The 88-year-old actress will bring the play “My Grandson Benjamin” by Lyudmila Ulitskaya to Israel. In January 2027, the production will be shown in Be’er Sheva, Rishon LeZion, Ashdod, and Haifa. Behind this theatrical poster is the story of an actress who opposed the Russian war in Ukraine, lost the stage of Moscow’s “Sovremennik,” but continued to perform outside of Russia.
From January 24 to 30, 2027, Lia Akhedzhakova will once again take the stage before the Israeli audience. In the play “My Grandson Benjamin,” she plays Esther, a Jewish mother who decides to arrange the personal life of her adult son and goes to Bobruisk for a suitable bride.
The production by director Marfa Gorvits is already more than ten years old. It has been shown in Russia, Israel, European countries, and North America. However, in recent years, the biography of the main role performer has changed significantly.
Akhedzhakova was born in Ukraine, opposed Russian aggression back in 2014, supported Ukrainian political prisoners, and after February 24, 2022, did not abandon her position. In 2023, she left the theater where she had worked since 1977.
View available seats and buy tickets for “My Grandson Benjamin” with Lia Akhedzhakova in Israel
The author of NANews, Alexander Khmelnitsky, tells about the play and the circumstances that brought the actress to the international touring stage.
Born in Dnipro, grew up in a theatrical family
Lia Medzhidovna Akhedzhakova was born on July 9, 1938, in Dnipropetrovsk, now Ukrainian Dnipro. Her childhood was spent in Maykop, in the North Caucasus. Her parents were connected with the theater, and the future actress knew it from the inside from an early age.
In 1962, she graduated from GITIS — the State Institute of Theatrical Art in Moscow. She worked at the Moscow Youth Theater, and in 1977 she moved to “Sovremennik,” one of the most famous Moscow drama theaters.
Millions of viewers know her from Eldar Ryazanov’s films. In “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!” she played Tanya, Nadya’s friend; in “Office Romance” — the secretary Verochka, who teaches the strict boss about fashion and relationships. There were also “Garage,” “Promised Heaven,” “Old Nags,” “Playing the Victim,” and dozens of other works.
Akhedzhakova’s Ukrainian connection was not limited to her birthplace. Together with Bohdan Stupka, she played in Valery Fokin’s play “Old World Love” based on Gogol’s “Old World Landowners.” Stupka played the role of Afanasy Ivanovich, Akhedzhakova — Pulcheria Ivanovna. Their stage duet became one of the main features of the production.
Over the years, the actress openly spoke about the events in modern Ukraine.
Ukraine: the position Akhedzhakova took long before 2022
During the Euromaidan of 2013–2014, Akhedzhakova publicly spoke about her respect for Ukrainians who took to mass protests. In March 2014, after the start of the Russian intervention in Crimea, she joined the appeal of Russian filmmakers against military intervention in Ukraine’s affairs.
Later, the actress explicitly stated that Crimea belongs to Ukraine.
In 2015, Akhedzhakova supported Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who was then in Russian custody. In 2018, she defended Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, convicted in Russia on terrorism charges and released during a prisoner exchange in 2019.
These statements were made long before the full-scale invasion. Akhedzhakova was not a politician and did not hold government positions. She used her fame to publicly speak about what was happening.
On February 21, 2022, even before the start of the full-scale war, the actress signed a collective anti-war appeal by representatives of the Russian intelligentsia. After February 24, her position did not change.
For a famous Russian actress who had worked in state theaters for decades, the consequences soon became quite tangible.
How Akhedzhakova lost “Sovremennik”
In the fall of 2022, “Sovremennik” canceled performances of the play “The First Bread” featuring Akhedzhakova. Before that, the production was criticized and complained about by the pro-government organization “Officers of Russia.”
In December of the same year, a planned January performance of “My Grandson Benjamin” was canceled in St. Petersburg.
On February 8, 2023, the management of “Sovremennik” removed “The Gin Game” from the repertoire — the last play in which Akhedzhakova still participated.
According to the actress, the theater’s director, Yuri Kravets, explained the decision with numerous angry letters and recommendations from the Moscow Department of Culture. The theater itself did not publicly name her anti-war speeches as the official reason for the cancellation.
For the actress, this meant that after 46 years of work at “Sovremennik,” she no longer had the opportunity to take the stage there.
On March 10, 2023, she published a letter in which she said goodbye to the theater. In particular, Akhedzhakova wrote: “I didn’t have time to say goodbye to my stage.”
On April 5, 2023, her employment with “Sovremennik” ended. The official wording was resignation at her own request. But the statement was written after the actress was effectively left without performances.
She was 84 years old at the time.
Fifteen thousand letters for Lia
The theater’s decision caused a reaction far beyond Russia.
Director Kirill Serebrennikov, with whom Akhedzhakova worked on the film “Playing the Victim,” together with “Novaya Gazeta,” organized the “Letters for Lia” campaign.
Viewers were encouraged to send words of support to the actress. Over three weeks, more than 15,000 letters came from Russia and other countries. They were printed, collected, and handed over to Akhedzhakova.
In her response, she thanked people, many of whom were unfamiliar to her. For the audience, it was an opportunity to say to the actress what they could not express after the performance, which was removed from the repertoire.
The story continued. Without a permanent Moscow stage, Akhedzhakova began to participate more actively in international tours.
Ukrainian flag after a performance in Germany
In the summer of 2023, Akhedzhakova’s name appeared in political news again — this time due to an episode directly related to “My Grandson Benjamin.”
On June 27, after a performance in Bremen, Germany, the actress found herself on stage with a Ukrainian flag. Photos spread on the internet.
In Russia, a public activist, Vitaly Borodin, complained about her, after which it became known about an investigation by the Ministry of Internal Affairs under the article on “discrediting” the Russian army.
Akhedzhakova herself explained the incident differently. According to her, the Ukrainian flag was unexpectedly handed to her along with flowers, and initially, she did not even realize what she was holding. The actress called the incident a provocation.
There are no reliable grounds to claim that she organized this stage action in advance. At the same time, her long-standing public support for Ukraine is confirmed by numerous speeches and statements unrelated to this episode.
New role at 86 — and back to Israel
After leaving “Sovremennik,” Akhedzhakova did not end her career. She continued to play “My Grandson Benjamin” on international tours.
In March 2024, the play was shown in Toronto, New York, Chicago, Miami, and Boston. The production remained in demand among the Russian-speaking theater audience.
And at the beginning of 2025, a new premiere took place.
In Yerevan, director Boris Pavlovich presented the play “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” based on the novel by Polish writer and Nobel Prize laureate in literature Olga Tokarczuk.
Akhedzhakova played the main character — Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman living among mountains and forests and trying to unravel mysterious deaths. The production also featured Alexander Feklistov, Musya Totibadze, Maria Krol, and Gleb Romashevsky.
In April 2025, the play was brought to Israel. It was shown in Ashkelon, Haifa, Petah Tikva, and Tel Aviv.
Akhedzhakova’s story is not the only one among Russian artists who found themselves outside familiar theatrical venues after the start of the war. NANews previously reported on Alexander Filippenko’s tour in Israel — an actor who also publicly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“My Grandson Benjamin”: a Jewish mother who decided everything for her son
For the January 2027 tour, Akhedzhakova returns to the role of Esther — the heroine of Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s play.
The play was written in the late 1980s. According to the organizers, Ulitskaya initially envisioned Akhedzhakova as the main character. But Marfa Gorvits’s stage production appeared much later — its premiere took place in July 2015.
Esther grew up in the Jewish environment of old Bobruisk. She retained her youthful ideas about family, origin, marriage, and maternal duty. For her, her son’s future is too serious a matter to allow him to choose a wife on his own.
She goes to Bobruisk and brings back a girl from a family she considers suitable. However, it turns out that the mother’s ideas about a proper marriage do not match the lives of young people.
Alongside Esther are other characters, each with their past and their ideas of happiness. An important place is occupied by Lisa, a kind and lonely midwife, played by Alexandra Islentyeva in the well-known touring version of the production.
Esther’s son, Leva, around whom much of the conflict is built, does not even appear before the audience in this production. He is talked about, his fate is discussed, and decisions are attempted to be made for him. And in the title, there is already the unborn grandson Benjamin — the future generation that everyone cares about in advance.
This is a comedy with recognizable family situations, but its content is not limited to the conflict of a domineering mother and an adult son.
Bobruisk and the world of Eastern European Jewry
Bobruisk is a city in modern Belarus, historically associated with a large Jewish community.
According to the Israeli memorial complex “Yad Vashem,” at the end of the 19th century, about 21,000 Jews lived in Bobruisk — approximately 60% of the city’s population. In January 1939, the Jewish population was 26,703 people, or 31.7% of the residents.
The city had Jewish schools, cultural and public institutions. Yiddish was used in education and even in the work of one of the judicial instances.
After the German occupation in June 1941, the Jews of Bobruisk were persecuted, herded into a ghetto, and mass murdered. The main killing actions took place in the fall of 1941.
This history helps to understand Esther’s world. She belongs to a generation for whom traditions, family ties, ideas about origin and marriage were connected with the life of Eastern European Jewish communities.
The play does not involve a documentary reproduction of the Holocaust. But the memory of the vanished world is present behind the outwardly domestic conflict. That is why comedic situations in the play can coexist with tragic memories.
For Israeli viewers, whose families have preserved stories about immigrants from Ukraine, Belarus, and other regions of Eastern Europe, this cultural context is quite recognizable.
Why the play has been performed for more than ten years
Marfa Gorvits built the production on domestic scenes, dialogues, and psychological details. Here, conversations, family quarrels, unexpected confessions, character habits, and the actors’ ability to instantly change the mood of the scene are important.
In 2017, “My Grandson Benjamin” received four awards at the “Amur Autumn” festival in Blagoveshchensk.
Lia Akhedzhakova was noted for the best leading female role, Marfa Gorvits for directing, Nadezhda Lumpova for a supporting role. The fourth award was a special jury prize for creating an artistic production in an enterprise theater.
At that time, the play received high marks for combining comedy and drama. There is no need to explain every joke or every family argument: the viewer recognizes familiar characters and relationships.
In 2027, Akhedzhakova will be 88 years old. She returns to Esther more than a decade after the premiere and almost four years after leaving “Sovremennik.”
NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers these tours not only as a cultural event. The story of an actress born in Ukraine, who publicly supported Ukrainians and continued her theatrical career after losing the Moscow stage, adds additional context to the January poster. At the same time, “My Grandson Benjamin” remains an independent play about family, love, memory, and the right of a person to choose their own life.
“My Grandson Benjamin” in Israel: dates, cities, tickets
Four performances are announced for January 2027. All start at 8:00 PM.
January 24, 2027, Sunday — Be’er Sheva
Performing Arts Center, Grand Hall. Yitzhak Rager Avenue, 41.
Ticket prices: ₪235–405.
January 25, 2027, Monday — Rishon LeZion
Gehal Meir LeTarbut. Jabotinsky Street, 16.
Ticket prices: ₪255–475.
January 28, 2027, Thursday — Ashdod
Performing Arts Center. Derech HaAretz Street, 1.
Ticket prices: ₪245–455.
January 30, 2027, Saturday — Haifa
Teatron HaTzafon, Kiryat Haim. Beilinson Street, 41.
Ticket prices: ₪245–455.
View available seats and buy tickets for “My Grandson Benjamin” with Lia Akhedzhakova in Israel
Other plays, concerts, and cultural events can be found on the partner project’s platform — sTDe | NAnews — Israel event listings.