Catherine (F, 25), a college dropout, has spent several years at home caring for her mentally ill father. Their relationship, although sometimes antagonistic on the surface, was sustained by strong mutual affection. Although she is a highly intelligent woman, she has no direction in life. Catherine is worried that she may inherit her father’s illness, and the signs of mental instability are already there.
Robert (M, 50-60s) was a famous mathematician who has just died of a heart attack in his fifties. He is already dead when the play begins, but he appears in the first scene in Catherine’s imagination and returns in two later scenes, which flash back to earlier years. Robert was afflicted by a serious mental illness which dogged the remainder of his life. He became so incapacitated that his daughter Catherine had to stay at home to care for him. Robert had a deep affection for Catherine.
Claire (F, late 20s-early 30s) is Catherine’s twenty-nine-year-old efficient, practical, and successful sister. Unlike Catherine, she has inherited none of her father’s erratic genius. Instead, she has made a career in New York as a currency analyst. Claire and Catherine have never gotten along well. Claire feels responsible for Catherine’s welfare and wants her to move to New York, but Catherine resents what she sees as Claire’s interference in her life.
Hal (M, 28) is a twenty-eight-year-old mathematician who teaches at the University of Chicago. He also plays drums in a rock band made up of mathematicians. Hal is a former student of Robert’s, whom he admired immensely, not only for the brilliance of his achievements in mathematics but because Robert helped him through a bad patch in his doctoral studies. Hal first met Catherine briefly four years earlier, and when he meets her again (in an attempt to find any redeemable work by Robert in his later years), he quickly becomes romantically involved.