One of Russia"s greatest poets, Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was a Futurist, early Bolshevik, and champion of the avant-garde. Despite his revolutionary youth, he became increasingly disillusioned with Soviet society, and three of his plays--all banned until after Stalin"s death--reflect his changing assessments of the Revolution. Mayakovsky: Plays includes Mystery Bouffe, a mock medieval mystery written in 1918 to celebrate the first anniversary of the Revolution; The Bathhouse, a sharp attack on Soviet bureaucracy subtitled "a drama of circus and fireworks"; and The Bedbug, in which a worker with bourgeois pretensions is frozen and resurrected fifty years later, when the world has become a material paradise. The collection also includes Mayakovsky"s more personal first play, Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy.