After staging several shows in Moscow theatres, director Irina Keruchenko created The Dream of a Funny Man in Saint Petersburg. The performance is based on a science fiction story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The performance was nominated for Saint Petersburg Ultimate GOLDEN SOFFIT Professional Theatre Prize in several categories. The young Alexandrinsky Theatre actor, Ivan Efremov, was the winner in the Best Debut category.

The Sunstroke is Irina Keruchenko’s second work in the Alexandrinsky Theatre. In her new work, the director follows Bunin’s idea that love is the essence of earthly happiness and the short moment of ultimate concentration of a man’s life force that burns him up. She continues to explore the philosophy of the feeling.

A chance meeting of the Lieutenant (Stepan Balashin) and the beautiful Stranger (Julia Marchenko) evolves from a fleeting passion into a full-out struggle of the character with the primary essence of love and its eternal laws. There is no curbing or controlling this elemental force, nor is there a living without it, as a passing summer encounter leads to a new conscience and the awareness of your own life as well as of ‘every grain of sand or drop of water and the shadow of a seagull’s wing on the disk of the Sun’.

The soundtrack of the performance includes fragments of Rachmaninoff pieces and a Russian folk song Golden Bee. The music was recorded with the participation of Anton Popov (the violin) and Givi Sarkisyan (the trumpet).

The show premiered on April 10, 2014

Media about the