Theatrical Company "TT814" released its third performance. After modern conceptual "Kitchen" Oleg Menshikov decided to return to the good old Russian classics and staged "Gamblers" based on the play by Gogol.

"Events of the distant past in one act" take place in a real Ukrainian khutor, created by famous cinema artist Alexandr Popov. Gogol's room in a district inn is quite different in the performance - there are also household constructions, an inner porch, a hen house. There is a broken cart in the corner, a dog barks behind haycocks, and somewhere over spectators' heads a stereophonic warbling of a nightingale can be heard. Real "evenings at khutor near Dikanka", only exaggerated a bit. Everything is artistically unkempt and theatrically ramshackle. There is a cobweb curtain, which seems to be taken from a fairy-tail. Girls and boys from the folklore ensemble of Vladimir Nazarov (who composed unobtrusive melodies and a dashing ending) add more national mood. It seems that suffering from claustrophobia "Gamblers" were driven out from a stuffy room into the open air.
Once Oleg Menshikov played Ikharev in the London staging of "Gamblers". And despite his credo "not to repeat himself", he returned to this play, thinking that "he hadn't solved it yet". But he didn't intend to act in it. As Mr. Menshikov confessed, it was Kiev director Yuri Odinoky, who persuaded him to play the leader of card-sharpers, Uteshitelniy. The troupe started rehearsing with Odinoky in the Crimea, but he didn't put a finish to the performance, so Menshikov became "a director to himself" again, although Galina Dubovskaya helped him as before. However, the performance didn't turn into a benefit.
It's been in fashion lately to add a female character to unisexual cast in the play - bring to life a deck of cards named Adelaida Ivanovna by Gogol. "TT814" restored the play with its original male team. A very impressive acting team. Most of them came to the new performance from "Kitchen": Oleg Menshikov (Uteshitelniy), Alexey Gorbunov (Shvokhnev), Alexandr Sirin (Krugel) and Alexandr Usov (Ikharev). There is no special introspection about hazard and deceit in "the land of trickery". The directors decided to tell an adventurous, but private story, thus they drew roles and episodes very thoroughly. Two hours are filled with high-quality and harmonious acting.
Take, for instance, Alesandr Sirin's Krugel - a shy commander, whose every word and deed is not to the point, who keeps coming off the rhythmical outline, on which the swindlers' collusion is based.
They act like a well-organized team: they sit down, tap their walking sticks on the floor and even crackle cookies synchronously. The game is like a show, similar to the one given by the "Stomp" band not long ago in Moscow. It looks like a performance inside a performance - one for the audience and the other for the fooled Ikharev. Ikharev is so young and innocent here that the whole story seems a vigilance lesson given to a young man in a very professional way. As for Menshikov, even though he plays an absolutely comedy part of a scoundrel, still there is no cause for talks about him changing his theatrical line. If you want to find the closest analogue of what the actor does in "Gamblers", it will be - as strange as it may seem - cadet Tolstoy from "The Barber of Siberia".