This play is a comedy that unfolds its Pirandellian theme of reality and illusion through a discussion of how a play should be written. The strings of the plot are pulled by Sándor Turai, a famous playwright and librettist. He arrives for a visit at a château on the Italian Riviera together with his collaborator, Mansky, and his young protégé Adam, a composer. In the adjoining room, unaware of their presence, the actress Ilona is fending off, rather tolerantly, the advances of Almady, a middle-aged actor. Their dialogue reveals their brief amorous involvement some years ago. The trio overhear the conversation, and Adam, who is engaged to Ilona, is heartbroken. To mend matters, Turai spends the rest of the night weaving a one-act play around the overheard dialogue.
The next morning Ilona and Almady are persuaded by Turai to perform the play, she to keep her young fiancé and he to save himself from his wife. They hurriedly rehearse and act it out the same night at the château. As Adam watches the play-within-the-play, a burlesque of French melodrama, he is overjoyed to learn that the erotic conversation he had heard was only a "rehearsal."