Maly Drama Theatre Of St. Petersburg Makes Return To London With A Limited Season Of LIFE AND FATE and UNCLE VANYA

The legendary Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg - described by Peter Brook as 'the finest ensemble theatre in Europe' - returns to London this spring for a strictly limited engagement for the first time in over a decade. 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. Press nights will be held for Life and Fate on Tuesday May 8th and Wednesday 9th and on Tuesday May 15th for Uncle Vanya. Both productions will be performed in Russian with English surtitles.

Under the artistic directorship of Lev Dodin - one of the most celebrated theatre practitioners working today - 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 (becoming the first international company to do so for Stars in the Morning Sky, 1989). In 2000 he received the European Theatre Award.

LIFE AND FATE (UK première)

7.00pm May 8th & 9th (Press Nights), 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th

2.30pm May 20th

It's early 1943. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia are in a bitter struggle for their very survival.

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.

Lev Dodin discovered the novel in 1985 whilst guest directing in Helsinki. He says: "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.

Dodin continues: "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."

UNCLE VANYA

7.00pm May 15TH (Press Night), 16th and 17th

Vanya, together with his niece Sonya, has sacrificed his life managing the estate of Professor Serebryakov, his former brother-in-law and Sonya's father. But when the Professor returns from the city with his glamorous young wife Yelena, tensions spiral as their world is thrown upside down.

Chekhov's tragicomic masterpiece of dashed dreams and thwarted and eternal love returns to London in

Lev Dodin's definitive interpretation of this classic play.

Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg's Royal Theatre, Haymarket season is presented by Oliver King and Ekaterina Kashyntseva for Belka Productions with the support of Roman Abramovich, Sir Leonard Blavatnik , Yuri Shefler & Alexander Machkevitch.

For more information visit Maly2018.com.

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