Set in New Orleans following the Great Depression, the play focuses on the Berniers sisters, two middle-aged spinsters who have sacrificed their own ambitions to look after their ne'er-do-well younger brother Julian, whose grandiose dreams repeatedly lead to financial disasters.

When he unexpectedly returns home accompanied by his emotionally unstable, childlike young bride Lily, her aloof, aristocratic mother Albertine, and an unexplained large sum of money, Carrie and Anna suddenly find that the position of power they have always held has become unbalanced, leaving their lives in chaos.

Carrie has an incestuous infatuation with her brother, similar to the strong sexual attraction Hellman felt for an uncle when she was an adolescent, and one of her aunts had an affair with an African-American chauffeur, as does Albertine in the play.

In his review in the New York Herald Tribune, Walter Kerr said the play "binds us to it with a cold, serpentine grace that is born of a clear head, a level eye, and a fierce respect for the unchanging color of the precisely used word."

Both Maureen Stapleton and Irene Worth were nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play but lost to Anne Bancroft in The Miracle Worker.