A rambling country house outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma, sixty miles northwest of Tulsa. More than a century old, the house was probably built by a clan of successful Irish homesteaders. Additions, renovations, and repairs have essentially modernized the house until 1972 or so, when all structural care ceased.
-- Stage Directions (Prologue)

Importance: These stage directions sum up not only the geographical location of the house, but an attitude that has made the house appear the way it does in the play.

Violet. My wife. She takes pills, sometimes a great many. And they affect - among other things, her equilibrium. Fortunately, the pills she takes eliminate her need for equilibrium ... my wife takes pills and I drink. That's the bargain we struck - one of the bargains, just one paragraph of our marriage contract - cruel covenant ... I don't drink BECAUSE she takes pills. As to whether she takes pills because I drink - I learned...
-- Beverly (Prologue)