History Theatre / TheTimeOfYourLife

* TheBartender: Nick the friendly (though justifiably cynical) bartender.

Other characters include [=McCarthy=], a philosophizing longshoreman, Harry, an aspiring comedian and tap-dancer, "Kit Carson", an old man who tells fanciful stories; Blick, a meanspirited vice cop; and Nick, the owner and bartender of Nick's. Creator/GeneKelly played Harry in the original Broadway production.

* CrazyMemory: Kit Carson, the odd old man in strange clothing. Throughout the day, he tells a series of unbelievable stories, every one of which starts with him stating the unlikely event, the place, and the year. In the final act, he tries to make a corrupt vice cop stop harassing a dancer/prostitute and is thrown out of the bar. Minutes later, the vice cop is shot offstage. The old man returns to the bar, and someone says the cop has been killed. The old man says,
-->"I killed a man once. San Francisco, 1938. I didn't like the way he talked to ladies, so I went and got my pearl-handled pistol, waited for him to get out of the bar, and shot him . . . I had to throw that beautiful pistol into the bay . . ."

The action is centered in a dive bar, "Nick's Pacific Street Saloon, Restaurant and Entertainment Palace", in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco. The action centers around Joe, an affable man who has enough money to spend his days lounging around in a bar. Joe encourages Harry, a young man with dreams of being a dancer. He matches up his buddy/flunky Tom with Kitty, a hooker who dreams of a way out of the life.

* NoNameGiven: Has a character identified as "Kit Carson" in the Dramatis Personae and who introduces himself as Murphy. Given the wild stories he tells, even he might not even remember his real name.

Other characters include [=McCarthy=], a philosophizing longshoreman, "Kit Carson", an old man who tells fanciful stories; Blick, a meanspirited vice cop; and Nick, the owner and bartender of Nick's. Creator/GeneKelly played Harry in the original Broadway production.

** Also "The Arab", who only speaks in cryptic aphorisms.

** Longshoreman McCarthy, who happens to be very well-read as well as very articulate and perceptive.

* BlatantLies: Kitty Duval is obviously a streetwalker, but she goes about putting on airs claiming to be a star of the Burlesque theater all over the US and Europe. As soon as Nick meets her, he correctly identifies her as a two bit whore (not that he cares one way or another).

** Kit Carson with his tall tales - everything from falling in love with a midget to being attacked by a man with a hook for a hand.

* TheMunchausen: The old man identified in the DramatisPersonae as "Kit Carson" (which may or may not be his name). Among his many stories is one about herding cattle on a bicycle in Toledo, Ohio in the year 1918, when a hurricane struck the town and left him floating northwest sitting on the roof of a house. The play ends with him telling the story of having killed a man in San Francisco, 1938, because he didn't like the way he talked to ladies. Since that's the present day and a vice cop was just murdered outside after harassing a woman in the bar, the characters believe this one.

** Kit Carson with his tall tales.

* TheBartender: Nick the friendly bartender.

Made into a film in 1948 which starred Creator/JamesCagney as Joe, directed by H.C. Potter.

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Kit Carson with his tall tales.

* DrinkBasedCharacterization: Joe, being something of a RichIdiotWithNoDayJob, likes to loaf around at Nick's and order champagne, though Nick's isn't the kind of high-class joint that would ordinarily stock up with it.