©  Alyona Besser

This is a stage production of the play by one of Russia’s most popular contemporary playwrights Ivan Vyrypaev. The storyline at first looks like a “detective”: Robert’s wife claims that last Monday she was with his brother Marcus, while his best friend says that Markus was a guest of his. The story develops in both directions until reaching the levels of utmost absurdity, and gradually falls into the background. Instead, it’s replaced not just with questions of idle curiousity (where was Marcus? who was Sarah with? who’s lying?), but with questions of trust and faith. And then, there’s only the rain left. The rain, which falls three days in the row. That, and the summer wasps, the saint summer bees, which bite us even in November.

Vyrypaev experiments with absurdist theater and creates a play, whose principal value lies in its perfectly crafted, scathing, witty and senseless dialogues. It’s amazing that the Workshop’s three leading actors — Ksenia Kutepova, Tomas Mockus, and Alexei Kolubkov — plunge into this chaos with gusto and delight, readily accepting rules of the game. They don’t try to perform a drama for us, they arrange a crazy three-person stand-up. In the Fomenko Workshop’s performance, Vyrypaev’s protagonists look like Chekhov characters that got lost and ended up in a Beckett play.

Nikolai Berman, Gazeta.ru

Opening night: December 8, 2013

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes without intermission

Ticket price range: 1000—5000 rub.