Mister X, The Flight and Invisible Friends: this week’s programme at Moscow theatres

Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy
Date: 6 December
Time: 7-10 pm
Venue: Theatre of Nations
Age limit: 18+

Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy is Russia's first staging of Polish director Grzegorz Jarzyna. It is based on a play by Witold Gombrowicz, already staged by Jarzyna.

The play, spiced with grotesque, tells about a royal family. The catalyst for all internal conflicts becomes a shy girl, Yvonne. Pointed characters make the play something between a comedy and a psychological thriller. A major issue for the director is interaction between the social system and the forceless person, who cannot and does not want to live by its laws.

Talents and Admirers

Date: 7 December

Time: 7 – 9.30 pm

Venue: Soprichastnost Moscow Drama Theatre

Age limit: 12+

This is a story about the difficulties of the bohemian world, which attracts so many people. The performance is directed by Igor Sirenko and based on a play by Alexander Ostrovsky. The playwright wrote not only for but also about the theatre. Talents and Admirers is a play about searching for your artistic path and the clash between talent and cruel reality.

The main character, aspiring actress Sasha Negina, faces the first temptations of the stage when setting out on the path of art. The first success, admirers, backstage intrigues – is this the theatre and the art to live for? The character has to make a difficult choice.

Khovanshchina
Date: 8 December
Time: 7-10.30 pm
Venue: Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Musical Theatre
Age limit: 12+

The folk musical drama Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky was his final work. The opera is a kind of reflection on Russia’s fates. Staged by director Alexander Titel and conductor Alexander Lazarev, the opera has made a big hit.

Detailed psychological portraits of the main characters intersperse with large-scale mass scenes. Without dividing the characters into positive or negative, the authors analyse lessons from one of the most tragic periods in Russian history.  

Starring as Ivan Khovansky is one of the leading Russian basses, Dmitry Ulyanov, who was nominated for the Golden Mask in the Best Actor category in 2015. His role in Khovanshchina became one of the brightest in his career.

The Flight (Beg)

Date: 9 December

Time: 7-11 pm

Venue: Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre

Age limit: 16+

The Flight (Beg), according to literature experts, destroys conventional boundaries of the genre. The psychological drama is mixed with phantasmagoria, which is beyond the real world. According to Bulgakov’s contemporaries, The Flight was one of his favourite plays. But the play was premiered only after Bulgakov’s death, in 1957 in Stalingrad.

The director of the play at the Vakhtangov Theatre notes that the play has been staged only seven times over 87 years. He believes this is because of its mysterious theatrical texture and the impossible task of finding a stage equivalent to Bulgakov’s fantastic and incredible remarks. According to the director, The Flight is “the state of a man who wakes up after a nightmare and gains peace of mind in the morning.”

Merry Christmas, Mum!

Date: 9 December

Time: 7-9.30 pm

Venue: Commonwealth of Taganka Actors Theatre

Age limit: 12+

The stage production is based on a few plays: Silent Night by Harold Muller, Iron Class by Aldo Nicolaj, and Four Women of Ivan (How Old Women Get Married) by Florid Bulyakov. The play was created for the elder actors of the theatre, including such famous actors as Lidiya Savchenko, Tatyana Zhukova-Kirtbaya, Alla Bogina, Yelena Gabets and Yelena Kornilova.

The three plays are united by time and place: the action unfolds in homes for elderly people in Italy, Germany and Russia on Christmas Eve. But Christmas is not a simple holiday but a day when impossible things can happen and life can change in the blink of an eye.

The writers call the play’s genre “laughter through tears in two acts.” It is devoted to relations between generations, and the audience will feel both joy and sadness when seeing themselves in the characters.

Invisible Friends

Date: 10 December

Time: 7-9:15 pm

Venue: Young Spectator’s Theatre

Age limit: 12+

The popular Broadway play by famous English playwright Alan Ayckbourn will be staged for the first time in Moscow. This is a good story about cultivating feelings, growing-up and the difficult science of forgiving, accepting and loving your family.

Lucy is a girl lost between two worlds – a real one and an imagined one. Having a grudge against her family, she asks for another, magical family. Now she has a teenager’s dream family: a perfect friend, a wonderful brother, a caring and good father and even the ability to cast spells.

Will Lucy become part of the wizarding world? Will the ideal family replace her original one?

 

The Star Without a Name

Date: 10 December

Time: 7-10 pm

Venue: Armen Dzhigarkhanyan Moscow Drama Theatre

Age limit: 16+

Millions of people know the plot thanks to Mikhail Kazakov’s film. Director Dmitry Isaichev presents his stage production of Romanian writer Mihail Sebastian’s play. A Woman comes to a little town and instantly changes the established way of life of all its citizens. Previously, a passing-by train was the only source of entertainment and fantasies.

The Star Without a Name is a story about human relationships, hopes and disappointments.

Savage

Date: 11 December

Time: 6.30-9.15 pm

Venue: Maxim Gorky Moscow Art Academic Theatre

Age limit: 16+

The Savage, a play by Tatyana Doronina, tells a story about changing time and unchanging people.

He and she, a hunter and a victim, passion, disappointment, disillusionment, love, money, conflict between the past and the future… These timeless subjects together with the brilliant acting of People’s Artist of Russia Vladimir Rovinsky, Honoured Artist of Russia Alexander Titorenko and young talented actress Yelena Korobeinikova grab the audience’s attention from the first scene.

Mister X operetta

Date: 11 December

Time: 1-4 pm; 7-10 pm

Venue: Moscow Operetta Theatre

Age limit: 6+

The Circus Princess, a famous operetta by Hungarian composer Imre Kalman, has been staged by the Moscow Operetta as Mister X. Mister X is the mysterious nickname of the main character, forced to wear a black mask and become a circus artist.

The Circus Princess was staged by the Moscow Operetta four times – in 1927, 1959, 1990 and 2008. During the tour in November 1959, the most famous Mister X in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet countries, Estonian singer Georg Ots, and Tatyana Sanina starred in the play.