In an alcove of a town house a great man lies dying. Waiting in the anteroom are his wife, his mistress, his best friend, and his ineffectual son and adulterous daughter, both of whom his wife despises. A doctor – too old to quite practice – and a nurse delineate the family portrait, while newsmen enter for the latest news, and television crews wait just off-stage. They who stand the death-watch recollect, rekindle old occasions, and amplify their own characters as well as the past, as one and all await the word that it is “all over”.
