A play about WWIII, which occurred a few years after WWII, when most of the world's major cities were wiped out by escalating nuclear warfare. The topic is interesting, and the characters are reasonably well developed, but the dialogue is heavy-handed, with the turgid prose characteristic of Sinclair. He uses the radio as a tool to handle the long expository speeches, but in the end, it mostly comes across sounding pedantic. And it's hard to believe that radio announcers spoke that way, even back in the 1940s when radio was still the most popular form of entertainment. The only likeable character in the entire thing is the character you're probably not supposed to like, the nuclear physicist who worked on the bomb, but has been spending most of his time since the war working to get some control over nuclear weapons, and for that has attracted the attention of HUAC. Unfortunately, this character does not spend a lot of time in the show, arriving late and departing early. Overall, an admirable effort, but not something I would ever want to read again, or see staged. ( )

3