Simonov, Reuben Nikolaivich

Simonov, Reuben Nikolaivich (1899–1968), Soviet actor and director, who in 1920 joined the Moscow Art Theatre's Third Studio (later the Vakhtangov Theatre). He was an excellent actor, his best parts being Cyrano de Bergerac in Rostand's play and Kostya Kapitan in Pogodin's Aristocrats; but after a brilliant performance by students he himself had trained in the dramatization of Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned in 1931 he devoted himself almost entirely to production. He was Chief Director of the Vakhtangov from 1939 until his death, being succeeded by his son Yevgenyi (1925– ), who had been Director of the Maly. Among the elder Simonov's outstanding productions were Pogodin's The Man with the Gun (1937), Korneichuk's The Front (1943), and his own adaptation of Gorky's Foma Gordeyev (1956). His son's productions included Antony and Cleopatra in 1972 and Little Tragedies, based on Pushkin, in 1975.