The press performances of the two plays commissioned by the RSC as part of its Revolutions programme took place so late into their run that both are closing within days of this review's appearance (on October 1). I regret, then, that there is little time for readers to travel to Stratford to see these gripping and instructive plays, though I am assured by the company that both will be reprised soon, possibly in London.

Revolutions, just beginning, is a four-year celebration of theatre in Russia and the former Soviet Union. From Russia comes Natal’ia Vorozhbit’s The Grain Store, translated by Sasha Dugdale and directed by ther RSC’s artistic director Michael Boyd; from Ukraine brothers Mikhail and Vyacheslav Durnenenkov offer The Drunks, translated by Nina Raine (director Anthony Neilson).

Both, to a considerable extent, are studies in tyranny. The first focuses on that practised by Stalin, the greatest tyrant of them all, from 1928 in his programme of farm collectivisation. Here we see its enthusiastic application under a cold-blooded communist zealot, chillingly portrayed by John Mackay, on a once-contented rural community, and the starvation and misery that follow. At its centre is an affecting love story in which an eager recruit to the communist cause (Tunji Kasim) remains emotionally entangled with a young woman (Samantha Young) from the landowning class his political masters tell him he must hate.The action is placed firmly within a framework of religious belief, with the beginning and end supplied by the prayers of an old woman (Kathryn Hunter) for the souls of her many relations who died amid the chaos.

The Drunks offers an up-to-the minute picture of life in Ukraine as a shell-shocked and badly wounded soldier (Jonjo O’Neill, pictured) returns home to find himself proclaimed a hero in his community. As such, he becomes a valuable pawn in a struggle for power between the town’s Mr Big mayor (Brian Doherty) and a crazed police chief (Darrell D’Silva) whose gleeful sadism and worship of weaponry – especially his antique sword ‘Delilah’ – make him a figure at once comic and terrifying.