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The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant - Abbey Theatre, Dublin:Why do great Irish writers resonate with great Russian writers? Brian Friel once expressed empathy with characters who “have no expectations whatever from love, but still invest everything in it”. But to judge from the Abbey’s new theatrical version of Shchedrin’s bleakly satirical 19th-century novel, The Golovlyov Family, Tom Murphy’s sympathies lie elsewhere.

The inspiration for Murphy’s new play, the “gloomiest novel in all Russian literature”, makes a much heavier investment in moral corrosion, religious hypocrisy and political tyranny. Jettisoning several of Shchedrin’s characters, events and narrative methods, Murphy retains the novel’s sharp cynicism and, more importantly, retains Arina. This cold matriarch, in the indomitable shape of Marie Mullen, has come from servitude, married above her station, revived a family’s ailing fortunes and established an empire.