SOURCE: Rumens, Carol. “The Perestroika Pageant.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4566 (5 October 1990): 1069.

In the following review, Rumens calls Moscow Gold “gripping,” and lauds the play for its bold, contrasting scenes and innovative stage construction.

Three hours' worth of perestroika for beginners ought to be boring. While alive to the broader issues at stake in Moscow, Tariq Ali and Howard Brenton add little to the arguments already sketched for us elsewhere in the media and, some neat one-liners notwithstanding, their language is often as clichéd. Yet Moscow Gold is gripping. Dramatically as well as visually it evokes the bold, ad hoc style of Constructivism, its sharply contrasted scenes as immediate as a series of revolutionary posters brought to life. Borrowing from many genres, Ali and Brenton vindicate the risk-taking that is their avowed dramatic policy—and also part of the real-life drama of perestroika. Unlike Gorbachev's reconstruction, though, this...