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ACT ONE

The show opens with Gabe, Diana’s seventeen-year-old son, arriving home at 3:30 in the morning. She’s waited up for him anxiously for the past seven nights in a row, she tells him, imagining all the ways he might have died (“Prelude�). He tells her that she has to let him go; he’s almost eighteen. Dan, Diana’s husband, calls from offstage to ask who she’s talking to, and Diana tells Gabe to go upstairs the back way. “Just me talking to myself,� she tells Dan. Diana begins describing her “perfect loving family� (“Just Another Day�). Natalie, her daughter, enters. She is a hyper-overachiever and is still awake finishing homework. Diana tells her that she has to take it easy, and that she (Diana) is going upstairs “to have sex with your father.� Natalie thanks her for the unnecessary piece of information. Natalie reveals that the “perfect family� facade may be covering a very complicated dynamic and a feeling of collective desperation. Dan confirms this, as does Diana, as each