Absurd Person Singular takes place on the Christmas Eve of three consecutive years—past, present, and future—when three couples
gather to celebrate the festive season. Each act takes place in a kitchen.
Act 1 is set in the kitchen of Jane and Sidney Hopcroft. Husband and wife are in a state of panic, anxious to impress their guests. Sidney is struggling to climb the social ladder, whereas
Geoffrey Jackson and Ronald Brewster-Wright are already successful businessmen. As Sidney and Jane bungle their way through the evening, the other characters find themselves in the kitchen for varying reasons, usually farcical. One of the first to appear, Marion, appears attractive but cynical. Her laudatory remarks about the Hopcrofts’ kitchen are so exaggerated as to be sarcastic and false, and her attitude epitomizes the overly polite scorn which the upper middle class feels for the merely respectable middle class. Ronald, her husband, is by contrast pleasant and relaxed, but incapable of standing up to Marion.
When they return to the living room, Jane Hopcroft enters the kitchen in a state of utter dismay; she has forgotten to buy tonic water. Always ready to play the martyr, she dons a ridiculous outfit consisting of a huge raincoat, a trilby hat, and outsized Wellington boots. In this ensemble, she launches herself out of the back door, only to find herself exiled from the party for the rest of the evening. Her absence is remarked on only with the utmost politeness, and the evening continues with everyone being exceedingly nice to one another. Act 1 gives the audience an insight into the characters’ personalities as well as the relationships existing among the three couples. The act closes with the guests gone and Jane once again polishing the spotless kitchen surfaces, her equilibrium restored.
Act 2 is set in the present, this time in the kitchen of Geoffrey and Eva Jackson, which proves to be quite a contrast to the Hopcrofts’ gleaming showpiece. It has the usual homespun look of the comfortable, trendy middle-class home. In this untidy room, the scene opens on an equally unkempt Eva Jackson, who is intent upon writing something on a notepad. Geoffrey, her husband, is pleading with her to be reasonable and to let him go off and live with his mistress. He tries to arouse her pity by referring to his desire to be unfaithful as a dreadful burden, as if it were an affliction with which he was born. Eva remains silent, even when Geoffrey leaves to fetch the doctor for her. Next, Eva embarks on a series of ironically ridiculous suicide attempts in the presence of her guests: Sidney, Jane, Ronald, and Marion. They all manage in one way or another accidentally to deter Eva from killing herself, while remaining oblivious to what she is actually doing or to how she might feel.
In this act, Geoffrey establishes himself as a weak womanizer, Eva as one who has sunk to the depths of despair, and Ronald as impractical and still unable to control Marion. Sidney and Jane are unbearable as the neighborly do-gooders, with Jane repeating almost everything her husband says as if her life depended on it. The climax finds Jane pouring greasy water over Sidney, and Marion wondering why Ronald is looking so queer when she has just nonchalantly electrocuted him. Act 2 ends with Sidney losing control and yelling at Eva, who is as detached as she was at the start. Surprisingly, she begins to sing and ends up conducting the rest of the company from her prone position on the kitchen table. At that moment, Geoffrey returns.
The final act portrays Christmas future, and this time the scene is the kitchen of the Brewster-Wrights, who live in a large, fine Victorian house. The heating has broken down, but Ronald is reluctant to have it fixed. Marion has taken to spending all of her time in her room, with three electric fires blazing, and the scene hints that the Brewster-Wrights are not as affluent as they first appeared. Eva and Ronald seem on friendly terms, and Eva is a changed woman since Christmas Eve the year before. She is more demanding of her husband and more assertive generally. The Brewster-Wright marriage has definitely cooled. Geoffrey has failed in a mission to recover some money owed to him, and Eva reprimands him for his weakness. They argue about the merits of borrowing from Sidney.
Marion arrives in a negligee, still displaying her usual cutting humor, and maudlinly drunk. She is distracted from self-pity by a ring on the doorbell. There follows an excruciating scene in which those inside attempt to pretend that the room is empty and that no one is in, while the Hopcrofts, the unwanted guests, go to every length to invade the house and eventually succeed—much to the embarrassment of everyone else, caught in the act of trying to hide as Sidney finds the light switch. What follows is more Hopcroft insensitivity and tactlessness. They produce presents for the Brewster-Wrights but not for the Jacksons, and Sidney finally gets his wish (expressed two years previously) to have everyone play party games. Because he now is the most influential member of the party, instead of the one trying most to impress, he is able to carry it off.