Identify this one-act play

Cafe Society
1

This is an obscure one. I saw it many years ago when I was in high school, so it was available in the late 60s.

The scene was a kitchen. The plot involved a husband and wife suddenly being surrounded by the aspects of a spy thriller – gunshots, mysterious phone calls, etc.

About halfway through, and man walks into the kitchen and sits, putting his feet up on the kitchen table. He reads a newspaper.

Neither the husband and wife pay the slightest attention to him. He continues to read until there’s a gunshot or some other thrilling moment.

Then, the man puts away his newspaper and says words to the effect, "That’s fine. But at the next rehearsal, I want . . . " The joke being that he is the director of a play watching the runthrough.

Any ideas?

2

My memory is muddled and neither quite fit, but how about either Stoppard’s The Real Inspector Hound (theatre critics get involved in standard murder mystery) or his After Magritte (surreal tableau explained as everyday dance rehearsal, the unravels)?

3

Not Stoppard – I’ve read them both. And the play I’m thinking of was performed in a high school stage a few years before either of the Stoppards were written.

Thanks, though.