It tells the story of a man who pays a woman to spend several weeks with him by the sea to learn "how to love".

Then, the sound of ("music of") the sea faded in, and actors Smith (the Speaker) and Wyman (the Listener) were faintly revealed sitting a table with a dim lamp, smoking.

This visual image was inspired by Duras' movie, Le Camion [The Truck], of which director McElhinney remarked that, "Drama becomes nothing and yet it suffices.

"[4] Also, revealed stage right over the duration of the show was a tableau of an inexpensive plastic blow-up doll "reading" magazines on a beach blanket.

In the program essay, "On Staging The Malady of Death," director McElhinney commented that, "A blow-up-doll was perfect, as it is an object, like the girl is in the text.

A blow-up-doll is an inherently sexual being and would strike the cord between sex and commerce that I think is implicit in Duras' text.

Mitchell's production relied heavily on the use of live-feed greyscale images to give the audience a sense of dissociation.