Yaga

Most people picture Baba Yaga as a hunched grandmother in a remote forest, grinding bones. This play asks what would happen if she were a clever, self-assured modern woman whose motives are hard to pin down.

A detective arrives in a remote town to look into the vanishing of a young heir to a yogurt fortune. He soon wonders how an obscure local legend about an old witch connects to the case. A nervous local sheriff, a university professor who prefers younger men, and a large group of eccentric residents help or hinder him as the Slavic myth folds into hidden lives, old magic and a crowd of possible culprits.

Part comic fairy tale and part whodunit, the play gives its heroine a voice and examines how men have historically told her story. Readers will come away with a new respect for the name Baba Yaga.