Plasticine

British premiere for extraordinary first play by 24-year-old from Western Siberia, winner of the Anti-Booker Prize In a faceless city in the depths of present-day Russia a young boy dies.

Women in the street are drunk, fight and demand sex.

Like a latterday figure from Dostoyevsky, the schoolboy Maksim makes his way through this urban hell, drawn into it one moment, repelled the next.

His only retreat is into a private world moulded by himself, out of which springs a final act of reckless courage. 'You attempt your home-grown welfare and the results are like this.

Look: drug addicts, delinquents and the dregs of society...' The British premiere took place at the Royal Court Theatre in Spring 2002 directed by Dominic Cooke.