Title: The Green Lantern - Jerome Charyn - book
Summary :
"They were given a mousetrap in Strangler Alley, the old Paradiz, where Chaliapin had sung before going into exile. The place was crawling with rats and all its exits were sealed off before the Traveling Comedians from Tiflis arrived for six weeks of performances. Their stage manager, Boris Nikolayevich Tushkov, had connived with the Georgian Party leaders. His only triumph had been King Lear. And now he was bringing Lear to Moscow." It's a rather risky production... To perform a play about a doddering old king, a widower and father of Cordelia, when Stalin is approaching sixty, his wife is dead, he has a young daughter and is as secretive as Lear, is that not very dangerous? All the more so since, hidden in his Kremlin office where a green lantern is permanently lit, Stalin controls everything, monitors the slightest actions of his "subjects", and in particular the artists, all peddlers of ideas quickly deemed subversive...
