SYNOPSES

Sergei Nosov

"Behind glass"

A comedy

Tolstoi and Dostoevskii never met. That's wrong, their families should have been friends. This is what the organisers of a Congress decide, when they hire actors to sit in a hall behind glass. The heroes adapt themselves to the absurd, only Dostoevskii rebels.

Male roles - 2

Female roles - 2

Andrey Zinchuk

"The Return of Hope"

A comedy in two acts

This comedy resembles a detective story: there's always someone breaking down the door of the flat where two old friends, Vera and Nadezhda, live, and the telephone keeps on ringing. The cast even includes 'fighters' with shaved heads, obligatory characters these days, and a policeman. And yet this is a story about the return of hope and... love.

Even if a woman is frivolous, and feelings unrequited.

2 female roles

5 male roles

Igor' Shprits

"Anything you say, darling..."

A lyrical comedy

A sanatorium on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. He is a forty year-old academic, researching the after-effects of Chernobyl?. While out walking, he meets a charming young girl. The girl is searching for a husband for her lonely mother. She has been searching for a long time - since she was six. She - the mother - is going to arrive later. And when He and She meet each other, it turns out that they are already acquainted. Moreover, they even used to be married to each other, and the girl is their daughter, about whom, of course, he knew nothing. The second act is concerned with sorting out a relationships which has been tangled up by time, by his dead mother-in-law, and resentment on both sides. But old love does not grow rusty, and puts everything back in its place again. He and She are together once more. The girl sorts out her problems too. Out of nowhere emerge two new families. A very happy ending.

Male roles - 4

Female roles - 4

Tatiana Katinskaia

"Dinner for two, cooked tomorrow"

A comedy in two acts

Two somewhat eccentric people, no longer in their first youth. She appears to be a lady who is successful and satisfied with her life. He appears to be a tramp. She hires him as watchman for her house in the country. But not everything in this story is so straightforward! In fact this is far from being the case: each dialogue between the two of them turns into a battle. At first it seems that these two people turn out to be living under the same roof quite by chance! But is that how it really is? Two people, two lives, two fates. Each has his own aim, dream, his own star. And he sees the meaning of his existence in her alone. But it might just be that there is another, different star ... nearby, very close...

Male roles - 1

Female roles - 1

Stanislav Shuliak

"Bastard Square"

A comedy of confusion in two acts

Someone once had a strange idea: gather together in one place all the unhappy people, the rejected people, all the 'superfluous' people... And so a town came into being, where you can find Bastard Square, Misanthropes' Prospect, Paranoiacs' Prospect, Schizoid Street. One day the calm and steady way of life of the inhabitants of Bastard Square is disturbed by the arrival of an odd stranger. Either they are being visited by a dangerous lunatic or conman, who is pursuing his own unknown plan, or it is the Second Coming of the Saviour...

Male roles - 7

Female roles - 2

Taras Drozd

"The Sweet Salmon-Spawning Season"

A drama in two acts

An isolated village at the mouth of a Siberian river. It is the end of the world and a dead-end for the lives of its inhabitants. The only chance to make ends meet somehow comes from the catch of salmon during the spawning season. Vladimir, a surgeon, arrives from the region's main town to visit his friend. But Sasha Bekasov hasn't just invited his old schoolfriend for the fishing - he dreams of sending his teenage son back with him to civilisation, where he can have a decent education and find work. This has to be kept secret from Sasha's wife, whose son is her only joy, and who would be unwilling to let him go. In Bekasov's life social problems combine with a mid-life crisis, and with a split in his family.

Male roles - 5

Female roles - 3

Translations into English
by Dr Katharine Hodgson
Russian Department School
of Modern Languages University
of Exeter
England