Marjanishvili Theatre
Lela Ochiauri
“Wait Until Dark”. Anuki Khidesheli
Anuki Khidesheli’s Wait Until Dark (based on the screenplay by Frederick Knott) is a psychological crime drama built on a system of metaphors, unfolding in an atmosphere of psychological and physical tension. It takes place in the conditional, enclosed world created by the director, a world with its own dimensions, rules, and contours. As the laws of the horror genre require, the fear-inducing mystical and mysterious events increase from episode to episode, and the atmosphere becomes more and more charged. Consciousness, subconsciousness, doubt, reality, and imagination are intertwined, and the boundary between them is difficult to decipher. The events are constructed with precise psychological calculation and possess a powerful emotional impact.
This is a performance about the fate and life of a vulnerable and helpless person left alone in the face of violence, and about the possibilities and abilities that one must discover within oneself.
“Terror”. Temo Kuprava
Temo Kuprava’s Terror—based on the play by Ferdinand von Schirach—is a creative/social project, a “courtroom drama” about personal choice, which also implies the involvement of society.
The action develops according to the “plot” of both the dramaturgical structure and the course of the court proceedings—in its form, motivation, and order. Only the case itself is unusual, atypical, and therefore difficult both to conduct and to decide. That is precisely why the verdict must be delivered by the audience, “appointed” as the jury, guided by their own morality, heart, and reason. And they must answer the central question—who has the “right,” in a crisis and hopeless situation, to take upon themselves the fate of human beings—to sacrifice in order to save.
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Maka (Marine) Vasadze
The Underground Man (Theatre Workshop 42)
Director – Levan Tsuladze
Music Director – Zurab Gagloshvili
Assistant Director – Tamar Pruidze
Choreographer – Tinatin Tsuladze
Digital Art Designer – Levan Geliashvili Eredeli
Cast:
Nika Kuchava, Nina Lortkipanidze
One of the best directors of the middle generation, Levan Tsuladze, became deeply interested in the stage adaptations of the works of the pre-existentialist Fyodor Dostoevsky in the 21st century and created several productions based on them. I believe this is not surprising in a century filled with political and social upheavals, wars, and one that calls into question the very essence and existence of human beings. This century is probably the most ruthless, heartless, pragmatic, and the era of ignorance and the rise of little people. At least its first third certainly is. During his tenure as Artistic Director of the Marjanishvili Theatre, in 2016, together with composer Vato Kakhidze, he staged BEGALUT – In Exile, based on the works of Sholem Aleichem and Guram Batiashvili, combining the techniques of non-verbal and dramatic theatre. Among other themes, through the example of the lives of two Jewish families, he raised the issue of violence, specifically the genocide of Jews in Russia. It was there that he used Dostoevsky’s text for the first time. One of the characters reads to Russian soldiers from a newspaper Dostoevsky’s (as astonishing as it may seem, an actual excerpt from a published letter included in his collected works) portrayal of Jews as enemies of Russia and his call for their destruction. It is noteworthy that neither the playwright nor the director translated this excerpt from Dostoevsky’s letter; it was performed on stage in the writer’s native language. This was the only verbal passage in the performance, followed by the brutal assault and physical annihilation of Jewish families by a Russian general and his entourage.
Later, the director created a trilogy in which he explored the problem of violence. What gives rise to violence (its causes), who the perpetrators are, why they become perpetrators, and why they develop the desire to oppress, humiliate, and kill others. Personally, I perceived this trilogy as a series of productions directed against violence towards women (although, according to the director’s concept, not only against violence towards women). Violence against women is, unfortunately, a global problem. In 2021, together with Temo Kuprava, he staged one part of the trilogy based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
A person of constantly restless creative nature, the director is always searching for something new. Three years ago, he opened yet another new theatre – Theatre Workshop 42. Here he staged Shakespeare, Strindberg, Gogol, the historical production 1921, about the occupation of Georgia by the Red Army, stage adaptations based on famous films, and others.
At the end of the spring of 2026, based on Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from Underground, he staged the two-person performance The Underground Man. The first act is, in fact, a one-man performance in which actor Nika Kuchava, following the task set by the director, with great professionalism, combining the Georgian tradition of psychological theatre with the principles of interactive theatre (the audience being the primary addressee of his active monologue), creates the character of a man consumed by nihilism, a man who no longer believes in anything or anyone, who is possessed by fears, for whom the destruction of the world and chaos are the cornerstones of his worldview. He is inadequate, having lost every human quality, including the most important one—the ability to love. He is a small, frightened little man who does not live but merely exists. He is an intellectual, yet his intellect is of no use to him; terrified, he has hidden himself away in a hole. He insists that there is nothing good in the world. In the second act, he meets a young woman (Nina Lortkipanidze). A feeling seems to spark between them; although sexually incapable (or so he believed), he even develops desire. Yet the nihilistic intellectual extinguishes with his own hands the spark that should have burst into flame. In the hopeless world surrounding us, there is no longer any place for love. He cruelly humiliates and rejects the very person who represented his last hope of turning back toward life. In the novella, the girl is mostly silent, and her character is not fully developed. In the performance, however, the young woman’s character is, one might say, entirely the product of the imagination of the director and the actress; together they gave this character her stage life.