Act one: Bulitchev's dining room.

Act two: Bulitchev's living room.

Act three: same as Act one.

Settings by Walter Thornton.           Stage Manager -- A. Alexander.           

Assistant Stage Manager -- B. Rosenbaume.

Customes: Sarah Patt.            Properties -- D. Stein.

SYNOPSIS OF THE PLAY

Russia 1817. On the western front the armies of the Allies and their enemies are locked in a grip of death, but on the eastern front the tide had turned against the Czar's forces. Discontent on the front, as well as industrial centers in Russia, was beginning to find expression. Confusion was everywhere. Echoes reached the realm of Bulitchev. A leading merchant and money grubber, he seemed to exemplify the gradual breakup of the great Empire. Bulitchev, who had dominated everyone and everything with his sharp tongue and overbearing manners, is attacked by an incurable disease.

Sensing the weakness of Yegor, his family and little army of retainers, begin to plot the division of his fortune. To help in their dark schemes, Melanie, a mother-superior at a convent, is invited to the house. Bulitchev has befriended Glaphyra, a peasant servant, and it is suspected that he means to divide his estate between her and Shura, an illegitimate daughter by a former alliance. Xenia, his wife, Zwontov, married to their daughter Barbara, a business associate, Dostigayev, Bakshin, and old employee, all put their heads together, but they find Bulitchev more than a match for their evil machinations.

The tactics of the family center on a match between Glaphyra and a penniless student Tyatin; the engagement of a new overseer for the large forest holdings and the repayment to Melanie of a large sum of money that she invested in Bulitchev's business.

Yakob, a godson of Bulitchev, has taken the leadership in agitating for a change of government. The police raid his headquarters and place Yakob and many of his followers under arrest. Bulitchev is impressed with the preaching of the revolutionaries and asks Bakshin to sing a revolutionary song heard in demonstrations. "Sounds more like a prayer to me," Bulitchev mutters.

Frustrated in their plans to wrest the fortune from Bulitchev, they seek to impress him with fake cure-all and witchery. Bulitchev takes little stock in the current superstitions, but in his eagerness to be cured he submits to a trumpet player, a witch and a religious zealot known as "The Holy Innocent." Each in turn try their cures, only to be revealed as the fakers they really are.

Not unlike all Russia, which can no longer find peace under the old regime, the discredited church and the opportunist Donna, Bulitchev can find no relief in the forces of darkness.

As the masses rush through the streets in demonstration, singing their hymn of a new Russia, Bulitchev breathes his last ...

The old Russia is dead ... Bulitchev, the money grubber, the hard liver, the cynic is dead ...

Jack Charash