On March 1st «King Lear» premiered at the renovated historic stage of the Maly Theatre. The production of this tragic tale by William Shakespeare is staged by Anton Yakovlev.
On March 1st «King Lear» premiered at the renovated historic stage of the Maly Theatre. The production of this tragic tale by William Shakespeare is staged by Anton Yakovlev.
«In my opinion, this is one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays, both for the analysis and for the understanding. This is a tragic story of a man, spoiled and blinded by the power, authority, and wealth who at one point loses all that.
Lear is both a tragic clown and a director of his own "theater", in which he cannot accept the new reality of what is happening around. And, in spite of all terrible events, almost till the very end Lear does not admit his major, fundamentalerrors. Today I can see people creating parallel realities around themselves, a kind of "mirror-world", where they hide from reality, leaving the responsibilities behind. That is what makes this play so relevant.
In this play there is a phrase, uttered by King Lear during his darkest hour: “When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” For me that is the main theme of this tragedy. It seems to me that the story does not teach us anything and people keep on repeating the same mistakes again and again, that is a vicious circle… we only find new ways of destroying ourselves and each other.
The Maly Theatre is a theatre with certain traditions and canons. Today this is quite rare for the theatre world. That is why the Maly Theatre is so different from many other theatres. You have to be very careful with the so-called "modern" language. It is quite a challenge to make a production which has to be modern both in form and in content, but with limited possibilities to experiment.
The set design was developed by Maria Rybasova. The essential part of the set belongs to the towers, once adapted to the war and the siege, now they constitute a part of life, and represent a “stage” within a stage. They are the smouldering islands of the war that are ready to get back into the fight at any time.
Costumes were designed by Oksana Yarmolnik. They match perfectly the somber tone of this story, they are timeless and combine features from different eras.»
Angelica Zaozerskaya, «Vechernyaya Moskva» (The Evening Moscow) newspaper, February 28th, 2017
