The exceptional nature of the moment, for the man who feels death upon him—to use Pirandello's phrase—and the normality of it, for the one who is absorbed in the usual affairs of life with its small daily commitments, mark the two ends of the dialectic which is animated in the grand soliloquy of the protagonist.
He lucidly analyses his last sensations on earth, evoking scenes of common life, particulars of a quotidianity which are receding from him irremediably and which, for this reason, make precious the memories of even the most trivial events.
In the summer of 1930 it was decided that a drama should be produced as a new test for and demonstration of the medium, and The Man With the Flower in His Mouth was selected for use because of its short length of around half an hour, its limited cast of only three characters and its confined setting.
Generally regarded as a successful experiment, the production was watched at the time by Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister, with his family from their official residence at 10 Downing Street.
However, in 1967, Bill Elliott, a technician working at Granada Television in Manchester, decided to attempt a re-creation of an extract of the play, using a replica of one of the 30-line Baird Televisiors he had constructed himself, which acted as both camera and monitor.