The Players in Moscow, Mossovet Theatre

At the Mossovet Theater there is a production of Nikolai Gogol’s famous play “The Players”.

This Gogol play is dearly loved by directors and playwrights not only of Russian theaters, but also of foreign ones. It has been staged on the theater stage many times and each time the directors find something unknown and new in it.

The story of how several swindlers outwitted another rogue like themselves, witty, funny, brilliant in a characteristic Gogol manner, shows the audience a world in which everything is inside out. The main thing here is not to live, but to make money, and in the struggle for profit absolutely all means are good.

This value system turns every person into a professional liar who can easily wishful thinking if this wishful thinking will bring benefits in the long run and help them snatch a fatter piece. Such people easily feign love, patriotism, faith, and stop at nothing to snatch a fatter piece.

Director Pavel Parkhomenko brilliantly conveys Gogol’s style of ridiculing the terrible, stupid and absurd so that the audience laughs, but still gives the audience the idea of how “making money” is more important than “living” and what price one sometimes has to pay for profit.