Russian playwright Vassily Sigarev shot to prominence in 2002 with his debut play, Plasticine, which won him the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright—the first time the award had gone to a non-English-speaking writer. Set in a block of low-income apartments near the city cemetery, Ladybird returns to the urban setting Sigarev knows so well and the people at the bottom of society for whom he has an obstinate affection.