The Kolyada Theater tour opened with “The Glass Menagerie” in Moscow.

“Kolyada Theater” came from Yekaterinburg to Moscow on tour for the seventeenth time. They opened with “The Glass Menagerie,” staged for the 80th birthday of actress Tamara Zimina, who recently received the “Golden Mask” for her theatrical career. She has been with the Nikolai Kolyada Theater since 2004; before that they worked together in the Sverdlovsk Drama.

As usual, loyal fans of Nikolai Kolyada gathered. From the stage he bowed to them from the waist and said words of gratitude that you will not hear on any other stage. Wearing a traditional skullcap, he signed autographs and took pictures with everyone – there was a whole line of them. Spectators swept away lopsided faceted glasses, Kolyada books, and other fancy things to support the theater. Kolyada for them is like “a holiday that is always with you.”

On the eve of the tour, he turned to Ural officials in the hope that they would help conduct the Moscow tour at the proper level. “And in response there was silence… spin yourself, Kolyada. Yes, I’ll get out of it. Just let them not come to my funeral later,” Kolyada shared with the public.

Tamara Zimina performed in the afternoon the play “Ba” based on the play by Yulia Tupikina, and in the evening she appeared in the benefit role of Amanda Wingfield in “The Glass Menagerie” based on the play by American playwright Tennessee Williams, written in 1944. After the performance she was showered with flowers and gifts. “Williams’s play is very complex. Everything is according to Chekhov. They say one thing, think another, do something else. It was difficult to find internal subtexts,” says Kolyada. — One girl in the lobby asked me: “What are you going to show today—is it black bread or sweet buns?” I answered her: “Of course, sweet buns.”

The buns were really sweet. The artist Lev Nizami, who is either a servant in a coffee shop in “Dowry”, or a devil in “Sorochinskaya Fair”, and more recently the set designer of the “Kolyada Theater”, built a house on stage for Barbie with tiny red chairs suitable for dolls. In the center is a pinwheel with beaded curtains. They rustle quietly, waiting in the wings for the tragic carousel to spin in the finale, the whirlwind that distinguishes the Kolyada Theater, which for the time being was not felt in The Glass Menagerie. Kolyada’s loyal fans explained to the new recruits that this was not a typical production for him, it was for the sake of Zimina that he sacrificed his signature style. So what were the regulars missing? Action, as they said, or rather, a happening. But the final carousel still took them to distant places, for which many come to this theater year after year.

The eternal Barbie Amanda Wingfield lives in a dollhouse with her adult children. She, like a pop diva, changes outfits designed by costume designer Valentina Galina. Shoes with edges, transparent trousers, ribbons – all this riot of colors and materials looks ridiculous in the small world of the heroine Tamara Zimina. She herself once worked as a fashion model, and this can be felt in her ability to wear a costume. In her space outfits, her Amanda is tragically hopeless, but also life-affirming. She is fire, an inexhaustible source of energy. Day after day he tells his children the same stories about his own life and former fans. In her artificial world, Christmas tree beads are served as a treat. They are eaten like spaghetti. Here everyone sprays perfume from a spray bottle – everyone has their own associations.

In addition to Tamara Zimina, the performance features young artists who joined the troupe two or three years ago. Touching like a child, Laura is played by Kristina Gorbunova. Her heroine is always at home, sorting through a glass menagerie, where instead of little animals there are some bottles and jars. Son Tom (Evgeniy Korniliev) works in a shoe store, and in the evenings he goes to the movies to temporarily escape the dull everyday life. He dreams of going anywhere, just to break out into real life. The mother wants to marry Laura, but this is not easy, because her daughter is not like everyone else – one of her legs is slightly shorter than the other. Amanda persuades Tom to bring a decent young man, preferably a non-drinker, to visit and introduce him to his sister. One fine day, Jim O’Connor will appear – a simple-looking guy who turns out to be much subtler than one might expect. He was played by Denis Raptanov, and we will see him a little earlier in the guise of the demonic and at the same time comical Mr. X from the operetta “The Circus Princess” by Imre Kalman. He wears a mask and a light wig, and sings about a sea of ​​lights. Then it turns out that Laura has been in love with him since school. He sang well even then and called her Blue Rose. They dance, glass toys break from their awkward steps. And then the “groom” will leave forever.

Tom will also leave, just as his father once left, leaving his family. All the walls are covered with his portraits. He is forever young, the same as he left these lands, and is visibly present on the stage. Actor Dmitry Breikin, as if wearing an invisibility cap, is always nearby. Tom dreamed so much about a new life, and now it has come, and he remembers his poor and unhappy family. The image of his sister will haunt him all his life. The impossibility of forgetting the past, of completely erasing it from memory is the piercing intonation of the finale, upending everything that came before it.