The play is set in a psychiatrist’s office. A middle-aged man is stretched out on the therapeutic couch, his body a veritable anthology of agonized attitudes, powered by blunted vectors of thwarted desire.
DOCTOR: Keep still!
MAN: I can’t.
DOCTOR: Where are you trying to go?
MAN: Out of my mind.
DOCTOR: Will that help?
MAN: It’s got to be better than being in here [he points irritably to his head].
DOCTOR: You need a ladder.
MAN: A ladder?
DOCTOR: Yes. [calls his nurse] Moira, will you bring in the ladder, please?
[Moira appears, struggling under the weight of a ten-foot ladder—which appears to be made of solid gold. She sets it up near the patient’s couch]
MAN: And what am I supposed to do with it?
DOCTOR: Climb it of course.
MAN (irritably): Why?
DOCTOR: Well, you don’t care much for your life down here, right? A ladder is an Ascension Machine…
MAN: What does that mean?
DOCTOR: It means that in the act of climbing it, you will rise above yourself.
MAN: That sounds alright to me.
DOCTOR: Yes, I thought it might. Well, up you go!
[The man gets up from the couch, goes to the gleaming ladder and begins to climb it]
DOCTOR (looking up at his patient who is now on the 3rd rung): How does it feel?
MAN (shouting back): It’s exhilarating!
DOCTOR: Just as I told you. [there is a pause] Okay, you’d better come back down now.
MAN (exuberantly): Not on your life! I like it up here! And l’m going all the way…
[and as the doctor and Moira watch, the man ascends the ladder, rung by rung, until he disappears entirely from view]
DOCTOR (to Moira): What’s my next appointment?
MOIRA: You don’t have one, Doctor. You’re free.
(curtain)
