''Clevinger's Trial'' is a 1973 short

dark comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...

play in one act by Joseph Heller. ''Clevinger's Trial'' is based on Chapter 8 of Heller's 1961 novel '' Catch-22''. It is excerpted from the 1971 play '' Catch-22'', being cut from the original version of ''Catch-22'' to shorten that play's running time and published as a separate one-act play, running about 15 minutes. The play is a satire of institutional justice. The action, which is a close copy of the same scene in the novel ''Catch-22'', concerns a

kangaroo court Kangaroo court is an informal pejorative term for a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides, and is typically convened ad hoc. A kangaroo court ma ...

court-martial A court-martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the arme ...

of air cadet Clevinger on various nonsensical charges. Lieutenant Scheisskopf (English: Shithead) is both prosecutor and defender, and also one of the judges and Clevinger's commanding officer. During the trial, Scheisskopf rises in rank while almost everyone else present (including the court stenographer) is found guilty of something and sentenced to punishment. ''Clevinger's Trial'' was produced in London in 1974, and in 1993 by the Griffin Theatre Company of Chicago, where critic Jack Helbig decried the short running time as the "worst deal in Chicago late-night theater... no sooner do we become adjusted to Heller's satirical-absurdist universe with its thinly veiled attacks on cold-war paranoia than the play's over."

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