For me, the proposal to put on a performance of Dostoevsky in the Alexandrinsky Theatre is very honorable. And I am very glad that this is happening. For the Hungarians, `Crime and Punishment` is still the main foreign novel, the major creation of the foreign literature. We feel really connected to the issues that are raised in the novel and to the answers that are very powerfully and very clearly presented here by Dostoevsky. These are the eternal questions of a human existence and destiny. First of all, about the freedom and the faith. The loss of faith. I do not know how important it is for Russia. In the West, it is the most important issue. The world slowly became an atheist and did not become happier due to this, did not find the comforting answers to the most essential questions. In Dostoevsky’s creation this is described so finely, and disclosed so comprehensively, there are so many associations, branches of the topics, that the novel anyway touches virtually everything essential to the human life. It can be read throughout one’s entire life, and each time it will sound a little different. I definitely want to put `the Crime and Punishment` performance in Hungary in a couple of years. I believe that this work should be on the repertoire. Since this is an answer of the theater to all those issues that surround us. The correct answer. Attila Vidnyansky
The performance is based on the novel of F.M. Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment - the first work on the Stage of Alexandrinsky Theatre of one of the most prominent stage directors of the contemporary Eastern Europe, the artistic director of the Hungarian National Theatre, Attila Vidnyansky.
In 1992, Attila Vidnyansky graduated from the stage directing course of Kyiv I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre Institute. In 1993, he became the founder and the art director of Gyula Illyés Hungarian Theatre in the Western Ukraine, in the Transcarpathian city of Beregovo, established on the basis of the Hungarian course of the Kiev Theatre Institute. In Hungary, his creative biography has been developing since the beginning of the new century. In 2004 Vidnyansky was appointed as the art director of the Hungarian Opera in Budapest; in 2006 – as the art director of the Mihaly Csokonai Theater in Debrecen, where he seriously reformed a repertoire and organized a festival – one of the main objectives of which was the development of the modern dramaturgy. In July 2013 he headed the National Theatre of Hungary. St. Petersburg’s audience is acquainted with the works of the stage director due to the Alexandrinsky International Theatre Festival: in 2014 the National Theatre represented in its programme the performances called Flying Man and Johanna at the Fire, in 2015 a movie of Attila Vidnyansky Son Who Became a Deer. The Cries from the Gates of the Sacraments was also shown in the off-festival programme.
The performance premiered on September the 10th, 2016.
The Alexandrinsky Theatre would like to thank Anastasia Fedorova and Andras Kozma for their help with the work on the performance.
Premiered on September 10, 2016
