Театральная компания ЗМ
Oliver Wolf Sacks

The man who mistook his wife for a hat

Mayakovsky Theatre, Moscow
Presented in the frame of Russian Case
Участник программы «Russian Case» Фестиваля 2017 года
Director: Nikita Kobelev
Age category 18+

The show staged by Nikita Kobelev at the Small Stage of the Mayakovsky Theatre is part of the Studio-Off project, which is designated as a territory of innovation and collective creative work. When rendering the plot, which was the basis of an opera by Michael Nyman and a performance by Peter Brook, the authors of the Moscow version actually had to go into joint writing and research. The actors combine almost naturalistic techniques with romantic loftiness when they tell the stories of characters obsessed with exotic psychological ailments.
«As for the disease, we want to know whether we could avoid it» – this is the question that the director asks us after Nietzsche. The live sound of exotic instruments, excellent video and brilliantly devised choreography for each character make it possible to fill all the stories with symbolic playing content. From among the various cases that Oliver Sacks describes in his book, the performance focuses on those associated with memory and oblivion. It is not a mere coincidence that the performance ends with a story about The Lost Mariner, whose traumatized memory persistently turns him to the past and stops him from seeing the present.

Alyona Karas