The play opens with a 1978 six-year reunion of women who had graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1972; one of the central characters, Holly Kaplan, is autobiographically based.
Shortly after the reunion begins, the play shifts back to the women's final year at Mount Holyoke, setting out their histories. This varied group includes Rita Altabel, a promiscuous rebel who repeatedly assures her friends that they will all be "amazing" in a certain number of years, moving the deadline back as they age. She had hoped to write and planned to persuade her husband to facilitate her literary career; instead, she has done essentially nothing since graduation besides getting married. In college, Samantha Stewart hoped to build her life around her fiancé, Bob, who she felt deserved this devotion because of his superiority to her; at the reunion, she seems to have succeeded in attaining her goal, but doing so has left her feeling somewhat inadequate and embarrassed by her lack of professional achievement: "Sometimes I get intimidated by all of Robert's friends who come to the house. And I think I haven't done very much of anything important." Kate Quin, the Phi Beta Kappa philosophy major who consumed romance novels during every spare moment, worried at graduation that entering law school would set her on a path to success, not happiness.
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