The premiere held on September 10, 2014

“Should you be attacked by gloomy thoughts, just open a bottle of champagne or re-read the Marriage of Figaro,” a characters of A.S. Pushkin’s “Little tragedies” advises. Years and even centuries have passed, but today, the same as then, it is no sin to take the advice of the great poet. The charm of Beaumarchais’ comedy has not wilted, its energy, passion, irony, humor, virtuosic intrigue seems to have acquired an ever greater witticism and dash. And though Figaro is interesting to us today not as a revolution harbinger, which scandalized the ruling classes in Paris at the times of the very first night of the play, the popular hero appeals to us with his independence, resourcefulness, unruly spirit of the truth-seeker.

Follies of a day … One should probably look for the stylistics of the play in this day of mad follies dumped upon the participants of this story, where everything was intertwined, tangled, and thanks to the efforts of the main character was happily resolved, and the right of the first night formerly belonging to the Count, clashes today with the uncompromising attitude of Figaro, a man of the new time, new ethical laws. The conflict is in the contradiction of the modern clever man with the customs and practices having survived their usefulness.

The decoration and costumes do not correspond to the period when the comedy was written. The stage manager tries to show the story through the prism of the present, painting a vivid picture of the society, teaches while entertaining.

Vladimir Mirzoev, stage manager:

Old masters liked to give two variants of the title of one and the same text. Near to the magic “if” there often arises the no less magic “or”. For me this variability of theatre and culture in general is very dear. And the second part of the name of Beaumarchais’ masterpiece could well have dropped off, like the tail of our ancestor, as something superfluous. Madness – this is the main category with which we want to play today. I would even delete the “marriage” from the posters, and even the intriguer Figaro, but I fear this would confuse the spectator.

Imagine standing before the ocean of classical dramatic art trying to feel something, to catch the wave. But it is not a fashion, no, not the question of where the wind blows. When choosing the material the main thing for me is the theme. In the “Follies” I saw the possibility of a very important conversation. How a modern man is forced to follow archaic practices, how the elite mentally lags behind the society impetuously moving ahead. After all, the time vector is always directed to the future. But Beaumarchais’ anthropology is not didactic – it is a cheerful vitamin hidden among the sweet berries of sensuality, disguise, theatrical game. We, as children, swallow up the juicy, clever text, without noticing its complicated inner meaning.

Pulling our characters out of the epoch of feudalism with little effort, we, nevertheless, did not place them into the world of gadgets and free love. Our play is not a modernization in the strict sense of the word. But eclecticism, dynamics and, the main thing, mad follies here are quite in the spirit of the topical postmodernism. For does not the very life today look as a strange collage – a mix of mythologies, customs, errors. Therefore Mozart and Rossini can easily drop on to visit an African tribal leader, sit at a fire, drink a cup of coffee. It is sometimes difficult to understand, in what century we find ourselves: in the middle of the 20th, in the 17th, or in the 21st.

As Oleg N. Efremov liked to say (in different situations): “So what would you want? It is life”. And sometimes the phrase sounded somewhat differently way: “So what would you want? It is theatre”.

Running time of the performance 3 hours with one intermission.

The play is recommended for audience older than 16 years (16 +).