ABSTRACT
The theatre lived on in a hand-to-mouth sort of way until 1973, when Roman Malkin became its managing director and Efim Padve its artistic director. Padve already enjoyed a successful career in Leningrad and had been a pupil of the redoubtable Georgy Tovstonogov, director of Leningrad’s Bolshoy Drama Theatre, which was considered to be ‘virtually the strongest Russian company of the post-Stalin period’ (Smeliansky, 1999: 13). He shared Malkin’s ambition to give the Maly Drama Theatre an artistic project, which it had failed in the past to combine with its social plan. Padve demanded more of actors, raised the artistic and technical standard of productions, and focused on contemporary plays, both Russian and foreign, including plays by Edward Albee – a remarkable choice of repertoire for a lack-lustre touring company with no authority whatsoever in Leningrad and modest achievements in the Leningrad province. As a result of its general overhaul, the theatre was able to build up audiences in the city while continuing its work in the region, although now at a higher creative level and still at the gruelling pace of up to 200 performances each season, all of it in extremely difficult working conditions (Malkin, St Petersburg, 30 September 1998).
