For a rough-cut diamond, see the Gorky Art Theater's How Stalin and I Boozed Up My Stalin Prize, based on the prose of the late Viktor Nekrasov, who died in forced emigration in Paris. While the lame first act focuses on scenes during World War II which led to Nekrasov's Stalin Prize-winning novella, "The Battle of Stalingrad," the powerful second act shows a drunken night with Stalin trying to make friends with the young laureate as he cruelly mocks Khrushchev and Beria. The whole reason to see the show is the stunningly humorous and chilling performance of Stalin by Yury Gorobets.


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Ostankino Enterprises this week kicked off a program combining theater and television. Relying on big-name actors, they will perform shows for live audiences for just a few weeks and will then tape them for later broadcast. The first project, playing Friday through Sunday at the Ostankino Concert Hall, is William Saroyan's theatrical fantasy, "The Cave Dwellers," starring Tatyana Vasilyeva and Viktor Proskurin, a last-minute replacement for the ailing Armen Dzhigarkhanyan in the role of the King. It may be too early to say how it will look on television, but Oleg Fomin's slick, soulless direction fails dismally as theater. Tel. 217-7942/9686.


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An actors' revolt has put the Pushkin Theater's production of Nikolai Gogol's "The Inspector General" on indefinite hold after just one public performance. Inexplicably unable to assemble an appropriate opening night crowd for a show starring two of Moscow's most respected actors -- Viktor Gvozditsky and Alexander Porokhovshchikov -- the theater's administration filled the hall with school kids. Their behavior was so rowdy that the actors were only barely able to complete the performance. They refused to perform the following night, and now performances have been cancelled until at least the end of March.


--John Freedman