Can you speak Ukrainian? Richard Nelson’s latest play, When the Hurlyburly’s Done, is currently performed in the Ukrainian language (with English supertitles) at the Public Theater through Sunday. Composed in English, Nelson’s text was translated into Ukrainian by Yulia Sosnovska and performed by Theater on Podil, a major company in Ukraine based in Kyiv, where the play premiered in March.
Nelson’s title references the opening scene of Macbeth and his story regards a traveling troupe of actors who are performing Shakespeare somewhere in war-torn Ukraine in 1920 during a time when the Red and White armies were battling for control of Russia. The action of the play occurs one evening following a show. Most of the company has gone elsewhere in the village. Six young-ish women – two who play witches, the actor who plays Lady Macbeth, a choreographer and others – remain behind to prepare and share a meal for themselves and their little children. Neither the kids nor the troupers who the women often talk about appear during the drama’s nearly two-hour span.
Viewers familiar with Nelson’s The Apple Family Plays and his similar cozy dramas about upstate New York people in recent years will recognize the pattern of When the Hurlyburly’s Done: Everyday life and mundane conversation going on against a nightmare looming in the larger world, whether it is a pandemic, a Presidential election or in this historical situation, the bloody horrors of a civil war. While the women peel potatoes and make dumplings – in later scenes they will drink moonshine and dance – their talk ranges from backstage gossip to accounts of terrible atrocities only recently witnessed. The farmhouse the troupers are sharing, it is later revealed, was previously occupied by a Jewish family since suddenly disappeared and likely massacred.
A significant real-life figure who remains offstage is Les Kurbas, a legendary Ukrainian theater-maker whose early career was passed heading this little troupe as its star. A real-life character who does appear in the play is Bronislava Nijinksa, the celebrated choreographer and dancer soon destined to flee the conflict for a productive lifetime abroad. Not incidentally, an epilogue briefly relates the mostly unhappy futures fated for Kurbas and the characters here.
Ukrainian speakers will be able to appreciate the play’s subtleties and humor better than the rest of us, of course. But Nelson’s timeless, timely theme about artists striving to create beauty in spite of war and oppression remains clear.
The production is staged by Nelson more or less in the round in the Public’s 99-seat Shiva space, where a six-member ensemble from Theater on Podil begins the play by arranging tables, chairs and cooking stuff into a semblance of a kitchen. They are dressed by designer Maria Nevgadovsky in casual clothes not specific to time and place but look appropriate here. Those busy, realistic details of cooking a dinner and washing up are adeptly handled by the actors whose easy way with their props is merely one physical indication of their excellence. The members of the ensemble are Yulia Brusentseva, Kateryna Chikina, Mariia Demenko, Natalka Kobizka, Olena Korzeniuk and Maria Kos, and the closely-meshed performances they offer under Nelson’s direction are warm and natural. It is a pleasure to observe their artistry in such intimately staged circumstances.
When the Hurlyburly’s Done opened September 16, 2025 at the Public Theater and runs through September 21. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
