“Overheard, glimpsed, unwritten…”, staged by I. Raikhelgauz after the works of Evgeny Grishkovets at the Theatre on Trubnaya, is described on the poster as an improvisation. The action unfolds in a café, at whose tables ordinary inhabitants of our city sit and talk. Each table is a small stage of its own, on which readily recognisable types play out small plays of their own. The types are alive, their relations with one another are well known to us in the audience, the dialogue is witty and offers a vivid cross-section of our life. The characters are on the whole likeable.
The trouble is only that this life is being lived not today but ten or fifteen years ago. The marks of a departed time show not only in the details of the situations discussed, not only in the tune from the soap opera “Santa Barbara” sounding loudly from the stage as one heroine’s ringtone, but in the very types of the characters, who belong to a time not quite ours. The action wants for currency. Why do I call this a trouble? Because the people in this production are good, dear and interesting, and I am sorry to part with them. I should like them to be my contemporaries, telling me their impressions of our fast-flowing time, showing that high power of observation which Grishkovets has, and which such idols of ours as Zhvanetsky, Zadornov, Gorin and Arkanov had.
For all that, the hall receives the production warmly — or rather both halls do, since the stage divides the auditorium in two. Such a configuration might be thought acceptable were it not for passages where the dialogue on stage is poorly heard: when the actors send their voices into one half of the auditorium, the other half cannot always make out the words. But on the whole — great thanks to the author, the director and the actors: the audience had a good evening. And finally, I believe this production should be brought up to date and, so renewed, go on adorning the repertoire of the Theatre on Trubnaya.
