City Limits, November 14, 1991, by Antonia Denford.
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This stunningly snobbish comedy centres on one joke: an 
aristocratic Russian emigre couple are reduced to servants 
in a wealthy Paris home. Tatiana and Mikhail dazzle the 
household with the immaculate service skills they learnt in 
the Tsar's palace. When their employers the Arbeziats twig 
they have a duchess in an apron and a prince for a butler, 
they go weak-kneed with awe. Meanwhile, visiting Soviet 
minister Gorotchenko is a murderer, torturer, and smokes in 
front of ladies. All this and the play's grisly nostalgia 
for "old Russia" would be less stomach-churning if Robert 
Powell and Natalia Makarova had an ounce of charm or erotic 
zing as the aristo-domestics. Makarova carries herself with 
brittle narcissism: Powell manages only the most dutiful 
husbandly complaisance in return. The genial Arbeziats and 
their cocktail-set kids warm things up somewhat: but they 
cannot disguise the jaded conventionality of the production, 
nor the idiocy of the play.



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