Children of the Sun

by Maxim Gorky, Andrew Upton (Translator)

Overview

I didn't read your books. I licked them, I rubbed them all over my naked body and licked them.
Protasov, detached and idealistic, wants only to immerse himself in chemical experiments to perfect mankind. He's more or less oblivious to the voracious advances of the half-crazed widow Melaniya and his best friend's unrelenting pursuit of his wife, let alone the cholera epidemic and the starving mob at his gates. While Nanny fusses round, Protasov's admiring circle, variously skeptical, romantic and lovesick, spar over culture and the cosmos. Only Liza, neurotic and patronized, feels the suffering of the peasantry and senses that their own privileged world is in jeopardy.
Gone? They're everywhere. Have you heard about the riots? The starvation and the flagrant disregard of authority. This disregard is building walls and barriers between us all. And they are massing. The crowds of angry people. And the hate... the hate between us all... kills everything.
Written during the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, Maxim Gorky's darkly comic Children of the Sun depicts the new middle-class, foolish perhaps but likeable, as they flounder around, philosophizing, yearning, or scuttling between test tubes, blind to their impending annihilation.
This is Andrew Upton's fourth English version of a play for the National by one of the great Russian masters, including his acclaimed adaptation of Gorky's Philistines.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571304882
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	04/30/2013
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	142 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Maxim Gorky and Andrew Upton
The Mother (1907) and for the three volumes of his Autobiography, with only The Lower Depths (1902) established on the stage; but in the last third of the twentieth century his other plays began also to be recognised for their portrayals of the painful pre-revolutionary decades. Besides Philistines (1901), these included Summerfolk (1904), Children of the Sun (1905), Enemies (1906) and Vassa Shelesnova (1910). After some equivocation and years in exile, he finally embraced the Revolution, and died in 1936.
Hanging Man, was staged in 2002, followed by Riflemind in 2007. He has adapted a number of classics for the company, and in 2007 his version of Gorky's Philistines was seen at the National Theatre in London, followed by Bulgakov's The White Guard (2010) and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (2011). He wrote the films Bangers (1999), which he also directed, and Gone (2006), and the libretto for Alan John's opera Through the Looking Glass (2008).