Overview

As in its later, and substantially re-written version (entitled Orpheus Descending) the play deals with the arrival of a virile young drifter, Val Xavier, in a sleepy, small town in rural Mississippi. Taking a job in a store his smouldering animal magnetism draws out the latent sexual passion in the love-starved store keeper, whilst her husband lies dying upstairs. A sense of inevitable tragedy grows and there is a denouement of overwhelming and chilling intensity.