Here is a man who has acted with Vanessa Redgrave on the London stage, starred with Catherine Deneuve in the hit French movie "East-West" and played the lead in an Oscar-winning film, Nikita Mikhalkov's "Burnt by the Sun."
Just over a year ago, Menshikov wanted to create an epic spectacle that would attack some of the stereotypes of contemporary Russian theater and so he staged Maxim Kurochkin's "Kitchen." This enormous production short-circuited the reflective abilities of many Moscow critics and overloaded the switchboards at agencies selling tickets to the show.
So, when Menshikov got the idea of doing an intimate ensemble piece, it was a good bet nothing would stop him. Which brings us to his production of "The Gamblers" for his own 814 Theatrical Association. The show plays for just 120 spectators on the cozy upstairs stage at the Mossoviet Theater.
Menshikov's version of Nikolai Gogol's "The Gamblers," a wacky yarn about cheaters cheating cheats, is obviously a labor of love. There is an unusual richness to all of its aspects - the detailed period costumes by Alexander Kalmyk, the elaborate, almost aromatically rustic Ukrainian inn designed by Alexander Popov and the spirited live music performed by Vladimir Nazarov's Folk Music Ensemble.
Ruslan Tatyanin's hair designs deserve special note. He wasn't satisfied giving one actor a comically spiked 'do and another a bouffant swell of curls. He found ways to individualize bald heads.
These are all marks of the painstaking efforts that went into this show.
Menshikov, again working with his longtime co-director, Galina Dubovskaya, imagined the production as a hyper-theatrical extravaganza. The actors, "hiding" their heroes' intentions from each other, "confess" their plans to the spectators. They often move and speak in a tightly rhythmic, choreographed manner, slipping into chants and dances. Their performances are filled with histrionic business, jokes and sleights of hand. It makes for a show of extraordinary density and variety.
A most entertaining scene occurs before anything begins. As the audience enters the hall, the innkeeper Alexei, played with a flip mix of hospitality and indifference by Dmitry Mukhamadeyev, is seated at a table on stage. He invites spectators to join him for a shot of vodka, getting many to accept, and banters caustically with those who refuse.
Gogol's play presents a bounteous congregation of curious characters. The traveling card shark Ikharev (Alexander Usov) is a kind of pedantic scholar of subterfuge.
This pedantic dandy originally plans to clean out a local trio of gamblers - Uteshitelny (Menshikov), Shvokhnev (Alexei Gorbunov) and Krugel (Alexander Sirin) - but soon joins forces with them to take on a more lucrative target by the name of Glov (Viktor Sukhorukov).
To everyone's disappointment, Glov has given up gambling and leaves with his 200,000 rubles still in hand. But with the appearance of a nervous, ferret-like young man claiming to be Glov's son (Nikita Tatarenkov) and possessing a power-of-attorney for all his dad's money, the game is on again.
I won't divulge many more specifics of the plot, but somebody looking curiously like Glov returns a while later under the suspicious name of Zamukhryshkin to help put the finishing touches on a heartless hoax.
The depth of atmosphere in this show, unquestionably its strong point, on occasion overshadows the actors. There are times when they lack the control actors must have, especially in a show like this which piles ruse upon ruse.
But I may be nitpicking about that and it certainly is no problem for Sukhorukov, who plays both Glov and Zamukhryshkin with a glorious mendacity. The former, whose mocking protestations of virtue will not allow him to gamble, and the latter, speaking purely in a delectable dialect of Ukrainian, are masterful con men.
This is true, too, of Menshikov's energetic, quick-minded Uteshitelny, who is not so much a crook as a semi-respectable opportunist who relishes the theater of deception. One suspects that, as much as he probably enjoys the financial fruits of his dubious labors, what really keeps him interested is the process of the swindle.
At its best, "The Gamblers" is a celebration of making something out of nothing - whether it is money or theater.