It’s Only A Play by Terrence McNally

On the opening night of The Golden Egg on Broadway, the wealthy producer Julia Budder is throwing a party in her lavish Manhattan townhouse. Downstairs the celebrities are pouring in, but upstairs in the bedroom, a group of insiders await the reviews, including 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. Adding a drama critic who has panned the playwright in the past and a new-in-town aspiring singer creates a prime recipe for the narcissism, ambition, childishness and just plain irrationality that infuse the theatre—and comedy.