The Promise

Synopsis

In the savage 1942 winter siege of Leningrad, as the Russians fight off the Nazi invaders, three teenagers, Lika, Marat and Leonidik are thrown together. Losing everything from their pasts, they forge a new love that binds them together and a new hope which keeps them alive: the promise of a better future. After the war, now Heroes of the Soviet Union, Marat and Leonidik both return to the only woman they could ever love, and Lika is forced to make an impossible choice between two men who keep the promise alive.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 20 November 2012

The Promise (1965) by Aleksei Arbuzov (1908-86) is one of the most famous 20th century Russian plays, and it marks the start of the third Donmar Trafalgar season initiative, sponsored by United House, to support young directors.

Alex Sims, who was a resident director at the Donmar Warehouse and is an associate on War Horse, certainly seizes his chance with both hands and comes up with a cracking account of this triangular friendship between two men and a girl across two decades in Leningrad.

Or St Petersburg, as it now is again. They all meet during the Nazi siege of the city in 1942, holed up in a dank, burnt out apartment that is magically transformed by designer Mike Britton into the renovated 1946 marital flat of the injured poet Leonidik (Gwilym Lee) and the trainee nurse, Lika (bewitching newcomer Joanna Vanderham).

Their mutual friend Marat (Max Bennett), a military hero, and first comfort to Lika during the bombar...

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Latest User Review

Lynn - 1 December 2012:

A gripping set of performances in the love triangle, brilliantly evoking the terror and stress, hunger and cold, of the siege of Leningrad....

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