Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky THE STORM

Гроза, 1859

Drama
Translated by Tatjana Stanič
Directed by Jernej Lorenci

 

Premiere: November 2011

 

 

Katerina is a young, married woman, caught in the cold house of her heartless mother-in-low, rich landowner Kabanikha, who terrorises three young people: her daughter-in-low Katerina, her merry daughter Varvara and her cowardly son Tihon, who regards his wife Katerina as a necessary evil and prefers to take a breather from his mother and women in the house having a bottle of vodka. In this small town on the Volga also lives a young man from Moscow, Boris Grigorievitch, whose financial fate is left to the mercy of his hot-tempered uncle, the respectable merchant Dikoy. In a few speechless meetings on the promenade a flame of forbidden love ignites between Katerina and Boris. Katerina is grabbed by an unbearable guilty conscience, Varvara convinces her to grab the opportunity for happiness, the watchmaker Kuligin creates the perpetuum mobile, a storm gathers over the Volga and a half-mad old woman predicts a sad end for everyone. When Tihon goes to Moscow for two weeks, Katerina's virtue is put to the test.

 

Russian dramatist Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky first tried his hand at writing comedies, in which he ridiculed the representatives of uncultured, self-satisfied merchant class, which he portrayed in his play The Storm as well. Later, when he made his piece with the regime, he switched from comedy to historical dramas and lived under the patronage of Tsar Alexander III. He founded the Maly Theatre in Moscow and was appointed an artistic director of all the Moscow State Theatres just before his death. He died of heart attack, while translating the Shakespeare's tragedy Antony and Cleopatra.

The Storm was staged by Marija Nablocka in May 1951 as a first performance in the then newly established professional Ljubljana City Theatre (MGL), which is (also) the reason why we decided to revive it again in our Jubilee Season.

A dream keeps creeping into my mind, and I cannot get away from it.