The Robbers
In 1929 Ostuzhev was billed as Karl Moor in "The Robbers". The play was a success, but spelled a professional catastrophe for Ostuzhev: between "The Robbers" in 1929 and "Othello" in 1935 he got only one part to play, that of Vova in "The Fruits of Enlightenment", "entirely alien to him". By January 1935, when director Sergey Radlov began rehearsing "Othello" at Maly, the audience and fellow actors had nearly written him off but Radlov preferred Ostuzhev to his younger rivals and rediscovered the actor's true capabilities.