

Gogol's dead souls get a phantasmagoric remix—Chichikov meets a ghost girl in Soviet TV chaos.
The play was directed by Mark Zakharov and is based on the play "Brother Chichikov," inspired by N.V. Gogol's poem "Dead Souls." The performance intertwines the adventures of Chichikov with the phantasmagoric occurrences involving him and Pannochka.
Direction
Zakharov's stage-to-screen phantasmagoria feels like Brecht on Soviet acid.
Acting
Pevtsov's Chichikov: sleazy, desperate, weirdly sympathetic.

Director
Mark Zakharov
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Mark Zakharov was a Soviet TV theater legend; this 2005 swan song adapts a 1971 play that itself adapted Gogol's 1842 novel—layers of dead media haunting dead literature.
The original 'Brother Chichikov' play was banned briefly in the 1970s for being too weird even by Brezhnev standards.