Cinema and Performing Arts
How to Find the Right Door: A Photo Essay
Ildar Sadykov, Maria Maksimycheva
Mikhail Doloko’s Teatr+ is still in its first year. On 8 October, the troupe offered a first look at its debut production for adult audiences, Three on a Swing, based on Luigi Lunari’s play. Ildar Sadykov’s photo essay captures moments from the performance and the magic of the preparations before the curtain rises.
To mark a new chapter in Teatr+’s life, the director chose a philosophical comedy with elements of the theatre of the absurd. Three strangers, each a recognisable type in any culture, find themselves trapped in a room. Each has their own plans, their own way of seeing the world and their own particular neuroses. Each tries to make sense of how something so far removed from ordinary logic could have happened to them.
With its light, witty dialogue, a touch of the absurd and a timeless setting, the play has become enormously popular and has been staged in dozens of languages.
Yet what begins as a comedy of misunderstandings gradually turns into a philosophical conversation about death, sin and the afterlife, and the search for logic and meaning.
The characters include a good-natured martinet, a womanising businessman who had been counting on a romantic date, and a professor of philology. All three must confront the finite nature of their own lives. Despite the chilling subject matter, the director and actors manage to retain the lightness of a parable, with elements of the comedy of masks. Slow to realise that they are in “purgatory”, the characters discuss faith, responsibility, repentance and the meaning of life with striking matter-of-factness.
Photo: Ildar SadykovPhoto: Ildar SadykovPhoto: Ildar SadykovPhoto: Ildar SadykovPhoto: Ildar SadykovThe masks allow the characters to remain deeply human and recognisable, with hopes and weaknesses familiar to us all. The singing and dancing scenes evoke the irreverent folk spirit of “Whatever, let’s dance!” and embody the thirst for life, even as its curtain is about to fall.
Blending farce, musical theatre, comedy of situation and philosophical parable, the production leaves us to decide for ourselves what has really happened. Will the characters who walked through the wrong door die, or will they find a way out?
Despite a few rough edges, the actors have succeeded in creating multi-layered characters in a tragicomedy in which, sooner or later, each of us may find ourselves. That, it seems, was precisely the director’s intention.
For a theatre that is still in its first year, this production is a great achievement. I wish the team every success, both as a friend and as a spectator. I hope as many people as possible get to see the play.
Read also
Newsletter
A letter from the HD editors
Once a week, we send the best stories, events, and cultural discoveries from Central Asia.