Philistines
by Maxim Gorky
in a new version by Andrew Upton
Guardian, Sunday Telegraph, Time Out, Financial Times
'Howard Davies's splendidly observant, atmospheric revival.'
The Times
A restless bunch of young radicals hang out, have sex, dance, drink, moan and philosophise at the home of a prosperous decorator. While Pyotr, a sometime student of law, falls for the lovely, loose-living lodger, his sister carps on about the tedium of life, lusts after Nil – who's blind to her charms but in pursuit of the servant – and botches her own suicide.
Life. People shout, fight, eat and go to bed. Whenthey wake up? They start shouting again. In this
house everything fades quickly. Tears, laughter.
Everything. Dissipates. The last sounds ringing
out over the lake. Then nothing. A banal hum.
A household falls to pieces as the personal and political turmoil of pre-revolutionary Russia gathers pace. Gorky's darkly comic first play of 1902, banned from public performance under the Czarist regime, is seen here in an exuberant new version by Andrew Upton.
In the video below, members of the cast talk about their experience of production.Philistines finished on: 18 August 2007
