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In praise of … Maxim Gorky In praise of … Maxim Gorky
(6 months later)
His long years as a Soviet-era icon consigned Maxim Gorky's reputation to the cold war permafrost for half a century. But Andrew Upton's new adaptation of Gorky's 1905 play Children of the Sun at London's National Theatre is the latest of Gorky's plays to return brimming with new life to the British stage after suffering a long period of condescension. Like his plays Philistines and Enemies, both successfully revived in the last decade, Children of the Sun combines echoes of Chekhov with the rawer political nerve that would ensure both Gorky's later canonisation under Stalin and his subsequent neglect in the west. Aspects of recent adaptations have been controversial, and Gorky's work can be both variable and politically crude. But his was an extraordinary and a serious creative life and it is good to have him edging back on to the collective mental map again. It is surely time that his novels, which were once so popular, got a fresh look too.His long years as a Soviet-era icon consigned Maxim Gorky's reputation to the cold war permafrost for half a century. But Andrew Upton's new adaptation of Gorky's 1905 play Children of the Sun at London's National Theatre is the latest of Gorky's plays to return brimming with new life to the British stage after suffering a long period of condescension. Like his plays Philistines and Enemies, both successfully revived in the last decade, Children of the Sun combines echoes of Chekhov with the rawer political nerve that would ensure both Gorky's later canonisation under Stalin and his subsequent neglect in the west. Aspects of recent adaptations have been controversial, and Gorky's work can be both variable and politically crude. But his was an extraordinary and a serious creative life and it is good to have him edging back on to the collective mental map again. It is surely time that his novels, which were once so popular, got a fresh look too.
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