The Catcher of Butterflies and Souls

Three short plays based on early works by Vladimir Nabokov-Sirin – “La Veneziana”, “The Granddad” and “The nursery tales”are united in one show. Nabokov’s most famous novel “Lolita” enchants readers and repulses puritans, while some of his early works are more obscure. Two of the plays are world premieres, while “The Granddad” has been previously shown in Edinburgh

In addition to being a celebrated writer in both Russian and English, Nabokov was also a lepidopterist and a composer of chess problems, earning such a reputation that in 1970 he was invited to join the American chess team to create problems for international competitions. Puzzling out chess problems and solutions, he wrote, “demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity and splendid insincerity” – all qualities, we’d have to agree, of Nabokov’s fiction.