What do you think?
Rate this book
Dying for It: A Free Adaptation of "The Suicide" by Nikolai Erdman
Hallway-dwelling Semyon is unemployed and disheartened with life. When his last hope at turning his life around disappears he decides to commit suicide, only to find that a number of people would like him to die on their behalf. On the night of the deed, a party grows towards a glorious climax.
Moira Buffini has freely adapted Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide, which was banned by Stalin before a single performance, to create Dying For It.
Dying For It premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in March 2007.
Moira Buffini has freely adapted Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide, which was banned by Stalin before a single performance, to create Dying For It.
Dying For It premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in March 2007.
96 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2007
1 person is currently reading
37 people want to read
About the author
Moira Buffini
38 books186 followersMoira Buffini (born 1965) is an English dramatist, director, and actor.
She was born in Carlisle to Irish parents, and studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths. She subsequently trained as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.
For Jordan, co-written with Anna Reynolds in 1992, she won a Time Out Award for her performance and Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe play. Her 1997 play Gabriel was performed at Soho theatre, winning the LWT Plays on Stage award. Her 1999 play Silence earned Buffini the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for best English-language play by a woman. Loveplay followed at the RSC in 2001, then Dinner at the National Theatre in 2003 which transferred to the West End and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy.
Buffini wrote Dying For It, a free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's classic, The Suicide, for the Almeida in 2007. She followed it with Marianne Dreams, a dance play with choreographer Will Tuckett, based on Catherine Storr's book. Her play for young people, A Vampire Story was performed as part of NT Connections in 2008.
Buffini is said to advocate big, imaginative plays rather than naturalistic soap opera dramas, and is a founder member of the Monsterists, a group of playwrights who promote new writing of large scale work in the British theatre. She has been described by David Greig as a metaphysical playwright. All her plays have been published by Faber.
Buffini is also a prolific screenwriter. In 2010 her film adaptation of Posy Simmon's Tamara Drewe was released followed by her adaptation of Jane Eyre for BBC Films and Ruby Films in 2011. The script appeared on the 2008 Brit List, a film-industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. It received nine votes, putting it in second place. Buffini also adapted her play A Vampire Story for the screenplay of Neil Jordan's film Byzantium released in 2013.
She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six for which she wrote a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible.
- Wikipedia
She was born in Carlisle to Irish parents, and studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths. She subsequently trained as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.
For Jordan, co-written with Anna Reynolds in 1992, she won a Time Out Award for her performance and Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe play. Her 1997 play Gabriel was performed at Soho theatre, winning the LWT Plays on Stage award. Her 1999 play Silence earned Buffini the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for best English-language play by a woman. Loveplay followed at the RSC in 2001, then Dinner at the National Theatre in 2003 which transferred to the West End and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy.
Buffini wrote Dying For It, a free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's classic, The Suicide, for the Almeida in 2007. She followed it with Marianne Dreams, a dance play with choreographer Will Tuckett, based on Catherine Storr's book. Her play for young people, A Vampire Story was performed as part of NT Connections in 2008.
Buffini is said to advocate big, imaginative plays rather than naturalistic soap opera dramas, and is a founder member of the Monsterists, a group of playwrights who promote new writing of large scale work in the British theatre. She has been described by David Greig as a metaphysical playwright. All her plays have been published by Faber.
Buffini is also a prolific screenwriter. In 2010 her film adaptation of Posy Simmon's Tamara Drewe was released followed by her adaptation of Jane Eyre for BBC Films and Ruby Films in 2011. The script appeared on the 2008 Brit List, a film-industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. It received nine votes, putting it in second place. Buffini also adapted her play A Vampire Story for the screenplay of Neil Jordan's film Byzantium released in 2013.
She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six for which she wrote a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible.
- Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 4, 2025
The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman
Nine out of 10
Suicide is a good idea, though the thought of putting this at the start of this note seemed amusing in that it was thought as a game, wherein we see if it attracts any attention and then some harsh criticism and rebukes, but the fun part is more due to the fact that nobody is reading this and this is both a blessing and a curse, the former because your truly is free to put here whatever he goddamn pleases and the latter because it is such a loss for the earthlings who are not blessed enough to enjoy these musings – the last part is still part of the same Games People Play, though not likely to be inspired from the book by Eric Berne http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/g...
As for why suicide might be a good idea, this was actually inspired by one of the lectures of Jordan Peterson, the rising academic star, the thinker of the conservatives in this age, freely available on the internet, in which he interprets the Bible stories from a psychological perspective, with the opposite view from that taken by Nathaniel Branden http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/04/p..., and it is not meant literally, but as the start of a new époque, after one commits suicide in that he or she kills the old, malevolent, mean, improper self, they conceptuate what is Proper, start eliminating the wrong, sinful things they do and set the foundations for a new, better, proper individual, ready to follow the role models of Messiah, Jesus, Noah and others, who serve as an excellent aspiration point, which makes sense for, though they are perfect or near there, it is always good to aim high and why not towards the most admired ideals…by the way, sin comes from Greek and it means originally missing the mark, by not aiming high enough, or not even trying to hit the target…
Another though that came to mind watching the play that was on National Television last night, though on the remote Channel 3, though not for its entirety, for reasons of excessive length, at two and a half hours it is an adaptation that drags on at times and because the thought of suicide came from other quarters, close to home, where a fucking idiot of a neighbor, who had made a complaint at the police and mayor office when I was the president of the association and forced by other members I placed a playground next to my fence, though quite far from him, has decided over the past years to get a dog that barked continuously, loudly, for no apparent reason other than the moon was high, the leaves were falling, birds flew in the air, then got another dog that starts the morning in the same loud way, at three the children aged seven maybe gather for the first round of screams and piercing yells, to be followed when they finish, well into the dark of evening by a second set, of even more obnoxious, vile, overwhelming, shouting to high heaven or better still, deep hell, since well, this moron does not allow anyone to touch on his (I hope soon to be eternal) peace, but as for his own culpability, there is no such thing given that he belongs to a category well represented here of ciocoi, uneducated, despicable, arrogant, preposterous, pathetic arrivistes that are so well depicted by Trump.
So you see, suicide is a valid option when what you have around looks like eternal Hades, damnation by psychological, physical torture – I did come out to shout at them and say this is unacceptable, but what is left for me is to show them my ass on the balcony, for them to kiss it and see that if we are playing the games – from the same Eric Berne classic – of WDY, IOTHY, or better still Now I’ve Got You SOB, then there are two ways on this street and if you fuck with me, then it is more than appropriate for me to use the same shit and if you open the House of Horrors, Adventure Park the massive Shooting Range and whatever else you have in mind – oh, and by the way, he also placed a basketball ring with panel and then when they get tired of shooting, screaming and being devils, they just bang on forever on the panel and well, scream again- then I will have a swingers session and let the curtains off and lights on so that your brats can enjoy the horror to the full, if this is the Anything Goes season, voila…’We’ll drink nothing but champagne, cause I’m the boss’ and if you read this, which I know you don’t and this is the main reason why this raving Suicide Wish went on for so inexplicably long – it is the same pithecanthropus you need to blame if you are here, which by the way, you should not be…why are you still here, don’t you see that I am torn between Suicide and opening a brothel, House of BDSM to compete with the carousel of terrors next door…
All right, revenons a nos moutons, the above was just an attempt to look into the mind of Semyon so it is just fiction – after all, the cretin in question had been there before, making a massive fuss over something small, that he does now with tyrannical disrespect, as if he had to call the NATO forces for a mosquito and then he plays with Rhinoceros – as in Eugene Ionesco http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/r... and says he is special, he can be disturbed by a bug, but we have to swallow the mess made by his aliens and their Doomsday cries – Semyon decides to commit suicide but then never manages to complete his plan, making us think of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his last three minutes: the genius that is considered by many to be one of the five best writers ever had been condemned to die and looked at the last three minutes of his life, in front of the execution squad, allowing one minute to say goodbye to family, another to pass his life before his eyes and the last for a ray of sun that falls on the cupola of a nearby church and after he would have been pardoned, in the last moments, he would share with the readers of his Magnum opera the notion that life is extremely precious and if we all had the chance to be facing the last minutes or hours of our existence we would see that surviving even on an empty, meager rock in the middle of the ocean is preferable to death…unless of course we are determined to die or are forced to by the Forces of Evil, attacking from the nearby garden.
The play was banned in the days of Stalin, published in 1928 and then immediately forbidden and the author sent to the Gulag, a fate shared by so many in a country that alas is not free even today, when they have just voted (if they ever really did in sufficient numbers to have it valid) to allow Putin to rule for life, which is the very definition of a dictator, albeit one that played around the rules, including incentives for everyone in the package, from inflation proof pensions to marriages only between man and wife in the new constitution, who is facing these days some serious protests, far away from the Kremlin, in a region where goons from Moscow descended to arrest the governor, for a murder he had a part in fifteen years ago – in Putin’s Russia, they would just throw someone in without waiting that long and even execute them, proof being the death of Sergei Magnitsky – whose name is now in use for an Act, a bill passed in the American Congress to punish officials responsible for his death – a man that had tried to call attention to severe corruption, only to be tortured and then killed, a trial would continue even after he is no more, as a sign that the Kremlin would chase you even into the grave…then of course there are the killing of Litvinenko, with Plutonium no less, as another barbaric, devilish message that you will die in pain if you cross those ghouls – I better be careful here then – and the most recent attacks on the security of vaccine making companies, from which they want to steal secrets and probably compromise the efforts…
Nine out of 10
Suicide is a good idea, though the thought of putting this at the start of this note seemed amusing in that it was thought as a game, wherein we see if it attracts any attention and then some harsh criticism and rebukes, but the fun part is more due to the fact that nobody is reading this and this is both a blessing and a curse, the former because your truly is free to put here whatever he goddamn pleases and the latter because it is such a loss for the earthlings who are not blessed enough to enjoy these musings – the last part is still part of the same Games People Play, though not likely to be inspired from the book by Eric Berne http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/09/g...
As for why suicide might be a good idea, this was actually inspired by one of the lectures of Jordan Peterson, the rising academic star, the thinker of the conservatives in this age, freely available on the internet, in which he interprets the Bible stories from a psychological perspective, with the opposite view from that taken by Nathaniel Branden http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/04/p..., and it is not meant literally, but as the start of a new époque, after one commits suicide in that he or she kills the old, malevolent, mean, improper self, they conceptuate what is Proper, start eliminating the wrong, sinful things they do and set the foundations for a new, better, proper individual, ready to follow the role models of Messiah, Jesus, Noah and others, who serve as an excellent aspiration point, which makes sense for, though they are perfect or near there, it is always good to aim high and why not towards the most admired ideals…by the way, sin comes from Greek and it means originally missing the mark, by not aiming high enough, or not even trying to hit the target…
Another though that came to mind watching the play that was on National Television last night, though on the remote Channel 3, though not for its entirety, for reasons of excessive length, at two and a half hours it is an adaptation that drags on at times and because the thought of suicide came from other quarters, close to home, where a fucking idiot of a neighbor, who had made a complaint at the police and mayor office when I was the president of the association and forced by other members I placed a playground next to my fence, though quite far from him, has decided over the past years to get a dog that barked continuously, loudly, for no apparent reason other than the moon was high, the leaves were falling, birds flew in the air, then got another dog that starts the morning in the same loud way, at three the children aged seven maybe gather for the first round of screams and piercing yells, to be followed when they finish, well into the dark of evening by a second set, of even more obnoxious, vile, overwhelming, shouting to high heaven or better still, deep hell, since well, this moron does not allow anyone to touch on his (I hope soon to be eternal) peace, but as for his own culpability, there is no such thing given that he belongs to a category well represented here of ciocoi, uneducated, despicable, arrogant, preposterous, pathetic arrivistes that are so well depicted by Trump.
So you see, suicide is a valid option when what you have around looks like eternal Hades, damnation by psychological, physical torture – I did come out to shout at them and say this is unacceptable, but what is left for me is to show them my ass on the balcony, for them to kiss it and see that if we are playing the games – from the same Eric Berne classic – of WDY, IOTHY, or better still Now I’ve Got You SOB, then there are two ways on this street and if you fuck with me, then it is more than appropriate for me to use the same shit and if you open the House of Horrors, Adventure Park the massive Shooting Range and whatever else you have in mind – oh, and by the way, he also placed a basketball ring with panel and then when they get tired of shooting, screaming and being devils, they just bang on forever on the panel and well, scream again- then I will have a swingers session and let the curtains off and lights on so that your brats can enjoy the horror to the full, if this is the Anything Goes season, voila…’We’ll drink nothing but champagne, cause I’m the boss’ and if you read this, which I know you don’t and this is the main reason why this raving Suicide Wish went on for so inexplicably long – it is the same pithecanthropus you need to blame if you are here, which by the way, you should not be…why are you still here, don’t you see that I am torn between Suicide and opening a brothel, House of BDSM to compete with the carousel of terrors next door…
All right, revenons a nos moutons, the above was just an attempt to look into the mind of Semyon so it is just fiction – after all, the cretin in question had been there before, making a massive fuss over something small, that he does now with tyrannical disrespect, as if he had to call the NATO forces for a mosquito and then he plays with Rhinoceros – as in Eugene Ionesco http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/r... and says he is special, he can be disturbed by a bug, but we have to swallow the mess made by his aliens and their Doomsday cries – Semyon decides to commit suicide but then never manages to complete his plan, making us think of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his last three minutes: the genius that is considered by many to be one of the five best writers ever had been condemned to die and looked at the last three minutes of his life, in front of the execution squad, allowing one minute to say goodbye to family, another to pass his life before his eyes and the last for a ray of sun that falls on the cupola of a nearby church and after he would have been pardoned, in the last moments, he would share with the readers of his Magnum opera the notion that life is extremely precious and if we all had the chance to be facing the last minutes or hours of our existence we would see that surviving even on an empty, meager rock in the middle of the ocean is preferable to death…unless of course we are determined to die or are forced to by the Forces of Evil, attacking from the nearby garden.
The play was banned in the days of Stalin, published in 1928 and then immediately forbidden and the author sent to the Gulag, a fate shared by so many in a country that alas is not free even today, when they have just voted (if they ever really did in sufficient numbers to have it valid) to allow Putin to rule for life, which is the very definition of a dictator, albeit one that played around the rules, including incentives for everyone in the package, from inflation proof pensions to marriages only between man and wife in the new constitution, who is facing these days some serious protests, far away from the Kremlin, in a region where goons from Moscow descended to arrest the governor, for a murder he had a part in fifteen years ago – in Putin’s Russia, they would just throw someone in without waiting that long and even execute them, proof being the death of Sergei Magnitsky – whose name is now in use for an Act, a bill passed in the American Congress to punish officials responsible for his death – a man that had tried to call attention to severe corruption, only to be tortured and then killed, a trial would continue even after he is no more, as a sign that the Kremlin would chase you even into the grave…then of course there are the killing of Litvinenko, with Plutonium no less, as another barbaric, devilish message that you will die in pain if you cross those ghouls – I better be careful here then – and the most recent attacks on the security of vaccine making companies, from which they want to steal secrets and probably compromise the efforts…
July 19, 2022
Gaslamp Theatre. 13th Note, 50-60 King St. I found the production through Google events over my 5 days in my second stint in Glasgow. Sunk in that going to ‘Goldilocks Goes to Greece,’ a pantomime at Oran Mor would be a sure shot at seeing Alasdair’s mural there, which is in fact in the auditorium, they have a special place for a play a pint a pie.
I guess people who read philosophically inclined books will find themselves following those righteous influential thinkers. In reading the blurbs I watched thought this was a contemporary Scottish play; in its first run. But it is a Scotification, Glaswegified, modern russian classic. While I was watching it I was as astounded until intermission where I completely doubted this was such a talent as will soon see the likes of international critical acclaim. More suspicious was the Russian content, the names. “It has to be originally Russian!” Or the young person who wrote this is an old fashioned smarty. It was too polished. It was old!
I guess people who read philosophically inclined books will find themselves following those righteous influential thinkers. In reading the blurbs I watched thought this was a contemporary Scottish play; in its first run. But it is a Scotification, Glaswegified, modern russian classic. While I was watching it I was as astounded until intermission where I completely doubted this was such a talent as will soon see the likes of international critical acclaim. More suspicious was the Russian content, the names. “It has to be originally Russian!” Or the young person who wrote this is an old fashioned smarty. It was too polished. It was old!
March 31, 2021
The theatrical equivalent of the Death of Stalin.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews