Misha's Party
by Richard Nelson, Aleksandr Gel'man, and Alexander Gelman
Misha's Party is set one August night in Moscow: a man attempts to throw himself a sixtieth birthday party, a grandmother attempts a reconciliation with her granddaughter, and one half of the government attempts to overthrow the other half. With the 1991 attempted coup for its backdrop, the play is a funny and ironic tale about how simple solutions only look simple and how past mistakes aren't easily made right. This edition contains an introduction by Richard Nelson about the writing of the pla...
Жар-Цвет (Fire-Blossom )
by and Alexander Amfiteatrov
This book is an insiders’ account of the groundbreaking Moscow production of Chekhov's The Seagull directed by Anatoly Efros in 1966, which heralded a paradigm shift in the interpretation and staging of Chekhov’s plays. It is a unique glimpse behind the curtain of the laboratory of new Russian theatre in the twentieth century. Efros' articles about Chekhov and The Seagull, his diaries, interviews and conversations, and most importantly the original rehearsal records combine to form an in-depth a...
"Ivanov, a driving force in local government and a visionary landowner, feels burnt out at thirty-five. Once the pioneer of scientific farming methods and of education for the peasants, he now drowns in bureaucracy and debt, his large estate neglected. While his wife is dying, Sasha, a young, educated woman, falls in love with Ivanov and determines to save him. Set in a country suffering from political, ideological and spiritual stagnation, Chekhov's first full-length play anticipates the explos...
A mysterious stranger appears in a Moscow park. Soon he and his retinue have astonished the locals with the magic show to end all magic shows. But why are they really here, and what has it got todo with the beautiful Margarita, or her lover, the Master, a silenced writer? A carnival for the senses and a diabolical extravaganza, this most exuberant of Russian novels was staged in this adaptation at Chichester Festival Theatre.
One of Ostrovsky's most poetical works, The Storm is set in Kalinov, a provincial town on the banks of the Upper Volga. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, Katerina is tormented by her widowed mother-in-law, Marfa Kabanova. Katerina seeks solace in an affair with a similarly tormented young lover, and the confession of this affair to her husband leads ultimately to tragedy. The Storm was a great success on its first performance the Maly Theatre, Moscow, in November 1859, and continues to be critic...
