Reviews
'Andrew Rattenbury has constructed an intensely concentrated short play for just one actor. The audience is not there to merely absorb the story, it is required to reflect the convictions and bitterness of what is before it.'
Whatsonstage.com
'Ed Hughes gives a tour de force performance as Russian revolutionary artist and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky... The play deserves a wide audience'
The News Line
Ed Hughes is a masterpiece of fire and physicality. The poet of the people, he writes and performs for the factory and the shipyard. The stark staging is effective, with chalk scrawled on the wall, and the poet's trademark yellow coat standing out against the black brickwork. Was this how it was when the real Mayakovsky stood up in front of the five thousand? We'll never know, but the piece, urging outcry and confusion, was a powerful reminder of a seminal figure in Soviet culture.
I want to be understood by my country, nothing more.
but if I fail to be understood –
what then?
I shall pass through my native land
at an angle, in vain,
like a shower
of slanting rain.
Michael Gray, The Public Reviews