About the Play:

The Play's The Thing is a full-length comedy by Ferenc Molnár translated into English by P.G. Wodehouse. In Ferenc Molnar's play-within-a-play farce, a young playwright is distraught when he overhears the actress he loves having an affair with another man. His mentor must convince him that she is only rehearsing a play – and that he must write her a better one.

The Play's The Thing is P.G. Wodehouse's deeply funny adaptation of Ferenc Molnár's celebrated take on theatrical life. Playwright Turai and his collaborator Mansky bring a young composer, Albert Adam, on a surprise visit to a castle on the Italian Rivera with their prima donna, Ilona, Albert's fiancee. The pointed and deadly barbs fly fast and furiously among this group of charming sophisticates. When Albert overhears his beloved being wooed in her boudoir, Turai tells him it is all a silly mistake, explaining to the besotted young man that the passionate scene was merely a rehearsal for a new play. To support his fabrication, Turai stays up all night to write a play, including the overheard love talk. The next day during a public rehearsal the suggestive dialogue is reborn as an innocent, harmless bit of theatre-play. A Broadway smash over 90 years ago, P.G.Wodehouse's adaptation of writer Ferenc Molnar's play remains a hilarious comedy that is witty, cleverly constructed, and stylish. The characters are extreme, larger than life, and full of affectations and false mannerisms. It is high comedy at its best!

The Play's The Thing premiered in 1926 at Henry Miller's Theatre on Broadway. This mostly rollicking and often riotous comedy was a hit and spawned at least five Broadway revivals. When a play is revived as many times as is The Play's The Thing, you know it has to be something special. This brilliant English adaptation by P.G. Wodehouse remains the most popular adaptation since its Broadway premiere in 1926, and has been performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 8 male

What people say:

"High spirits, springliness, and charm." — New York Post

"...a barbed satire with timeless wit, preserving an era that merits remembering." — New York Times

About the Playwright:

Ferenc Molnár (1878-1952) was a Hungarian-born dramatist and novelist who adopted American citizenship. Probably the greatest playwright to come out of Hungary, he was celebrated all over the world at the height of his fame in the 1920s and 30s. He emigrated to the United States to escape persecution of Hungarian Jews during World War II and is now best remembered in the West for the play Liliom, on which Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel is based, and for the adaptation of his farce The Play's the Thing by P.G. Wodehouse.

P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) spent much of his life in Southampton, New York, but was born in England and educated in Surrey. His roots were in England and his youth had been spent there: prep schools, Dulwich College, a spell in a bank, and years of freelancing as a journalist, novelist, short-story writer, lyricist, and playwright. He gained his dual citizenship in 1955 and lived more years of his life in America than he did in England. In a literary career spanning more than seventy years, he wrote more than ninety books, twenty film scripts, and collaborated on more than thirty plays and musical comedies.