Two Ukrainian Plays

TWO UKRAINIAN PLAYS is now completely sold out for the entire run. There are no tickets left.
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★★★★★ Five Stars, The Stage
★★★★★ Five Stars, theatreCat 
★★★★★ Five Stars, London Pub Theatres
★★★★ Four Stars, The Guardian
★★★★ Four Stars, West End Evenings
★★★★ Four Stars, theatreCat
★★★★ Four Stars, Jewish Renaissance
★★★★ Four Stars, Close-Up Culture
★★★★ Four Stars, The UpComing
★★★★ Four Stars, London Pub Theatres
Off West End Award Nomination for Lead Performance in a Play – Kristin Milward
Off West End Award Nomination for New Play – Neda Nezhdana

Take The Rubbish Out, Sasha

The English Premiere

“They’ve mobilised all the living now, the fifth call took the last of the living. But the war keeps on. So high command asked us.”

Katia and Oksana are organising Sasha’s funeral feast. The bereaved widow and daughter mourn for Sasha, a Colonel in the Ukrainian Army, who has dropped down dead suddenly of heart failure.

As war intensifies, a year after his death, the army has resorted to recruiting soldiers who are dead. Sasha is anxious to join his country’s fight, and ready to be resurrected, but his family are reluctant to bury him again. A family argument ensues, should Sasha volunteer again?

From Ukraine’s leading contemporary playwright Natal’ya Vorozhbit (The Grain Store – Royal Shakespeare Company, and Bad Roads – Royal Court Theatre, and filmed as Ukraine’s official Oscar® selection in 2022), Take The Rubbish Out, Sasha, blends reality and the afterlife in a critical look at the effects of war and conflict.

Pussycat in Memory of Darkness

The first production outside Ukraine

“I want to report a robbery…I was robbed. What was stolen from me? Almost everything…Home, land, car, work, friends, city, faith in goodness…’”

Donbas, 2014. A nameless woman stands in the street. Wearing a pair of dark black sunglasses, she tries to sell a basket of kittens. She has lost everything else she holds dear: her home, her family, her hope.

Russia has taken over Crimea and stirred up ongoing violence in her beloved homeland of Donbas. Betrayed by her neighbour and brutalised by Russian-backed militia, her hope has waned for humanity. She can only now place her hope in finding a home for a basket of kittens, a home she cannot offer.

An urgent piece of new writing from Neda Nezhdana – in her UK debut – that starkly reveals the roots of Russia’s war on Ukraine through the brutalised eyes of one woman.

On Wednesday, 24 August (Ukrainian Independence Day) at 5.00pm, and free to ticketholders for the evening performance, we will also be screening the award-winning film – Golos, a feature film documentary about Ukraine today, which focuses on people’s response to the war across age, place and economic background. The Maidan revolution, where the narrative starts, creates the backdrop as we visit four cities and listen to their inhabitants; old, young, and from different educational, ethnic and economic backgrounds. By documenting what people celebrate and what national holidays mean to them, the film provides a context for people to communicate their hopes, fears and ambitions. These poignant encounters show a common struggle for peace despite differences of opinion, and the influences and memories that form Ukrainian identity.
“Golos takes us outside the polarised rhetoric on the either side of the conflict and gives voice to those stuck in the middle; at one a history lesson and taking-of-the-temperature of a people trust into an unwanted war.”
Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC Newsnight
“A sensitive and insightful documentary about modern-day Ukraine. Although the film takes the Euro-Maidan demonstrations of late 2013 and 2014 as its starting point, the unrest is really just a pretext. In fact, Golos: Ukrainian Voices would be better described as an examination – and a probing one – of post-Soviet national identity.”
Judith Fagelston, Central and East European London Review
For more information, click here.

COVID SAFE
As one of the most intimate theatre venues in London, we are taking every possible precaution to ensure the safety of performers, staff, and audience members during the current pandemic.
Audience members may be temperature-checked upon their arrival at the theatre, and we strongly recommend wearing a face mask at all times, including during the performance.
In order to ensure that the Finborough Theatre is still accessible for those who are CEV (Clinically Extremely Vulnerable) or those who would just prefer it, all Sunday matinee performances are Covid Pass Sundays when we will ask for proof of vaccination as well as mask wearing.
We have reduced our audience capacity to 85% and adjusted our ticket prices to reflect this. We have been reviewing these protocols every month and will lift them as soon as it is safe to do so.
For full information, please see our full Covid-19 policy here.