Alexander Ostrovsky – författare

One of Ostrovsky's most poetical works, The Storm is set in Kalinov, a provincial town on the banks of the Upper Volga. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, Katerína is tormented by her widowed mother-in-law, Marfa Kabanova. Katerína seeks solace in an affair with a similarly tormented young lover, and the confession of this affair to her husband leads ultimately to tragedy. The Storm was a great success on its first performance the Maly Theatre, Moscow, in November 1859, and continues to be critically regarded as one of Ostrovsky's best plays. It inspired Janácek's opera Katia Kabanova.

The Value of Something is Never its Price In a trading town on the banks of the river, penniless Larisa is desperate to marry and escape heartbreak and humiliation. But in this brutal world of transactions true love has no worth. Larisa is up for sale and the local merchants want a bargain. Samuel Adamson's version of Alexander Ostrovsky's rarely seen, sharp and darkly funny play Larisa and the Merchants, premiered at the Arcola in May 2013, produced by InSite Performance.

Classic Russian play, the best-known work of Alexander Ostrovsky. According to the introduction, "ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH Ostrovsky (1823-86) is the great Russian dramatist of the central decades of the nineteenth century, of the years when the realistic school was all-powerful in Russian literature, of the period when Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy created a literature of prose fiction that has had no superior in the world''s history. His work in the drama takes its place beside theirs in the novel. Obviously inferior as it is in certain ways, it yet sheds light on an important side of Russian life that they left practically untouched."

Gloumov, (the protagonist) has not only become an eduring character on the Russian stage, but the abstract noun derived from his name, gloumovshchina (or gloumovism), has entered the language. As long as ambitious young men with brains and talent can most readily achieve success by selling themselves and betraying their better natures, gloumovism will thrive. Transitional societies have a special need of Gloumov to keep things moving – as well as to maintain equilibrium – since the actor-opportunist will further any cause, switch positions overnight, defend opposite sides of the same issue, and turn his coat with every wind until he almost becomes the coat. – from the Afterword by Daniel Gerould

Includes the plays The Forest, Artistes and Admirers, Wolves and Sheep and Sin and SorrowFour of Ostrovsky’s finest plays. The best known of these, The Forest (1871), has two young lovers in thrall to their tyrannical elders, who are prevented from marrying until a pair of strolling actors come to their rescue. In Artistes and Admirers (1881), a comedy of theatre life, a dedicated young actress renounces both love and fortune in order to pursue her sacred calling. In the comedy Wolves and Sheep (1875) Ostrovsky returns to a favourite theme, the double-dealing and hypocrisy of the Russian landowning classes, while the melodrama Sin and Sorrow (1863) explores the tragic consequences of a bored provincial wife’s brief affair.

Four of Ostrovsky's finest plays. The best known of these, The Forest (1871), has two young lovers in thrall to their tyrannical elders, who are prevented from marrying until a pair of strolling actors come to their rescue. In Artistes and Admirers (1881), a comedy of theatre life, a dedicated young actress renounces both love and fortune in order to pursue her sacred calling. In the comedy Wolves and Sheep (1875) Ostrovsky returns to a favourite theme, the double-dealing and hypocrisy of the Russian landowning classes, while the melodrama Sin and Sorrow (1863) explores the tragic consequences of a bored provincial wife's brief affair.

"Includes three comedies - Too Clever by Half, Crazy Money, Innocent as Charged - and a tragedy The Storm from the father of Russian drama. Ostrovsky (1823-86) paved the way for twentieth-century stage realism in Russia. These plays are populated by characters that reveal Ostrovsky's talent for well-turned idiomatic phrases and his acute observation of behaviour and conditioning."