That's Where the Town's Going

Locale of the play is a small midwestern town, the setting, a large old home that bespeaks dwindling wealth This stultifying atmosphere and utter uselessness of their existence bothers Wilma Sills more than Ruby who insists she is "contented. Some days, even happy"

Not Wilma First, she invites the town wolf, George Preble, to the house for brochures and data on Shadyside, a new housing development she briefly dreams of moving to. Another desperate gesture is to write to Hobart Cramm, once a poor boy from the town who, she learns, has made good in the East" ~ NY Daily News

But when he turns up it is quickly evident that it pleases him to see the once influential Sills family brought low. After assuring himself of Wilma's complete humiliation, he asks her to marry him. She has been told she is silly so many years that she now believes it and is terrified of doing the wrong thing at this, the most crucial moment of her life

But she cannot help herself; she refuses Hobart because she does not love him. The blow to his vanity is monumental, and he turns for comfort to Ruby, whose assumed acceptance of life is now penetrated, revealing a reckless, almost conniving desire for escape which Wilma never suspected