Russian Plays

Includes the plays Master and Margarita (Satan’s Ball), Vanity, Gogol and Brothers Karamazov

From original translations by Faynia Williams.

Crane and Williams’ sensational Master and Margarita (Satan’s Ball) marked the beginning of a golden period when their company BrightonTheatre premiered a succession of ground-breaking new plays, which took festivals by storm and toured the world. Out of the spectacular Bulgakov, came the minimalist Gogol, a chilling evocation of Gogol’s whirling world, distilled into a nightmare for today. Then Vanity, a ’glittering diamond of a play’, reclaimed Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin as a intimate reflection on a love mistimed and shattered by social convention.

From these successes, Brighton Theatre moved onto the main Edinburgh programme with Brothers Karamazov: a leap into the dark world of epilepsy, orthodoxy and murder in the family, which won triumphant reviews and international acclaim. Published now for the first time, these four plays flourished out of a unique collaboration of author and director, which saw them progressing from fringe to mainstream, West End and Off-Broadway without changing their style, and becoming an acknowledged inspiration for many of today’s theatre artists.

RICHARD CRANE was Resident Dramatist at the National Theatre, Literary Manager at the Royal Court and Dramaturg at the Tron Glasgow. His plays have been translated into many languages, and performed worldwide. He has also written two films and 9 radio plays.