To create Afterplay, stage director Evgeny Kamenkovich combined two plays, Anton Chekhov’s musical comedy “The Bear“, and a one-act play by Brian Friel entitled „Afterplay”. The two works are “united” by Chekhov, since Friel’s protagonists are actually Sonya Serebryakova from “Uncle Vanya“ and Andrei Prozorov from the „Three Sisters”. Chekhov’s characters meet in Moscow 20 years after the curtain fell on their respective plays.

The actors of Fomenko Workshop had managed to stage Chekhov and his Irish colleague from another century in such a wonderful way that all of the hidden meanings, even if they existed, had disappeared without a trace. The audience was shown a true classical performance. Without innuendos and millions of implications, which are so desperately sought out by contemporary stage directors. Here, everything is simple — and genius.

Natalya Vitvitskaya, Vash dosug

Opening night: September 8, 2010

Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes with one intermission

Subtitles are available in: French, Russian