Theatre on Podil

When the hoardings came down on Andriivskyi Uzviz in late 2016, Kyiv got its first clear look at the new Theatre on Podil — a black metal box set among pastel facades — and the verdicts came fast: some residents likened it to a crematorium, others to a reactor block at Chornobyl. Few new buildings in the city have been argued over so loudly.

Behind that facade is a chamber theatre founded in 1987, one of Kyiv’s most respected small stages. Keep the two apart: the walls are barely a decade old and still divide opinion, while the company inside has spent more than thirty years building a name for close, contemporary theatre. And keep an open mind — the facade reads very differently in a photograph than it does from the cobbles below it.

The building that split a street

The official opening came on 9 October 2017, with President Petro Poroshenko and Mayor Vitali Klitschko among the guests. Years in the making, the reconstruction was largely paid for by the Roshen confectionery corporation — reportedly around 174 million hryvnia — and designed by the Kharkiv architect Oleh Drozdov with his bureau, Drozdov & Partners.

The objections were loud and organised. The ‘Andriivskyi Uzviz Community’ picketed, the National Union of Architects questioned whether the building respected heritage rules, and plenty of Kyivans simply felt a dark modern block had no place on the city’s most romantic street. The counterweight is worth stating plainly: the same building won the Grand Prix at the 2018 Ukrainian Urban Awards and was nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award, Europe’s top architecture prize, in 2019. On a photo the facade looks severe; in the flow of the descent it argues its case rather better.

The company behind the walls

The theatre is far older than its home. Vitaliy Malakhov founded it in August 1987 as an experimental studio, and in its early years it was an itinerant company, playing where it could before settling for a long stretch near Kontraktova Square. Official recognition followed — state-theatre status in 1994, the ‘academic’ honorific in 2006 — but its reputation was made on Malakhov’s Shakespeare, among them Iago and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Malakhov, a People’s Artist of Ukraine, ran the place for more than three decades, until his death in November 2021. Soon after, the city gave the stage his name; it is now formally the Theatre on Podil named after Vitaliy Malakhov — founder and the building’s fiercest champion in one.

A small room, on purpose

Everything here is built around closeness. The main auditorium seats just 253, with a studio space for a few dozen more, so wherever you sit the actors are near enough to catch what a bigger house swallows. That intimacy is the point, and it survived the move into the glossy new building.

The repertoire runs from world and Ukrainian classics to new writing and experimental work, Shakespeare still a thread. The rebuilt stage is heavily equipped — moving sets, projection, serious light and sound — so even a familiar play can look unfamiliar. Check the programme before you book: it changes often, and the small hall sells out.

Getting there

The easy way in is the metro: Kontraktova Ploshcha on the blue line leaves you on the square at the foot of Podil, minutes from the bottom of the descent. The theatre stands low on the uzviz at No. 20-A, so the climb is short and gentle; come down instead from St Andrew’s Church at the top and you get the whole slope as a warm-up.

Wear sensible shoes. The descent is cobbled, steeper than it looks, and treacherous in rain or ice. Driving is more trouble than it’s worth — the street is narrow, parking scarce — so on performance nights take the metro and leave time; Podil’s cafes have a way of slowing you down.

What's around it

The setting is half the reason to come. Andriivskyi Uzviz is an open-air museum of a street — galleries, craft stalls, antique sellers — that turns into one long art market in warm weather. A few doors up, at No. 15, stands its most theatrical neighbour: Richard the Lionheart’s Castle, a five-storey apartment house of 1902–1904 built in mock English Gothic, all spires, battlements and a tower over the street. The romantic name is pure invention — nothing to do with the medieval king — but it stuck.

Next door at No. 13 is the Bulgakov Museum, in the writer’s old house; the Museum of One Street and small galleries fill the gaps. At the top waits St Andrew’s Church, Rastrelli’s Baroque flourish crowning the hill. See the building, argue about it if you like — then let the descent take over.