“Here they are used to breathing the tenuous air of the mountain tops, from where the Creator plays his divine (and frightful) games with the Man.

It was not by chance that Boris Yukhananov, the director, and Igor Yatsko – art-director of the theatre (and the performer of the main role) named the preparatory work on “Faust” “Laboratory of Game Structures”. After the first night the laboratory didn`t stop – a curious spectator can look it out in the repertoire of the theatre, and - if he comes – listen to weird talks, like this:

What is the Faust issue of these days?
Well, if we give a hint, we could say about the interrelationships between Sodom and Heavenly Jerusalem, the two principles of life that are starting to unwrap so vitally important nowadays.
What is Sodom?

-   Sodom is when mine is mine and yours is yours. This seems reasonable. But this principle leads to the crime when what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine. Opposite to it there’s an altruistic lifestyle, when what’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours. If you entrust your life to Creator and to his solution, you confirm: “what’s mine is Yours, and what’s Yours is Yours”.  In this regard Faust entrusts his life to Creator. Because it was Creator, who ordered the Devil to start competing with the Man, knowing in advance that the Man will win. God asks Mephistopheles: “Do you know Faust?” – “A doctor?” – “A servant of mine”. If you just look through the Old Testament you’ll know what being a Servant of God means. It’s a very high level of spiritual order…

Yukhananov has been taking his lead from the Holy texts, where you can’t call the mystery by its name in order to explore it. That’s why Fust, the servant of God, is buffooning, god-fooling and quarrelling with the devil (Ramil Sabitov as Mephistopheles), scoffing at everything sacred, seducing the girl, surrounded by a host of golden-winged angels that are running about like schoolchildren at recess.

Yukhananov, along with Yuri Kharikov, creates a space where one could recognize signs of a puppet theatre of the Middle Ages (the one that showed the story of the contract between doctor Faust and the Devil), or of an ancient Mystery Play and new Play Theatre, where angels sit on the benches, but, when required, take off their golden wings and sing divine songs by Rubinstein, Rachmaninov, Glinka and Dargomyzhsky, prayers by Handel and Gounod. The very principle of mockery, that hides everything important under the disguise of irony, is guiding the audience along the paths of a very complex text for four hours.

Igor Yatsko’s Faust is the very flesh of his. His scarily strange, expressive face, with the devilish glint – he seems to be the real Mephostopheles. Only once, when, trying to seduce Gretchen, her questions about faith catch him on the hop, Faust-Yatsko answers with a straight face. The play, full of larky and horrible paradoxes, stops dead over the abyss for a moment…

…The beginning of the second part. Gretchen is sitting and praying on a pew, and a golden-winged angel (Svetlana Naidionova) is stepping along the red curtain with full concentration, reading for her the words of the prayer. This ritual footstep and the acuteness of the speech turns the buffoonery into tragedy at once.”