London,

Laughter in the darkness

By Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard  16.03.07

No play in modern theatrical history has suffered such a history of censorship as this extraordinary black comedy by Nikolai Erdman in which Semyon, an unemployed, impoverished young man, decides to kill himself.

"Look. Life is beautiful," his neighbour says, pointing to a window looking out to rubbish.

Semyon tries learning the tuba to raise money but needs an expensive piano to tune it.

Visitors arrive begging Semyon to die for them. A pompous member of the intelligentsia wants him to write a suicide note indicting the government. A people's poet wants to pen his obituary. A party to mark Semyon's impending death goes with a swing. The combination of shameless self-interest and gallows humour in the face of impending death, together with bleak irony and political mockery, induces spasms of laughter.

While attacking Stalin's ghastly brave new world, Erdman celebrates the triumph of staying alive.

Stalin banned the play in 1932. Erdman was arrested and exiled to Siberia for seven years. Subsequent attempts to present the work in the Soviet Union all failed. Moscow finally allowed a showing 50 years later but it was closed down after six performances. By then Erdman had died.

In Anna Mackmin's exuberant,high velocity production, with Lez Brotherston's effective evocation of a dingy lodging house, the play emerges as a great, neglected drama.

There are, though, stylistic irritations. Thanks to the vanity of its adaptor, Moira Buffini, Erdman's The Suicide is awarded the sniggering title, Dying for It.

In Anglocentric triumphalism, a vulgarising Buffini gives a Russian period-piece the gloss and language of television soap opera, complete with expletives undeleted.

She disdains historical perspective, makes Erdman's working-class characters under Stalin synonymous with ours under Blair. "Shut it" "Whinge" "Toe Rag" "Does he give a toss?" and "Boy Genius" gives an idea of her tone.

If the cast had spoken with Russian accents the right Soviet flavour might have been achieved. Instead Sophie Stanton's coffee shop owner sounds straight out of EastEnders, Tony Rohr's drunken priest, Father Yelpidy, could be Father Ted and Susan Brown's flinty mother-in-law comes from far north of Watford.

By contrast, Tom Brooke's suicidal hero, Semyon, a wiry figure of feverish energy, his face streaked with long-term desolation, scores a complete comic triumph. He passes from morose self-pity to pathos and drunken self-glorification at death's door, before his poignant delight in having survived.

• Until 28 April (020 7359 4404).

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