Yet there are problems with the plot France provides - chiefly that within the first five minutes you'll know exactly what fate each of the characters will finally meet - who will be the survivor, who the sacrificial lamb, who the passionately convinced to the end. The cast does a fine job of making them individually deeper than stereotypes, but their fates are clear beyond any suspense.
This play's other fault is length - it is a pity that playwrights and directors seem to feel that epic subjects demand epic lengths. The three hours would be greatly improved by being cut to about two and a half - a particular mercy for the Globe's hard-on-the-butt seating, and for the groundlings in this wintery London September.
Still the finely-judged production - the way in which director Guy Retallack has the young Gamelin make his first passionate speech from the wobbly stage of a ridiculous picnic basket is indicative of the attention to detail in the staging - very nearly carries off the length and the weakness of the story. And there's the extra power that comes from the inevitable modern parallels - just as in the novel's time it was marked by its author's involvement (on the right side) in the Dreyfus affair, so the promises now of perfect liberty and justice — "once the emergency is over" — have painful resonance.
There's sex, there's passion, there's politics here, in a nicely, if a touch too calculatingly, assembled mix - and the opening night audience tonight certainly left satisfied, if chilled to the bone. It's late in the season for a Globe premiere - but worth getting out the winter woolies to make sure that you don't miss a cockle-warming production.
The production continues, in rep, until October 4.
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