- For the film see Bus Stop.
Bus Stop (aka The Wrong Kind of Girl) is a 1955 play by William Inge. The film of the same name is only partially based upon it.
Characters
Bus Stop is a drama, with romantic and some comedic elements. The characters are:
- Grace - Owner of the diner, a "grass widow". She is 40-ish, and pretty in a fading, hard-bitten way. She has a passionate side to her nature, loving a good fight and the attentions of a good man.
- Elma - A very intelligent but naive high school student; she is Grace's waitress.
- Will - The local sheriff. Tough as nails and brusque in manner, but good-hearted and a staunch Christian. A highly "moral" man in the general sense of the word.
- Professor Lyman - A college English professor who is articulate and charming, but cannot hold a position, partially due to his resistance to any kind of authority, and partially due to his unfortunate taste for young girls. He also has an obvious drinking problem.
- Cherie - A pretty young woman who comes from a difficult "hill folk" background, and has left her innocence far behind. She is an aspiring nightclub singer, but has never worked in any establishment above the level of "cheap dive".
- Bo - A young and wealthy cowboy with boorish manners that hide a naivete almost as profound as Elma's. He has convinced himself that Cherie will be his bride, though Cherie wants nothing to do with him.
- Virgil - An older, wiser cowboy. Bo has been an orphan from an early age, and Virgil has become a father figure to Bo, as well as his head ranch hand.
- Carl - The bus driver, who has an ongoing "just passing through" relationship with Grace, which is purely sexual in nature.
Synopsis
The play is set in a diner about 20 miles west of Kansas City in early March, 1955. A freak snowstorm has halted the progress of the bus, and the eight characters have a weather enforced layover in the diner from approximately one o'clock until five o'clock in the morning. The interaction among the characters, and the interweaving of their stories is the sum of the play's plot.
