This spring a grand premiere took place on the main stage of the Mayakovsky Theater – the play “Simon” based on the best-selling book by Narine Abgaryan. As Mayakovka’s information partner, we tell you why you should check out the show in the near future. The next shows will take place on June 2, 24 and July 5.
The work is based on the tragicomic novel by Narine Abgaryan, one of the main authors of modern prose in Russian; In 2020, The Guardian included her among the six most prominent authors in Europe. And her 2021 novel “Simón” reached the final of the “Big Book” award and won the readers’ vote.
Performance “Simon” (dir. Denis Khusniyarov)
The action of the play “Simon” takes place in a mountainous Armenian town, where the famous bricklayer Don Juan Simón dies. All his wives go to the widow’s house to say goodbye to her former lover. Each of them has their own story, but everything revolves around true happiness. Although at first it seems that Simon can only cause pain.
“Simon” was staged by Denis Khusniyarov, winner of the “Breakthrough” and “Golden Sofit” awards, nominated for the “Golden Mask”, who has been directing the Samara Theater for Young Spectators “SamArt” since 2023. He himself He says about the production: “In the play we try to talk about simple things, sometimes even banal. Love. Compassion. Happiness. Pain. Sensitivity. But this is precisely what is most difficult to talk about. These are such pure matters that it is difficult to work with, because they are so simple, and it is difficult to think about these simple things, much less bring them to stage life. “We thought about this and tried to make sure that these things didn’t sound banal, so that they reached the viewer in a very simple way.”
The role of Simon in the play is played by Alexey Dyakin, an actor known for his leading roles in the plays “The Eldest Son” (Busygin), “Marriage” (Podkolesin), “Mad Money” (Vasilkov), “On a Busy Place” (Vukol Bessudny), and also based on the films “Ivan the Terrible”, “Furtseva” and “Quiet Don”. Curiously, Alexey played Nicholas II in the British historical drama series “The Crown” for the Netflix platform. .
Favorites of the Mayakovka stage are also Elena Molchenko, Natalya Korennaya, Alexandra Rovenskikh, Daria Poverennova, Zoya Kaidanovskaya, Natalia Filippova, Yulia Silaeva, Igor Marychev, Yuri Korenev, Maxim Glebov, Nadezhda Butyrtseva and Lyudmila Ivanilova.
The beautiful scenery is one of the distinctive features of the performance. Which is not surprising, since the designer of the performance was Semyon Pastukh, who designed more than two hundred productions in musical and dramatic theaters, including the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky, the American Ballet Theater in New York, the National Theater of Norway and the NHK Concert. Salon in Tokyo. Furthermore, the actors’ decorations are also pleasing to the eye: they were provided exclusively for the performance by the Spanish brand UNOde50. Production designers (Semion Pastukh, Stefania Graurogkaite) together with the brand’s stylists chose those products that emphasized the individuality of each actress and most accurately revealed the images of the novel: the Merci gold necklace, the Rock n’ ring Pink, the Stand out bracelet and the unconventional silver earrings.
