“The encyclopedia of German life, embodying the ethics, aesthetics and philosophy of Renaissance, tangled with bible stories, became a base of contemporary mystery play for Yukhananov.  Doctor Faust, sickened with life, indifferent to everything around him, locked himself up into the world of his searches, becomes a character of a divine game, where God – the author of an incredibly immense play – gives a lesson to the Humanity.

Yukhananov builds a sophisticated composition of the play, with the model of frisky and playful, but deceptive world, similar to Shakespeare’s, where all is a theatre and all are actors. From the moment the red curtain is up, the action shifts to the Heavenly Chancellery – and the Mystery springs to life…

Yukhananov uses baroque aesthetics with all its attendant mixtures, reflecting so natural for our time overflow of the events of external life. Various kinds of jugglery and games, the comic and the tragic, a circus and a mystery play, gilded censers, appearance of the spirit, inflatable dinosaur with its otherworldly growls, tricks with tamed cats, real fire – all these build the props of the divine theatre, painted with bright colours, all these are the joys of life that distract soul. These artificial “miracles” and visual effects are a deliberate “fraud”, a metaphor of illusionary carnal reality that has consumed Humanity.

One more line is added to the multileveled construction of the play – the line of songs. The director brings them into the text of the play like the finest baroque illustrations to this or that scene: “Christ is risen” by Rachmaninov (lyrics by Merezhkovsky: “Be He among us and see what our glorious age has reached…”), defining the theme of the divine mystery; “Marguerites”  (lyrics by Igor Severianin) – the song that sounds in the scene of Heinrich’s uncommitted suicide, as if a prediction of the forthcoming meeting with Gretchen – Marguerite; “Two crows” by Aliabiev as an allegoric comment to the relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles…  

Sarcastic Heinrich is subtly performed by Igor Yatsko. Every line comes with the support of a sign-gesture and laborious monologues sound light and melodious.

Marguerite (Olga Balandina) is trustful, a bit childish; she can’t take her lover’s friendship with the devil, but unwillingly takes part in it. Blinded by love, she condemns herself to destruction.

In the piercing final scene, when Heinrich is trying to save the girl from the execution, Marguerite transforms – no sign of previous childishness. In cold blood she confesses her sin and prepares herself to death without groans and laments. Here the unusual distancing of the actress’s play gives the spectator a feeling of true compassion to the heroine who took so much pain – a sacrifice of her own love”.