Pilgrims and Hussars

Pogrebnitchko does not create individual performances but rather some kind of his own theatre serial, where authors of different periods peacefully coexist within a single series (Dostoevsky and Volodin, Vampilov and Chekhov). Sets and costumes almost do not change – they are always remnants of the Soviet way of life: decrepit doors and benches, outworn coats, and a plaster girl with an oar. Time flows slowly and quietly. (...) The Prozorov sisters, the officers leaving their town, and the Sarafan family where the “elder son” has just arrived. (...) If you ask Youri Pogrebnitchko, what connects the works of Chekhov and Vampilov apart from “familiar” titles, he will certainly answer that both authors and their characters died: if a reason is needed, then this is it.

Oleg Zintsov, Vedomosti

Pogrebnitchko collects his ideas, mixes them, creates new fragments and he reads the plays as poems. He always surprises: Is this really Chekhov‘s text, so contemporary and unexpectedly comical? And the dialogues of Vampilov‘s heroes that seem provincially straightforward when being read, suddenly become deep and witty.

Alena Solntseva, Vremya novosti

The actors master a special art of speech, everyday talk as if completely indifferent, just pronouncing the given words. As if they were not actors, as if they only met each other, talked a bit, and left.

Youri Fridshteyn, Literaturnaya gazeta

There is no doubt that Pogrebnitchko has found his unique way of staging Vampilov. He has united the very traditional form of the Elder Son by a structure based on rapid change of situations underlined by the music of the sixties with its banal and comic, as well as heart-welling internationalism. (...) Pogrebnitchko constantly recalls the Soviet past – he has no intention to forget about it. He belongs to the generation that grew up in that past and understood that denying their own history made no good. The past radiates from every word and phrase in The Seagull or The Elder Son.

Béatrice Picon-Vallin, Paris

All periods, all recollections, and even phantom pains coexist simultaneously in his theatre. He fits periods and their manners in ideal images with a strike of banality and he plays with all of that.

Natalia Kazyimina, Kultura