Making a Song and Dance of Mussorgsky ; a Ground-Breaking, Genre-Bending Co-Production Between the Young Vic and Sadler's Wells Aims to Tell the Chaotic, Vodka-Soaked Life Story of the Inventor of Russian Music

Evening Standard - London › July 22, 2009

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Summary

AGAUNT young actor is staggering about the chalked-up f loor of a rehearsal room, a vodka bottle to his lips.

"Russia is dying," he cries.

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Making a Song and Dance of Mussorgsky ; a Ground-Breaking, Genre-Bending Co-Production Between the Young Vic and Sadler's Wells Aims to Tell the Chaotic, Vodka-Soaked Life Story of the Inventor of Russian Music

"The old order must die. Russia will be reborn. The time is now." It could, of course, be anyone, any time.

So pervasive is alcoholism to Russian culture that the drama being readied for the Young Vic could be drawn from Pushkin, Leskov or Dostoevsky, Scriabin or Tchaikovsky, Gogol, Babel or Esenin.

The life on this slab is that of Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881), a composer so essential that many...

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