Maklena UK and Ukraine Tour

UK and Ukraine Tour
Written by Mykola Kulish, English translation by Maria Montague

Night Train Theatre Company

Director: Maria Montague
Designer: Nikki Charlesworth

“Captivating, heart-wrenching and genuinely funny” — ★★★★★ Theatre Bubble.
“The Luxurious detail in the set and costume (Nikki Charlesworth) keep us grounded in historical realism”.
— ★★★★ The Prickle Smart Arts Reviews.

Photos from the UK tour. Photos credit to Tobias Balduf.

In 2018 Night Train Theatre Company presented the English language premiere of MAKLENA, a poetic tragicomedy about a 13-year-old who gets lost in her fairy tale vision of life under the Soviet Union. Facing eviction at the hands of a conniving landlord, 13-year-old Maklena fights to lift her family out of abject poverty. When she gets lost in a whirlwind of propaganda, violence, dreams and magical geese, she must face a very real and dangerous choice.

Night Train Theatre Company’s Maklena is the first-ever English language production of Ukrainian playwright Mykola Kulish’s 1933 masterpiece Maklena Grasa — a fresh interpretation with puppetry, physical theatre and an original score. This unique take on a Ukrainian classic shows that Kulish’s work defies national borders, and remains powerfully relevant more than 80 years since it was written.

Set in 1930s Poland, a striking Polish house facade boasting three floors showed the strict class divide, whilst aged factory crates represented the industrialised world within the Soviet Union, and were utilised through skilful movement direction and physical theatre.

In the summer of 2019, Night Train brought the play back to its birthplace, Ukraine, where the company co-produced an international theatre festival in Kharkiv, 1919-2019: Kulish. Kurbas. Shakespeare. Following the performance in Kharkiv, Maklena went on to perform at the Molodyy Teatr, Kyiv, the theatre which the Director of the first-ever production of Maklena, Les Kurbas, founded.