Summerfolk
by Maxim Gorki
Direction: Alvis Hermanis
In a version by Florian Borchmeyer after the translation by August Scholz
A group of intellectuals are bored while on summer holidays. Plagued by tedium, the doctors, lawyers and poets search for meaning in their affluent existence. Lawyer wife Varvara plays the Grande Dame while suffering silently under her childlessness. She has never felt desire for her bland husband, Basov but she brusquely rejects the love of her weltschmerz-philosophising admirer, Ryumin. She projects her secret longing for greatness onto the writer Shalimov, but is forced to admit that his artistry has long been but a facade. Only her brother Vlas has managed to escape his dreary existence as a court clerk aided by cynicism and love for the much older doctor, Marja. Varvara decides to break out and Ryumin attempts suicide in an effort to escape his unhappy love, but they all inevitably remain trapped in their existences, almost as if the Datcha is an ornate cage from which there is no escape. Gorky wrote this play in 1904, on the eve of war and revolution and yet his characters are paradoxically vivid: like ghosts returned to walk amongst us again.
Author: Maxim Gorki
Direction: Alvis Hermanis
Stage and costume design: Krist?ne Jurj?ne
Dramaturgy: Florian Borchmeyer
Light Design: Gleb Filshtinsky
Sergej Bassow, lawyer: Ingo Hülsmann
Warwara Michailowna, his wife: Ursina Lardi
Kaleria, Bassow's sister: Eva Meckbach
Wlas, Warwara's brother: Sebastian Schwarz
Pjotr Suslow, engineer: Urs Jucker
Julia Fillipowna, his wife: Luise Wolfram
Kirill Dudakow, doctor: Robert Beyer
Olga Alexejewna, his wife: Cathlen Gawlich
Rjumin, no specific occupation: Niels Bormann
Marja Lwowna, Ärztin: Judith Engel
Sonja, her daughter: Jenny König
Doppelpunkt, industrialist, Suslow's uncle: Ernst Stötzner
Samyslow, Bassows assistent: David Ruland
Simin, student: Moritz Gottwald
Duration: ca. 195 minutes
(without interval)
Premiered on 14 December 2012
Tour Dates
Amsterdam (March 2013)