"Lungs"
Director: Yevgen Merzlyakov
Cast: Veronika Zolotoverkha, Yaroslav Groshov
Luhansk Musical Drama Theatre, Severodonetsk
In the recent production of Duncan MacMillan’s “Lungs” at the Luhansk Musical Drama Theatre, the performances of actors Veronica Zolotoverkha and Yaroslav Hroshov recall something out of the television programme “Behind the Glass.” On a bare, black stage, seated literally arm’s length from the audience, they deliver performances that are both natural and imbued with passion. It was as if the actors were telling their own story and not that of some remote London couple chewing over issues ranging from the intimate to the global.
Director Evhen Merzlyakov, however, was less drawn to the questions of the environment and overpopulation and more to the personal lives of this young man and woman. Typical of their generation, they are hungry to experience all that live has to offer, filled with energy and consumed by ambition. And so the question of whether or not to bring a new life into the world is one that agitates them greatly. It’s also a question that breeds fear: the loss of a way of life, the assumption of a new role in society. All of which they hope that, somehow, they will come to grips with.
Author of the text: Sergiy Vasylyev, a theatre critic