Description of Bus Stop

The play, Bus Stop, is set in a diner in the mid 1900’s during a big snow storm. It begins with a girl named Elma (who works at the diner) whom is talking to lady, that also works at the diner, named Grace. There is a big snow storm in the midst and they both ponder whether to keep the diner open incase the passengers need a place to stay. They decide to keep it open.
Next the town’s experienced and humble sheriff comes to the diner to watch over the bus’ passengers, also to inform Elma and Grace on the storms activity and increasingly worse conditions. Cherie (a chanteuse from Topeka, Kansas) enters the diner frantically in effort to escape her sleeping captures. She convinces everyone that a man named Bo, whom fell in love with her when he saw her perform at the Blue Dragon nightclub where she works, and his friend Virgil kidnapped her after she got off of work.
She explains that Bo wants to take her to his home in Montana where he has a significant amount of money and get married. Bus Stop takes on its plot from there with love, frustration and comedy. Bo tries to understand why the chanteuse Cherie does not love him. He realizes that no lady has ever turned him down because of the wealth he inherited. Virgil is constantly trying to make Bo comprehend what he is doing wrong in the ways of love, and how to treat a woman right to win them over.

Dr. Lymann becomes progressively drunker throughout the first night at the diner and becomes flirtatious with naive Elma. Grace and Carl end up leaving to “rest” and “take a walk”, when they both conspicuously imply that they will be with each other during that time. By reading this far in the play, the reader expects to learn what will happen with Bo and Cherie’s relationship and what this snow storm will entail for the rest of the characters.