Nearly all [Adamov's] plays are political in one way or another, being derived from his experience as a rootless intellectual who, in a very human way, was subject to terrifying dreams of injustice and persecution. His early work, written and performed around 1950, is undoubtedly his finest achievement, since it springs with such intensity from his personal sufferings and fears. His very first play, La Parodie,… is a depressing but impressively claustrophobic image of modern life…. The play as a whole shows little development (except that N, who had masochistically craved death at Lili's hands, is in fact run over by a car); it is a simple constat d'échec, an intense, personal, rather naked, and perhaps narrow, vision of things. In an understated, unexplicit play such as this, the dramatic power generated arises from the initial situation projected; the problem for the playwright is then to harness this...