Stage Review - Vassa
Presented By: Theatre33 - Seattle, WA
Show Run: November 06 - December 06, 2026
Date Reviewed: Thursday, November 08, 2026
Run Time: 100 Minutes (no intermission)
Reviewed by: Vid Hardt
I didn't make it all the way through 'Succession' on HBO. Once I realized the show was Making a Point, I checked the spoilers to confirm my suspicions, and bailed without regret.
Maxim Gorky wrote his own version of such a story in 1910, onstage through December 6 at Bellevue's multilingual theater company Theatre33, in Russian with English translation on a monitor house left. Its conclusions are more humane and tragic than merely satirical.
The work of Maxim Gorky was unfamiliar to me until a few months ago, when a social media post by the Romanian-American poet Alina Ştefănescu about a new reissue of Gorky's book 'Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Andreyev' prompted me to order it for myself. Its unevenness of tone and quality alternately drew me in and led me to set it aside for weeks at a time, obviously due to that the parts he'd written before the Russian revolution sparkled with clarity and brevity, while what he rewrote years later, when he was the darling of Lenin's new USSR, was often verbose and equivocating.
Gorky was nevertheless at all times a sharp and shrewd observer and renderer of human character.
So when The Sound on Stage offered a chance to review this production of Gorky's Vassa (First Version) I leapt at the opportunity, especially because it uses the 1910 (not its post-revolutionary 1935) text.
I wasn't disappointed. Marianna Chebodaryova's strong direction and striking design captivate from first glance. The single set centers on a dark wood conference table surrounded by plush black executive chairs, immediately establishing the story as about wealth. A beautifully stylized artificial proscenium is created within the intimate black box by three receding, squared-off arches of pipes illuminated by soft white/yellow string lights that heighten the set's theatricality.
And to set the tone for all the audience (uniformly Russian speakers, far as I could tell, save myself at the first Sunday 5pm performance), Chebodaryova starts the show with an extended pantomime, not in the script, displaying the lusts and vices of the characters in this contemporary telling of the story that otherwise hews closely to the text, though baby photos are on smart phones, and other such 2026 touches.
Vassa Zheleznova (Irina Bogdanova, firmly in command) is a corporate chief and family matriarch as much crumbles around her. Her pathetic and unspecifiedly disabled son Pavel (a histrionic Leonid Zelenstov) is cuckolded by his flashy hedonistic uncle (a gleeful Alex Bagdasarov, initially in dazzling white fur) and hot wife Lyudmila (a comically mercurial Svetlana Tuchkova) while a dying father offstage accelerates maneuvering in a family already expert in all imaginable schemes, including murder.
Prodigal daughter Anna (statuesque Anastasia Podlazova) seizes center stage on her return home from her staff officer husband to make the most of the chaos, while also-ran son Semyon (played as hopelessly outmatched by Evgeny Yakovenko) and his deliciously grasping wife Natalya (a radiant Veronica Sannikova) help anchor the production's ultimately comic tone as they too try to position themselves for advancement.
Batyr Galeev as Mikhailo, Elena Groysman as Dunechka, and Ekaterina Vlasova as Linden complete the attractive and talented cast.
The English titles weren't the easiest to follow, often breaking off mid-line, but I was never in doubt about the relationships between characters and conflicts unfolding.
Theatre33's Russian-language production of Maxim Gorky's Vassa (first version) uses a house left monitor for its English translation, but you'll most be struck by its dazzling production design, vivid direction, and passionate performances by the attractive and talented cast. It's a less cynical, more true-to-life version of HBO's Succession, but written in 1910, and in this production, set in the present.
Vassa (Russian with English subtitles) runs on stage at Theatre33 in Bellevue through December 6. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.theatre33wa.org/.
Photo credit: Sergey Prozhogin
