By Scott Vogel
Theater critic

Scene: Early evening in the theater district. Busload upon busload of eager patrons arrive at the vestibule of a playhouse, the impending satirical comedy much anticipated by all. Inside, they are not disappointed.

While the play can only be described as a dead-on critique of tabloid-mad America (a "tough, materialistic, violent society" as A.R. Gurney once put it), the audience is too busy laughing to notice. They've been won over by the ironic tale of Roxie Hart, a small-time showgirl arrested for her boyfriend's murder, only to be transformed by a circus-like trial into a media darling. The irony only deepens as Roxie parlays her overnight celebrity into an acquittal and successful post-trial vaudeville career, and yet the audience leaves the theater feeling thoroughly amused, even enchanted.

Where might the above scene take place?

There are two possibilities. The aforementioned buses might have arrived from the hinterlands of New Jersey, of course, spilling their blue-haired throngs into the lobby of a Broadway theater for the current revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb's 1975 musical "Chicago."

Then again, were this 1933, the buses might well have been ferrying Bolshevik factory workers to a performance of "Chicago" at the Drama Theater of Leningrad, or to a second production staged at the capital city's world-famous Moscow Art Theater.

That's right, the Maurine Dallas Watkins script (1926) on which the musical would one day be based was something of a hit in Stalin's Russia. While the play's original Broadway production was a modest success in New York, playing for 172 performances, the Russian "Chicago" ran in repertory for six years and was performed more than 240 times.

According to some critics, the decision by the Moscow Art Theater -- the jewel of Russia's thespian crown -- to stage such a low-brow burlesque was no coincidence. It was instead one of the earliest examples of repertory tampering by the Glavrepertkom, a government ministry intent upon staging both Soviet plays reflecting a socialist agenda and American works expressing dismay at the seamy soullessness of capitalist life. As the Cold War began, the latter practice intensified. Dramas like Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" (1937) were recruited for such a task, his classic tale of violinist-turned-boxer Joe Bonaparte given an extra turn in the Leningrad production of 1941. Every detail in the Russian staging conspired to emphasize the oppressive misery of New York, from the filthy costumes of the actors to the menacing skyscrapers of the backdrop.

Of all American plays turned to anti-American effect during the period, however, Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" (1949) reigns as the undisputed champion. The tragic fall of Willy Loman, a man whose life is destroyed by society's expectations and his own delusions, caused a sensation when staged first in Leningrad and then in Moscow in 1959. The scenery once again depicted a soul-crushing skyscraper landscape, and in classic socialist reworking, the climax of the play was moved forward to the moment when Willy loses his job, thus spotlighting capitalist ruthlessness.

In the 1950s, both Odets and Miller appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee to defend themselves against charges of Communist affiliation. Odets, who had been a member of the party, was particularly cooperative, reporting the names of several fellow Communists. Miller refused to inform on others, however, and his dramatic testimony before HUAC in 1956 was as eloquent and impassioned as any monologue the playwright ever wrote. Betraying its theater-as-social-engineering bias, the committee drilled Miller on the subject matter of his work, asking him why his plays were so sad, so depressing, so gloomy. "I reflect what my heart tells me from the society around me," was his simple reply.

Arthur Miller's ringing defense of artistic freedom and his refusal to name names led only to a contempt of Congress citation, but the consequences for victims of Stalin's version of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy -- Andrei Zhdanov -- were more dire. Brilliant playwrights like Mikhail Bulgakov, whose works, however popular, were deemed by Zhdanov to be counterrevolutionary, were banned. Several prominent theatrical figures, like the great director Vsevelod Meyerhold, were murdered. Bulgakov was spared, but he never lived to see production of his great play on the Russian Civil War, "Flight" (1928), and spent his last years in artistic exile.

Relatively free of state pressures, but with their eyes firmly fixed on the dangerous tensions developing between the superpowers, it was the European dramatists who would produce the Cold War's greatest masterpieces. Given a world in the throes of so many dark legacies -- Hitler, Nagasaki, escalating armament -- it's no wonder that a Theater of the Absurd appeared, questioning the laws of logic and the idea of progress. (See Eugene Ionesco's "The Chairs," 1952). Similarly absurd but in a class all its own, Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" (1949) is perhaps the finest play of the period. At the time it seemed to espouse no political agenda, being merely the story of two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, who are waiting for someone or something that never arrives. In hindsight, however, the play is not the timeless meditation it once seemed to be. As the journalist Mel Gussow has written, Beckett's drama "became the paradigmatic expression of people and nations moving from world war to Cold War, waiting impatiently for resolution while hoping to avoid apocalypse."

As nations moved from Cold War to post-Cold War, the American stage was still dominated by major writers who rose to prominence during the earlier period, all of whom were heavily influenced by Beckett. Works on a Cold War theme by Beckett's greatest protégés include "The Hothouse" (Harold Pinter, 1958), "The American Dream" (Edward Albee, 1961), and "The Unseen Hand" (Sam Shepard, 1969). Each of these maverick playwrights is still actively writing and producing, adapting his sensibilities to the challenges of a post-Cold War scenario.

Such challenges include a world in which capitalism has apparently won -- albeit by default -- and tabloid Americanism threatens to run rampant over the globe. Not coincidentally, perhaps, "Chicago" is running rampant as well, having so far spawned two U.S. touring companies, not to mention resident companies in Vienna, Amsterdam, London, Melbourne and Stockholm.

Given such non-nuclear proliferation, can a Moscow Roxie be far behind? And how different will she appear to the Russians after an absence of -- as she sings -- "50 years or so"? Especially nowadays -- when seamy soullessness looks less like a despised alternative and more like the future.

Scott Vogel is a New York-based playwright and theater critic.