Evreinov, Nikolai Nikolaivich

Evreinov, Nikolai Nikolaivich (1879–1953), Russian dramatist, an exponent of Symbolism, whose anti-naturalistic theatre is exemplified in The Theatre of the Soul (1912), a monodrama in which various aspects of the same person appear as separate entities. His Revisor (also 1912) illustrated amusingly what such directors as Stanislavsky and Reinhardt might do to Gogol's masterpiece The Government Inspector, and in The Fourth Wall (1915) Evreinov portrayed an ultra-realistic director let loose on Goethe's Faust. The Chief Thing (1921), which deals with the power of illusion, has some affinity with the work of Pirandello. Evreinov's theories were swept aside by the Socialist Realism of the Soviet era. Two of his short plays were translated and published in Five Russian Plays (1916) as A Merry Death and The Beautiful Despot.