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Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls” tells the story of a disgraced government official, Pavel Chichikov, who by manipulating the inefficiencies of the Imperial Russian government by purchasing the rights of dead serfs from middle-class landowners, is able to amass a personal fortune. Roman Kocherzhevsky’s endlessly inventive reimagining of the classic Russian poem shakes off a layer of dust from the revered work to help us answer questions we all face today. It doesn’t matter whether Kocherzhevsky has dressed his actors in waterproof trench coats or embroidered tailcoats, furnished the stage with delicate antiquities or Danish modern. In the end, as Gogol himself asks of us, “Isn’t there some part of Chichikov in me too?“
Production: Lensoviet Theatre