KYIV, Ukraine — In a black-walled theater at the heart of a darkened capital, the audience sits rapt as the plot unspools on a stark stage: A murderous dictator's calculated cruelty spirals out of control, and his madness grows in tandem with plots against him.
A venerable Kyiv drama company's staging of "Caligula," the absurdist play by Albert Camus about a tyrannical Roman emperor, hits close to home, nearly 10 months after Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops invaded Ukraine, setting off a calamitous war.
The modernist production has been playing to packed houses since July and is expected to run through December, although performances are often interrupted by air-raid alerts that send cast and audience alike hurrying to bomb shelters.
