'Mother Russia' Off-Broadway cast, creative team set

Lauren Yee's new drama premieres with Signature Theatre Company in February, featuring four NYC theatre veterans under the direction of Teddy Bergman.

Summary

• Mother Russia off Broadway stars Steven Boyer; Adam Chanler-Berat; Rebecca Naomi Jones; and David Turner
• The play runs at the Pershing Square Signature Center from February 3 to March 15
• The play follows a young man getting wrapped up in surveillance work while adjusting to life after the fall of the Soviet Union

Signature Theatre has set the cast and creative team for its winter 2026 production of Mother Russia off Broadway, running from February 3 to March 15 at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

The cast includes Steven Boyer (Kimberly Akimbo) as Dmitri, Adam Chanler-Berat (Next to Normal) as Evgeny, Rebecca Naomi Jones (Hadestown) as Katya, and David Turner (Into the Woods) as Mother Russia.

The creative team includes scenic designers dots, costume designer Sophia Choi, lighting designer Stacey Derosier, and sound designer Mikhail Fiksel. Fight direction is by UnkleDave's Fight-House, and dialect coaching is by Deborah Hecht.

Written by Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band), Mother Russia is set in St. Petersburg in 1992, right after the Soviet Union has collapsed. A young man gets a surveillance job targeted at a mysterious former pop singer, which leads to him falling in love, losing his bearings, and finally tasting freedom.

“I love the movie The Lives of Others [set in East Berlin in 1984], and wondered what that surveillance culture looks like in a period of time when the Soviet machine has collapsed," Yee said in a statement. "You can change a system, but the people still are habituated to the old structures: because of the environment these characters grew up in and the world they inherited, they're unable to connect without layers of suspicion and espionage, and there’s something incredibly funny and incredibly heartbreaking about that.”

“What's so fabulous about the journey of the play is that the comedy of it gives you a certain distancing effect — look at these guys in Russia in 1992, acting like baby deer walking for the first time in this new world," Bergman echoed in a statement. "But then it comes into focus how much this time period is speaking to our own crisis of belonging, and the tone shifts so beautifully as we start noticing that resonance.”

Get Mother Russia tickets now.