Love, lust and loss in this daring Soviet bestseller by Viktor Nekrasov, dramatised for the first time in the UK by Ming Ho.

1959. Stalin is dead; Soviet society has started to thaw; prisoners are being freed from the labour camps no-one talks about.
Ukrainian sculptor Kira lives a gilded life in Moscow, married to a respected Russian artist. She's just been given a huge commission that involves sculpting a rather attractive young electrician. Life is good.

But then her first husband returns after twenty years in the gulag - the only man she's ever loved...
It's time for Kira and her lovers to face both the past and the future.

Nekrasov's story takes us from the plush world of privileged Moscow to sultry rural Ukraine via post-WWII Kyiv in an examination of the corrosive legacy of repressed history.

Kira....Sharon Small
Vadim....Sandy Grierson
Nikolai....Michael Bertenshaw
Yurochka....Connor Curren
Lusha/Olga....Georgie Glen
Pankratikha/Varia....Helen Belbin
Nadia/Lida/Maria....Blanche Anderson
Lyoshka/NKVD officer....Dickon Farmar
Nekrasov/Sergei....Ewan Bailey

Written by Viktor Nekrasov
Dramatised by Ming Ho
Production Co-ordination by Jenny Mendez
Sound by Ali Craig, Keith Graham, Caleb Knightley, Peter Ringrose
Directed and produced by Abigail le Fleming

A BBC Audio Production

Ming Ho writes for stage, screen, and audio. Her play The Things We Never Said (BBC R4) won WGGB Best Radio Drama Award 2018. Other credits include: Riot Girls: Male Order (BBC Radio 4); EastEnders, Casualty (BBC TV), Heartbeat, The Bill (ITV), site-specific live audio drama, Citizens of Nowhere? (Chinese Arts Now/Southbank Centre), British People (The Uncertain Kingdom anthology), Royal Court Theatre Writers’ Group, and commissions for Leeds Playhouse and Theatr Clwyd. Show less