Pushkin, a new verse play written by Jonathan Leaf, examines the final two-years in the life of Russia’s most enduring poet, Alexander Pushkin.
Always quick to take offense, delusionally jealous, forever in debt, and censored by Tsar Nicholas I, Pushkin chronicles the sufferings of an artist of modest rank and mixed race, the confrontation between his exceptional talent and a flawed society, and the painful choice between duty and personal happiness.
In his struggles to end serfdom and reform his homeland, Pushkin, Russia’s first literary superstar, raised his voice above exile and censorship to turn his art into a substitute for politics poetically declaring, “Autocratic miscreant, Thee, thy throne I detest.”
