Months passed before Cain was informed that, according to his book publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, the Guild had "definitely abandoned any plan to do the play this season..."[3] By November 1935, producer Jack Curtis Sr. announced that the work would be staged as soon as possible.
"[6] Working closely with director Robert B. Sinclair, Caib wrote and rewrote scenes until finally providing the cast with a script "stuck together with adhesive tape, string, wire, and chewing gum."
The chilling tale of a drifter and an unfaithful wife conspiring to kill her husband was deemed "subversive" by the New York Sun, and Times found the characters "loathsome".
Though "box office attractions", neither of their fulsome performances did justice to the play,[14][15] The production opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and went on the road, appearing briefly in Chicago, Illinois and St. Louis, Missouri, then closed.
Claudia Cassidy wrote in the Chicago Tribune: "the crude dramatization suggests that if the theatre is isn't dead, somebody ought to arrange a mercy killing" and Variety declared Cain a "pedestrian playwright.