The action of the story "The Clock Without Hands" by Boris Rakhmanin takes place in seiged Leningrad. The heroes - two young soldiers. The first was performed by Alexandr Baluyev, who had just ended up the service in the "team" and decided to stay at the Army Theatre, and the second was Oleg Menshikov. In their story there was a fantastic shift: the main character (Alexandr Baluyev) knew his future, and the time-travel offered to him, made him choose between fulfilling and failing the military mission. The choice was hard. If he fulfilled the mission, he was doomed to death. If he failed it, he could stay alive and live a long life… There were many other collisions in the plot, but still the main was the decision of the hero.
Balueyev and Menshikov performed kind of two sides of one soldier personality. The first was full of tragedy. Looking at him I recalled the portraits of Khmelev as Alexey Turbin. Menshikov's hero, Vasyukov, was a cheerful joker, though aware how tense their situation was. But he tried to add some bright note to it with a joke or a smile…
I liked seeing the guys before the rehearsals at the piano quite often. As I recall, Oleg played either ragtimes or music by Nino Rota from Fellini's films. Sometimes he and Sasha Baluyev sang something. They were on very friendly terms then.
Both of them worked very earnestly and conscientiously, despite all the drawbacks of the dramaturgy. Oleg faced another difficulty: it was his debut at the huge stage of CTSA, which really is large enough for a tank. He had to become familiar with this immense space very quickly, find the way of expressive acting there, the appropriate sounding. It is very hard to remain natural and free in such a scale, but Menshikov managed to do it. He worked tactfully and within reasonable limits.
When we discussed the play, Oleg always caught the idea at once.
Oleg found a curious explanation for his character's buffoonery and humor. As if already acting he was saying: "I'm scared… I'm frightened to death… But I hide behind jokes, humor to overcome fear… I think it is the only way to fight it…"
Oleg knew how to listen to my impartial reproofs. Once after the rehearsal I told him:
"Oleg, today Sasha played with fibres and you - with gills". He endured this truth like all the other similar remarks to him. When he sometimes tried to play musical comedy, or nearly musical comedy, he could be a bit superfluous.
But in general, to my mind, Menshikov and Baluyev perfectly supplemented each other, and I think it was due to their friendship that time.

(from the book by Elga Lyndina "Oleg Menshikov", Moscow - Panorama, 1999)