Adapted by Phil Wilmott for the stage. Perhaps Maxim Gorky's best-known play. It was written during the winter of 1901 and the spring of 1902. Subtitled "Scenes from Russian Life," it depicted a group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga

Set amongst the whores, alcoholics, cynics and doss house dreamers of a Russia on the brink of revolution, The Lower Depths is a harrowing, violent and uncompromising portrayal of the human spirit at its lowest ebb, with destitution and death an ever present spectre.