The Mandate
13V NIKOLAI ERDMAN
Translated from the Russian, and a German version by inge-BOKG GAMPERT , by PETER TEGEL with Mary Wimbush as Hadeshda Geoffrey Beevers as Pavel Jane Knowles as Varvara and Sarah Golding as Anastasia Nikolai Erdman , whose first full-length play, The Mandate, was described by Gorky as worthy of Gogol, was one of the youngest Russian talents of the 20s. The Mandate, a great success at the time, in 1925, in a production by the great Russian director Meyerhold, is a stylised farce and satire, set in Moscow in the first years after the Revolution. Its characters, the Guliachkins and the Smetanitches, are members of the petty bourgeoisie and the old middle class, trying to survive in the new Soviet society. The title alludes to a Communist Party membership card which the hero pretends to own.
Produced and directed by Richard WORTLEY followed by an interlude