National Theatre regulars Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale combine in Collaborators, a tale of a writer with a distinctly tricky commission.

Collaborators is set in Moscow in 1938; a dangerous place to have a sense of humour and an even more dangerous place to have a sense of freedom. Writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who is living among dissidents while being stalked by the secret police, has both. Then he receives a poisoned chalice, a commission to write a play about Stalin to celebrate the Russian leader’s 60th birthday.

Collaborators depicts a lethal game of cat and mouse, through which the appalling compromises and humiliations inflicted on any artist by those with power are held up to scrutiny.

For more about Collaborators at the National Theatre read the First Night Feature.