Ensemble for the Romantic Century have today announced that British actress and national treasure Vanessa Redgrave will play Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, in two audio dramas that combine classical music and theatre.

Akhmatova, The Heart Is Not Made Of Stone is based on the play by ERC Artistic Director, Eve Wolf, and spans 20 years from Anna’s meeting with British philosopher Isaiah Berlin in Leningrad in 1945. The play features Akhmatova’s incomparable poetry and the romantic drama between her and Berlin amidst the repressive Stalinist regime.

Drama Desk Award winning actor Paul Hilton (The Inheritance) will play Isaiah Berlin, alongside Charles Daish, Lucy Doyle and William Oxborrow as KGBVD operatives and Sebastian Knapp as Anna’s son, Lev. Historic recordings of the music of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich chosen by Wolf as Music Director accompany the audio as well as documentary sound footage compiled by Renee Silverman.

Real Writing is a piece about Akhmatova by British playwright, Maureen Lawrence. It takes place from 1938-1992 and centres on the relationship between the poet and young Russian journalist and translator, Lydia Chukovskaya. Their meetings are recalled as they tried to free their loved ones from imprisonment in Stalin’s gulag. Lydia is played by Daisy Bevan.  Eve Wolf is the Music Director once again and the production features music by Prokofiev and contemporary Russian composer, Sofia Gubaidulina.

Both audio dramas are directed by ERC Director of Theatrical Production, Donald T. Sanders. He said: "It’s unbelievably exciting right now that Vanessa plays Anna Akhmatova, a woman and artist whom Vanessa admires so much. I always dreamed of Vanessa playing Anna on stage but the cards were never right. We did Akhmatova, The Heart is not made of Stone at NYC's Thalia in 2012, at Brooklyn's BAM in 2016, and were scheduled for reviving it at the Duke on 42nd Street last spring when Off Broadway shut down."

Recording took place during October 2020 at London's Sonica Studios.

Post- production is under way at London's Sound Room Studios with Wilfredo Acosta as sound engineer. The completed work is expected early in December 2020.