Sisters, Brothers' & 'Oginski Polonais'

(Paperback)

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Two new plays from Sweden and Russia premiered at The Gate in 1996

Sisters, Brothers by Stig Larsson: Three sisters arrange a rare evening together. The intervention of their respective boyfriends produces a night of increasing sexual tension, cruelty and, ultimately, revelation. Stockholm's theatrical hit of 1994, Stig Larsson's instinct for psychological and emotional violence has been compared with Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman.

The Oginski Polonaise by Nikolai Kolyada is about Tanya's return to Russia after eight years in New York. Her former servants await her return to Moscow with terror as they expect to be evicted. But when the "Americanized" Tanya does arrive she is dressed as a ballerina and in flight from the KGB. Playing on Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Kolyada skilfully blends comedy and pathos to produce a bleak but human vision of post-perestroika Russia.

Author Bio

Stig Larsson made his debut as a writer in 1979 with the novel Autisterna (The Autistics) which is considered to mark the beginning of a new era in Swedish literature. He has published three other novels, a collection of short stories and a dozen collections of poetry. He has also written four plays for the stage which have been performed in Sweden and abroad. VD (The Managing Director) was staged in New York in 1990, and has since been performed in Helsinki, Copenhagen, Geneva and London. Straffngens terkomst (The Return of the Convict) was performed at the Traverse in Edinburgh. He has written and directed two films, ngel (Angel) and Kaninenmannen (The Rabbit Man). Systrar, Brder (Sisters, Brothers), which Stig Larsson both wrote and directed, was premiered at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm in November 1994. It was published, alongside Nikolai Kolyada's The Oginski Polonaise by Methuen Drama in 1996.