Thirty years after "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", Zeffirelli returned to collaborate with Enrico Maria Salerno, one of his favorite actors — bold, complex, thoroughly modern. Their interpretation of Pirandello's masterpiece was highly unconventional: the action was transported to a contemporary setting, and the six characters burst into a crowded and chaotic television studio where rehearsals for another Pirandello play, "The Mountain Giants," were underway. The script itself was heavily revised, to the point that the program included the note, "original dramaturgical adaptation by Franco Zeffirelli and Luigi Vanzi."
The show generated significant interest, though it also provoked mixed reactions.