SHORT TAKES : Now Comes Gorbachev, the Play

Mikhail Gorbachev has been a lead player on the stage of history for years, so maybe it’s appropriate that he will soon be portrayed on a real stage.

“Moscow Gold,” opening in London later this month, will bring to theater audiences an array of Communist giants, from Lenin to the present-day Soviet president, to be played by David Calder.

The play was written by London playwrights Howard Brenton and Tariq Ali, who were responsible for last year’s “Iranian Nights,” about the plight of author Salman Rushdie under Muslim death threats.

Calder says the play treats Gorbachev as someone on whom “the fickle finger of historical fate suddenly lands, rather than a man of ambition desperate to get into the old Lenin seat.”

“Moscow Gold” opens Sept. 26 at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Barbican Theater. It runs through Nov. 3.