National Theatre regulars Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale combine in Collaborators, a tale of a writer with a distinctly tricky commission.

Collaborators is set in Moscow in 1938; a dangerous place to have a sense of humour and an even more dangerous place to have a sense of freedom. Writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who is living among dissidents while being stalked by the secret police, has both. Then he receives a poisoned chalice, a commission to write a play about Stalin to celebrate the Russian leader’s 60th birthday.

Collaborators depicts a lethal game of cat and mouse, through which the appalling compromises and humiliations inflicted on any artist by those with power are held up to scrutiny.

Following a successful run in the National’s Cottesloe theatre and a host of four-star reviews, Collaborators returns to the NT in the larger Olivier theatre.