Tom is a thin young man, successful and handsome. He's drawn to Helen, who is not thin. His friend Carter, who views the world with vicious hipness, discovers his feelings for her. Beautiful Jeannie, who once shared a wishy-washy romance with Tom finds out, and is insulted to the point of rage. They cannot abide this relationship, and they intend to destroy it.

Tom, played by boyish Schuyler Schmid, is a man who is so weak and unsure of himself that he can't even finish a sentence when in a confrontation. His weakness is what makes the play work. He truly likes Helen, but he is not a fighter, and cannot stand the constant disapproval the people in his life give him for being with her. The play demonstrates his vulnerability; he is the only character to change his costumes on stage, bare chest and thin arms exposed to the audience.

Mary Stewart is fat, beguiling Helen. The dialogue she is given is rather plain, and it is up to the actress to infuse it with enough life and humor to make us believe Tom would be attracted to her. She succeeds with disguised vulnerability and uncontainable laughter that makes the audience love her.

The most powerful performance comes from Paul Glazier's Carter, an angry, funny man who resists becoming a caricature of evil. He is the joyfully mean friend that so many boys have had in their lives, the one who never seems to give you the option of leaving him. Glazier is completely at home in this role, punching every joke and spitting out pain without ever becoming false to the character.

The production is clever in the way it quietly and constantly draws attention to the subject of fat and appearance. There is food in all of the seven scenes. The characters dine at a sushi restaurant, where Helen struggles gracefully to find a comfortable position on the tiny stools. Much like she quietly struggles through a later scene to find a way to present herself in her lingerie. Jeannie performs the last scene in a bright orange bikini, demonstrating her complete lack of fat in the presence of Helen's modest cover-up. Even the props have a certain anorexic look, thin as possible with clean hard lines.  

A world is created in this play, an extension of cut-throat junior-high dynamics, where a fat girlfriend really could cause you constant pain. The play ends abruptly. In another medium the audience would expect one more scene, one where the bad guys get told off and happiness finds those who deserve it. But when the lights go out the one thing a viewer can sure of is that no character in this story is headed towards happiness, whether or not they deserve it.