The Piotr Fomenko Theatre-Atelier

War and Peace
by Leon Tolstoy

The great Russian theatre director Piotr Fomenko makes his Athenian début this year, with his “Fomenki” – a dedicated troupe of his students – performing this internationally acclaimed adaptation of one of world literature’s greatest works.


It all began a few years ago in the Dom Aktera (Actor’s House) on Arbat Street, Moscow. The renowned restaurant on the ground floor had by then closed down, another victim of the market economy, but on the seventh floor a flame of artistic exploration still glowed, for it was there that this theatre master and his young drama students read the Tolstoy epic together.


The novel War and Peace (1812), set against the backdrop of the 1805 and 1812 Napoleonic Wars, is a masterful study of human nature and the notion of free will. Fomenko’s production contains neither canons nor blood, and is mounted in an ethereal theatrical style that successfully combines epic literature with satire. The actors, who are excellent both as a group and individually, push the boundaries of the grotesque whilst always remaining disarmingly human.


In Russian with Greek surtitles.