Gogol: Diary of a Madman (1964)

An adaptation of the off-Broadway production of Nicolai Gogol's short story, "Diary of a Madman", about a clerk's disintegration into madness. Written in 1834, the story contains one of the earliest descriptions of schizophrenia, by turns bizarre, funny and sad. It represents the kind of cutting edge writing that placed Gogol in the forefront of Russian writers, with great influence on the generation that came after him.