Theresa Rebeck’s provocative feminist two-act drama Spike Heels, first produced in 1990, is a problem play, that is a drama that looks at cultural, social, and economic issues. Problem plays intended to participate in the cultural conversation have a long and significant history in the theater. Playwrights like the Ancient Greek Euripides, 19th century Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw (whose presence looms large in Spike Heels), and a wide number of contemporary playwrights have investigated racism, sexism, immigrant rights, and economic inequalities in their work. Problem plays often forsake rich character development and believable plot, instead using these features to raise awareness and get an audience to interrogate their own positions of hot button topics. This is true in the case of Spike Heels, which revolves around the role of gender in defining social status, the problematic position of women in the workplace, the relationship between power and gender, and ultimately the dynamic between sexual identity and the integrity of self-perception. Initial critical reviews faulted Rebeck’s play for its polemical bent—the characters are unsympathetic and driven by ideology, and the plot is unbelievable.

This study guide uses the 1992 Samuel French paperback.

Plot Summary

The play is set in Boston. The plot centers on two people: Andrew, a college professor of political philosophy, and his upstairs neighbor Georgie, a secretary at a law firm where Andrew’s friend Edward works as a defense attorney.

The play opens in Andrew’s apartment. Georgie stops by after work, happy to finally shed her sexy, uncomfortable office attire, including a particularly painful pair of spike heels. Georgie opens up to Andrew about her boss Edward’s sexual aggression at the office: He threatened to rape her, but then claimed this was a joke. The office offers no structured protocols for pursuing sexual harassment complaints. Now in her underwear, Georgie makes a half-hearted effort to seduce the staid Andrew, but Andrew refuses. He tells Georgie he helped get her the job even though she never finished college, and then reveals that he put Edward up to hitting on Georgie—Andrew thinks dating Edward would help refine Georgie’s rough, working-class affect. The news stuns Georgie, who quickly dresses and leaves.

In Scene 2, the next day, Edward arrives at the apartment on his way to pick up Georgie, who has decided to go out with him. In a sudden about-face, a drunken Andrew challenges Edward’s integrity. Georgie arrives for the date dressed in a slinky dress and exotic spike heels. Andrew asks Edward to give the two of them a moment together. When Edward departs, Andrew tries to get Georgie to remove the heels and attempts to make out with her, which leads to a heated discussion about Georgie’s use/abuse of sex as power. Andrew again volunteers that he is trying to reshape Georgie, who storms out of the apartment for her date.

Act II opens in Georgie’s apartment later that night. Edward and Georgie are kissing on her couch, though Edward refuses to have sex before ascertaining Georgie’s feelings for Andrew. Andrew’s fiancée Lydia, whom he has disparaged as cold and passionless, pounds on the door. When Georgie lets her in, the two women have a long discussion over the moral failings of both Andrew and Edward. They then share a slow, loose dance, bonding in friendship and solidarity as women. The men, now drunk, return. Challenged by Edward, Andrew finally admits his feelings for Georgie in front of Lydia. Disgusted by this confession, Georgie leaves—with Lydia.

In Scene 2, Edward and Andrew wake up the next morning in Georgie’s apartment. Andrew confesses that he and Lydia hooked up when she was still dating Edward. When Georgie returns, Andrew again declares his feelings for her, but Georgie rejects him, realizing that he would never stop trying to fix her or see her as an object. He leaves dispirited. Edward and Georgie talk hesitatingly about their new relationship and kiss, before negotiating what kind of future they will have.