Young director Kotryna Siaurusaitytė brings back to the theatre stage Nikolai Gogol, a Russian classic of Ukrainian origin, known as the Godfather of Russian literature. Vladimir Nabokov called Gogol Russia's best writer, and his work has influenced generations of authors from Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Mikhail Bulgakov. Gogol's work masterfully combined reality and fantasy, comedy and drama, a realistic portrayal of reality, criticism of the social system and existential reflections and mystical insights.
The main character of the short story "The Cloak" is Akakiy Akakiyevich, a poor, lonely official in his early sixties. He is a typical "little man" - silent, closed, rarely expressing his opinion. Constantly ridiculed for his manner and appearance, Akakievich decides to buy a new cloak, hoping that it will change his life and win him the respect of those around him. The thought of a new garment overwhelms his mind, and he begins to think of the cloak as a loved one. When the dream is finally realised, Akakijevic's life seems to change, but it soon becomes clear that this was just the beginning of even greater troubles... An ordinary man is left alone to fight against injustice and is eventually crushed by the tentacles of the bureaucratic system.
As the director of the play, Kotryna Siaurusaitytė, says, "It seems that Gogol in The Cloak is experimenting with a man: he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, held him up, and threw him down. Gogol is a sad humourist: the funny immediately turns sad and vice versa. The lightness of the genre gives room for creativity and actorly improvisation, bringing this material to the stage. The play is a glimpse into an absurd world in which man can only exist through fantasies, and in which the tragic nature of a single and lonely man is revealed, conditioned by the indifference of the society that surrounds him and the attempt to systematise everything and everyone. With associative images, sound solutions and, of course, healthy humour, we will try to immerse the audience in a surreal dreamscape."
The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
