But Bartlett’s version underlines Camus’ point that, even in times of plague, “There is more to admire about people than to despise or despair of”. Nothing is done to mitigate the horror as in one scene which, through sound alone, evokes the painful death of an eight-year-old boy used as a guinea pig for a new serum. By focusing on a handful of characters, he shows how behaviour is dictated by practical necessity: Rieux struggles to cope with the death toll, a man-about-town like Tarrou and even the journalist, Rambert, join voluntary health teams and a civil servant, Grand, neglects his private obsessions for the public good. It is a chilling fable and, like Camus, Bartlett is fascinated by how people react to a crisis. Gradually, the city is infested with rats, people die in vast numbers and, although the medical authorities are in denial, a plague is declared and the city quarantined from the outside world. It starts with the discovery of a dead rat on a landing. Dr Rieux then takes up the story to offer eyewitness accounts of what happened over one particular spring and summer. Bartlett’s version takes place in an unspecified locale and begins with a public enquiry into a disaster that has overtaken a perfectly average city where life is both “frenetic and vacant”. Camus set his story in the Algerian coastal town of Oran.
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