The action is observed by a Greek-style chorus of "firemen", and the increasingly surreal flavour culminates in a final scene, the afterpiece, where Biedermann and his wife Babette find themselves at the gates of Hell.

Here they once again meet Schmitz and Eisenring who turn out to be Beelzebub and the Devil respectively, who, after becoming angered at the number of mass murderers being allowed to go to Heaven, refuse to conduct a Hell for a "small fry" like Biedermann.

[2] The first sketch was written in 1948 in response to the Communist takeover in Prague, but the play is often seen as a metaphor for Nazism and fascism, and Frisch encourages this through several allusions[citation needed].

The name Biedermann is itself a play on the German word "bieder" meaning conventional, conservative, worthy, honest, upright and is frequently used in a pejorative or ironic context.

[2] During his brief tenure as Director of the Liverpool Playhouse Bernard Hepton put on the play, which featured in his effort to move the theatre’s repertoire beyond its normal fare.

[8] A new translation of the play by Alistair Beaton entitled The Arsonists, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, was produced at London's Royal Court Theatre in November 2007, under the direction of Ramin Gray.

The play has been adapted into the opera Biedermann und die Brandstifter by Šimon Voseček (premiered in 2013 at the Neue Oper Wien in Vienna).