Performance "Mechty i Griozy Mishenki Balzaminova" (ru) 30 September 2023

"Mechty i Griozy Mishenki Balzaminova” (ru) based on the comedy by Alexander Ostrovsky.

Inna Sokolova-Gordon's production is bright, cheerful, colorful, lively. With stylish costumes, infectious music, rosy makeup.

Balzaminov is not just a dreamer. He is a dreamer by conviction. This is how I would sleep all my life and see pleasant dreams! His dreams are consistent, logical (in his own, peculiar logic); natural. fascinating. The only problem is that they are baseless. While he sees his dreams, retells them to his mother, relives them, thinks them over, not wanting to wake up - everything is wonderful and promising. But they cannot withstand contact with reality. It would be so wonderful: to get married and make a million! What is it? Something doesn't happen? Well, three hundred thousand! And then, living a thousand a year... still enough for three hundred years! And two at a time - that’s enough for a hundred and fifty years! If you live a good life, you can live a hundred and fifty years!

Or here: two brides, both rich, both have a garden that can be combined... But you can’t marry both! He's not a Tatar...

And if some bride falls in love with him and agrees to run away, suddenly a stroller and a house to which he must bring her will appear by themselves...

His mother, she is more and more in the real world. Only this world is shallow and unattractive. The son, bearing the first rank, receives a salary of one hundred and twenty rubles a year for his labors - they live on it. And, frankly speaking, he is not smart enough... So let him dream! After all, everyone is free to dream! He doesn't harm anyone by doing this. What to serve! How long will he last? And their side is like this, there are a lot of rich brides!... And how can you not believe in dreams?

The two-hour performance is divided into two acts and is performed without intermission. The first is based on the play "A Festive Sleep Before Lunch”, the second is based on "What you go for is what you will find.”

The performance recreates this now difficult-to-recreate atmosphere of a merchant settlement. Illiterate, dense. Longing, Anfisa! Longing, Raisa! Oh, how boring! What a melancholy! Even a wolf howls! And - it's hot! How hot! And then we had lunch, and it made me feel even worse. Here are the two most noble conversations - one: which is better - a man or a woman? And - What is harder: to wait and not wait or to have and lose? They read things from newspapers as if they read modern tabloids.

But the performance is over, the lights are turned off. Let's leave Ostrovsky's heroes alone: It's better to dream in the dark...