Rhapsody in Red

‘Rhapsody in Red’

by Robert Salvin

Directed by Robert Salvin

The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh   12 – 14 July 2007

ABOUT THE PLAY

When the US administration sought to foster closer ties with the Soviet Union in the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt turned to the author and critic Alexander Woollcott for advice.

Woollcott suggested, in part tongue-in-cheek, sending his friend Harpo Marx to Moscow.

And so it was that in the winter of 1933 the silent Marx brother took his vaudeville show to the great theatres of Russia.

During this period the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov was finding it increasingly difficult to bring his work to the stage due to the vice-like suppression of artistic freedom being applied by the state apparatus.

Stalin – recognising the potentially incendiary effect of the arts – found the time to adopt a surprisingly hands-on approach to the licensing of entertainment he deemed fit for consumption by the Soviet masses.

‘Rhapsody in Red’ imagines a meeting between Marx and Bulgakov, with the chain of events it kicks off taking in the giants of Moscow theatre and winding up in the explosive Communist witchhunts of post-war Hollywood.

CAST

Robert Arnott – Grisha Konsky/ HUAC No 3

Mary Blackford – Anna Akhmatova

Simon Eilbeck – Konstantin Stanislavsky/ HUAC No 2

Leo Glaister – Mikhail (Misha) Bulgakov

Chris Hall – Butler/ Ed Murrow

Claire Hall – Leonora Bullitt/ Gilda Dolinova/ HUAC No 4

Nigel Jarvis – Hotel Manager/ Yakov Leontyev/ Solly Myznick

Natasha Kirby – Yelena Bulgakova/ Betty Bennett

Craig McFarlane – Harpo Marx/ Pavel Popov/ Waiter/ Chairman

Travis Meyers – Nikolai Gorchakov/ Ambassador Bullitt/ HUAC No 1

Seb Muirhead – Maxim Litvinov/ Nikolai Bulgakov/ Frank Brand

Gregor Shanks – Guy Ratchett/ Pianist

Frances Tigar – Ivy Litvinov/ Hannah de Lys

Tom Wheeler – Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko

PRODUCTION STAFF

Producer – Mary Blackford

Co-Producer – Claire Hall

GALLERY