Darkness at Noon (adapted by Sidney Kingsley from Arthur Koestler's novel; produced by the Playwrights' Company) dramatizes, on the whole, very well. Not only does much of it prove dramatic on the stage, but the drama has been bought at a sense-making price. The play keeps faith with the book: the brushwork is necessarily broader, but the framework has been kept intact. It remains a vivid memento of the Moscow trials, a sharp probing of the Communist mind.
Kingsley's N. S. Rubashov is, like Koestler's, a fallen intellectual commissar whose own harsh weapons have been turned against him. He will soon be...
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