Ivanov

The director Timofei Kulyabin (his Three Sisters, staged in Novosibirsk at «Krasny Fakel» with participation of deaf people, took part in the programme of Wiener Festwochen 2016) transferred Chekhov’s early play into a modern apartment, where the main character suffers from depression and tries to get away from himself, from annoying relatives and his terminally-ill wife. And he escapes, but to a petty-bourgeois country house of his neighbors and creditors, where they make barbecues, listen to Russian pop songs and wear pink slippers. Even young Sasha’s love cannot cure Ivanov’s melancholy.
Leaving the plot unchanged, Kulyabin attempted to update the play through a change in the characters’ living conditions. Together with the designer Oleg Golovko, he created an elaborate household environment, where the characters live and torture one another. It turns out that the reasons for melancholy are as difficult to elicit—and almost as impossible–as over a hundred years ago; this is possible only through the protagonist’s death in the finale. A team of talented actors, headed by Yevgeni Mironov, takes part in the performance: Igor Gordin, Chulpan Khamatova and Yelizaveta Boyarskaya, a guest from St Petersburg’s Maly Drama Theatre – Theatre of Europe.