Spike Heels

Georgie, who lacks middle-class polish and a college education, has developed a lop-sided friendship with Andrew, a college professor who has taken it upon himself to mold this scrappy, feisty, working-class girl into a law office professional. Until his involvement, Georgie was a waitress; now, she feels like an imposter doing a job she is not acculturated to, so she falls back on the reliable tactic of using her sexuality to distract the men in her office from her lack of belonging.

At the beginning of the play, Georgie accepts Andrew’s judgment of her as someone who needs to be fixed. She listens to his hackneyed motivational clichés; his lectures about books he demands she read; his insistence that she stop smoking, and his efforts to transform the way she speaks. Andrew’s efforts make Georgie a target of Edward’s disgusting sexual harassment campaign, and a pawn between these two men. Doing her best to navigate the patriarchal power structures she is trapped in, Georgie even decides to go on a date with a reptilian Edward even after he jokingly threatens to rape her—her only conception of how to achieve workplace advancement and job security.

However, after Georgie bonds with Andrew’s fiancée Lydia, she finds the freedom to reject Andrew’s controlling dominance and to search for her identify from within.