" Egypt""s fearful Pharaoh Rameses I (Ian Keith) issued an edit to kill all newborn male Hebrew babies ("Since this deliverer is among their newborn, only their newborn need die").)The screenplay was adapted and based on playwright Noel Coward""s 1935 short one-act (half-hour) stage playStill Life.Artistic performances by a self-absorbed group of disguised, impersonating "ham" actors (who had been forbidden to perform an anti-Hitler play in their own theatre) took to their own ""stage"" (with clever tricks of the trade) to challenge, subvert, ridicule and mock the authoritarian political agenda of the Nazi regime and its main proponents.Nicknamed "Bloodthirsty Bessie" by her friends, the elderly woman is amusing herself by reading a "wonderful" murder novel about a man who married a woman while having six wives buried in the cellar.