How It All Goes Down
John Wright has been strangled to death with a rope in his mega-creepy Midwestern farmhouse. The main suspect of the grizzly crime? His wife. As the County Attorney, Sheriff Peters, and a neighboring farmer named Mr. Hale investigate the house for clues, the real sleuths turn out to be Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Though the menfolk constantly make fun of the women for worrying about female things, like Mrs. Wright's unfinished quilt, it's the ladies' attention to "woman stuff" that allows them to crack the case.
When the ladies discover Mrs. Wright's pet canary with its neck wrung, they immediately put the mystery together. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters know that the harsh Mr. Wright snapped the canary's neck, and that, after years of neglect and emotional abuse, Mrs. Wright repaid her husband by giving him a taste of what her pet bird got. (And we don't mean birdseed.)
The play comes to its spine-tingling conclusion when the ladies hide the bird from the male authorities, denying them the evidence of motive they need to convict Mrs. Wright. In the end, we're left with lots of juicy questions about the true meaning of justice for women… and oppressed people everywhere.