Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater: Seryozha is very stupid

Trials and Errors, running time: 1 h 10 m, prime April 4, 2018
Ticket price range 1500—10000 rub.

Author — Dmitry Danilov
Director — Alexey Kuzmin-Tarasov
Designer — Olga Bogatischeva, Vladislav Frolov, Anna Zobova, , Anna Zobova, Yekaterina Burlakova, Oksana Globa
Ass. director — Maria Kozyar

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I found it interesting to write a play with a completely classical form (plot, characters, dialogue), with its own internal logic, but at the same time absurd. This combination of “relatively normal“ dialogues, without abstruseness, etc., and absurd content somehow captivated me.

I was interested in this situation from a psychological point of view, especially the main character's reaction to unusual events and conversations. But if I were to answer the question „what is this play about?”, I would say that it is about the fact that something irrational and inexplicable can invade the simple, measured life of an ordinary person at any moment, and one will have to deal with this irrational and somehow react to it. And your whole future life (or its end) may depend on this.

Dmitry Danilov

Seryozha Is Very Stupid, directed by Alexey Kuzmin-Tarasov from a new play by Dmitry Danilov, is at once realistic and absurd, funny and frightening — a story about our life today, a world in which a “delivery service” you never asked for already exists. […] This light, ironic production leaves ample room for serious thoughts, fantasies and emotions, while the final scene, when Seryozha and Masha are left alone, is almost touching. This new work by the Fomenko Workshop, part of its “Trials and Errors” series, has turned out precise and unerring. You leave the theatre in a wonderful mood — something that does not happen often in the current Moscow theatre season… And apparently it does not take all that much: an interesting play, lucid direction and fine acting.: Larisa Kanevskaya, Mnenie

Seryozha Is Very Stupid, based on Dmitry Danilov’s play, is an unusually intelligent, serious and incisive production. All its characters — even those who are obvious fools, like the Third Courier — say intelligent things, grounded in logic and historical context. […] There is no idealization of the Soviet Union in Seryozha Is Very Stupid, but there is irony — directed equally at the past, the present and even the future. Irony with an element of satire. Seryozha Is Very Stupid may well be the most ironic production about our lives currently playing in Moscow theatres — about a life in which so much has become mixed up and confused, and which poses so many questions the internet cannot answer.: Anzhelika Zaozerskaya, Vechernyaya Moskva

The ending of the production, however, is decidedly life-affirming. […] In Kuzmin-Tarasov’s production, Masha and Seryozha instead draw closer in the face of mysterious forces intruding into their world. Their conversation after the strange delivery men leave, accompanied by footage of the couple out for a walk, feels warm, intimate and domestic. It is wonderful that the play can be read and staged in such different ways; one can only wish it a long theatrical life and many more interpretations. For now, we can simply rejoice in this wonderful, slightly comic and mysterious production about love triumphing over everything once again.: Anna Bogatyreva, Porusski.ru

For Andrey Mikhalev, this production is the showcase he has long deserved. He is unquestionably a versatile actor, capable of transforming himself not merely from one production to another but even within a single performance. Particular attention, however, should be paid to Maria Bolshova: in the few minutes she spends onstage, she draws all attention to herself with an extraordinary energy. No wonder Seryozha, the couriers and the audience are all captivated by her.: Vladimir Borisov, Izvestia

Director Alexey Kuzmin-Tarasov and his actors — Andrey Mikhalev and Maria Bolshova as Seryozha and Masha, and Vasily Firsov, Tagir Rakhimov and Nikolai Orlovsky as the three couriers of different generations — manage to avoid both caricature and stereotype in this confrontation. The working-class couriers are more human, their reactions more vivid, and they are more open to the new than the programmer and the designer. But are they really couriers at all? Couriers do not normally travel in threes. That is more characteristic of the horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or the Christian Trinity.: Mikhail Wiesel, God Literatury