Theatre Sans Argent is in deep financial trouble. Former actor and now Artistic Director Geoffrey Tennant, is forced to give his greatest performance since walking off stage in the middle of a production of Hamlet seven years before. He has to pretend the rent cheques won’t bounce. Meanwhile, his former best friend and colleague, Oliver Welles, Artistic Director of The New Burbage Shakespearean Festival, has sold his artistic soul for commercial success. Ellen Fanshaw, his aging leading actress and Geoffrey’s former inamorata, reluctantly takes on the role of Oliver’s nagging conscience. After celebrating the Festival’s opening night with a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, a heavily inebriated Oliver sees Geoffrey on the television news playing Custer to the Sans Argent’s Alamo. Drunkenly calling to commiserate from a phone booth, Oliver passes out on the road and the New Burbage Festival loses its leader to a pork truck.