[1][2] The two-act play depicts the final year in the life of Francis Biddle—the United States attorney general under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and chief judge of the Nuremberg trials—as it was seen through the eyes of his then twenty-five-year-old assistant, Sarah Schorr.
As the young woman relates to the audience, she is merely the latest and coincidentally the last in a long and unsuccessful line of personal secretaries, all of whom have disappointed Biddle in some way.
[3][4] The original production was directed by Victory Gardens' associate artistic director Sandy Shinner and starred Tony Award-winning actor Fritz Weaver as Biddle and Kati Brazda as Sarah.
[5][6] The success of Trying came as a surprise to Glass, as the play was only picked up as a replacement for Claudia Allen's Hanging Fire when the show's lead actress, Julie Harris, suffered a stroke and was unable to go on.
[8] Following the play's transfer off-Broadway, the production continued to be met with high praise, with critics calling the relationship between Weaver and Brazda some of the best acting seen in New York City that season.