You wouldn't think a Five-Year Plan novel about an industrial contest could be sprightly and funny, but it truly is.
The ironies of life under the 'new realities' of socialism provided much material for creative spirits :) Shostakovich's ballet (which is very much in the same spirit as Broadway shows of the same era) 'Svetlie Ruchei' ('The Bright Stream') is very much the same. The title isn't touching, but instead intentionally ironic - 'Bright Stream' is the name of a collective farm where the action takes place. The story is about the high jinx which arise when the ballet artistes from a 'big theatre' in Moscow are sent as extra workers to help with the harvest on a farm in the south. Of course, it just happens that the wife of the farm's Chief Agronomist turns out to be the promising young star of the Bolshoi Academy... who threw-over a ballet career to marry the Agronomist who'd captured her heart...