It’s been a long hard winter, but spring is here and with it, a garden of great comedies has arrived in town.

First, “The Party,” and now, the brilliant “Death of Stalin.”

Movie info

“The Death of Stalin”

Follows the Soviet dictator’s last days and depicts the chaos of the regime after his death.

Length: 107 minutes

MPAA rating: R for language throughout, violence and some sexual references

Director: Armando Iannucci

Writers: Armando Iannucci, David Schneider

Stars: Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jeffrey Tambor

This is Armando Iannucci’s farcical, deeply black comedy about the sudden and mysterious death of one of history’s most evil dictators, taken from Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin’s graphic novel.

It’s a comedic bell ringer that cuts deeply and coats the wounds of reality with laugh syrup. If you thought the current situation around us is funny, just you wait.

Imagine Bertolt Brecht, Mel Brooks, the Marx Brothers and The Coen Brothers sitting down to write a comedy together. Well, it’s late, but it’s here.

If the name Iannucci doesn’t ring a bell in your living room, he’s the political comedy genius (“In The Loop,” “The Thick of it”) who created HBO’s “VEEP.” Yes, that “Veep.”

If you’ve been a fan these past couple of years of “Veep,” you’ll know at once where you are.

“Stalin” stars Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend (“Homeland”), Jason Isaacs, Michael Palin (“Monty Python”), Andrea Riseborough and Jeffrey Tambor. (The troubled but brilliant star of “Transparent”).

After a Monty Python kind of symphony concert opening, we get to the real opening when Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin, Scottish accent and all), while reading a hate note from a prominent woman pianist, suffers a major stroke and drops to the floor.

Code Red: The usual suspects are called to the Kremlin: Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor); Stalin’s biggest supporter, Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD (Simon Russell Beale), a small, portly man in a black suit with an even blacker soul.

A more familiar name arrives — Nikita Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi? Yes, Steve Buscemi, Brooklyn accent and all ) rushes in.

Molotov (Palin) joins them.

Yes, but for a few who will bang in later, the gang is all here, standing around the great Stalin, who lies in a pool of his own urine that keeps all of them hopping around to avoid it, like panicked ostriches.

“Someone call a doctor,” one shouts. Everyone looks at each other.

“They’re all in prison or in one of the gulags.”

“Who ordered that?”

“He did.”

Finally they round up a group of doctors, a motley group of seven, of which only one is a real doctor. The others may well be sewer workers.

As it’s only for window dressing, each one is given a white coat and stethoscope and is asked for an opinion. The expressions on the sea of blank white, terrified faces is an Oscar scene in itself.

One scene after another, one killer moment after another, the entire history of the Soviet Union begins to crumble, as this gang who can’t find the toilet or a phone begins to take over the U.S.S.R.

Pick a scene: Six frightened sycophants trying to get Stalin’s body onto a bed, then into a rug, then into a coffin and out the door as quietly as possible.

Wait. Here comes the ultimate scene stealer. Rupert Friend, as Stalin’s drunken comic clown son Vasily, rushed from his attempt to put together a Russian hockey team, to the bedside of his father. What a turn for Friend. Enter Stalin’s hysterical daughter Svetlana (Andrea Riseborough) ready to have them all shot.

The great general Field Marshal Zhukov (classic villain Jason Isaacs in a brilliant comic turn) arrives with his own private army to solve everything. He won’t.

Backstabbing, murderous mendacity, sinister schemes. There are no American and British actors struggling with Russian accents, each actor speaks in his own language, especially Buscemi, doing Khrushchev like a Chicago furniture salesman trying to save his job and replace Stalin.

Zac Nicholson’s camera is the proverbial fly on the wall and captures each moment. Suzie Harman’s costumes are letter-perfect, she deserves her own Oscar.

“Death of Stalin.” Watch your back, no one is safe.

J.P. Devine, of Waterville, is a former stage and film actor.