Maly Drama Theater (Maly Dramatichesky Teatr)

Maly Drama Theater (Maly Dramatichesky Teatr) Review

Even if you can't understand the dialogue, any performance at the MDT—home to one of the best theater companies in the city—is a must-see. The repertoire includes productions of Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde. Maly is also nearly the only company in town that continues to stage the finest plays from the Soviet era. Seeing their whole repertoire has been compared to living through the entire 20th-century history of Russia. If you have a whole day to spare and lots of stamina, the nine-hour performance of Dostoyevsky's The Possessed makes for an incredible theatrical experience, although it can be a bit hard on the posterior. It takes two consecutive evenings to sit through the company's veteran show, Fyodor Abramov's "Brothers and Sisters," but nobody is known to have regretted doing it. Order tickets well in advance, because it's rare that the Maly plays to a less than packed house.