DESCRIPTION:
Music: Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102: Movement II (Andante)
Composer: Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
Performers: Angela Cheng (piano) & CBC Radio Orchestra
Conductor: Mario Bernardi

Starring Peter Anderson as Akaky Akakyevich
Directed by Morris Panych

From the original Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company Stage Production, based on the story by Nikolai Gogol.

The Overcoat, a performing arts masterwork inspired by the short story by Nikolai Gogol, the nineteenth century absurdist best known for scathing political commentary. At its heart is a simple moral fable of a humble Civil Servant, a lonely and alienated man who is isolated in his own world. The story is set to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich without a single word of dialogue, resulting in a seamless piece that operates on a grand scale.

At the heart of the work is the lean figure of the Civil Servant, a social pariah touched with nobility. Like Chaplin, he has a sweet innocence that triumphantly survives the vicious taunts hurled at him by everyone around him. Though a wordless mix of movement, mime and music, the production engages its audiences in the paradox that the realization of material dreams can bring about mans destruction. The same overcoat that proves emancipation also enslaves him in insanity. A Russian composer seemed an obvious choice for the music of The Overcoat. "I love Gogol," declared Shostakovich in Testimony, his memoirs. "I'm not bragging, but I know pages and pages by heart." Shostakovich's fondness for Gogol was lifelong: the two men were kindred spirits, lampooning bureaucracy and officialdom in particular. With its ineluctably Russian sound, taut rhythms and spiky melodies, Shostakovich's music - whether or not originally written for the theatre - is, as it were, tailor-made for The Overcoat.