On 3 April the Variety Theatre on Bersenevskaya Embankment gave “Free Love”, after Leonard Gershe’s play, staged by A. Zhitinkin. Four characters sorted out their relations on stage: the overgrown mummy’s boy Don (D. Dyuzhev), the free-spirited girl Jill (A. Postnikova), Don’s solicitous mother (E. Safonova) and the cynical producer Ralph (P. Belyshkov). All of it takes place in the atmosphere of 1970s America, in the flat Don has rented in his bid to escape the care of a mother who has managed to write five novels about her son’s life. The light-headed neighbour Jill drops in on Don and tells him her own life story — not a long one, but a very full one. Jill’s frank account (she wants to be an actress) impresses the unworldly Don (he wants to be a musician). The result is clear: they end up in bed. We, the audience, are glad for them. The mother, arriving unannounced, does not share our gladness, or theirs. All at once the mighty theatrical producer Ralph appears, and Jill leaves with him on the spot. We, the audience, are dismayed. Poor Don decides to go back to his mother, and even to end his life. We, the audience, are horrified. But then the door opens and Jill comes back to Don. We, the audience, are delighted. His mother’s care is no longer needed.
So we, the audience, have lived through the whole range of feeling along with the characters: gladness, dismay, horror and delight. The question is: what more could one want from an evening at the Variety Theatre on a Wednesday, the third of April? My answer: practically nothing. If one recalls that we saw on stage the fine playing of D. Dyuzhev, who at forty-five splendidly portrays a young man tied in knots; E. Safonova, whom we have loved for a long time and not seen for a long time in film or theatre; and that we heard A. Shchigol’s touching song — then one may say with confidence that the evening was a success. Even the various excesses — for instance, that the guileless Don is not only kind but also blind, which by the playwright’s unerring design is supposed to make us love him automatically — did not darken our bright feeling that evening.
We, the audience, came out of the theatre smiling.
