A new adaptation of Maxim Gorky's play Vassa Zheleznova, from the writer of King Charles III.

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868-1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gorky's works include: The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl (1899), The Song of the Stormy Petrel (1901), My Childhood (1913-1914), Mother (1906), Summerfolk (1904) and Children of the Sun (1905).

Mike Barlett is an award-winning playwright whose plays include: Vassa, adapted from Maxim Gorky's play Vassa Zheleznova (Almeida Theatre, London, 2019); Snowflake (Old Fire Station, Oxford, 2018; revived at Kiln Theatre, London, 2019); Albion (Almeida Theatre, 2017); Wild (Hampstead Theatre, 2016); Game (Almeida Theatre, 2015); King Charles III (Almeida/West End/Broadway, 2014-15); An Intervention (Paines Plough/Watford Palace Theatre); Bull (Sheffield Theatres/Off-Broadway); Medea (Glasgow Citizens/Headlong); Chariots of Fire (based on the film; Hampstead/West End); 13 (National Theatre); Love, Love, Love (Paines Plough/Plymouth Drum/Royal Court); Earthquakes in London (Headlong/National Theatre); Cock (Royal Court/Off-Broadway); Artefacts (Nabokov/Bush); Contractions and My Child (Royal Court).

He was Writer-in-Residence at the National Theatre in 2011, and the Pearson Playwright-in-Residence at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007. Cock won an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre in 2010. Love, Love, Love won the TMA Best New Play Award in 2011. Bull won the same award in 2013. King Charles III won the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play in 2015.

He has written several plays for BBC Radio, winning the Writers' Guild Tinniswood and Imison prizes for Not Talking.

His work for television includes Press (BBC One, 2018); Trauma (ITV, 2018); two series of Doctor Foster (BBC One, 2015 & 2017, Best New Drama at the National Television Awards); and The Town (ITV1, 2012).