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After leaving his post as artistic director at the Pushkin Theater, Yury Yeremin disappeared from view for quite some time. He resurfaced only recently with a new production, "The Silver Age" by Mikhail Roshchin, widely considered one of the classicists of modern Russian playwriting. However, only obliquely concerned with the Silver Age of Russian literature, the play, which is remarkable for its absence of a clearly developed plot or a clearly defined conclusion, focuses much more on the "glorious Soviet past."

The curtain rises on a post-war kommunalka flat. The tenants, who are entirely preoccupied with their day-to-day problems, periodically meet up in the large communal kitchen to discuss the events of the previous day. One of them is Viktor Mikhailovich (Georgy Taratorkin), a shadowy dealer in stolen goods, who frequents expensive restaurants and is in love with the kind-hearted housewife, Klavdya (Olga Ostroumova), but who for some reason tries to seduce the young Nadya (Irina Tomskaya) behind her back. Then there are two pro-Communist elderly women (Irina Kartasheva and Galina Dashevskaya), the avant-garde artist Matvei (Alexander Lenkov) and the poet Boris (Valery Yaremenko).

Finally, there is the young Misha (Yevgeny Pisarev) – a role perhaps more clearly drawn than any other in the play – who writes poetry and is in love with Kira (Lyudmila Drebneva), a woman much older than himself. Since she is an assistant in a second-hand bookshop, she is able to obtain copies of poetry from the Silver Age, with which she sets out to charm her young admirer. Their love story is the one thing in the play that appears to make sense and, thanks to the good writing and acting, blends in well with everything else going on around them.

As a whole, the production succeeds in conveying the atmosphere of the period. But for many members of the audience, watching it could well bring back unhappy memories. Kommunalkas in general have a different history. They were – and since many exist to this present day, still are – for many of their inhabitants merely another word for misery.