Sashko is a proud inheritor of his Zaporozhian Cossack history and he inspires his younger sister with tales of Cossack military success.  He is a magnificent storyteller and his words sound like poetry. 

I really admired Jack Bandeira’s characterisation of Alexei, an innocent and gullible to differentiate from his almost heroic character of Sashko.  I liked less Liz Kettle and Steve Watts’s comic flirtation. 

There are aircraft overhead and sounds of fighting.  Many families are leaving the Ukraine each day.  The play is like a patchwork account of life in the Russian occupied basin of the River Don, the origin of the name Donbas.  The people are fragile, Seryoga has a furious temper and is showing the effects of the stress they live with.  The fridge is empty except for a bottle of water.  There is a hole in the roof through which snow falls and the wall paper has been patched up with tape. 

As of December 2025, the Russians were reported to control 85% of the Donbas region and in terms of Russian territorial demands they are negotiating peace in return for territorial gains here.  Olga Braga has written a play that presents the complexity of the people with the Soviet history and the terrible impact of living in a warzone.