The Play's the Thing

A celebrated dramatist and his young composer arrive at an Italian villa, only to discover the woman they both love has vanished on a picnic with another man. What follows is a glittering farce about the thin membrane between art and life, love and jealousy, the stage and the heart. P.G. Wodehouse adapted Ferenc Molnár's Hungarian masterpiece into English comedy of the highest order, preserving every sparkling exchange, mistaken identity, and romantic complication. But the real delight lies in watching Turai, the aging playwright, try to spin everyone's tangled emotional disasters into proper dramatic form while chaos erupts around him. The play asks a delicious question: are we the authors of our own lives, or merely characters in a comedy someone else is writing? A witty, sophisticated treat for anyone who loves Wodehouse's incomparable voice or the delicate machinery of well-made farces.