Theatre UNB Presents Slavs! by Tony Kushner, Oct. 27-30, 2015.
Theatre UNB is set to open its 2015-16 season with Slavs!, a play by Tony Kushner, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America, perhaps the most celebrated and influential play of the late twentieth century.
Subtitled Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness, and set in Russia just before and after the monumental late 1980s fall of Communism, Slavs! explores the collapse of the Soviet Union as just one of many examples of our repeated failure to create governments and societies that are just, compassionate, and truly free.
Slavs! tells three interwoven stories, all marked by Kushner’s trademark mixture of comedy, spirited political debate, and fantasy: one about a group of geriatric Politburo members bickering hilariously over the merits of reform at the meeting that would eventually choose Mikhail Gorbachev as the new Soviet leader, one about a cynical young woman who guards the pickled brains of past Soviet leaders, and one about a crusading doctor trying to get the post-Communist government to help a group of children who have been poisoned by radioactive contamination. For good measure, Kushner also takes the audience on a trip to a distinctly Soviet version of the afterlife.
Directed by Len Falkenstein and featuring a cast of UNB Drama students, Slavs! will be performed from Tuesday, October 27 through Friday, October 30 at 8 PM nightly at Memorial Hall on the UNB campus. Tickets are available at the door, priced at $12 regular, $10 for seniors and the underemployed, and $8 for students, with $2 off all prices for the Tuesday, Oct. 27 preview performance. For more information, phone 447-3078 or email lfalken@unb.ca
