Elvira Kekeeva

Yury Butusov’s final Moscow production is this multi-award-winning work based on Nikolai Gogol’s “Government Inspector.” The play deftly delves into the dual impossibilities of both accepting reality and escaping from it. As with many of Butusov’s stagings, chaos and pathos are seamlessly interwoven, with art presented as both freeing and healing.

Office employee Vasily is forced to spend the Friday evening before the New Year not in a bar with friends and not at home with his family, but at work with his boss, who during a Skype call instructs the hero to urgently make another presentation. The hated boss drives Vasily so much that for the first time in his life he decides to tell him everything he thinks about him — more precisely, write to him in a messenger. The sweet feeling of liberation from office slavery is replaced by anxiety for the future, own and family, especially since the boss immediately starts typing something in response…