The Last Days of Cleopatra is a new musical by Charlie Barnett — an entertaining romp of a farce about love, betrayal, and triumph, all told in a setting of strife and midcentury-modern glamour.

In 1961, after a calamitous start in London, the cast and crew of the film Cleopatra move to Cinecittà Studios in Rome to re-start the film. The dazzling Elizabeth Taylor has stayed on in the role of Cleopatra, but she has a new co-star: Richard Burton, a famed Shakespearean actor, who has joined the cast as Mark Antony. With the largest budget in Hollywood’s history and an acclaimed new director, Joseph Mankiewicz,  the production seems to be back on track. But the reality is that this esteemed  cast and crew is in the process of making one of the biggest turkeys of all time—while Taylor and Burton strike up a world-famous adulterous affair that ends Taylor’s marriage and drenches the production in scandal. As Taylor learns hard lessons, though, other troupers meet sunnier fates, finding friendship or true love on the set of this colossal disaster.