In a harrowing drama, O'Neill shines a harsh but compassionate spotlight on the failed lives, empty hopes, and perpetual pipe dreams of an assortment of down-and-out denizens of a seedy saloon, set in New York in 1912. Their sad, but complacent existences are rattled when Hickey (Robards) arrives for his annual bender a changed man - forswearing alcohol and preaching a deliverance from "the lie of the pipe dream".