Ladybird

Dima, 19, lives with his alcoholic father in a block of flats near the cemetery.

Tomorrow he'll join the army and go to fight in Chechnya.

Tonight he's trying to have a party. Lera, 20, lives in the same block. She reckons she's won a fortune if she can just borrow 1000 roubles to enter a competition.

Yulka, her cousin, 18, is more interested in extracting proof of Dima's devotion to her: 'Would you jump off the balcony for me?

Could you?' Outside, snow begins to fall on the abandoned cemetery...Ladybird is Vassily Sigarev's third play to be staged in England - and published by NHB.

He shot to prominence in 2002 with his debut piece, Plasticine, which won him the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright - the first time the award had gone to a non-English-speaking writer.

He followed it with Black Milk in Spring 2003. Like his previous two plays, Ladybird is premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, the foremost powerhouse of new plays in the country.

With Ladybird, Sigarev returns to the urban setting he knows so well and the people at the bottom of society for whom he has an obstinate affection.