International Theater in Town for Chekhov Fest

It might be Matthew Bourne’s “Cinderella,” a production of the New Adventures Company of London that opens two weeks of performances on June 28. Or it might be Pere Arquillue’s dramatization of Samuel Beckett’s story “First Love” for the Greece 2010 Festival of Barcelona.
Two of the festival’s 17 productions involving foreign companies “borrow” casts from other countries.
Declan Donnellan’s “The Tempest,” which opened to raves in London in the spring, is another in a long line of collaborations between the British director and a Russian acting company. Featuring Igor Yasulovich as the displaced and disconsolate Prospero, “Tempest” opened Wednesday and performs Thursday and twice on Friday.
In a similar vein, but with different components, we are promised a piece called “Town. History” directed by Vladimir Pankov of Moscow’s SounDrama Studio and acted by the company of Studio Six, a New York troupe consisting of actors who studied in Moscow. This piece collating stories by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Irving Washington plays July 15 to 17 at the Meyerhold Center.
Renowned Italian director Romeo Castellucci, who first visited Moscow during the festival’s fourth running in 2001, unveils his “J Project. On the Concept of the Face, Regarding the Son of God” at the Teatrium Na Serpukhovke, where it runs from Saturday to Tuesday. “J Project,” according to the director, is an attempt to look beyond the surface of a portrait of Jesus Christ.
Other artists making return visits during the two-month-long festival, which closes July 31, include the Canadian master Robert Lepage and the French visual wizard Phillipe Genty