Goodbye Vitali, a lovely, genial man who lit up the Fringe - Steve Cardownie

As mentioned above, my friend Yuri from Kyiv is currently in the city and we have spent some time over a few beers reminiscing and discussing current events. He gave me the sad news that another of my Ukrainian friends, theatre artistic director Vitali Malakhov, recently passed away. I first met Vitali when I was in Kyiv some 30 years ago when he approached to ask if his group, Theater on Podil, should perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

The late Ukrainian theatre artistic director Vitalii Malakhov will be remembered for his stunning Fringe shows, writes Steve Cardownie.

I was delighted to tell him that he should definitely come to Edinburgh and mapped out what he needed to do. He duly did and his company performed “A Feast During the Plague” by Alexander Pushkin in The Assembly Rooms in George Street.

He was so taken by The Fringe that he revisited the Festival, this time staging “Iago” from Shakespeare’s “Othello” and he asked me to source an appropriate venue. He provided me with details of the kind of thing he was looking for and after a great deal of failed attempts, Keith Jackson, the then Chief Executive of Edinburgh Leisure, and I agreed to use Infirmary Street Baths.

Once the public had left for the day, a small platform was placed in the pool and the seats for the audience were placed around the perimeter. Queues formed outside and the performance started at 10pm. The moonlight was cascading through the huge skylight when a girl appeared (Vitali’s daughter, Dasha), holding a candle, at one end of the pool. A man soon appeared at the other end and after she whispered “Othello” and he responded by whispering “Desdemona” she blew out her candle and swam the 25 metres, almost all of it under water it seemed, where, at the end, Othello lifted her out of the pool one-handed and wrapped her in a towel before they both made off.

The audience was mesmerised and I doubt whether there had ever been a more dramatic opening to a Fringe performance. Such was its impact, the BBC featured the play on Breakfast Tim” and it also made the front page of the Sunday Times.

Vitali was a genius and also a lovely, genial man. I will miss sharing a few glasses of vodka with him.