Vasiliyev showed his financiers a marketing study stating that 30% of Moscow's population fit the profile audience that would be willing to pay for the production, due to changing sensibilities and increasing incomes.

[clarification needed] Peter Baker and Susan Glasser said that the Russian theatre community "considered the concept the thespian version of McDonald's".

[2] Vasiliyev said "Nord-Ost was a sort of protest against tarnishing our history, against not believing in your own strength, against all this pervasive, depressing, ugly stuff in mass media.

[2] On October 23, 2002 Chechen terrorists took the audience hostage in the Moscow theater that was showing the production of Nord-Ost, threatening to blow up the building and demanding withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.

130 hostages died from poison gas used by Russian special forces; Nord-Ost lost 17 members of the team, including 2 child actors aged 13 (Kristina Kurbatova and Arsenii Kurilenko) and one third of all musicians in the orchestra.