Moira Buffini comedy at the Atlantic Theater Off-Broadway draws on the banned 1928 Soviet satire ‘The Suicide’

The first five minutes of Dying For It take place in the dark, a shrewd move by playwright Moira Buffini to underscore the big black cloud shrouding her hapless hero. Through the pall we hear sadsack Semyon Semyonovich bemoaning his pathetic existence in an urban slum in 1920’s Russia. Why even go on? That’s the 64,000-ruble question in this adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 send-up of the Soviet regime, The Suicide. The original play was so biting about the can’t-win ridiculousness of Soviet life that it was banned by Stalin. Erdman was sent to Siberia. The decades have substantially defanged the satire. And director Neil Pepe’s staging never quite explodes into the “riotous farce” promised in promotional materials. At its best, the Atlantic Theater Company presentation makes for an amusing two hours that are buoyed by a game cast, lively musical interludes by two musicians who play violin and accordion (think “Fiddler on the Goof”) and striking design work packed with shadows and peeling paint.