For unnamed reasons, Russian military goons incarcerate 26 Yiddish writers in prison cells. It's 1952. For his final purge, Josef Stalin wants to eliminate the Yiddish "soul" by erasing its language. In Nathan Englander's unevenly written drama, three of the most famous writers confront the unthinkable different ways, prompted by the arrival of a teenage boy. The subject's a chiller. But the play, with lengthy dialogue and long monologues, belabors its theme. Though his actors tend to shout, at times peaking in the middle of a speech, director Barry Edelstein delivers a tight staging and a sudden, explosive conclusion. Hal Linden heads the cast as Zunser, the last great Yiddish writer. Michael McGarty's set's a hydraulic wonder and a puzzle. The floor and ceiling rise and fall, even flipflop when the ceiling becomes the floor. But the script calls for a slop bucket, along with a bucket of water. The Old Globe production tones things down and erases the play's grisliest moment, when the two buckets become one, by eliminating the slop bucket altogether.Worth a try.