The Devil and the Good Lord is Sartre's most ambitious work for the theater. Outstripping in scope and magnitude his previous plays, this dramatic epic, which calls for a cast of over ninety and takes some four hours to perform, is a synthesis of the basic tenets of Sartre's philosophy. It is based on the Peasants' Revolt in fourteenth-century Germany, a period that he considers closer to the modern epoch than any other; and through the actions of his protagonist, Goetz, the bastard son of a noble, Sartre demonstrates man's inability to achieve the absolute either through good or evil. In Kean Sartre has done more than rewrite the play by Alexandre Dumas père, (which was in turn an adaptation of an 1836 play by Théaulon, inspired by the career of the English actor Edmund Kean). Sartre has re-created the drama, and in his version the original flamboyance of character and situation embodies as well as a serious moral issue. Fast-paced and witty, his Kean is at the same time a thoughtful and subtle play about the question of emotional sincerity. Nekrassov, a political satire in the form of a farce, is a lampoon of anti-communist journalism in France. Revolving around a master swindler who impersonates a famous escapee from Soviet terror, the play abounds in comic situations and bristles with topical allusions. Sartre is not only having fun here reducing to an absurdity the extreme anti-communist position, but Nekrassov is further evidence of his versatility and theatrical craftsmanship.