The Bald Soprano, a one-act "anti-play," opens in a "middle-class English" interior, furnished with typically English furniture and a typically English couple, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, whose first names remain unknown. It is an English evening, and the pair is engaged in English activities. He reads a newspaper while she darns socks. The silence is broken by an English clock that strikes seventeen times, prompting Mrs. Smith to remark that "it's nine o'clock."

Mrs. Smith recounts what the pair had for dinner, mentally wandering from the menu to the pair's children while Mr. Smith continues to read and click his tongue. He finally responds when she concludes that one Dr. MacKenzie-King was to be trusted because he underwent a liver operation before performing the same operation on a patient. They start a mild quarrel over the issue because the doctor's patient died, prompting Mr. Smith to...