Play On, Marko: The Extraordinary Story of the Man Who Helped Finance Ukraine into Existence
How a new Ukrainian musical tells the story of a forgotten patriot, and why his message may be more important today than ever before.
By Matthew Parish
Thursday 5 November 2026
There is something rather remarkable about the cultural renaissance taking place in Ukraine in the middle of Europe's most destructive war since 1945. While Russian missiles destroy theatres, museums, libraries and concert halls, Ukrainian artists are responding by producing an extraordinary range of new theatrical works exploring the history of their country and the meaning of Ukrainian nationhood. One of the latest examples is a musical with the curious title Грай, [Марку], which might be translated as Play On, Marko. It is coming to Lviv's historic Maria Zankovetska National Drama Theatre on 9 and 10 November 2026, and its subject is a man whom comparatively few people outside Ukraine have ever heard of, but without whom modern Ukraine might look rather different.
The musical is the latest production by MUR, a Ukrainian creative collective that combines contemporary music, theatrical performance and historical education. Under the direction of Oleksandr Khomenko, MUR has developed a distinctive approach to popularising Ukrainian history, using the language of modern musical theatre to introduce younger audiences to personalities and events that were suppressed or distorted during the Soviet period. Its previous productions include Ти [Романтика], exploring the tragedy of Ukraine's persecuted literary generation, and Ребелія [1991], concerned with the struggle for Ukrainian independence. These are ambitious subjects for musical theatre, and their popularity suggests that contemporary Ukrainians possess an appetite for historical self-examination extending far beyond conventional patriotic entertainment.
The protagonist of Play On, Marko is Yevhen Chykalenko, who lived from 1861 to 1929. He was an agricultural entrepreneur, landowner, publisher, intellectual and philanthropist, but this description scarcely begins to explain his historical significance. Chykalenko belonged to that small class of wealthy Ukrainians who understood, decades before the country achieved even a brief period of independence in 1917, that a nation could not survive merely through romantic declarations of national identity. It required newspapers, schools, books, universities, cultural institutions and a prosperous economic class prepared to finance them.
Chykalenko understood something that political idealists often overlook. National independence is not merely an emotional aspiration or a constitutional arrangement. It is also an economic project, requiring institutions capable of maintaining the language, identity and collective consciousness of a people over generations. Without such institutions, even the most passionate national sentiment may gradually evaporate beneath the weight of an imperial power determined to extinguish it.
Born into a wealthy family in what is now Odesa oblast, Chykalenko developed an early interest in Ukrainian culture and the practical sciences of agriculture. He introduced innovative agricultural techniques, wrote popular educational works and used the proceeds of his enterprises to support the Ukrainian national movement. His wealth was not merely a private accomplishment. He considered it a resource that imposed upon him an obligation to pursue a greater public purpose.
This attitude was encapsulated in one of his most famous observations: Ukraine must be loved not only to the depths of one's soul, but also to the depths of one's pocket. There is something refreshingly unsentimental about this formulation, particularly in a country where professions of patriotism have sometimes been abundant while the resources necessary to give them practical effect have been altogether more difficult to obtain.
Chykalenko was one of the principal financial supporters of Rada, the Ukrainian-language daily newspaper published in Kyiv from 1906 until 1914. At a time when the Russian imperial authorities regarded the Ukrainian language with suspicion and often subjected its cultural expression to severe restrictions, financing a Ukrainian newspaper was simultaneously an act of entrepreneurship, philanthropy and political defiance. The enterprise was frequently unprofitable, requiring Chykalenko to mortgage property and sell land to meet its expenses. Nevertheless, he continued because he believed that a nation without an independent public voice would eventually cease to understand itself.
This is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of his personality. Chykalenko was not principally a politician seeking elected office or a revolutionary general dreaming of military victories. He was an institution-builder who understood that a successful national movement required a sustainable intellectual infrastructure. When the Ukrainian Central Rada emerged in 1917, he was among those who helped bring it into existence, although he did not seek to dominate its subsequent political activities. His contribution had been to help create some of the cultural and political conditions that made such an institution possible.
The title of the new musical comes from another expression Chykalenko repeatedly used to encourage himself during periods of exhaustion and disappointment. A ty, Marku, hrai — roughly, And you, Marko, keep playing. The underlying idea was that however discouraging the circumstances might become, the work must continue. If one generation exhausted its strength, another would inherit the task and continue playing the same national melody.
This is an extraordinarily appropriate metaphor for contemporary Ukraine. The country has been fighting for its independence in one form or another for centuries, often against adversaries enjoying overwhelming advantages in wealth, military power and international influence. Generations of Ukrainian patriots have endured imprisonment, exile, poverty and death without witnessing the achievement of their ambitions. Yet the national project survived because there was always somebody prepared to take up the instrument and continue playing.
It is this continuity between generations that gives the musical its particular contemporary significance. The Russian invasion of February 2022 was not merely an attempt to seize territory or overthrow a government. It was also an attempt to reverse the cultural and political emancipation that figures such as Chykalenko had spent their lives advancing. Russia's attacks upon Ukrainian language, historical memory and national institutions are recognisable continuations of an older imperial tradition, albeit pursued with the destructive technologies of the twenty-first century.
The theatrical treatment of these themes is especially interesting because MUR has chosen to explore them through contemporary musical performance rather than through solemn historical reconstruction. The central role of Chykalenko is played by Artur Piskovskyi, with Mariia Demenko portraying his wife, Mariia. The production combines acting, music, choreography and elaborate visual imagery to transform what might otherwise be a relatively obscure historical biography into a contemporary cultural event.
Accounts of the performances already staged describe an ambitious and visually extravagant production. One particularly imaginative device involves performers circulating amongst the audience as sellers of Rada, recreating the atmosphere of the early twentieth-century Ukrainian press. The historical newspaper thereby becomes more than an incidental prop. It represents the physical medium through which the idea of Ukraine was communicated, debated and sustained at a time when the very existence of a distinct Ukrainian nation was contested by imperial authorities.
There is an interesting irony in all this. Chykalenko devoted much of his life to financing the printed word, believing that newspapers and literature were indispensable instruments of national survival. More than a century later, his story is being communicated through an entirely different medium, using music, theatrical spectacle and contemporary publicity to reach audiences who might never otherwise have opened a history book about him. The technologies have changed beyond recognition, but the underlying cultural purpose remains remarkably similar.
The production also raises a more uncomfortable and consequently more interesting question about the relationship between wealth and patriotism. Chykalenko was a wealthy landowner, and his capacity to support Ukrainian culture depended upon economic inequalities that modern political sensibilities might regard with suspicion. Yet his financial resources enabled activities that might otherwise have been impossible. The history of national liberation is not exclusively the history of impoverished revolutionaries confronting wealthy oppressors. It is also the history of affluent people deciding that their wealth should be placed at the disposal of a collective national purpose.
The production itself reflects this relationship. Its principal corporate partner is MHP, a major Ukrainian agricultural business, whose sponsorship establishes an obvious connection between Chykalenko's agricultural entrepreneurship and the modern Ukrainian economy. There is nothing inherently objectionable about such patronage, although it inevitably invites questions about the relationship between contemporary corporate power and cultural influence. The most persuasive interpretation of Chykalenko's legacy is not that wealthy entrepreneurs are automatically patriotic, but that their wealth acquires a different moral significance when they are prepared to use it in the genuine service of society.
This distinction is particularly important in Ukraine, where the experience of oligarchic capitalism has produced considerable public scepticism about the political influence of wealthy individuals. Chykalenko offers a rather different model. He did not simply seek political influence through the expenditure of money. Instead, he accepted substantial personal financial sacrifices to support institutions whose eventual benefits he might never live to enjoy. His commitment was directed towards the creation of something that would outlast his own existence.
He also had human failings, as all historical personalities do. His private life was complicated, his political judgments were not invariably correct and his experience of the Ukrainian national movement was frequently characterised by disappointment with the very people whose aspirations he was trying to advance. An effective historical musical should not turn such a figure into a flawless patriotic saint. His achievements are more impressive when understood alongside the frustrations, personal contradictions and occasional despair of an individual attempting to realise an ambition that often seemed hopeless.
Indeed, Chykalenko's eventual fate was deeply melancholy. The Ukrainian independence movement of 1917–1921 failed to establish a durable independent state, and he spent his final years in exile, increasingly impoverished and suffering from ill health. He died in 1929, long before the Soviet Union's collapse brought about the independent Ukraine that he had helped to imagine. His life therefore presents a familiar historical paradox: a man who made an extraordinary contribution to a national cause without living to see its ultimate success.
There is a particular poignancy in the decision to bring this musical to Lviv. Chykalenko was not exclusively concerned with Ukrainian cultural activity in the territories controlled by the Russian Empire. He supported the construction of the Academic House in Lviv, providing accommodation for Ukrainian students and helping strengthen intellectual ties between the Ukrainian communities separated by imperial frontiers. Lviv was therefore not merely another city in his conception of the Ukrainian national movement. It was part of the network of cultural institutions through which a divided people might gradually acquire the consciousness of a single nation.
Today those historical divisions have largely disappeared from the political map, but their cultural legacy remains visible. Lviv has become one of the principal centres of Ukrainian literary, artistic and intellectual life, and the city's cultural institutions have assumed additional significance during the war. Bringing a theatrical account of Chykalenko's life to the city is therefore an opportunity to reflect upon the relationship between its cultural history and the development of Ukrainian national consciousness as a whole.
The most important question raised by Play On, Marko is ultimately not historical but philosophical. What does it mean to dedicate one's life to a project whose completion may lie beyond one's own lifetime? How should an individual measure success when the objectives towards which he or she works are so large that no single person can reasonably expect to achieve them? These questions are familiar to soldiers, humanitarian volunteers, journalists, educators and countless other Ukrainians whose daily contributions to their country may seem individually insignificant when measured against the enormity of the challenges confronting them.
Chykalenko's answer was that the value of a contribution does not depend upon witnessing the final outcome. There is intrinsic worth in sustaining the institutions and ideals upon which future generations may build, even if the immediate political environment remains hostile. The important thing is to continue the work, refusing to surrender to the temptation of believing that one's efforts are futile simply because their ultimate consequences cannot yet be observed.
This is also why theatre remains such an important cultural institution in wartime Ukraine. Theatre provides a collective experience through which historical memory may be transformed into contemporary moral understanding. A newspaper can explain the circumstances of a national struggle, and a history book can describe its principal protagonists. But a theatrical performance can connect those events to the emotional lives of contemporary audiences, encouraging them to recognise themselves in people who lived generations before them.
The musical's eventual artistic achievement must be judged by those who have seen it, rather than by its admirable intentions alone. Historical patriotism is not a substitute for theatrical excellence, and moral enthusiasm does not guarantee good drama. Nevertheless, the very existence of such a production is an encouraging indication of the vitality of Ukrainian cultural life during a period when the nation is confronting an existential military threat.
There is something profoundly defiant about Ukrainians gathering in a theatre to listen to music celebrating the perseverance of a man who spent his life defending Ukrainian national identity against Russian imperial domination. The historical distance between Chykalenko's world and our own appears considerable until one recognises how many of the fundamental questions remain unresolved. Can Ukraine sustain its cultural independence? Can its institutions survive repeated external assault? Can individual acts of commitment accumulate into a durable national achievement?
The fact that the performance will take place in a country where air raid sirens may interrupt the proceedings provides its own powerful answer. The musicians, actors and audience will have gathered because they consider Ukrainian culture worth sustaining even under conditions of danger. In this respect, the production's message is not confined to the historical events it portrays. Its performance becomes part of the same national tradition of perseverance that its central character embodied.
Chykalenko would probably have been astonished to discover that nearly a century after his death, a musical celebrating his life was touring an independent Ukraine. He would have been less surprised to discover that the country was once again struggling against Russian imperial ambitions, or that its cultural and political institutions continued to depend upon the sacrifices of individuals who believe in a future they cannot necessarily predict.
Yet there is reason to imagine that he would have been deeply moved by the spectacle of Ukrainians filling their theatres to celebrate the survival of the nation he helped sustain. For all the failures and disappointments of his own lifetime, the melody he sought to preserve has not been extinguished. Others took up the instruments after him, and others will do so again.
And so the message of Play On, Marko is both simple and profound. Nations are not built exclusively by military victories, revolutionary declarations or the achievements of celebrated political leaders. They are also built by quieter acts of persistence, by people who finance newspapers, establish schools, support artists, preserve languages and continue working when every rational calculation might suggest that their efforts are destined to fail.
Ukraine's future will depend upon such people no less than upon the soldiers defending its frontiers. Yevhen Chykalenko understood this long before his country possessed an independent state, and the lesson remains as relevant in November 2026 as it was more than a century ago.
The music must continue, even when the musicians change.
