I'm only interested in mice: Strauss and Tolstoy will be staged on Moscow stages in 2026.

Eternally relevant classics, modern prose, biopics, verbatim and even an operetta with the participation of dramatic artists — all this awaits Melpomene's metropolitan fans in the new year. Details about the most interesting upcoming premieres can be found in the Izvestia article.

Theater of Nations

"Honey, I can't come. Almonds are blooming" — such a telegram was sent to his wife from Crimea in the spring of 1963 by a young and already megapopular poet just two days before his big and important speech in Moscow...

Nonlinear biographical play "Voznesensky. Almond Blossoms" — one of the first premieres of the coming year — will be played at the Theater of Nations at the end of January, and, as the name suggests, it is dedicated to the fate of the outstanding poet of the sixties. The audience is waiting for several key stories from the life of Andrei Andreevich, they will play them in an unusual set-designer. Director Roman Chaliapin combined poetry, prose, music, architecture and graphics. Pavel Artemyev plays Voznesensky.

Photo: t.me/tofnations

There, on the Small Stage of the Theater of Nations, another biographical production, Gorky, will be shown for the first time this winter. Love." It was created in the summer specifically for the Gorky+ Art Festival, and after a successful outdoor premiere, they decided to include it in the repertoire. Director Philip Gurevich and playwright Ekaterina Guzema offer to look at Maxim Gorky through the eyes of his four beloved women. Their monologues will be performed by Anastasia Lebedeva, Alexandra Revenko, Yulia Khlynina and Anastasia Svetlova.

Foreign directors are constantly working at the Theater of Nations, and in 2026 they promise a large-scale premiere on the main stage, a real blockbuster from the Chinese Mou Sen, who has a reputation as an experimenter and an avant-garde artist. He will bring to the stage the characters of Mikhail Sholokhov's novel "The Quiet Don", which, by the way, is very popular in China. To understand the characters of the Don Cossacks, the master from Beijing will be helped by his Russian colleague, 33—year-old Marat Abulkatinov, the chief director of the Krasnoyarsk Youth Theater.

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A.S. Pushkin Theater

By the way, Marat himself will invite Muscovites to another premiere of a classic work, Goncharov's Oblomov, at the Pushkin Theater next year. And we can confidently say that this will be the unhurried and charming "nostalgia for the unexpected" characteristic of this director.

Mayakovsky Theatre

The artistic director of the Mayakovsky Theater, Egor Peregudov, has also planned two performances for himself this year. He's currently rehearsing Anna Karenina. From other versions of Tolstoy's novel that appeared on Moscow stages last year, this one, called "Karenina. Volume two" will differ in that the focus will be on "family misfortune", and it will begin with the birth of Anna. The director invited his wife, Daria Ursulyak, to play Karenina. Makar Zaporozhsky will play Vronsky, and Alexey Fateev will play Karenina. It is known that the actors first read the staging for a more complete and emotional immersion in the material at the Moscow museum-estate of Leo Tolstoy in Khamovniki. A special program was even timed to coincide with the premiere, scheduled for April. And at the end of January, Tolstoy biographer Pavel Basinsky will give a lecture to the Mayakovka audience, where he will answer the question: who is to blame for Anna's death?

Photo: TASS/Evgeny Messman

The second novel that Peregudov intends to bring to the stage is called "The Season of Poisoned Fruits", it is written by Vera Bogdanova, our contemporary, and is dedicated to the growing up of children of the 1990s. Critics note the strong plot, psychological reliability and pronounced social issues of this text. The premiere is promised in November at the Sretenka branch of the theater, and before that, everyone will be able to attend open rehearsals.

Another premiere of Mayakovka, which will certainly attract the attention of theater—goers, is Johann Strauss's operetta The Bat. A funny story about love, infidelity and jealousy will be presented in September by the fashionable director Vladislav Mentorshev, who is working at this theater for the first time. Dramatic actors will be given a chance to show off their vocal and dancing skills.

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Mikhail Bulgakov's texts are still in demand by theaters. And, for example, new versions of the novel "The Master and Margarita" are going to be presented soon by such different directors as Konstantin Bogomolov (Theater on Bronnaya) and Svetlana Zemlyakova (Theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov). But it is known that the heirs of Bulgakov's copyrights are against the alleged Bogomolov outrage, and therefore the release of the play on Bronnaya is still questionable. But the director does not give up, saying that it will be a reflection on "The Master and Margarita", a deconstruction of previous concepts and approaches to the novel.

Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov

Bulgakov's play "Don Quixote," directed by Nikolai Roshchin, promises to be presented in February by the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. The premiere is timed to coincide with the 135th anniversary of the writer. It is reported that the action was moved to the end of the 1930s, where a certain Soviet theater is rehearsing a dramatization of Cervantes' novel. Among those involved in the performance are Irina Pegova, Ivan Volkov, Ilya Kozyrev. Julia Chebakova. Well, the most anticipated premiere at the Art Theater is Shakespeare's Hamlet. Director Andrey Goncharov gave the role of the Prince of Denmark to Yuri Borisov. And the movie star's fans are already looking forward to it!

Photo: Global Look Press/Bulkin Sergey

Theater of Satire

Anton Yakovlev, who currently heads the N.V. Gogol Theater as artistic director, will continue to cooperate with the Satire Theater, where they have been playing his "Les" based on Ostrovsky for five years. This time he will direct the play by Swiss Friedrich Durrenmatt "The Visit of an Old Lady" (1956). However, the director removed the adjective "old" from the title of the famous tragic comedy about collective hypocrisy, and decided to make the lady, billionaire Clara Tsakhanassian, a media mogul and generally modernize the text a little. It is still unknown how the roles are distributed, but most likely the main role will be played by the director's sister, People's Artist of Russia Alena Yakovleva.

The Cashmere Theater

Continuing the theme of biopic films: closer to summer, the young Cashmere Theater, which has a play "Without Yesenin" in its repertoire — about the Russian days of Isadora Duncan, will tell about the first and only tour of Marlene Dietrich in the USSR, which happened back in 1964. The play "What should I tell Madame Dietrich?" was written especially for the People's Artist of Russia, the star of Lenkom, Anna Yakunina. Among the actors are Lyubov Orlova and Grigory Alexandrov, who had a legendary guest at their cottage.

Photo: t.me/teatrkashemir

Taganka Theatre

At the Taganka Theater, where premieres have been released almost monthly in recent years, in January they promise to surprise on the New Stage with a spectacle called "Opus 48. Ostrovsky", which was based on director Alexander Karpushin's "Penniless". A well-known play will be filled with new meanings, and the characters will seem unusual to classical connoisseurs. Suffice it to say that the role of the young Larisa Ogudalova will be played by the director of the theater Irina Apeksimova.