Byronic hero …

… ‘Pushkin: A Life Played Out’ Review: The Poet and the Pistol - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Greatly aided by his masterly 11-person cast, Mr. Leaf has brought off the considerable feat of writing a play in blank iambic pentameter (he even supplies his own believable-sounding Pushkinesque verses for the poet’s own poems) that has the clean, transparent sound of everyday speech, eloquent but not high-flown. If you didn’t know that the characters in “Pushkin” were speaking in verse, you could easily fail to realize it until well into the evening, so involving is the high-stakes plot and so good the acting.