The Hairdresser

Within ten minutes of the play beginning, I knew it would become my favorite we've seen in Moscow. I left with that same feeling as well. The play was about a young woman who owns a hair salon in a somewhat rural town in Russia. She has been reciving letters from someone whom we don't know much about at first, but are led to believe that they are lovers. All the letters end with requests to destroy the letters, because the author doesn't want his feelings to be known by anyone but the young woman. That being said, the young woman burns the letter in her salon one day, unkowingly allerting the fire authorities, who dispatch a handsome young gentleman, named Viktor, to rescue her. He arrives only to notice that there is in fact no fire, which leads to some pleasantly awkward exchanges between Viktor and the young woman. When Viktor leaves the salon, we are left with the feeling that he is beginning to fall for the young woman, Tatiana. Our suspicions are proved correct when he continues to return to the salon daily, sometimes for haircuts, sometimes to deliver as gifts items he has recued from fires. While this is all happening, the salon is frequented by an older man who gives Tatiana life advice and love advice, many times when Tatiana didn't ask for it. While this somewhat Cinderella-esque story between Viktor and Tatiana is developing, Tatiana's first husband shows up at the salon only to complicate things. He professes his love and how he wants her back and effectively proves to us that the young Tatiana is not as innocent as we think. This suspicion is furthered when we discover that her lover that has been sending her letters is in jail. For murder. He is released from jail and finially comes to visit Tatiana, and to the surprise of Tatiana, is not all he has written himself to be. That being so, Tatiana falls in love with him almost instantly and the two dream of a new life in Moscow. Not long after that, the two go on a romantic outing to the country, where after laying and talking for sometime, her lover Evgani strikes her in the head attempting to kill Tatiana. He then procedes to try and set her on fire in a barn, but that failing too, he simply stabs her. Being being a Russian play steeped in the abnormal, this stabbing fails to kill her as well. Evgani goes back to jail, and we are to believe that the love between Viktor and Tatiana can finally flourish, but in the end, Tatiana recvieves another letter from Evgani, professing how sorry he is and how much he loves her.
An analysis of the story leads me to believe that it is a new take on an age old Cinderella story. Tatiana is simply looking for her prince charming in all the wrong places. This, however, can fall between the lines when reading the text, but is brought back in an outragingly strong force in the production of the play. The production was the most unique thing about this play. The set was constructed out of cardboard and made to look as 2 dimentional as possible. To add to that, some characters had cardboard doubles. And even on top of that, and my favorite part, the actors moved like they were cardboard cutouts. It was fantastic. It gave the play a very childish feeling and really took me back to the days when afternoons were spent watching Disney movies. The play changed my feelings on some of the characters from the text as well. For example, in the text, I read Viktor to be an overly persistant and annoying male suitor. In the play, Viktor was painted to be somehting of a sweetheart and a real source of comic relief. His persona on stage radiated love. Overall, I thought this play was fantastic. The adaptation of the text was a welcomed change from the text itself, the actors were phanomenal in this new 2D style of acting, and the set supported all of this extremely well.