In a detention camp in 1918, a group of Finish actors are sentenced to death. When an important German general arrives, the camp’s vicious commandant forges out a cruel plan: The prisoners have to perform a play - and if they can make the visiting general laugh, they will be spared. Due to the brutal conditions within the camp, this goal seems to be impossible to reach. But after some time, even the commandant’s wife starts to sympathise with the prisoners, watching them rehearsing dressed up in woman’s clothes.