AllMovie

The director of a provincial theater group, Adam Horkai (Sandor Szakacsi) is in the middle of rehearsing his troupe for a Schubert musical when he learns that a famous Hungarian author has only two weeks left to live. Out of veneration for the author's contributions to literature, Horkai decides to fake rehearsals of the dying man's prohibited play, "The Jacobins" and invite the moribund writer to come witness his great work as the actors run through it. The cast knows the play is banned, but they concur in this scheme to make the last two weeks of the writer's life rewarding. Their rehearsals, in fact, are so intense that the crew and director have all but forgotten their play acting was only play acting and the result is that they stemmed the tide of the playwright's illness. Now he is looking forward to an "opening night" -- and the director sees no easy way out of his dilemma.