Anna Narinskaya’s play The Last Word, which has transferred to London’s Marylebone Theatre after its premiere in Berlin in 2022, gives voice to nine women who have fallen foul of the Russian legal system in recent years.
They range from members of feminist band Pussy Riot to artist Sasha Skochilenko, who featured in the prisoner exchange with the west on August 1. Another voice is that of poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya, who protested on Red Square against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia back in 1968.
The play offers a montage of their courtroom speeches, all based on verbatim transcripts, and all performed by Alisa Khazanova. In the final moments of the performance, a list of 85 more women who have been imprisoned recently scrolls silently in front of the audience. This ongoing tragedy continues to consume the lives of many women.
