Queenie and Burrs are entertainers living in Manhattan in the late 1920’s, one of the most decadent eras of American popular culture. Their world is both glamorous and brutal, and they are creatures of it. Though Vaudeville stars, Vaudeville was on its way out. They live in relative squalor, either for lack of money or lack of will to do anything but enjoy the pleasures of life. At the start of the play they are living in a bubble that needs just one provocation to pop.

Joseph Moncure March sets his poem in this sensuous world of beauty and ugliness, and Lippa amplifies the emotions through music. The scenic environment is inspired by the American artist Reginald Marsh. Marsh’s work has been characterized as offering “…scenes of people acting out with unbridled gusto. He charts sociability as it tilts toward debauchery, as on the mixed-race dance floor of The Savoy, where everyone’s dancing the Lindy Hop. If he were alive today, he’d be out at Brooklyn raves watching artists take molly” (Andrew Russeth, The Observer).

The painting “Twenty Cent Movie” became the central inspiration.