Oleksandr Gavrosh, based on accounts from the actors
Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre, Mariupol
HOME, Manchester
January 14-18, 2025; 55 mins
Mariupol Drama is probably the most moving and haunting piece of theatre you are likely to see this year – maybe for years to come.
Not because it’s technically clever, grandiose in concept or brilliantly performed – it’s none of those. It’s just four performers on an almost-bare stage, and it doesn’t last long, either.
But it’s unlike almost every other show I’ve ever seen, because it’s people – who happen to be actors, using their craft – telling the story of something utterly traumatic that they themselves experienced: the siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in 2022 and the final obliteration of its theatre on March 16 of that year.
They were there. They were lucky to escape. Out of around 1,200 people who desperately fled to the noble theatre building, hundreds did not survive the Russian bomb that destroyed it.
The text is based on their own accounts; they’re refugees in their own country now. Vira Lebedynska, the theatre’s former head of music and drama, and husband and wife Ihor Kytrysh and Olena Bila, with their son Matvii, use personal items they brought out of the hell of Mariupol, along with video footage – of life before and after – captured on their phones. They tell their story in their own language, with simultaneous English translation on a screen behind them.
There are memories of happier days: video of the illuminated fountain the city used to boast; an echo of the past as Vira sings a snatch of Handel’s Lascia ch’io pianga opera aria; a few jokes about the sort of place Mariupol used to be (it wasn’t perfect, but they loved it).
But all that has gone. They are all that’s left of the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre, based in that theatre, and they’re not going to let its spirit die.
They’re often brutally honest: how no one listened to their pleas when people seeking succour in the building started tearing up the plush seats for something soft to sleep on and burning the wood that remained of them for fuel to cook with; how promises from their own authorities of a “Green Corridor” for civilians to escape were not kept; how they somehow believed that one day, eventually, wrongs would be righted and “everything would be Ukraine”.
But they’re not just mourning: they want to fight. We’re at a point in history when their country’s future hangs in the balance, and they’re not giving in. Winston Churchill said nations that surrender to oppression often cease to be, but those that go down fighting live to rise again.
The sad thing is that this show, receiving its UK premiere at HOME, does not, as far as I know, have any further venues to visit. It should have. And we should remember these aren’t the only Ukrainian artists in need of support right now. Ellen Kent is bringing a Kyiv-based opera company on an extensive UK tour again, beginning in Hull at the end of this month, and visiting Blackpool, Liverpool, Manchester, York, Sheffield, Darlington, Sunderland, Stoke and Bradford through to April – and beyond in the south. They will be singing their national anthem at every show.
More info and tickets here
