he father took it upon himself to keep tabs on the new family, even going as far as to bring the youngest girl gifts after school. The mother was not happy about the father's new involvement and the family moved away. Eventually the secretary died the mother and her three children were forced by poverty to return to the city where she and the father had lived. The mother and her daughter find work as a mender and a prostitute respectively. One day the father tries to pick the daughter up but the mother intervenes. The father takes in the mother and the three kids, causing immense resentment from the son towards the family and more specifically the mother he views as having abandoned him. The mother makes several attempts to reconcile this situation, but all are in vain as the son wants no part of it.
             It is also revealed in the first act that the mother's youngest son and daughter will be dead by the end of the play, and the older daughter will run away. This is why they will not speak throughout the play. While this is all going on, the real actors become agitated that their rehearsal was interrupted for such a ridiculous reason. The actors continually mock the characters and the manager throughout the play.
             In the second act the manager directs the characters in the aforementioned scene in Madame Pace's dress shop where the father tries to pick up his step daughter. A problem arises when the manager realizes that there is no one to play Madame Pace. The father explains that the set has to be arranged just right so that she will show up to her shop. The manager has a lot of trouble trying to build the exact setting of the shop as the characters describe. The father tinkers with the set and Madame Pace arrives. Finally the scene begins while all of the dialogue is recorded. As the father and his step daughter come close to commencing the act the mother tries to stop the whole scene, rather then ju...