Two stories about love under the pressure of circumstances: In Anna Karenina, Lev Tolstoy dedicates himself to the tectonic shifts tirelessly working away under the sugary surface of riches at the end of the 1870s. Anna’s story is also that of today’s Western Europe, a society that suspects that something is going to change but doesn’t know what the new situation will look like. Dostoyevsky's novel Poor Folk, in contrast, is »just« a collection of letters – the leftovers of the relationship between Makar and Varvara, a couple without a future. Love, according to Dostoyevsky's bitter realisation, is something they cannot afford. Oliver Frljić is celebrating the re-opening of the Gorki’s mainstage with a twin-track evening that brings these two great novelists together.
Photo: Esra Rotthoff