Lev Dodin Directs Grossman, O'Neill, and Shakespeare

Abstract

When Lev Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre travelled to Britain in 1988, performing Stars in the Morning Sky at the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), it was their first tour abroad. Since then, this repertory ensemble has had an enormous impact on audiences across the world because of its powerful artistry, sustained by the unique training methods, emotional and philosophical as much as technical, developed by Dodin and his collaborators. This article is an account of the three productions directed by Dodin since King Lear (St Petersburg, March 2006, and performed at the Barbican in London in October that year). They are Life and Fate (2007) after the novel by Vasily Grossman, Long Day's Journey into Night (2008) by Eugene O'Neill, and Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost (2008, its premiere in April preceding that of Long Day's Journey in December). Maria Shevtsova is Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Co-Editor of New Theatre Quarterly.