"Utopia" by M. Durnenkov tells about the familiar history of the family "business" to each of us. An entrepreneur from Moscow offers the heroes a deal they can't refuse - to resurrect for a day the bankrupt Utopia family beer bar, famous in the 90s for its disgusting beer and kitsch interior. Mother, father and son, who were once close people, get the opportunity to do whatever they want with the restored business for the day they recreated "Utopia".
Playwright M. Durnenkov says: “It seems to me that all utopias are not about how to make our society smarter, kinder and better, but about community, about the opportunity to be together. The play "Utopia" is about the fear of the future, the fear of life, the need to change, the attempt to find a safe haven in the past and stay in it forever. Because it is death."
Russian and Estonian theater director, artistic director of the Russian Theater of Estonia Philip Los shared his thoughts on the play by M. Durnenkov: “Utopia” is tragic. The heroes of the play dream of happiness, love, family harmony, but in the name of this circumstance they are forced to recreate a cheap and dirty eatery, a phantom of the past that does not want to let go and will eventually crush them. This is a play about the doom of the desire to return what has ended, about the fact that returning to the past leads to death and destruction of the future.
At the same time, the story we tell is absolutely not tied to a particular country or a particular historical era. Each of the heroes of "Utopia" has its own pain, its own echoes of memories. They, heroes, live among us in Russia, and in Lithuania, and in Estonia, and anywhere. The tendency to idealize the past has around us the character of a global epidemic. And everyone himself must answer the question - am I able to break out of this captivity, move forward, find myself in today's, present.
Warning - smoking on stage during the performance
The performance is in Russian with Lithuanian subtitles
Photographer - Dmitry Matveev
