When the Hurlyburly's Done - Paperback

by Richard Nelson (Author)

In 1920, thirty-two-year-old Les Kurbas (the founder of the modern Ukrainian theatre), takes a group of young actors out of war-torn Kyiv into the countryside where they will perform plays, bartering tickets for food. One such play is MACBETH, the first Shakespeare production ever in Ukrainian. While Kurbas and most of the company attend a show by a local theater company performed in their honor, six young women, four actresses, a pianist, and a dancer stay behind with their children. Over a meal which they cook from the proceeds of that evening's show, the young women talk, complain, joke, make fun of themselves, laugh, rehearse dances from the show, all while in pain, heartbroken, lost, scared, and with a need to be together.

"Somewhere before the finale, you suddenly say to yourself: no, I'm not going to cry, because there was nothing that usually makes people cry in the theater. Meanwhile, your tears, which you have no control over, rise from the bottom of your soul like air bubbles from a goldfish tank." ⁠-⁠Theater Magazine, Ukraine

"September 1920. A small Ukrainian village, where the war still echoes in people's hearts, and fear and instability have become part of everyday life. It is here, far from the big city, that a story filled with drama, tenderness, and inner strength is born. A story that took place against the backdrop of the first production of MACBETH in Ukrainian in Ukraine ... WHEN THE HURLYBURLY'S DONE is not just a reconstruction of events from a century ago. It is a play about community, female resilience, and how theater can be not only a stage but also a home. It is an intimate conversation about the price of creativity during times of destruction, about the internal storms we have to endure when the outside world is going mad." ⁠-⁠Rest. Kyiv, Ukraine

"Let's be honest ⁠-⁠ we couldn't write this review for two months. And it's not that we have any excuse. We just couldn't find the words. You literally can't describe what you feel, and you leave the theater in a daze, with round and teary eyes. The performance is paralyzing. And we're not afraid to use big words ⁠-⁠ this is one of the plays that has emotionally affected us the most recently." ⁠-⁠Medium, Ostap Theatere