The play at the Deutsches Theater flew by at a rapid pace, with Reinhardt’s usual imaginative and atmospheric staging of the crowd scenes. The first scene shows the great revolutionary, tired of politics, sitting at a card table surrounded by his friends, listening to a frivolous young woman recount her adventures. The stage darkens, and amid shrill cries, the image of lighthearted enjoyment is transformed into a picture of the terrible hardship facing the people.
[…] An aristocrat who has strayed into the crowd is to be punished for his pristine clothes by being hung from a lamppost, but escapes death at the last moment. What good are the severed heads of aristocrats to you, cries a street agitator, when your skirts are full of holes and your stomachs remain empty and hungry? Courage and despair mingle with excited laughter and the dance of the Karmagnole. […] At the end, Reinhardt was called out stormily.
Conrad Schmidt: Entertainment section of Vorwärts, December 17, 1916