The Golovlyov Family
THE PIT

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Doors will open 45 minutes before the start of each performance.

<ADVANCE TICKETS>

Available from Saturday 26 April, 2003 at 10:00am.
To order tickets, please call +81-3-5352-9999 (10:00am-6:00pm).
Internet ticket reservation available through the following Websites.(Japanese only)
http://t.pia.co.jp/
http://eee.eplus.co.jp/

<TICKET PRICES>

Seat Z(¥1,500) is sold only on the performance day at the Box Office and exclusive Ticket Pia Offices.

　Nagai Ai is a playwright who is drawing the most public attention these days with her humorous satires and approach of creating steady dramatic effects through dialog. The Golovlyov Family, which Nagai wrote the script for and will direct, marks the second appearance of her work at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, following the high-profile staging in 2001 of her play Konnichiwa Kaasan [Hello, Mother] that vividly depicted a contemporary Japanese family. The upcoming production is based on one of the great works of the Russian literary master Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-1889) , and this is the first time for Nagai to take up the challenge of a translated novel.

  Set in Russia at the end of the 19^th century, the play presents the tragic story of the Golovlyovs, a landowning family that is in a state of collapse and faces extinction, having lost its moral values and intellectual interests. The author of the novel Shchedrin, considered Russia’s greatest satirist, looked squarely at the real lives of people and described them sincerity, so that even today his works are widely read in Russia. The drama of the Golovlyov family, destined to die out, is depicted sharply and straightforwardly within the broad current of the times marked by the emancipation of the serfs.

   Nagai says that she was horrified by the desperate everyday fights over property between the greedy mother and her children and the ugly image of human beings that this revealed, while at the same time she rolled about in laughter over the incredible absurdity of this struggle. She employs her outstanding story development skills to condense episodes from the novel and manages to make a first-rate human comedy out of a calamitous story. The drama of people who are seized with indescribable fears as they face hopeless situations and only manage to go on living by clinging to their desires is one that will also shed strong light on the present-day world.

<Synopsis>

  The Golovlyov estate is located two nights carriage ride from Moscow. The landowner Arina trembles with anger to hear the news that her eldest son is returning home broke after squandering his fortune in Moscow. Nothing remains that can be given to this eldest son. Her husband Vladimir has virtually retired from active life. Arina’s two other sons return home from the city where they live and a family meeting is held to discuss how to treat the eldest son. They decide to provide the eldest son with the father’s old clothes, leftover food from the family, and a small detached room, which effectively amounts to his confinement. The second son Porfiri, also known as Judas, observes these events with an uncanny smile. Every night the eldest son breaks into the kitchen to search about for food ant drink vodka. It is just a matter of time before he becomes an alcoholic. And on a cold night...