Plays

Nádya’s future is being settled for her: Madam Ulanbékov intends to marry her protégée to a drunkard. How can a young woman find room to choose her own life beneath a mistress’s roof?

Set in mid-nineteenth-century Russia, these four dramas enter the households of merchants and landowners, where authority can hide behind a show of virtue and a person’s prospects may be decided by someone else. Aleksandr Ostrovsky turns his eye on the rough, moneyed city class and the lives constrained by its hierarchies: Nádya longs to escape her bleak match, while other characters face the pull of greed, pride, and kindness. The plays shift from sharp comedy to quiet sorrow, revealing a society in which even a small act of generosity can matter. What choices remain when the powerful believe they are acting for the best?

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