The setting is a clean but slightly threadbare apartment in a medium-sized New England city, occupied by Artie and his live-in girlfriend, Roxanne. As the play begins, Artie and his pal Doober are rehearsing the skit (Artie dressed as a box of ziti, Doober as vermicelli) with which they hope to win first prize in the annual pageant put on by the pasta manufacturer for whom Artie works. Hopefully this will turn out better than some of Artie's other schemes�such as betting on the horses�which have put him heavily in debt to an unseen but sinister bookie, Ernesto Mal, whose henchman, appropriately named Slimy, has come by to give Artie a pay-up-or-else ultimatum. Artie's only hope of staving off a broken arm, or worse, is the stamp collection his grandfather left to him, and while Slimy is hardly a philatelist he just happens to have a friend (a lady named Walter) who is. Happily the stamps are valuable, enough so to settle Artie's indebtedness, and as the play ends (after allowing each of the characters an opportunity to regale the audience with a zany recounting of his or her personal story), Artie and Doober are back in costume and heading off to the pasta pageant, their customary high spirits fully restored.