Albert Camus’ fourth play L’État de Siège (State of Siege) premiered in Paris on October 27, 1948. 

… A clock strikes four. The dialogue that now begins is barely comprehensible, a muttering of broken phrases.
It’s the end of the world.
Don’t talk nonsense! 
Prelude State of Siege

Albert Camus (1913-1960)
Issued in France 1967 as part of their Famous People series
Designed by Claude Robert Ernest Durrens

When in 1947, the philosopher, journalist, playwright, and novelist Camus published The Plague Barrault contacted him in the hope that Camus would adapt Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. Camus preferred to write an original play and chose to set it in Spain, then under the rule of Dictator Francisco Franco. According to the author, he and Barrault worked closely on what they viewed as an untraditional theatre piece of many styles that made use of poetic monologues, wordless scenes, a chorus, simple dialogue, and farce.

At its opening in 1948, the play flopped and closed after a brief run of twenty-three performances. Critics accused Camus of appropriating his novel The Plague as the basis of The State of Siege, although the two works, apart from utilizing a plague as the motif, are dissimilar. Sixty-eight years passed before it received another important Paris production. The 2016 French presidential elections and the fear they engendered lay behind director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota’s decision to revive it.
“The State Of Siege” (L’état De Siège): A Political Warning – The Theatre Times <- this is an excellent write up on the play and the audience reaction. 

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