When Tatiana from Killing Eve becomes a bloodthirsty tyrant
We knew her as the icy and mesmerizing Russian mother in the BBC series Killing Eve. We found her in Cannes, first in 2016 with One Week and a Day by Asaph Polonsky, then last year in official selection in Mama by Or Sinai, where she plays the role of a Ukrainian mother immigrated to Israel with a precision and nuances that leave speechless. But it is on the stage, and in the role of a man, a bloodthirsty, hunchbacked, lame, manipulative king, that she has become essential for the French public.
A historical Richard III
In the Richard III at the Gesher Theatre directed by Itay Tiran at the National Stage of the Twins in Sceaux, she enters on a single high heel and from then on the stage is hers. The set is black and white, a checkerboard for the bloodthirsty tyrant, tables, chairs, lights and projections in an atmosphere reminiscent of the great theaters of the East in the 2000s, from Warlikowski to Serebrennikov. Around her, the fifteen actors of Gesher excel in acting, singing, dancing, with a range that goes from church choir to traditional hora. But it’s her that you can’t take your eyes off, feverish, playing with the graves and the severed heads with a precise and wicked jubilation that astounds the audience, dressed as a man, but worse than all the femme fatales of the Bible put together. After three hours, we understand that Evgenia Dodina is playing to wake us up about what is happening in her country. A country she has adopted and that adores her: Israel.
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From Mogilev to Tel Aviv: a life of twists and turns
Born on December 10, 1964 in Mogilev, in Soviet Belarus, trained at the Moscow Academy of Arts, she joined the Ma'akovski Theatre where she met the director Yevgeny Aryeh. It was with him and a handful of actors that she crossed the Mediterranean in the early 1990s to found the Gesher Theatre in Tel Aviv (which means “the bridge”). She was performing before even learning to speak Hebrew and worked on pronunciation in this language she did not yet master. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Medea, the repertoire is immense and she navigates it with ease, winning the actress of the year award at the Israeli Theatre Awards two years in a row, in 2001 and 2002. She then moved to Habima, the legendary national theatre, where she portrayed Anna Karenina, Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, and Chekhov’s Three Sisters. In 2012, a co-production with the Residenztheater in Munich on Bergman’s Persona completed her transformation into an international star. So much so that from 2020 to 2024, she is a permanent member of the ensemble of the Staatstheater Stuttgart, one of the most demanding theatres in Germany. There, she learns her roles in German without speaking the language, as she had done in Hebrew thirty years earlier. Her role in 2020 in the BBC series Killing Eve solidified her status as an international star.
Honors and success
Israel consecrated her as one of its beloved actresses. She continuously acts and perhaps plays all the Russian and Slavic women that the country wanted to see on screen! She received six Ophir nominations, the Israeli Oscars, for this work. But also an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University in 2010. And in 2009, she was the one who lit the flame at Mount Herzl for the 61st anniversary of the state of Israel, “for her contribution to Hebrew theatre.” Festivals also recognize her talent: in Haifa, she won the best actress award for Invisible by Michal Aviad in 2011. And at the Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, she was also rewarded for embodying the great lady of Hebrew theatre Hannah Rovina in Haya o lo haya.
The brilliance of an unclassifiable chameleon
As a man or a woman, as a mother or a tyrant, what defines Evgenia Dodina remains elusive: somewhere between Russia and Israel, sensual and ageless, sanguine and intellectual. The actress is all the more fascinating because she is an absolute chameleon who seamlessly transitions from a Hebrew Shakespeare to a BBC series without missing a beat. We look forward to seeing her soon in Etty, the series by Hagai Levi, the creator of In Treatment, co-produced by Arte and presented out of competition at the Venice Film Festival but also at Series Mania. She plays the mother of Etty Hillesum, the Dutch Jewish woman whose diaries have become a monument in Holocaust literature. Another complex mother. We have no doubt and can’t wait to discover her in this role…
To read our review of Richard III at the National Stage of Sceaux, Les Gémeaux, click here.
