Overview

A fine, firm sense of staging permits the leading character to wander in and out of scenes and to address the audience directly whenever he wished to comment on the Egg—i.e., the world, the system to which everyone wants to belong. The leading character, portrayed on Broadway by Dick Shawn, always seems to be on the outside looking in. He tries to get into the system by getting a government job and taking a wife. But he was really not cut out for this, for he and his wife soon tire of one another, and he goes back to another woman he has known. When an old flame comes to see his wife and begins an affair with her, the leading character kills the wife and frames the boyfriend; and the result is a most amusing lampoon of justice. Some individualists belong outside the Egg.