The opening scene establishes the play’s one-room setting in “an old house in North London” (6). It is a summer evening. The house in question has no back wall and is instead outlined by a “square arch” (6), a visible staircase, and a hallway. The room is furnished with “odd tables, chairs” (6).

Max, the household’s aged patriarch, and one of his sons, Lenny, bicker about the location of a pair of scissors. It should be a trivial matter, but the chat is barbed and laced with an undercurrent of violence. “Why don’t you shut up, you daft prat?” (7), says Larry. His dad later boasts, “You think I wasn’t a tearaway? I could have taken care of you, twice over” (8). Max goes on to refer to his now dead wife, Jessie, as a “bitch” with a “rotten stinking face” (9). Max also recalls how he used to work at a racetrack and had a knack for picking winners. Lenny has little interest in his dad’s anecdotes and changes the subject—only to pour scorn on Max’s cooking.

Max’s brother, Sam, arrives home and interrupts this escalating argument.