This February, for the first time ever, Arlekin Players will perform a play in English. Previously all plays have been performed in Russian (Immigrants 3.0, The Guest), or in Russian with English surtitles (Memorial Prayer). Now Arlekin Players is drawing the English-speaking audience of Greater Boston in with the English language re-run of the highly praised show Natasha’s Dream, based on a play by Yaroslava Pulinovich.

Originally performed in Russian in December 2015, the production has been translated into English by John Freedman, an American writer, translator, critic and scholar of Russian theater, who has lived and worked in Moscow since 1988. “[It] is one of the most resonant texts to have emerged in Russia over the last two or three years,” noted Freedman in 2011. “[It] is an incisive look at the complex life of one teenage girl who runs up against insensitive teachers, shifty classmates, a journalist who unwittingly wins her heart, and a couple of experiences that most likely will scar her life forever.”

He continues, “Pulinovich’s text, written when she herself was a teenager, is deceptively simple. Much more than a picture of teenage angst, it is a stinging rebuke to an insensitive society. It is a portrait in pastels — with a few strokes of dark, bloody red — of youthful dreams being offered up as a sacrifice to ‘the way of the world.’”

The play will be performed on February 27-28 at the Arlekin Players Theater, 368 Hillside Ave, Needham, MA.

Find out more about Natasha’s Dream.