Typically provocative, at once comic and tragic, Pirandello’s Naked (Vestire gli ignudi) uncovers the machinery of guilt, deceit, and betrayal underlying the motives of five people. The heroine is a young governess who has been reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes. Dismissed from service when the baby in her care fell from a terrace to its death; abandoned by her prospective husband and penniless; she turns to prostitution but fails at this too and poisons herself. She nevertheless does not die – and the action turns farcical, resembling a contemporary media event. She invents a romantic tale about her history which appears in a newspaper and generates more than casual interest in four men: the newspaper reporter; a best-selling writer who rescues her; her faithless lover; and her former employer; all of whom pursue her, demanding she account for her lies. As she feels hounded beyond endurance, her situation grows increasingly dark.