Max Frisch is too good a playwright to dismiss but too uninteresting to take seriously. Writing in almost-allegories and near-symbols, Frisch is basically a conservative playmaker with a (highly public) liberal conscience. Frisch's problem plays are Democracy in Action, in which great political and moral dilemmas are neatly summarized in terms of individual humanism. But once you accept Frisch's invitation to use the plays as a mirror to the real world, their scheme becomes untenable: the world is not lost (or won) through bourgeois angst.

When the War Was Over, a 1947 effort which is just now receiving its American premiere …, is a particularly instructive case in point. (p. 75)

To write a play right after World War II that denies the existence of Pure Evil takes some daring. Frisch is smart enough to include both passive collaboration (in the form of a piano tuner) and genocide (the Jewish interpreter...