A rich evocation of a world poised on the brink of Stalin’s Great Terror, based on the 1994 Oscar-winning film written by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov.
General Kotov, decorated hero of the Russian Revolution, is spending an idyllic summer in the country with his beloved young wife and family. But on one glorious sunny morning in 1936, his wife’s former lover returns from a long and unexplained absence. Amidst a tangle of sexual jealousy, retribution and remorseless political backstabbing, Kotov feels the full, horrifying reach of Stalin’s rule.
Peter Flannery’s play Burnt by the Sun was first staged at the National Theatre, London, in the Lyttelton auditorium, in March 2009, in a production directed by Howard Davies.
‘A cracker… starts out like something by Chekhov and ends up as a gripping Stalinist thriller… Funny, affecting and taut with suspense, Burnt by the Sun is a new play that already feels like a classic’
— Telegraph
‘A brilliant playwriting achievement… a wonderful panoramic view of a family and its misfortune with an inexorable, gruesome dramatic tread’
— Independent
