Odessa Russian Drama Theater

(full name, the A. V. Ivanov Odessa Russian Drama Theater). Founded in 1927, the theater bears the name of the Bolshevik revolutionary A. V. Ivanov. M. F. Astangov, D. V. Zerkalova, and B. F. Il’in worked in the theater; a number of the productions were staged by A. L. Gripich and A. D. Treplev. During the Great Patriotic War, the theater was closed; it was reopened in 1944.

The theater’s best productions of Soviet plays included V. Ivanov’s Armored Train 14–69 (1927), Vishnevskii’s The First Cavalry Army (1928), Simonov’s The Russian Question (1947), Pogodin’s The Kremlin Chimes (1956) and Third Pathétique (1959), Salynskii’s The Drummer Girl (1959), Rozov’s On the Wedding Day (1965), Bulgakov’s Flight (1967), Korneichuk’s The Heart’s Remembrance (1970), and Dvoretskii’s The Outsider (1972).

The theater has also staged Russian and foreign classical plays, including Gogol’s The Inspector-General (1952), Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (1955), King Lear (1963), and Romeo and Juliet (1967), Gorky’s Enemies (1955), The Last Ones (1957), The Old Man (1963), and The Zykovs (1968), Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1960), Ostrovskii’s Wolves and Sheep (1957) and The Dowerless Bride (1973), and A. K. Tolstoy’s Tsar Fedor loannovich (1972).

In 1973 the theater’s company included People’s Artist of the RSFSR S. M. Prostiakov, People’s Artists of the Ukrainian SSR L. I. Bugova, Iu. A. Velichko, and P. V. Mikhailov, Honored Artist of the RSFSR B. I. Zaidenberg, Honored Artists of the Ukrainian SSR E. A. Kotov, L. I. Mershchii, V. M. Naumtsev, G. I. Nozhenko, L. F. Poliakova, V. I. Storozhenko, and L. B. Chinidzhants, Honored Artist of the Uzbek SSR L. S. Maren-nikov, and Honored Artist of the Latvian SSR A. G. Bessonov. The principal director since 1973 has been Honored Art Worker of the RSFSR K. S. Cherniadev.