Sovremennik Makes UK Debut In January 2011

In a landmark event for London and UK theatre, one of the giants of Russian theatre, Sovremennik is to make its UK debut in January 2011. Sovremennik's strictly limited season at the Noel Coward Theatre, made possible with generous support from Roman Abramovich will be the first time in over 20 years a major Russian theatre company has performed in the capital.

Led by their legendary artistic director Galina Volchek, the Moscow-based company is a dominant force in the Russian theatrical and artistic landscape. With casts featuring some of Russia's most popular stage and film actors, Sovremennik has toured extensively in Europe and America and were the first foreign company to win an American Drama Desk Award.

Now the West End can experience Sovremennik's stylish productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. With lavish, visually stunning scenery and costumes and performances honed on stages across the world, this all-Russian company has made these classics of Russian drama their own.

Sovremennik will also present the epic and intensely moving true story of Russian journalist Eugenia Ginzburg's descent into hell, along with hundreds of thousands of other innocent victims, when she was imprisoned in the Gulag. Into The Whirlwind is an insightful, harrowing and at times humorous adaptation of the author's memoir of her seventeen year internment in some of the most notorious camps and prisons of the time.

Sovremennik (literally Contemporary) formed as Russia was beginning to free itself from Stalinism at the time of the ‘Kruschev Thaw' by young graduates from the Studio School of Moscow Art, driven to create theatre free of State influence.

The company continues to break new barriers as it works across the world, presenting classic and contemporary work performed by an unrivalled troupe of fifty of Russia's leading actors, including Marina Neyolova, Chulpan Khamatova, Valentin Gaft and Igor Kvasha.

Sovremennik Theatre's London season is produced by Oksana Nemchuk, who has toured the company internationally since 1999. The executive producer is Artsbridge Ltd.

All three plays will be performed in Russian with English surtitles.

www.sovremennik.ru

Listings information:

Dates: Friday 21 January to Saturday 29 January 2011

21-22 Jan Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
24-25 Jan Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov
28-29 Jan The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

Time: Time: 19.00
Venue: Noel Coward Theatre, St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4AU
Ticket Prices: £49.50 - £12.50 ( £7.00 with a student ID card)
Box Office: 0844 482 5140 / www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk