A journalist meets a man in a ruined village outside Kyiv.
“Why don’t you start with when the war began for you?”
The Man from Stoyanka is a security guard, just an ordinary man. But when everyone else flees, he stays. As his home turns into a no man’s land, he chooses to take extraordinary action.
And she’s there to record it – for the history books, the courts, for humanity.
Written by Anastasiia Kosodii and Josephine Burton, and directed by Burton, The Reckoning is a vivid and powerful new play about war, survival and the fragile trust between those who uncover the truth and those who must live with it.
Based on real events within The Reckoning Project’s verified archive of witness testimonies of the Russian war in Ukraine, The Reckoning is playful and unsettling, blending storytelling with movement, music and cooking.
Please note that the roles of Sam / Echo will be played by Danylo Shramenko starting from Saturday 21 June.
Food for Thought
As the performance ends, the conversation continues. Audience will be invited to hear reflections from expert speakers, journalists, lawyers, and those with lived experience of the conflict.
Speakers include Rory Finnin; Martin Bright, Index on Censorship; Alissa Timoshkina; Nataliya Gumenyuk in conversation with Josephine Burton; Anastasiia Kosodii and Josephine Burton in conversation with Dr Molly Flynn; Dr Olesya Khromeychuk; Maxine Marcus; Dr Yulia Ioffe; Orysia Lutsevych OBE; Olga Tokariuk; Olia Hercules; Aarif Abraham; Peter Jukes; Nick Tranter; Awet Fissehaye, English Pen; Uilleam Blacker; Kateryna Babkina, Index on Censorship; Inna Hryhorovych MBE; Oliver Bullough; Anna Reid; Luke Harding; Peter Pomerantsev; Viv Groskop; Lord Charles Banner KC; Valeriia Voshchevska; Hanna Komar, English Pen; Josephine Burton and Daniella Peled; Tsvetelina van Benthem; Vicky Tennant – UNHCR; Felicity Spector; Tetyana Nesterchuk; and Janine Di Giovanni.
See dates for each speaker at dasharts.org.uk/the-reckoning
Food For Thought will take place immediately after each performance and is included in the ticket price.
Latecomers / Refunds / Exchanges
Please note that The Reckoning has a strict latecomer policy: there is only one specific entry point for latecomers, at approx 7 minutes after the performance has started. We regret that we can cannot refund or exchange your tickets if you are not in your seat at the start of the performance, or have missed the latecomer entry point. Thank you for understanding.
PLEASE NOTE: This show includes food, please contact our box office or a member of staff at the theatre if you have any allergies or concerns. No peanuts have been used, however we cannot guarantee that there are no traces. Please get in touch with us if you are an airborne celiac.
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Running time
90 minutes (no interval) -
Age guidance
14+ -
Content warnings
Praise for The Reckoning
“Shattering.”- The Guardian
“Powerful and important.”- The Stage
“Brilliant, sharp stagecraft.”- The Reviews Hub
“Powerful, sensorially immersive.”- Everything Theatre
- The Spy in the Stalls
- Adventures in Theatreland
- Theatre & Tonic
- A Young(ish) Perspective

The Company
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Marianne Oldham
The Journalist
Marianne Oldham
The Journalist
Theatre includes: Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and King Lear for The Globe Theatre, A Monster Calls for Bristol Old Vic and The Old Vic, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for The Old Vic, The Argument, Hampstead Theatre, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas, Chichester Festival Theatre, You Can Still Make a Killing, Southwark Playhouse, The Real Thing and The Changeling for ETT, Hamlet and The Seagull for The Factory, Design for Living and Persuasion for Salisbury Playhouse, An Inspector Calls, Novello/Wyndhams Theatre, The Years Between, The Royal & Derngate, The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Market Theatre Johannesburg/Live Theatre Newcastle, Troilus and Cressida, Cheek by Jowl, At the Arcola: Meet Me at Dawn, Sons without Fathers (Platonov) and Uncle Vanya (both with The Belgrade Theatre).
Television includes: The Midwich Cuckoos, Sky, A Very English Scandal, The Living and the Dead, The Musketeers, The Crimson Field, The Impressionists and WPC56 for BBC1, Life in Squares, Ecosse Films for BBC2, Grantchester, Endeavour and Foyle’s War for ITV, Has Fallen 2 for Canal +.
Film includes: Finding Your Feet, and Absolutely Anything -
Tom Godwin
The Man From Stoyanka
Tom Godwin
The Man From Stoyanka
Theatre includes: Professor Bernhardi, Victory Arcola, Best of Enemies Noel Coward Theatre, Tina! Aldwych Theatre, Woman in Black Fortune Theatre, Earthquakes in London NT, Beneatha’s Place, Bingo, Best of Enemies Young Vic, ENRON Chichester, Royal Court & Noel Coward Theatres, City of Glass Lyric Hammersmith/ 59 Productions, Macbeth Park Avenue Armory NYC, To Kill A Mockingbird Regent’s Park Theatre, Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare’s Globe, The Crash of the Elysium Punchdrunk/MIF, Get Santa! Royal Court, Henceforward, Arsenic & Old Lace Derby Playhouse, Elizabeth Rex Birmingham Rep, The Little Mermaid Bristol Old Vic, Secret Heart, Volpone Manchester Royal Exchange, Skylight Vaudeville Theatre
Television includes: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms S.1, Doc Martin, The English, Discovery of Witches, The Irregulars, Hendrix & Handel, Joe All Alone, Coronation Street, Quacks, Eastenders, The Hollow Crown: Henry VI, Taboo, Family Tree, Psychoville
Film includes: Savage House, Napoleon, Alice Through The Looking Glass, About Time
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Olga Safronova
Olga / Echo
Olga Safronova
Olga / Echo
Olga is a graduate of the Ukrainian Film School and has trained at Drama Centre London (summer school). She has experience in physical performance with Aktorstvo theater in Kyiv, Ukraine, and since 2022, she has also been engaged in military interpreting.
Highlights include:
Theatre: Booking Clerk/Queen in Restless Choice (Aktorstvo), Widow in Rebirth (Aktorstvo), Nasie in Duel (Classic).Film: Olesya in Daddy’s Little Scratch (53th Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival selection for National and International competition), Katya in The Drill, Funny Woman in I Work At The Cemetery.
Television: Stasya in Season 3 of Dr Kovalchuk, Kateryna Motsak in Sex Insta Exams, Halyna Avramets in Material Evidence. -
Simeon Kylsyi
Sam / Echo
Simeon Kylsyi
Sam / Echo
Simeon is an Actor, Singer, Dancer, and Co-founder of Hooligan Art Community. He trained at the Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television, and starred in lead roles early in his career at the Dakh Contemporary Art Center in Kyiv.
Simeon has worked on international productions across Europe (England, Germany, Spain), with notable projects including I Tell You We Must Die at the Deutsches Theater and Interbeing (2Theatre), also showcased at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
With Hooligan Art Community Simeon developed Bunker Cabaret, which premiered at Somerset House to great critical acclaim, and has been featured at various prestigious festivals throughout Europe.
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Danylo Shramenko
Sam / Echo
Danylo Shramenko
Sam / Echo
Danylo Shramenko is a Ukrainian theatre and film actor and performer. He works internationally across physical theatre, devised performance, performance art, immersive formats, and site-specific theatre.
He trained at the Kyiv National I.K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University and has since been an active member of Kyiv’s renowned Dakh Theater as well as co-founding and producing for Hooligan Art Community and Wanderbühne Freudenberg.
Theatre includes: Bunker Cabaret (UK & European Tour), I.We. (Kyiv), Radiation 2.0 (Hooligan Art Community, Kyiv), Castle of Crossed Destinies (Immersive theatre, Schloss Freudenberg, Wiesbaden), Hooligan (Site-specific, Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv), East-West (A4 Space for Contemporary Culture, Bratislava), I Tell You We Must Die (Deutsches Theater, Berlin), Paradise Hotel (Schloss Freudenberg, Wiesbaden), If You Can’t Find a Partner, Use a Wooden Chair (Gogolfest, Kyiv), Tranzyt (Tour in Ukraine and Germany).
Film includes: Syndrom Hamleta, Iron Butterflies, Tomorrow Never Comes, Mariana’s Room, Miracles.
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Josephine Burton
Director and Co-writer
Josephine Burton
Director and Co-writer
Josephine Burton is a theatre director, playwright, dramaturg, and Artistic Director of Dash Arts, which she co-founded to create award-winning, cross-artform work connecting audiences with global stories. Over nearly two decades, she has directed and developed over 80 productions and events that blend artistic excellence with social and political resonance, work that has been praised for its “immersive ingenuity… that stretches the vocabulary of the stage” (Observer).
Recent highlights include directing Dido’s Bar (2022), an immersive retelling of Virgil’s Aeneid, The Great Middlemarch Mystery (2022), exploring Thatcherite Britain, and Songs for Babyn Yar (2021–2022), a commemoration of Holocaust memory performed internationally. She has co-written The Reckoning (2025), a multidisciplinary exploration of justice in Ukraine, and served as dramaturg on Lyrical Alliance and Renegade Orchestra.
Josephine is also an artist who has created work for Tate Modern and the host of over 50 Dash Arts Podcasts and 100 Dash Cafés, where she collaborates with academics, artists, and communities to explore contemporary issues.
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Anastasiia Kosodii
Co-writer
Anastasiia Kosodii
Co-writer
Anastasiia Kosodii is a Ukrainian Playwright and director based in Berlin. Also a co-founder of the Theater of Playwrights (Kyiv), her plays have been read and performed in theatres across Ukraine and Europe.
Before the full-scale Russian invasion, Anastasiia often worked with NGOs in Eastern Ukraine in towns on the frontline.
Her international work has been presented at Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin), Münchner Kammerspiele Theater and National Theater Mannheim, where she became Resident Playwright in 2022.
Her play How to Talk to the Dead (Wie man mit Toten spricht) opened in Mannheim in April 2023 to critical acclaim: “Kosodii’s undeniable ability to portray the human condition and protect it from theatrical affectation ultimately yields in an aesthetic quality that encompasses both moral claim and political statement.” Mannheimer Morgen
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Zoë Hurwitz
Set Designer
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Olivia Jamieson
Costume Designer
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Anton Baibakov
Composer
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Bella Kear
Sound Designer
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Joshua Pharo
Lighting Designer
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Josie Daxter
Movement Director
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Lou Platt
Artist Wellbeing Practitioner
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Olia Hercules
Food Consultant
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Abby Galvin
Casting Director
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Nataliya Gumenyuk and Peter Pomerantsev
Testimony Consultants
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Cristina Catalina
Producer
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Pete Rickards
Production Manager for eStage
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Tidy Design
Artwork Design
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Rich Lakos
Artwork Photography
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Anna Lukanina
Ukraine Marketing Associate
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Marie Horner
Podcast & Food for Thought Producer
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Eragona Communications
Marketing
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CRPR
PR