Russian playwright Vassily Sigarev shot to prominence in 2002 with his debut play, , which won him the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwrightthe first time the award had gone to a non-English-speaking writer. Set in a block of low-income apartments near the city cemetery, returns to the urban setting Sigarev knows so well and the people at the bottom of society for whom he has an obstinate affection.