L’état de siège Add a review

The State of Siege (French: L'État de Siège), sometimes translated as State of Emergency, is a 1948 drama by the French philosopher Albert Camus. The play centers around the Spanish city of Cádiz during an outbreak of the bubonic plague. The plague itself is personified as a dictatorial non-commissioned officer who, along with his secretary and several collaborationists, implements martial law and enforces a confusing but rigid bureaucracy on the city.

The play began as an informal collaboration between Camus and Jean-Louis Barrault. Barrault had originally planned to write a plague myth and later aimed to base the work off Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. He then reached out to Camus to write the dialog after the success of his novel The Plague the year prior. The two then agreed to aim the topic of the play toward a more contemporary audience, though Defoe's work is considered the most influential source of inspiration. Camus departed from his expected Greek tragedy–like style to develop something more akin to a morality play or auto sacramental, inspired by their ability to disseminate Catholic theology across medieval Europe.

Despite a prestigious cast and Camus's previous success, The State of Siege was a complete failure critically and commercially, with production ending only a few weeks after the premiere. Critics remarked that its characterization was one-dimensional, its practical effects and stage design overly stylized, and its action clumsy. Several opined that Camus might have been strong-armed by Barrault's forceful personality into writing something contrary to his style, especially given Camus's previous success. Camus, however, took full credit for the play and its failure, later remarking that "few plays have had the pleasure of being so thoroughly savaged". Modern retrospectives have had more mixed reviews, though they remain overall negative. It has been criticized for its heavy-handed symbolism and being contrary to the literary and theoretical inspiration on which it was based, though others have applauded it as experimental or at least ambitious.