Musical in two acts | Book by Michael Weller | Music by Lucy Simon | Song lyrics by Michael Korie and Amy Powers | Based on the novel by Boris Pasternak | German by Sabine Ruflair (song lyrics) and Jürgen Hartmann (book) | Running time approx. 3 1/2 hours | One intermission
Love in times of revolution: With "Doctor Zhivago", Boris Pasternak not only created an epochal novel of world renown, but also the template for David Lean's Oscar-winning Hollywood film adaptation with Omar Sharif. Now the love story about the poet Doctor Zhivago can be experienced as a large-scale musical.
Growing up in the Russian Tsarist Empire, Yuri Zhivago gets caught between the fronts in the turmoil of war and revolution. As an independent free spirit, he is not only caught between two regimes, but also between two women: his wife Tonia and the mysterious Lara. But Yuri is not Lara's only admirer: in addition to him, Lara's childhood friend Viktor Komarovsky and her husband Pasha Antipov, leader of the Red Army, are also fighting for her heart.
Pasternak himself did not live to see the success of his work; his novel was reviled and banned in the Soviet Union for 30 years. In 1958, he even turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature out of love for his homeland and died in seclusion two years later. With her Broadway musical, two-time Grammy winner Lucy Simon now brings his greatest work back to life and creates a contemporary sound that integrates emotional ballads as well as the overwhelming Russian language of sound.