Rubinshteyna Street is famous for its restaurants, but number 18 is a theatre that people travel to St Petersburg for, from Moscow and from abroad. The Maly Drama Theatre, a "Theatre of Europe" since 1998, is run by Lev Dodin, and his productions — Brothers and Sisters, The Devils, Life and Fate, The Cherry Orchard — are considered a benchmark of the Russian psychological school. The hall is small, tickets are few, and getting in is a project of its own.
The entrance at 18 Rubinshteyna Street. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The theatre and Dodin
The MDT was founded in 1944 as a regional theatre. Lev Dodin took over in 1983 and turned it into an author's theatre built around one director and his students: according to the theatre, much of the company came straight from his courses at the Theatre Academy. In 1998 the Union of the Theatres of Europe gave it the "Theatre of Europe" title, the third in the world after the Odéon in Paris and the Piccolo in Milan.
Repertoire
The core is Dodin's stagings of Russian prose — Abramov, Dostoevsky, Grossman, Chekhov — alongside work by his students and the company's younger directors. Many titles have run for ten or twenty years with new casts; the current Brothers and Sisters is played over two evenings. Most productions are long, three to four hours with intervals, so a 7 pm start means leaving close to 11.
MDT productions are ensemble pieces with large casts on a small stage. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The hall and seats
Just over four hundred seats, laid out as a gently raked amphitheatre; the stage is close and you see faces. There are almost no bad seats. Stalls rows four to ten are ideal; the first two rows suit chamber pieces but sit too close for crowd scenes.
A small amphitheatre hall with a clear view from every seat. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Buying a ticket
This is the real question. Sales open on the theatre's website a month ahead on an announced day, and Dodin's productions sell out within hours, sometimes minutes. What works: learn the sales date from the website and social media, be online when they open, consider productions by Dodin's students (easier to get, same quality), and watch for returns near the date. Resellers charge several times the price and the theatre fights them with named tickets — not worth the risk.
The box office on Rubinshteyna; most sales are online. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
