by Maxim Gorky
in a new version by Andrew Upton

Sung at a funeral and a wedding today. The full gamut of the human experience from the ridiculous to the utterly pointless.

A restless bunch of young radicals hang out, have sex, dance, drink, moan and philosophise at the home of a prosperous decorator. While Pyotr, a sometime student of law, falls for the lovely, loose-living lodger, his sister carps on about the tedium of life, lusts after Nil – who's blind to her charms but in pursuit of the servant – and botches her own suicide.

Life. People shout, fight, eat and go to bed. When
they wake up? They start shouting again. In this
house everything fades quickly. Tears, laughter.
Everything. Dissipates. The last sounds ringing
out over the lake. Then nothing. A banal hum.

A household falls to pieces as the personal and political turmoil of pre-revolutionary Russia gathers pace. Gorky's darkly comic first play of 1902, banned from public performance under the Czarist regime, is seen here in an exuberant new version by Andrew Upton.

Performances from 23 May

Director: Howard Davies
Designer: Bunny Christie
Lighting Designer: Neil Austin
Music: Dominic Muldowney
Sound Designer: Christopher Shutt

Cast:
: Includes
Perchikin : Duncan Bell
Nil : Mark Bonnar
Shyshkin : Jonathan Bryan
Doctor : Marcus Cunningham
Vassilly : Phil Davis
Polya : Susannah Fielding
Tsvetaeva : Rendah Heywood
Teterev : Conleth Hill
Akulina : Stephanie Jacob
Pyotr : Rory Kinnear
Stepanida : Maggie McCarthy
Elena : Justine Mitchell
Tanya : Ruth Wilson