Gerald Sibleyras, the playwright of “The Wind in the Poplars” is a present-day French dramatist who was born in 1961.

At the dawn of his vocation of a writer Sibleyras worked on dialogues and scripts for motion pictures. In collaboration with Jean Dell he wrote several plays, one of them, “A Little Game without Consequence”, became a howling success and in 2003 was honoured with 5 Moliere awards, including “Best French play of the year”. In 2006 Sibleyras’s solitary work “The Wind in the Poplars” received a Laurence Olivier Award for “Best Comedy”. Gerald Sibleyras unjustly stands below-the-radar in Russia despite distinctive excellence of his plays. He is a master of witty dialogues, his sense of humour is unquestionable, he is a philosopher and a provocateur. His heroes are ambitious cranks whose self-irony is ruthless while reverie is utterly naive.

Three heroes meet on the senior home terrace, each with the past, but today they are banded by common future – by their age and borders of the house. Adullstory? Not at all. For the heroes are focused not at the end of life, but, on the contrary, are willing to struggle for their future and cope with all the obstacles, hang-ups and sores. They look nothing like departing souls. Life excites them and this feeling prevents discouragement and the ails they have become subjects of self-irony.

Charles De Gaulle used to say that “the dignity of a nation is determined by the sense of self-deprecating humour”. The heroes of the play are well-possessed of this trait. Their lives flow surrounded by endless squabbles between each other, they dream of what will never happen and come every morning to the terrace, like Beckett’s characters to a dead tree, knowing that their closest reality is death.

Wonderful actors – Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Maksim Sukhanov and Vladimir Simonov – will tell the story of three weirdoes in the performance staged by R. Tuminas. Together with actors he creates both painting and graphics, but when the work is finished, the picture goes away and the performance starts living an independent life. So as in this play, the characters seek answers to the questions about eternity, pride, love and compassion. A powerful energy lies beyond the variety of colours, the kind of energy that, we hope, will jump over the limes and grab the audience.

Co-project of The Evgeny Vakhtangov Theatre and International theatre agency Art-Partner XXI.

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