[1] Raisa Buslova, once sprightly and beautiful but now a defeated woman, returns to a dismal provincial hole, after unsuccessful attempt to escape from it, with her lover.
[1] "Each time it felt like a whiff of fresh air, when the author himself started talking, explaining things about his characters... His explanations usually centered around some particular word, line or expression the deeper meaning of which might have otherwise escaped the cast and the director," Sakhnovsky remembered.
[3] The play premiered on 17 February 1928 but ran for only 20 performances,[4] due to lukewarm public response and some harsh press reviews.
He described Untilovsk as "the all-consuming mire hosting all kinds of creatures, rare plants and fishes," with its own laws and customs, "even its own poetry, the other side of zero."
[1] The modern theatre historian Inna Solovyova described the play as the one dealing with "...hopeless, thick misery of life amidst the snowy desert where political prisoners had to make their home… the drunken brewing of the unrealized dark powers of the soul and the all-consuming dark passions," and akin to both Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, as well as Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, some of "its psychological twists bringing to mind the Dostoyevsky novels.