Tragedy. A play in three acts by Sidney Kingsley, based on the novel by Arthur Koestler.
This winner of the Drama Critics Award starred Claude Rains on Broadway. A Soviet Commissar with considerable power in the party is jailed as the curtain goes up. He made two serious errors: he once fell in love with his secretary and he shot off his mouth at an inopportune moment. His torments and frustrations in the cell are dramatically heightened by other prisoners who communicate with him by tapping on the walls. Retrospective scenes explain his sentence and the series of ludicrously unjust hearings that lead to his execution. "Brilliant." Herald Tribune. "Pungent, spectacular melodrama." N.Y. Times. - from Amzon