ABSTRACT
Oleg Yefremov and Tatyana Lavrova were glad to take a break from acting in a stressful new play by Alexander Gelman, Naedine so vsemi. As A Man with Connections it would become an international success. The only characters are an engineer and his wife. Among those on the Hampton Court outing was Jeffry Wickham, who later appeared speaking only Russian in Ronald Harwood’s Interpreters, starring Maggie Smith and Edward Fox. Another was Caroline Blakiston, who from then on would become a frequent visitor to our widening circle of Russian theatre friends. One of the eight plays they saw was Michael Frayn’s hit comedy Noises Off. In 1984, an association set up a potentially important visit by Frank Dunlop, Director of the Edinburgh International Festival, and Thelma Holt, who had moved from the Round House to become Administrator of the Theatre of Comedy.
