SONIA
A lonely, ageless woman lives in a modest home in Leningrad in the 1930s. With a heart of gold and the soul of a child, she has an innate sense of beauty and an immoderate appetite for life. Sonia sews with care, cooks to perfection, dreams excessively. She has everything going for her, except that she is ugly. Through sheer spitefulness, her entourage convinces her that a certain Nikolai is languishing with love for her, sending her passionate letters for many years.
Sonia becomes infatuated with the suitor and discovers, through this lie, the greatest happiness of her life. This poignant tale taken from a short story by the contemporary Russian writer Tatiana Tolstaia is brilliantly recounted by Alvis Hermanis, the inspired director who presented The Sound of Silence at the FTA last year. With the complicity of two male actors who are very moving, shifting from tragedy to burlesque and from hyperrealism to the poetic, combining the pathetic with the comic and savagery with tenderness, Alvis Hermanis recreates an intimate drama tinged with immense compassion for human nature. An unforgettable moment of theatre.
PRODUCED BY NOUVEAU THÉÂTRE DE RIGA
WRITTEN BY TATIANA TOLSTAIA
DIRECTED BY ALVIS HERMANIS
PERFORMERS: GUNDARS ABOLINS + JEVGENIJS ISAJEVS
SET AND COSTUME DESIGN: KRISTINE JURJANE
SOUND DESIGN: ANDRIS JARANS
LIGHTING DESIGN: KRIŠJANIS STRAZDITS
PRESENTED BY FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES
IN COLLABORATION WITH MAISON THÉÂTRE
REDACTION: MARTIN FAUCHER
TRADUCTION: NEIL KROETSCH
ALVIS HERMANIS (RIGA)
NOUVEAU THÉÂTRE DE RIGA
The 42-year-old Alvis Hermanis has been the artistic director of the New Riga Theatre in Latvia for the past ten years. This state institution has a permanent troupe of 25 actors, and focuses mainly on the classic German and Russian repertoire but also stages contemporary works and plays inspired by elements of daily life, such as Long Life, which was a suite of melancholy variations on the lives of the elderly and their particular view of life.
