Pinocchio
Stanislavsky Electrotheatre

The Electro-Theatre-Folks themselves do not use the old-fashioned word "production" to identify this premiere, but as everything in the world is defined these days by way of office culture newspeak: it is a project. But the title isn't the point: This project, consisting of two parts, Forest and Theatre and lasting a total of some seven and a half hours while incorporating almost the entire company in its orbit, turned out to be spectacular. Its been a long time since a theatre in the capital  produced such a skillful, complex and painstaking work. Rumors tell us that the project's cost ran into eight figures. And it would be hard to deny: every ruble is visible!

It goes without saying that this long, long tale - humanely performed over two consecutive evenings — is intended for seasoned adult theatergoers. Even they, however, witnessing the odyssey of the Carlo Collodi's legendary character — first through an enchanted forest, where Pinocchio was born, and then through the no less magical world of the theatre — have every chance of failing to understand what’s what and why? Even the episodical synopsis included in the program does not help much.

In his play The Mad Angel Pinocchio, Andrei Vishnevsky included among the characters not only the proverbial Harlequin and Pierrot and the prototype for Karabas-Barabas — Mangiafuoco, but also Nijinsky, Goethe and Edgar Allan Poe.

The simple-minded wooden Pinocchio, by the will of director Boris Yukhananov, has an equal double (Maria Belyaeva and Svetlana Naidyonova), and they repeat almost every line twice or even more. To be honest, this is tiring. The costumes by Anastasia Nefyodova are so beautiful and so overdone that at a certain point the eyes grow a little tired of this feast. But to complain about that, as they say, is a sin!