An hilarious send-up of show-business and its often bizarre practitioners, which uses the occasion of a disastrous opening night party to pile comic sequence upon comic sequence.
It is the opening night of "The Golden Egg" on Broadway and wealthy producer, Julia Budder, 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 in the producer's bedroom, waiting for the reviews to come in. Included are the excitable young author; the brilliant, but unstable director - who courts failure and is devastated when his work is well received; the pill-popping leading lady - who hopes to revive her career after a series of flop movies; and the playwright's best friend, an egotistical but insecure comic actor who passed up the chance to star in the play for a television series - which has since been cancelled.
Also present are a fawning, hypocritical drama critic - who is a closet playwright; a would-be singer working as a part-time servant; and a hard-boiled lady taxi driver who has seen it all - many, many times over. The good natured bonhomie with which the evening begins grows steadily bitchier - and funnier- as the reviews, all bad, come in, and those assembled seek desperately to to pin the blame on each other. But as the euphoria slides into despair, the narcissism, ambition, childishness and just plain irrationality which infuses the theatre and its denizens takes over. The next play is sure to be the hit they have all been hoping for.