The Stalin Epigram Osip Mandelstam, 1891 – 1938 Our lives no longer feel ground under them. At ten paces you can’t hear our words. But whenever there’s a snatch of talk It turns to the Kremlin mountaineer, The ten thick worms his fingers. His words like measures of weight, The huge laughing cockroaches […]
A new performance based on Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, directed by Dmitry Bozin, Honorary Artist of the Russian Federation. This show is a double premiere: not only is it a new performance staged at the Roman Viktyuk Theatre but also the first time that Dmitry Bozin, one of the Theatre’s leading artists, […]
Roman Viktyuk’s 2017 new production is the best tragedy of 17th century British playwright John Ford – a less famous but no less great contemporary of William Shakespeare. The director preferred to change the original title of the play Tis Pity she’s a Whore, since to him the concept of […]
Tennessee Williams would have turned 105 years old in 2016. To commemorate the great American playwright, Roman Viktyuk decided to produce his last and possibly most daring play, Suddenly, Last Summer. Roman Viktyuk has made a name for himself as one of the first Russian directors to successfully tackle the […]
Many authors throughout history have offered their own rendition of the classic myth. This antique story focuses on Phaedra, wife of Theseus, king of Athens, who fatally falls in love with her husband’s son, Hippolytus. Different versions of the myth tell a varying story: in some, Phaedra is obsessed with […]
The Venetian is a fascinating blend of theatrical style and philosophy. Igor Nevedrov, the director, dedicated his work to the greats The Venetian is a fascinating blend of theatrical style and philosophy. Igor Nevedrov, the director, dedicated his work to the greats of the Russian 20th c. avant-garde: theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold, artist […]
At the Beginning and the End of Time stands out among the works of Roman Viktyuk. It is based on a new Ukrainian work by Pavlo Arie and is Viktyuk’s theatrical tribute to his homeland. The play is a story of a family living in isolation in the restricted area or […]
Glorious! tells an incredible story of Florence Foster Jenkins, considered to be ‘world’s worst opera singer’. Despite her complete incompetence, this amazing woman enjoyed great public success. Critics mercilessly scolded her, but the shows sold very well, and her admirers were willing to pay twice the price to get to see her […]
The dissolute and illicit biography of Marquis de Sade has inspired many to write about his life. The famous Russian theatre journalist and dramaturg, Andrey Maksimov, is among those roused by the biography of the notorious sinner and man whose name gives origin to ‘sadism’. However, once we strip away the charged […]
Roman Viktyuk directed Schiller’s tragedy for the first time in 1969 at the Kalinin Theatre for Young Audiences. The performance was full of passion and sympathised with young characters fighting for their love. The 2011 reincarnation of the play has little if nothing in common – it is rough, ironic […]
The play, based on the correspondence between Consuelo and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, tells the story of their relationship. There are so many confusing facts about their marriage, it is sometimes difficult to discern reality from fiction. Exupery. Towards the Stars is an allegory of the great love that was shared by […]
The first director to stage a play in Russia by the Austro-Hungarian playwright, Rudolf Lothar was Alexander Tairov. In 1917 King Harlequin premiered at the Kamerny Theatre in Moscow (today known as the Pushkin Theatre). It was shown only a few times and was soon taken off the stage due to a […]
Roman Viktyuk’s interpretation of the famous play by Shakespeare is filled with youthful irony, enthusiasm and abstraction. The production tells a story within a story: it opens with four young sailors on a ship who, waiting out a storm, find a copy of “Romeo and Juliet”. The longer they read the play, the more […]
Puss in Boots is a classic 17th c. fairy tale by Charles Perrault. However, Roman Viktyuk’s staging of the story is based on a dramatisation of the the text, written by Mikhail Kuzmin, a Silver Age Russian author who added a certain lightness and humour to the story of the […]
Two sisters, Solange and Claire, work as live-in maids in the house of Madame. Envious of her beauty and wealth, they reenact Madame, putt on her dresses and jewellery, imitating her manner of speaking and movement. However, eventually they get carried away with their game: they cast anonymous aspersions on Monsieur, Madame’s lover, […]
The life and a tragic end of Sergey Yesenin, one of 20th Russia’s best poets, reflected the catastrophic events of his time. It is no coincidence that he and Isadora Duncan, the great American ballet dancer and theatre innovator simply, were connected by an all-consuming passion during these turbulent times. […]
La Nuit de Valognes (1989) is Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s debut as a playwright. A young, dazzling and handsome Don Juan (Dmitry Bozin) appears on stage accompanied by gorgeous women, in an atmosphere full of passion and lust. However, these provocative games of romance and desire become meaningless when the protagonist is introduced to the […]
A Strange Garden is a theatrical ode to the genius of Rudolf Nureyev, one of the most renowned 20th century dancers. Not long before his death, Roman Viktyuk promised Nureyev, his good friend, to stage a performance about his life. The result, produced 10 years after the great dancer’s death, is a subtle […]
Along with The Maids, Salome is Roman Viktyuk’s signature production. Made in red and black, it leaves just as strong a visual impression as it does dramatically. Roman Viktyuk decided to create a joint piece, intertwining elements of Oscar Wilde’s biography into this famous play. The story of Salome is interjected by tribunal scenes […]
The author of this play is Valentin Krasnogorov, a prolific Russian-Israeli playwright and the former vice-mayor of Haifa. Let’s Have Sex! is a paradoxical and provocative parable about relationships between men and women. Behind the flamboyant title and ironic dialogues, hides great anguish about a loveless life with only sex left to […]
Mikhail Bulgakov worked on Master and Margarita for over 10 years. He burned the completed version of the Novel about the Devil in 1930. After that, he introduced multiple editions to the new text, already featuring the characters of Master and Margarita. Once the book was ready in the late 1930s – […]
When asked about giving permission for his play to be staged in Russia, Nino Manfredi, the famous Italian actor and director, put forth one condition: it can only be done if Roman Viktyuk directs it. Le Puttane tells a touching story of a relationship between a playwright (Efim Shifrin) and a prostitute (Ekaterina […]