The House of Special Purpose is a dreamy, fragmented retelling of the Romanov family’s reign and tragic murder during the Russian Revolution. When Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power, they imprisoned the Imperial family in a large merchant’s home in Yekaterinburg, ominously nicknamed “The House of Special Purpose.” On July 17, 1918, the Romanovs were led into the cellar and executed.

The musical unfolds in that same cellar in 1977, on the eve of the house’s demolition. The spirits of the Romanovs, trapped for 59 years in the place where they died, are caught in a dreamlike purgatory. Spinning “around and around and around” they relive the moments that defined their lives, searching for the memory that will finally break the curse and set them free.