Author : Venedikt Erofeev
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2014-06-24
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780300159868
Walpurgis Night, Or the Steps of the Commander by Venedikt Erofeev Pdf
Walpurgis Night, by acclaimed Russian writer Venedikt Erofeev, is considered a classic in the playwright’s homeland. Erofeev’s dark and funny five-act satire of Soviet repression has been called the comic high-water mark of the Brezhnev era. Walpurgis Night dramatizes the outrageous trials of Lev Isakovich Gurevich, an alcoholic half-Jewish dissident poet confined by the state to a hospital for the insane. In “Ward 3”—a microcosm of repressive Soviet society—Gurevich deploys his brilliant wit and ingenuity to bedevil his jailers, defend his fellow inmates, protest his incarceration, and generally create mayhem, which ultimately leads to a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.