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.
LIFE AND FATE (UK PREMIÈRE)
“Beautiful, terrifying, draining – and resoundingly contemporary” - Financial Times
It’s early 1943. Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia are in a bitter struggle for their very survival. 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 Shtrums.
Vasily Grossman’s celebrated novel, banned because of the parallels it drew between Nazism and Soviet Communism, is being adapted for the stage for the very first time. From Nazi concentration camps to the Gulags of Siberia and the Soviet nuclear programme, the battle of Stalingrad looms large as the characters 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 to great acclaim since 2007 and comes to London for the first time.
*Both productions will be performed in Russian with English surtitles*