Friday 27 October – Saturday 4 November 2017

The Suicide

By Nikolai Erdman, Translated by Peter Tegel
Directed by David Shirley

Written in 1928, Nikolai Erdman’s The Suicide is considered one of the finest plays to have emerged from the early phase of Communist Russia. When Semyon, a young unemployed man contemplates suicide following his failed attempt to learn how to play the tuba, he suddenly finds himself besieged and exploited by various sympathetic visitors pleading with him to make his own suicide a social gesture on their behalf.

Acerbic, Imaginative and very humorous, the play offers a telling critique of the political machinations that characterized the years immediately following the Russian Revolution.

Cast

Semyon Semyonovich Podsekalnikov – Ned Cooper
Maria Lukianovna – Kailey McGowan
Serafima Ilinichna – Maryam Ali
Alexander Petrovich Kalabushkin – Jordan Tweddle
Margarita Ivanovna Peryesvetova – Lucy Simpson
Aristarch Dominikovich Golashchapov – James Coutsavlis
Cleopatra Maxzimovna – Esther Thomas
Egor Timovyeyevich – Cameron Waghorn
Nikifor Arsenyevich Pugachov – Joel Black
Viktor Viktorovich – Christy Matthews
Raissa Filipovna – Maddie Wakeling
Father Elpidi – Jake Ashton-Nelson
Kostya – Jack Cave
Oleg Leonidovich – Andrew Long

Designer: Olivia Du Monceau