The face of a clown is the face of innocence, and innocence goes to the wall in German society after the Second World War, when double-dealing and double standards became a way of life. Heinrich Boll's clown is a professional entertainer in his late twenties who has reached the end of his tether: an unhappy drunk abandoned by the woman he loves, too honest and disillusioned to compromise, he sits in his lonely furnished flat and calls for help or consolation of any kind. For this is a study in hypocrisy - emotional, sexual, religious and political - where the majority are smugly blinkered and the rest are caught in a trap they fail to understand, let alone escape.