Unexpected and unsurmised

The Mikhailovsky Theatre presents the St. Petersburg premiere of the play “Unexpectedly” directed by Galina Polishchuk based on the work of the same name by Valentin Rasputin.

It’s the “wild nineties” outside. The river of life overflows its banks, boils, and overturns the fragile boats of fate. Lively, playful mysterious water suddenly turns into muddy streams of inexorable rock. It stuffs pockets with crumpled banknotes, tramples the body into the ground, and turns the soul inside out. Is there hope for salvation? Yes, says Valentin Rasputin.

Rasputin was one of the first to show what trauma lay behind these “tricks and gags”. A true expert on the life of the Russian province, the writer knew well what he was talking about, comparing his fellow countrymen with logs floating along the Angara. That is why he paints a different, but just as real world — the Russian village with its innocence and ingenuity, good humour and childish imagination, warmth and tenderness for nature.

Like living and dead water, the elements of good and evil flow in a person, filling the soul with grief and happiness. And each makes the weak strong, the last first. But the question of what the truth is no longer faces us. As well as the question of who will win: darkness or light.