“Cockroaches”, new play based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Flight”

“Cockroaches”, new play based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Flight”

Mikhail Bulgakov’s earlier, uncensored version of “Flight” translated and directed for the first time by Anastasiya Sosis for the UK stages, is a tragedy set in the last days of the Russian Civil War. In Cockroaches five refugees flee the impending Soviet rule in search of freedom and a better life, only to find poverty and indifference in foreign lands.
Impositioned by the starvation of St. Petersburg and imagining an impending victory of the Pro-Royal army forces, Sergey Golubkov, a naïve intellectual, embarks on a journey to Crimea, where he hopes to wait out the conflict. However, confronted with the realities of war, the cruelty and evil that men, not ideologies produce, he is thrust deep into the nightmare that is his journey to save a woman he loves, a stranger, met on a train station, under a lamp.
London-based, Ukrainian-born director, Anastasiya Sosis, has first-hand experience of the ongoing civil war in her home country. She brings to the stage her personal angle and understanding of what it’s like to lose one’s home and have no certainty of the future.