Театральная компания ЗМ
based on a novel by Andrei Platonov

A STORY ABOUT HAPPY MOSCOW

Tabakov Theatre, Moscow
“A Story about a Happy Moscow” is without doubt one of the best productions of the season. But it is also one of the best, if not THE best production by Mindaugas Karbauskis. It is surprisingly integral, harmonious, perfectly thought through and perfectly acted. The production is performed by an actors’ ensemble, where all the roles are main parts and one would want to list all the actors individually: Irina Pegova, the rising star of our art-house cinema Alexander Yatsenko, Dmitri Kulichkov, Yana Sekste...
The vivacity of the production does not undermine the depth of comprehension of Andrei Platonov’s prose. Karbauskis, the youngest and most talented successors of the tradition of Russian psychological theatre, managed to isolate from the uncompleted, and rather bulky novel a clear and very personal story about lost love. He was able to find an exact and capacious visual solution, where the action unfolds not in the country, not in the city, not in a factory, but in a cloak room: here is the model of the world – standing in the queue, taking a number tag. Like Platonov, he discovered problems of another, existential order behind social problems, but he treated them differently than the author. In the novel “Happy Moscow” the heroes renounce the pleasures of life and love for the sake of abstract ideas, but Platonov does not debunk the myth. The writer discredits life and nature as unfit to embody these ideas. By contrast, Karbauskis places life above ideals. Human relationships are higher than ideas. The production is actually about that: the high value of personal happiness and about the possibility of love.




TRAVELLING COMPANY
23


PERFORMANCE SPACE
6.5 m x 6.5 m

Height - not less than 5 m

FOR AUDIENCE OF
200


FRIGHT
1.5 tons


GETTING IN
One day before the performance




Photo © Michael Guterman, Igor Zakharkin