April has begun with something I really enjoyed -- Moira Buffini's adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide at the Almeida. I'm not sure quite how much of an adaptation this is -- perhaps I should find the Russian text and compare it -- but the result is highly satisfactory. The set by Lez Brotherston conjures up an ancient crumbling pre-revolutionary building, stuffed full of communal tenants eking out an existence in the 1920s. I enjoyed Erdman's other play The Mandate at the National Theatre a couple of years ago, and this one (written later) is even better. I remember seeing a version of it in Edinburgh a few years ago done by Hamish McColl but the Almeida's production seems to me far better. Anna Mackmin (whose Almeida production of The Lightning Play at the Almeida I also liked) is the director, standing in for the indisposed Kathy Burke. She has a very sure touch and seems to have the gift of persuading actors to give 110 per cent performances. What I liked about this production, with a highly experienced yet non-starry cast, is that there's no striving for comic effect. It's a very dark play and Mackmin rightly avoids trying to make it funny-funny. The actors quite rightly play it as near-tragedy and let the comedy emerge naturally. It's firmly set in period, in the NEP era of 1920s Moscow, and though the pronunciation and stressing of Russian names is mostly wrong, the look and style of the production are otherwise spot on. Tom Brooke is Semyon, the young man whose thoughts of suicide are exploited by all around him, Liz White is Masha his grief-stricken wife, and Susan Brown his mother-in-law. All are excellent. Moira Buffini is an intriguing writer, and I remember seeing Harriet Walter give a mesmerising performance in her black comedy Dinner at the National a few years ago. Though I still wonder what her name is doing on the play instead of Erdman's. Watch this space for some further research on the ethics of adaptation.
This play was banned under Stalin, although it did at one stage get close to being performed. In the easier climate of the 1920s, it would probably have been put on, but by the early 1930s the censorship was tightening and only Socialist Realism was approved. Miraculously, Erdman survived exile after he fell into disfavour, and so did his plays, although they were not performed until the 1970s and not in Russia until the 1980s. By any standards he is a major writer. I can't think of any English play from the 1920s that I would swap for this one. But it's worth reflecting on the fact that it would probably been banned by the Lord Chamberlain here as well if anyone had tried to stage it. I don't think Lord Cromer or Lord Clarendon would have liked its treatment of suicide, its subversive political content or its depiction of that horror of horrors, a man and a woman sharing a bed on stage.