The Middle of Nowhere
by Randy Newman, Tracy Friedman

Set in 1969, five disparate characters find themselves stranded at a bus depot in a back-water Louisiana town.

As the rain pours down, their personas pour forth.

There's the station's janitor, the jingoistic salesman and his hitchhiking pick-up, the redneck with a guitar case full of beer, and the Black GI returning from Vietnam.

In a succession of stylized vaudevillian set pieces, this show-within-a-show becomes a bittersweet allegory of American pluralism.