SOURCE: Beaujour, Elizabeth K. Review of The Complete Plays, by Yuri Olesha.Slavic and East European Journal 28 (summer 1987): 272.

In the following review of Michael Green and Jerome Katsell's translation of Olesha's plays, Beaujour criticizes the translations of colloquial expressions but finds the volume an otherwise valuable contribution to Olesha's body of work.

The Complete Plays of Yury Olesha includes The Conspiracy of Feelings, The Three Fat Men, The List of Blessings, and a fragment of the unfinished The Black Man. Despite its title, the volume does not include the little drama in rhymed verse: “Play on an Execution Block.” This omission is inexplicable and unfortunate, since “Play on an Execution Block” is almost inaccessible (it is not included in the 1968 Soviet collection of Oleša's dramatic works), and it would have been a real service to have made that intriguing, Blokian text available, even in English. On the...