A major theatre company in Russia decides to stage a bold new play about Stalin. The roles are cast, the set is constructed, and a preview for the press is arranged. However, it turns out that one of the viewers at the preview happens to be the President of the Russian Federation. He explains, “I’m curious to see how they’re planning to represent my predecessor.”

Solomonov’s play is about the troubling plasticity of the human psyche, about its readiness, under certain conditions, to reproduce the most dangerous practices of the totalitarian past, which never disappeared. In fact, as recent events in Russia and elsewhere make clear, that past has seized the present moment and is about to become the future.

The play shows how easily someone can turn into a tyrant and how readily his supporters allow him to become one. It allows us to investigate the paths by which Stalinism germinates in the souls of human beings today. In trying to answer that question, it’s impossible to remain entirely in the zone of high seriousness. So the play is not only relevant and terrifying, but also very funny.