Originally written by Soviet playwright Evgeny Shvarts in 1944, The Dragon was banned in Stalinist Russia for its sharp takedown of totalitarianism. Given the past year, it’s fitting for Spooky Action Theater to stage Jesse Rasmussen and Yura Kordonsky’s sharp new contemporary adaptation, directed by Elizabeth Dinkova and retold with a focus on migrant detention. Here, the depiction of authoritarian rule is impossible to divorce from our current political climate, and despite the older source material, the questions the play raises—about human nature and how we accept and perpetuate evil—continue to ring through history.

We open in a setting familiar from recent news headlines: a stark, cruel migrant detention facility. When Chilean journalist Sofia (Fran Tapia) arrives to inspect the pri

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