Lars Von Trier's original characters spiral away from 'normality,' but Serebrennikov's  production is immaculately constructed.

Luchino Visconti's classic 1960s film "Rocco and his Brothers" as a Russian stage play in 2013? Not an obvious transformation, perhaps, but one that clearly was waiting for the right people to come along and do it.

Nikita Kobelev's production of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" accomplishes the inevitable. It puts contemporary politics on the big stage of a velvet-seated, mainstream Moscow theater.

"Christmas at the Ivanovs" is one of the quiet classics of 20th-century Russian drama, and it comes across exactly as that in Denis Azarov's production at the Gogol Center.

A theatrical feast for theatrical gluttons: In its 11th running since the inaugural festival in 1992, spanning eight weeks to the day, it will begin this Sunday and conclude on July 14.

"Odd People" by Maxim Gorky. A Comedy. That's what the program says, and that's what director Yury Ioffe aimed for in his intimate production on the small stage of the Mayakovsky Theater.

It has been a year since star actor Oleg Menshikov took over the Yermolova Theater, and a further five months since he reopened the venerable old venue with a new repertoire. Now, for the first time, he has taken to the stage himself in a new production: A dramatization of Oscar Wilde's novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Annie Baker, an American playwright who hails from New England, is continuing to forge a professional relationship with Russia.

The 19th annual Golden Mask Festival award ceremony began with a drum roll and a walking bass line from the Oleg Lundstrem Jazz Orchestra and ended with standing ovations for six veteran theater artists who were honored with lifetime achievement awards.

Stepping into the hall at A.R.T.O. Theater, you always have the notion you are about to see something that you could not see anywhere else. You suspect that the humor will be dark, the performances fine-tuned, and that you will be challenged from beginning to end.

Andrei Konchalovsky is best known for his work in film, but in recent years he has taken several forays into theater.

The famous designation of Alexander Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" as an "encyclopedia of Russian life" can sound a bit timeworn these days.

"A lot of people these days are finding parallels between the present and the 1930s, but the real connection I see is between the present and 1968."

It is the 19th time we have gathered to celebrate along with the Golden Mask Festival. And it is intended to be a celebration, a celebration of the best Russia has to offer in music, dance, drama and puppetry.

Yury Butusov has a way of exploding a play from the inside out. He goes down inside and comes back to the surface with all kinds of things you may never have considered. His productions remind me of the Pompidou Center in Paris: It's a building like any other, only all the stuff from the inside is on the outside.

Journalist and theater director Mikhail Kaluzhsky called it a "theatrical slam." Olga Shakina, a journalist from the Dozhd television channel, said it was a moment when "one theatrical event replaced another."

Imagine a show that runs four-plus hours, and you responded well to about half of what it threw at you. Now consider what that says about your state of mind the other half of the time.

You thought you knew the Golden Mask Festival. You know, that three-week extravaganza every spring that shows off the best that Russian theater has to offer? The one that ends with figurative fireworks and a glitzy award ceremony somewhere in the middle of April?

Newcomer who wrote texts for the Gogol Center opening delivers a play about youth.

Gabriella Tuminaite's production of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's "Emilia Galotti" at the Sovremennik Theater is a fine example of a glass half-full/half-empty.

A lighthearted staging of Daniil Kharms' crazy anecdotes raises serious questions about the people's hostility toward each other.

Vladimir Ageyev's production of Viktor Slavkin's "Cerceau" for the Drugoi Theater is something of a wonder. Not only because it is a fine performance — and it is that — but also because it is one of those extremely rare instances where various historical eras are compacted in a single event.

"Nine Months/40 Weeks" is one of those projects that could only happen at Teatr.doc.

There's nothing original in my saying that a production of "Sailors and Whores" at the Fomenko Studio is highly original. But it still deserves to be said.

Arthur Miller was once a staple on Moscow stages. Forty, fifty years ago. The ground-breaking American playwright has been revived from time to time in recent years and decades, but it would be no exaggeration to say his works here have been in eclipse.

Some things remain relevant longer than you would expect.

Following the publication of his first novel "GenAtsid" in 2009, Vsevolod Benigsen found himself at the center of attention in the world of Russian letters. Although it was not unanimously praised by the critics, the novel about a state-sponsored cultural experiment taking place in a God-forsaken village was nominated for numerous awards and won the annual prize presented by the journal Znamya for best novel of the year.

Who would have guessed it, that by the beginning of winter the most popular play in Moscow would be "A Midsummer Night's Dream?"

What I wouldn't give not to write what follows.
News came that Alexandra Chichkanova died. She hanged herself in her apartment in Yekaterinburg.

If he had wanted to, Oleg Menshikov could have done it very differently. One of the few actors in Russia who commands genuine star power, he could easily have called in all the cameras, all the celebrities, all the glossy magazines and all the wannabe glossy people, and they would have come running.