Children of the Sun

Synopsis

Darkly comic play set in Russia as the country rolls towards revolution. It depicts the new middle-class, foolish yet likable, as they flounder about, philosophising and flirting, blind to their impending annihilation. Protasov wants only to immerse himself in chemical experiments to perfect mankind. He's oblivious to the advances of the half-crazed widow and his best friend's pursuit of his wife, let alone the cholera epidemic and the starving mob. His admiring circle, variously sceptical and lovesick, spar over culture and the cosmos. Only Liza feels the peasants' suffering and senses their own privileged world is in jeopardy.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 17 April 2013

One of the chief strands in Nicholas Hytner's tenure at the National Theatre has been the fine Russian productions of Howard Davies, and while this revival of Maxim Gorky's scathing 1905 tragi-comedy of the professional middle-classes may not hit the heights of Philistines some years ago, it certainly alerts us to the qualities in a great play.

The play was part of the RSC's revelatory Gorky cycle in the 1970s, and was locked into a company style that could embrace sourness and satire without losing the poetry and madness in a circle of friends and family of a visionary chemist, Pavel Protasov (Geoffrey Streatfeild), while the town outside is gripped in a cholera epidemic.

But Davies and his adaptor, the Australian playwright Andrew Upton ...

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Latest User Review

DCH - 17 April 2013:

The last 5 minutes of the play lift it from a rather tedious affair to something a bit more dramatic. The central character, Protasov, is just too wet to act as the hub of the action around which everything revolves. Get a Travelex ticket to see this rather than pay top price....

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