THE SHIP OF WIDOWS. Director Ivan Solovov

First published in 1981, The Ship of Widows, a short novel by the Soviet writer Irina Grekova (1902-2002), immediately aroused interest. The novella impressed with its truth, and soon Soviet theatres started staging it. Over 30 years after it was written, Kineshma Drama Theatre puts the novel back on stage to ask once more about the price of human life. The war is over but it irrevocably crippled many lives.

This is the story of five women brought together in a large communal apartment called by them “the ship of widows”. There are five different destinies, five characters with their own weaknesses, strengths and demerits. In spite of the difference in characters, the five women have one grief and one joy for all – the War and the Victory. This story is not about the time, it’s timeless. It is about death and life, love and betrayal, overcoming and eternal hope.

You won’t see this war in Soviet chronicles. It remained hidden from prying eyes beyond the doors of the communal apartment. Only widows live here. Each woman has her own room, her table in the kitchen, her basin in the corner, her oddities and her own disrupted life.

The cast: Elina Manapova (Аnfisa Gromova, nurse), Аlexey Dryagin ( Vadim Gromov, her son), Natalya Grosheva (Оlga Ivanovna Flyorova,

music teacher at the Children’s Home), Anna Ross (Kapa Grushina, night guard), Natalya Gogoleva (Аda Ulskaya, former operetta singer, now pensioner), Nayalya Rybakova (Panka Zykova, electrician) and others.