Daria Vorobyeva

You all know Chess – that grand musical about the rivalry between Soviet and American chess players with a love triangle and fleeing the Soviet Union. This fall, it finally reached Russia with the help from Dmitry Bogachev and his company Broadway Moscow. It has it all – a notable director, great cast, freedom in terms of changing the plot and, unfortunately, a few drawbacks. Chess is that show that always surprises you because it's never the same in terms of structure and characters. Luckily, I got a chance to see it prior to the opening night. Here's how it was. 

The opening night of the Russian production of CHESS is to take place in Moscow's MDM Theatre a?' home of Broadway Moscow Theatre Company on October 17, 2020. It will become the first and only large-scale musical premiere in Russia this Fall, after the restrictions on presentation of theatrical productions have been lifted by the authorities.

Broadway Moscow is back at it againa?"and by that, I mean the production of comedies. It all started last year with The Show That Goes Wrong, and now The Comedy About a Bank Robbery was added to the list. This isn't even on real Broadway yet! 

Watching First Date live was like a breath of fresh air. Finally, a musical about contemporary life and not an old but everlasting classic. This does not only start a conversation with modern spectators but also attracts modern audience for this genre. And musicals desperately need young spectators in Russia. Almost all previous productions in my country were either about mysterious phantoms in the operas, Russian history and literature or some phenomenon of stylish people in the USSR. 

18 years ago a love story by Jason Robert Brown premiered in Chicago. Today, it is translated into several languages and was shown in Stockholm, Basel, Belfast, Paris, London, etc. Now, it's coming to Moscow. 

Spring for Russian performers and musical theatre lovers is a special season - Broadway actors, directors and composers have been coming to Moscow to make a show every year since 2016. Three years later, we have Tyler Hanes, Nicholas Rodriguez and Matthew Scott as American stars shining together with Russian ones.

Composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens are going to hold a meet-the-artist session at Bolshoi Theatre on the 25th of April. They will share their experience in working on a musical score and lyrics. During the session, there will be a workshop for composers where young creators can share their music and get feedback.

Darya Avratinskaya is a theatre actress who acts both in plays and musicals and has already managed to get to the only Russian production of Sweeney Todd: she is Johanna and a part of the ensemble. Besides, Darya acts in Chekhov's 'The Seagull', plays Alice in 'Run, Alice, Run', Princess in 'An Old, Old Tale' and Dog in 'Fable' at Taganka Theatre. She is also a part of 'Stilyagi' cast at Theatre of Nations.

The show premiered on 21st of February. It was preceded by a huge casting (more than 2500 people took part in it!) that lasted for almost 6 months. As a result, the cast combines famous faces from the musical world with brand new ones, like Oleg Ots. He just finished acting school and got the leading male part (Mels, which is an abbreviation for Marks, Engels, Lenin and Stalin).

A Valentine's Day is coming up in a week, so we have chosen 5 different theatre spots where you can go on a date with someone and get things going.

This play, which is described by the theatre as "the reflections of a memory" tells the story of Russia in the last century, beginning with Imperial Russia, moving to the USSR and ending as the Russian Federation - all in 100 years. The Ball was directed by a choreographer Alla Sigalova with the cooperation of a media manager Konstantin Ernst. It premiered last month, on 5th of December.

2019 has been announced as the Theatre Year in Russia. Will it be great? What are the shows that you don't want to miss? Here are 9 musicals and plays, which I expect to be interesting. And they are going to premiere this year in Russia!

The work of Iranian writer Nassim Soleimanpour was produced as a part of a New European Theatre Festival in Moscow. There is no director. There are no rehearsals, costumes, decorations. Only the words of Soleimanpour and the performer's presence and voice. The chosen people to read the script for this festival were actors Sergey Yepishev, Alexey Yudnikov and Anatoly Bely, activist Anton Krasovsky, actresses Alisa Grebenshchikova and Yuliya Aug, writer and journalist Mikhail Zygar (I saw his performance).

The musical based on Vladimir Vysotsky's lyrics has been recently nominated for the Russian national theatre award Golden Mask in 5 categories: Best Production, Best Director, Best Designer, Best Costume Designer, Best Light Designer in Operetta/Musical. Vysotsky's work was released on vinyl in 1976 in the USSR. Run, Alice, Run premiered earlier this year to celebrate the 80th birthday of a great Russian songwriter and singer.

Moscow Broadway has announced the opening of the first Russian production of the legendary musical Chess, created by Tim Rice, Benny Anderson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. The musical will premiere on a stage of Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre in May 2019 and will move to Moscow to be daily run in MDM Theatre in September. This is going to be the first time when a Russian state academic opera theatre will make a co-production with a Russian commercial theatre company.

Russian theatre-goers are used to attend Moscow Palace of Youth to watch new musicals mostly produced by the company Stage Entertainment and its ex-CEO Dmitry Bogachev. But that is in the past. Bogachev, now a member of The Broadway League and a CEO of Moscow Broadway, has decided to put aside musical productions in Russia for this season and to produce The Play That Goes Wrong.

Dmitry Krymov has directed a new 'Anna Karenina' - and named it by her son's name, 'Seryozha'. 'This is a stage play based on motifs of a great novel, I would even say, on very distant motifs', the director explained his work where most of the Tolstoy's characters are erased, where Anna is transformed into Lyudmila Shaposhnikova from Vasily Grossman's novel 'Life and Fate' - and where the feeling of losing a child is clearly similar both in 19th century and during the Great World War.