The play, set in the mental ward of a city hospital, revolves around a theatrical director named Jim Downs, who has been driven to the verge of insanity and suicide by his estranged wife Ann.

Like the shrike, a small predatory bird that kills and impales its prey, Ann seems harmless but her coercion of Jim incapacitates his free will and traps him under her control.

Upon waking, Jim discovers that he is legally trapped in the hospital because the psychiatrists deem him a threat to himself and others and are unwilling to release him.

Ann regularly visits Jim at the hospital, supposedly to provide comfort and love, but really to continue her hectoring and manipulation of him.

The cast featured Judith Evelyn (Ann Downs), Somer Alberg (Dr. Schlesinger), James Hawthorne Bay (Perkins), and Mary Bell (Miss Wingate).

In a 1955 production starring Dane Clark, actress Isabel Bonner, who was married to the author, died during a performance on stage of a brain hemorrhage.