Michael Frayn's celebrated farce is structured as a play within a play, following a hapless touring theater troupe rehearsing and performing a sex comedy called Nothing On. The first act shows a chaotic dress rehearsal from the audience's normal viewpoint; the second act reveals the same performance a few weeks later from backstage, as offstage romantic entanglements and grudges among the cast erupt into silent, frantic physical comedy behind the set; and the third act shows the production disintegrating completely from the front again, weeks later, as the actors' personal feuds bleed uncontrollably into the show itself. The escalating structure, in which the same slapstick business is repeated with increasing chaos from different vantage points, is considered one of the most brilliantly engineered farces ever written. It's as much a loving, ruthless satire of the theater profession as it is a comedy in its own right.

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