Critic Vadim Rutkovsky on the Theatre of Boris Yukhananov
19 June 2020
Photo by Andrei Bezukladnikov
In this article, published in Vestnik Evropy (Messenger of Europe) magazine, Vadim Rutkovsky reviews a large swath of Boris Yukhananov’s work, from the 1970s in Voronezh to his latest premieres in Moscow.
Boris Yukhananov is one of the most significant theatre directors of our time. Major European directors stage their work at Yukhananov's Stanislavsky Electrotheatre. The premiere of one of Yukhananov's own early works, The Observer, took place in 1988 in West Berlin at the Berliner Festspiele. Another of his important works, The Minor, based on a play by Denis Fonvizin and a performance of it mounted in 1911, was performed in 1999 at the Russian Drama Theatre of Vilnius. In recent years, however, Yukhananov has mounted just one international project – the political opera Octavia. Trepanation, staged jointly with the Holland Festival in 2017 on the large stage of the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam. Of what consists Yukhananov's uniqueness and greatness, and why is it so hard to export his art?