Maydays

David Edgar's monumental 'Maydays' dissects the saga of post-war political awakenings, as the many dedicated devotees of the ideals of communism become disillusioned, and dissent. In a play that spans five decades, we see socialists of various dedication and origin - from the apparatchik of the Soviet Union down to the radical university lecturer - each finding that the distance between their conscience and their comrades has become too great to traverse. Written in the early eighties, 'Maydays' was first presented, in an RSC production at the Barbican in London in 1983, against a backdrop of many prominent members of the Left abdicating and turning Tory.