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As a cholera epidemic sweeps across the country, a group of artists, scientists and intellectuals who have gathered at the home of Professor Protassov reflect on the sense and the nonsense of life.

They are almost oblivious to the world around their own confined environment. Their eyes are closed to the inevitability, the triviality and the imperfection of an all-too-human reality, as they seek shelter from the violence, the distress and the destitution that has taken hold of the “outside” world. However, the imaginary wall which they have constructed around themselves is about to come tumbling down, for a cataclysmic crisis looms on the horizon. In this play, Maxim Gorki evokes the failure of the intelligentsia, the elite that rules society, to develop an alternative pathway, a vision that embraces the needs of all.