This play is hot property these days -- oddly enough for a play that went 50 years without a production. In 1932 it was a Russian social comedy, which Stanislavksky had rehearsed for 18 months and which Stalin abruptly canned...It really came back to life with a 1979 Royal Shakespeare production and a Broadway run with Derek Jacobi...Semyon Semyonovitch, depressed because he can't get a job, is going to kill himself. Word gets about and his apartment is besieged by disaffected intellectuals, butchers, prima donnas, writers and mailman. They all hate the system too, but since only Semyon is ready to kill himself, would he please sign a note saying he died for the cause of...and here they all fall to tearing one another's special interests limb from limb...
