Based on W. Somserset Maugham's novel Theatre the film is a delicious tale of amorous folly and revenge set in the world of the London stage during the late 1930s. Julia Lambert is a celebrated and glamorous actress, famous throughout England and happily married for years to her agent, Michael. But underneath the artifice, she is being tortured by her fading looks, her philandering husband, and her estranged son. When she meets Tom, a young American admirer and her son's best friend, she is swept off her feet, and embarks on a secret and passionate affair that threatens to create a social scandal and destroy her career and marriage; until she discovers that he has had an ulterior motive all along. There is no way that Julia Lambert is going to be taken for a fool, and she plans her revenge, the ultimate act of a woman scorned.