It’s the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway, and the wealthy producer is throwing a lavish party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but the real action is upstairs, where a group of insiders have staked themselves out to await the reviews. The group includes the excitable playwright; the possibly unstable wunderkind director; the pill-popping leading lady, treading the boards after becoming infamous in Hollywood; and the playwright’s best friend, for whom the play was written but who passed up this production for a television series. Add to this a drama critic who’s panned the playwright in the past and a new-in-town aspiring singer, and you have a prime recipe for the narcissism, ambition, childishness, and just plain irrationality that infuse the theatre—and for comedy.

THIS PLAY CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE