Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg brings the UK première of Life and Fate to London
The legendary Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg returns to London this spring for a limited engagement for the first time in over a decade.
“I still remember vividly that I ‘gulped down’ the novel in two nights and that I was in absolute shock. I didn’t even think before reading it was possible to write about our life in such a way.” Before its world première in Paris in spring 2007 the company spent three years rehearsing the piece, researching the period in great detail, visiting Auschwitz, and eventually premiering the piece in Norilsk, a city in the very heart of Gulag territory.” – Lev Dodin discovered the novel in 1985 whilst guest directing in Helsinki
They will present the UK première of Vasily Grossman’s epic novel, Life and Fate, and reprise their celebrated production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket.
Under the artistic directorship of Lev Dodin the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg has become one of the greatest theatres in the world. During his 35 year tenure many of Dodin’s shows have won international awards including state prizes of Russian and the USSR, Golden Mask Awards and a Lawrence Olivier Award. In 2000 he received the European Theatre Award.
Adapted for the stage for the very first time from Vasily Grossman’s celebrated novel, banned because of the parallels it drew between Nazism and Soviet Communism, Life and Fate is a sweeping panorama of Soviet Society, an epic tale of a country told through the fate of a single Jewish family, the Shtrum’s. From Nazi concentration camps to the Gulags of Siberia and the Soviet nuclear programme, as the battle of Stalingrad looms large the characters must work out their destinies in a world torn by ideological tyranny and war.
This critically acclaimed production, winner of the Golden Mask for best play, has toured around the world since its première in 2007, shining a light on the heart of 20th century darkness. On presenting a draft prior to publication, Grossman’s magnum opus, Life and Fate, was seized by the KGB. The former Red Army newspaper war correspondent, championed by his fellow soldiers for the honesty of his writing, was told by the Communist Party’s chief ideologist Mikhail Suslov that the novel would be unpublishable for at least 200 years. Its astonishing act of wartime truth-telling and the parallels it drew between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich were deemed unacceptably anti-Soviet. Grossman became in effect a persona non grata.
The KGB raided Grossman’s flat and seized manuscripts, notes and even the ribbon from the typewriter on which the text had been written. Unbeknownst to authorities, Grossman had smuggled two copies to acquaintances in the literary world. He died in poverty, forgotten and ignored in 1964, but his masterpiece would live on. Microfilmed and smuggled to the West, it was first published in 1980 to critical acclaim. France’s Le Monde hailed it ‘the greatest Russian novel of the 20th Century.’ Military historian Antony Beevor described it as the War and Peace of the Stalinist era.
“Grossman’s Life and Fate is in fact a simple family story, and it presents us with a vast panorama of the events and problems of the 20th and 21st centuries. In our everyday lives we still encounter the modern guises of fascism, communism, nationalism, totalitarianism, extremism, cruelty and lack of freedom. In spite of everything, people still continue to live, love and hope. Suffering has no nationality – I think this is why Grossman’s novel is becoming so popular – again – in Europe and across the world.” – Lev Dodin
Performance Details
Theatre Royal Haymarket, Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4HT
LIFE AND FATE
Tue 8th May – 7.00pm
Wed 9th May – 7.00pm
Fri 11th May – 7.00pm
Sat 12th May – 7.00pm
Fri 18th May – 7.00pm
Sat 19th May – 7.00pm
Sun 20th May – 2.30pm
UNCLE VANYA
Tue 15th May – 7.00pm
Wed 16th May – 7.00pm
Thur 17th May – 7.00pm
