Vicious in its mockery of early Communist society, The Bedbug tells the story of Ivan Prisypkin, a worker who wants to marry into the bourgeoisie and live a life of decadence. But a bizarre accident at his wedding leaves him frozen in a block of ice. Flash forward 50 years in the utopian (not so vaguely communist) future, where passion, vice, and even love is ancient history. A defrosted Prisypkin wakes in this cold new world to find himself a zoo attraction, the bedbug that was accidentally frozen with him now his lone companion.
This production – the first fully staged one in New York since the 1970s – will be performed with an ensemble of 9 actors playing over 90 roles, and honor the zany spirit of the original, while highlighting the paradox of how much and how little has changed in the last 90 years. The show uses Dmitri Shostakovich’s original score, once thought lost until unearthed from the Soviet state files in the 1990s, as a stepping stone of inspiration for original live incidental music
