C.V. Burgess is a master craftsman who reveals only a few names. The first patient Joe and his wife Emily are the most dominant characters. Joe is inside the surgical room. Emily is anxious about the husband. Among the two children the dramatist uses only the girl’s name Dorothea and the Dentist hospital becomes a play area for Dorothea and the little boy who claim the same magazine for reading. The snobbish woman who goes on showing her photo album gives us an impression if she came to see the doctor or to show her photos.
The whole play revolves around the dramatic irony of patients’ guess as to what happened inside the dentists’ room and what really happened. The pliers, hack saw and the huge hammer were taken inside the dentist’s room only for opening the tool cabinet. But the patients wondered how these would be used in dental surgery. The groaning noise from inside the dentist’s rooms and the vexation of Emily Joe add to the fear of the patients waiting. A few women patients leave the waiting room scared of subjecting themselves to the torture of having their bad teeth extracted with carpentry tools. The nurse moves about with all feigned seriousness without disclosing the fact of the misplacement of key.
