A Feast in Place of War

Today Nadezhda Kolyshkina is a well-known Russian author. The play is set on the sacred Mount Meru, where the mythological figures we know as the pantheon of Greco-Roman gods have assembled. It is the eve of war between the gods and Titans, and they have gathered for an emergency council. However, Zeus unexpectedly replaces this solemn affair with an evening of feasting and entertainment. And yet the gods cannot escape the concerns of complex earthly life even at such a supposedly light-hearted event… At first glance it seems to fit into the highly popular mythological fantasy genre: light-hearted yet intellectually stimulating entertainment. But from the very first scenes the audience senses a complex subtext underneath the veil of exquisite language and entertaining passages. The contemporary world, with all its anxieties and uncertainties about the future, emerges through the fantasy and mythic elements. This continues the tradition laid down by Shakespeare that “all the world’s a stage”, and everyone can see in it what they will.