RUSSIAN NOVEL. Director Mindaugas Karbauskis

Performance of Mindaugas Karbauskis is a subtle, metaphysical connection of biography and creativity of Lev Tolstoy. However, the director and the author of the play - Marius Ivaškevičius combine different times and realities: work and personal events of Tolstoy's life, in the center of which - his wife Sophia. Their love, tormented by writer’s genius, becomes the reflection of his characters’ feelings. Sophia Andreevna together with her sons and daughters tries to win from The Oblonskie and The Karenins a place in the life of her husband and find out whose history is primary: his literary lovers or her own.

Sergey Barkhin enter the iconic details of everyday life in a monumental, soaring space where the private love story of two people is turning into something prophetic. Rhymes of reality and scenes from «Anna Karenina» are bordering with an insanity of genius’s wife, who got lost somewhere in the pages of his novel.

«Russian Romance» is a continuation of the artistic director’s work with the legacy of Lev Tolstoy in The Mayakovsky Theatre. After the performance «The Fruits of Enlightenment» (based on L. Tolstoy’s writings) the audience of The Mayakovsky Theatre can take a look on this subject through the eyes of Marius Ivaškevičius.

Marius Ivaškevičius, playwright: «Russian novel» – is a kind of family saga, a variation on the «Anna Karenina» theme where Lev Tolstoy is not only the author of his masterpiece, but also the author of his own family drama. There are novels, built on the author's life. But there are also those which are building the future life of the author. Either it breaks. And then in the merger of the reality and art the author becomes the most tragic figure in his creations».