How to Get Tough About It

About the show

The author described the play as "A proletarian love story of pleasant dimensions." It tells the story of Kitty, an independent-minded waitress in a cheap cafe in a Midwestern industrial district, and Dan Grimshaw, "a boat-builder with more pride in craft than business sense." Atkinson gives the following summary: She has been in love with an amiable thug who promotes himself to labor union racketeering, and has coldly deserted her. By force of circumstances the waitress and the boat-builder are thrown together on the houseboat, where he lives on the mudflats, and they find that their notions of life are congenial. During a bogus strike the racketeer comes back, claims his old girl and takes her. The rest of the play is the story of how the uncontaminated pair learn how to get tough about it and save the decencies of their private principles in a world that is seething with violent corruption.