This play takes place in 1954, during the Hungarian Stalinist regime (1948-1955). A middle-aged intellectual, released after three years in prison for 'thought crimes', is reunited with his old friends, all of whom have become apparatchiks within the regime in hopes of living more comfortably. Powerful and amusing, The Garden offers a dramatic glimpse in the very difficult issues Eastern European intellectuals faced under Stalinist regimes. While the play and its characters (based on actual figures in Hungarian public life at that time) are very plainly East European, the reader or viewer is invited to examine more universal themes of power and opposition, loyalty and betrayal, and love and the limits of love.