by Ronald Eyre
A Play of the Month presentation
Starring Robert Stephens as Rasputin
with Peter Barkworth as Tsar Nicholas II, Isabel Dean as the Empress Alexandra, Lally Bowers as the Dowager Empress and T.P. McKenna as Kommisarov

Gregory Efimovich Rasputin was born in Siberia in the late 1860s. He was married around 1890 and they had three children, a mentally handicapped son and two daughters. For 10 years he wandered on foot through the Middle East, visiting Greece and the Holy Land. In 1903 he was recognised as 'a man of God' and taken up by the St Petersburg nobility. In 1905 he became the Tsar's Lamplighter and a friend of the Empress and her son Prince Alexei. For a decade he held enormous influence at the Russian court. This with his simplicity and peasant outlook made him bitter enemies with the nobility and the press. The short-lived Kerensky government started an inquiry into his power before his murder in 1916.

(Colour)