Comrade Stalin was quite right. He said, "Personnel selection is decisive. People are our most valuable capital." I want that slogan up in the camp yard.

Unlike our pantomime morality dramas where there are villains of the first order, a Platonic form of Evil -- what this play depicts is that everyone has a jackal within. Well, almost everyone. The gulag simply brought these lesser angels to the fore, a character here calls their world Campland and one of its cardinal features is that 99 people cry and one person laughs. The titular characters are swept into a labor camp in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War and find a fleeting human connection while they are tortured by the logic of their present existence. He a former officer in the Soviet army is the rube, unwilling to accept the human costs of his position as labor organizer. She is an orphan of Koba's wet dream of socialist perfection. He is soon demoted and she must satisfy the carnal whims of her superiors. Despite the debasement both recognize their doomed attraction as palpable. Such are the consolations of the informed. ( )

It's always tough to read a play instead of seeing it. I usually imagine myself watching the play, and that works pretty well.

Life in the camps, Solzhenitsyn's specialty. Idealism and compromise in prison. A bit hard to follow as a play, but still good stuff. ( )

Solzhenitsyn's Gulag play examines the moral, sexual and criminal corruption of the Gulag system and its inhabitants. Although the title suggests a love story, the drama focuses more on the absurdity of the work system, in which everyone is forced to falsify productivity, bend rules and bribe others (with goods, threat or sex), just to stay alive. It is a fitting literary companion to his other early camp novel 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich', and tries to cover much of the ground that 'The Gulag Archipelago' would plough years later. It is this last comparison that illuminates the play's only real flaws, which is that it tries to cram in too much. Whereas 'One Day...' was a relatively simple tale of survival, 'The Love-Girl...' relies heavily on the subtelties of relationships between politicals, non-politicals, free men, camp guards, work quotas, different camp types, etc. In 'The Gulag Archipelago', Solzhenitsyn takes 1800 pages to illuminate his ideas, in 'The Love-Girl...' he has just 140, and it does feel a bit cramped. There are too many characters and too many threads. Nevertheless, it is still a worthy part of his Gulag canon, and worth a read for anyone interested in a terrible period of Russian history.

This is a rough read, and in the end, I have to suggest that seeing it on stage would be a better prospect than trying to get through the text (and no, I don't recommend that for every play). There are so many different scenes and characters, though, that it's hard to keep track even for someone who's prepared to read it in a few sittings or pay extra attention as they go. It's a powerful book as is, but hard to get through. Also, I wanted more. I wanted more time in some of the scenes, more from the different characters, and I was left somewhat dissatisfied--not with the story, but with how much was given along the way. If you're interested in the subject or in an interesting directing project, this could be the perfect play for you to look into, but it is a heavy read. ( )

http://www.amazon.com/review/RNY... ( )