Premiere in the Theater "Contemporary"

The program is conducted by Leila Giniatulina. The Radio Liberty correspondent Marina Timasheva takes part.

Leila Giniatulina : Premiere in the Theater "Contemporary". The play "The God of Monasia" was set by Sergey Pukepalis, in roles Alena Babenko, Olga Drozdova, Vladislav Vetrov, Sergey Yushkevich. The playwright is the Frenchwoman Yasmin Reza. She is known to Russian viewers from the play "Art". Says Marina Timasheva.

Marina Timasheva : On the first, superficial look, the play of Yasmina Reza is an unpretentious entreprise comedy. Two marital couples are going to discuss the everyday problem - their children -schoolchildren were fighting, and they just do not end with a scammers. On the stage - complete high -tech. Everyone is silver, shimmers, a huge plasma television panel, vases with orange Dutch tulips. Artificial world. From under, at first noble, masks of characters come out, as Nikolai Vasilievich would say, pork snouts. One - the lawyer - protects the company selling unusual medicines, the second - the owner of the Hozhanda, who threw his daughter's beloved hamster on the road. Meet us not just an apartment, but a "European house". From the side - sterile and political correct. Inside - populated by the most ordinary people. (Fragment of the performance)

If something seriously hurts our heroes for the living, from the notorious "tolerance" there will be only scraps. Yasmin Reza shows that “tolerance” with “political correctness” is only visibility, official ideological decoration (as in our recent past the “moral code of the builders of communism”). And in it, non -free, unhappy, notorious people live their real life, who, in essence, do not care about anyone other than themselves loved. (Fragment of the performance)

Very bold for France, presumably, a play is much more bold than those with which the festival party has been shocking itself for 40 years. But for the manifestation of the inner meaning of a not very cheerful story, directorial efforts are needed. They are not. Sergei Puskepalis convinced very good actors that they play a comedy (with a melodramatic ending). And it is difficult to condemn him for this. Because the Moscow public does not understand the meaning of the play, everything that is seriously in this play is almost unfamiliar to us. “These are not our frosts,” as Evgeny Grishkovets would say. Small, but characteristic detail. One of the heroines becomes bad, the second offers her Coca-Cola as a reliable remedy for nausea. Spectators die with laughter, they think this is another joke. But Europeans really treat Coca-Cola to disorder of the stomach.

The fate of a hamster thrown out of the house, the topic for the play is significant, but Yasmin cuts it. Sergey Pukepalis is a soft person, so in the final of the play we see a hamster on the television screen, he is alive, free and enjoys fresh herbs. I asked the head of the Contemporary Theater Galina Borisovna Volchek - what is she seeing the prospect of hamster life?

Galina Volchek : This play, of course, about certain people. At the end, the hamster appears freely, and they already torn everything to each other. They did everything that it is impossible. These are.

Marina Timasheva : There is also a funny episode in the play when the wife of Avdokat drowns a spouse’s mobile phone in a vase, and his ringtone is exactly like Galina Volchek.

Galina Volchek : I had a different call. But my son put me on it. I tremble because almost everyone, all of humanity has this call.

Marina Timasheva : I decided that they were so mocking that, they say, Galina Borisovna Volchek, the mobile phone of Galina Borisovna.

Galina Volchek : No! Firstly, I always turn it off, except for an extreme case in Paris, when I said for a long time before the performance: "Turn off all the phones!" And I forgot absolutely, of course, to myself. And I sat during a steep route almost on stage in a fenced -shred bed. And suddenly he rang. And the bell was so terrible as my reaction.

Marina Timasheva : Here is such a terrible story from Galina Volchek.