Big City Dreams, Small Town Scandals

By Michael Handelzalts May 4, 2011

Crossposted from Haaretz

The recent Europe Theater Prize ceremony in St. Petersburg gave me a chance to meet with Lev Dodin, the director of St. Petersburg’s Maly Theater, who won the prize back in 2000.

Israel’s Gesher Theater hosted the Maly recently for their adaptation of Vasily Grossman’s “Life and Fate.”

Dodin’s perception of time on stage is unique; his productions do not have video clips and visual pyrotechnic marvels. It is all based on the actor’s art and the director’s wisdom in interpreting the text.

His new production of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” was a great experience for me. The story of the three Prozorov sisters is already known: their struggles to leave their boring lives in the town they moved to because of their father, the general, and their longing to return to Moscow since his death (about a year before the start of the plot). So what new meaning can one gain there?

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