One Hour Eighteen Minutes

Date: Wed 16 November 2011

The British premiere of One Hour and Eighteen Minutes, presented in conjunction with Sputnik Theatre as part of iceandfire and Amnesty's script submission scheme Everyone Has The Right.

 One Hour Eighteen Minutes is a documentary play which pieces together the final hours of Sergey Magnitsky's life. Sergey was a corporate lawyer who sued the Russian government for one of the most blatant cases of tax fraud in Russian history. Out of retaliation, the police arrested Magnitsky and threw him into jail. Over the course of eleven months, he was held in pre-trial detention, without charge, and tortured. He died in prison on November 16 2009. On the second anniversary of his death, this play is a dark and intimate look at a corrupt system - the medieval side of modern day Russia.

ELENA GREMINA is one of Russia’s most important playwrights. This play has been hailed by many as a unique new direction in Russian playwriting because it takes a difficult ongoing subject and does not disguise the names of real people involved. While pressure was put on the theatre not to stage this play, they didn’t back down - and so far it has run for several months without any negative consequences to those involved.