Stage

Soviet Theater Director Reinstated: Soviet theater director Yuri Lyubimov has been given back his job at Moscow’s Taganka Theatre five years after he was dismissed and exiled for staging productions displeasing to the Kremlin. The official news agency Tass said that for 18 months Lyubimov, 72, would work both at the theater and abroad as he fulfills Western contracts he has already signed. Under Lyubimov’s direction, the Taganka gained a reputation for radical thinking at the height of what is now termed a period of stagnation under the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Lyubimov was accused in 1984 of activities “hostile to the Soviet state” under Kremlin chief Konstantin Chernenko and stripped of his Soviet nationality during a trip to Britain. He was given back his citizenship in May.