The Power of Darkness (Russian: Власть тьмы, Vlast′ t′my) is a five-act drama by Leo Tolstoy.

[...] [T]he external realism of the production of The Power of Darkness revealed the absence of inner justification in those of us who were acting in it.

The stage was taken over by things, objects, banal outward events [...] which crushed the inner meaning of the play and characters.

[4]Actor Jacob Adler had a New York hit in 1904 with his own Yiddish translation—the first successful production of a Tolstoy play in the United States.

"[9] Herbert Ihering approved of its attempt to bring serious drama at low ticket-prices to working-class audiences, though he thought that its attention to naturalistic detail distracted from the core meaning of the play.