Performance "Office": reviews, actors

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The mega-funny, ultra-modern show-performance "The Office" tells about the life of a typical office in a large business center of a big city.

According to ticket sales ratings, it was this production that attracted the most viewers last year of all other performances combined, becoming the most attended theater event in the capital.

What are the critics saying?

After the play "Office" was held at the Taganka Theater, the audience's reviews were mostly perplexed. Inveterate theater-goers and critics almost in plain text advised the artists of the ProJect team not to go on any stage except the circus arena.

The ardor of criticism subsided, and then completely replaced by enthusiasm after Oleg Menshikov appreciated the production, saying that it was funny and witty. Probably in gratitude for the publicIn his opinion, the photo of the artist adorns the performance's Facebook page, although Menshikov himself has nothing to do with The Office.

The Taganka Theater subsequently invited the play "Office" more than once or twice. And each of the unique performances was held with the same full house. The project participants themselves speak extremely positively about their work on the legendary Taganka stage and are always ready for cooperation.

What is this sight?

What exactly is happening on stage? How the production is positioned by its participants is a theatrical show, and how critics write it is clowning. As the audience writes about the play "Office" in the reviews - "a new phenomenon that turns the attitude towards the theater", "an amazing spectacle", "acrobatic sketches" and so on. The “Kontora” pages on social networks are full of such characteristics, which boil down to the fact that the performance is know-how for theatrical art and has no analogues. Project participants and administrators of Internet resources, of course, do not dispute such assessments of viewers.

However, nothing new is actually happening on stage. In Western Europe, there have been plastic theaters for more than one century, and on every major street in any of the capitals you can see performances of mimes.

The play "Office" is precisely a plastic production, similar to any performance of absolutely every European theater of modern pantomime. There are no new stage techniques in the performance, on the contrary, there is an absolutely classicalpresentation, which includes elementary elements of acrobatic etudes, which are taught in the first years of theater institutes, not only European, but also Russian.

However, for our stage, everything that happens in the "Office" is really a breath of fresh air, and there really are no analogues to this original performance, at least not known throughout the country. The production center, which presented the play "Office", "Compass" a year ago, received the most flattering and to some extent envious reviews from fellow competitors, since the project began to bring real profit before the first season of its existence had passed, and at the same time even without leaving the Moscow Ring Road.

What's different

While critics are arguing about the artistic value of this production, the show-performance "Office" is almost collecting reviews from the audience, and the number of people who want to see this performance is increasing every day.

The main difference from the usual theatrical performance is the complete absence of text. For an hour and a half, the artists do not utter a single word and do not make a single sound. But this does not mean at all that dead silence reigns in the hall, on the contrary, the laughter of the audience often drowns out the musical accompaniment.

Worth watching?

When going to this performance, you need to understand that you are going to watch a spectacle that is really fundamentally different from the usual classical theatrical performance. If you expect a normal comedy, then disappointment is inevitable.

To the viewers,those who visit theaters for the sake of the artists, and not for the sake of the performances themselves, that is, “going to the star”, should also not watch The Office, because there is not a single famous performer on the stage. Moreover, advertisements periodically appear on the Internet for recruitment to the troupe of this project, where the main requirements are acrobatic skills and plasticity.

Accordingly, in the absence of a conservative attitude towards theatrical events, this performance is worth watching and laughing heartily, getting a lot of positive emotions and discovering a completely different genre of performing arts, which has nothing to do with the usual drama, opera, musical or ballet.

Who is the director?

The director of the "Office" is Filatov Sergey Vasilievich, whose personality is well known to the theater regulars in St. Petersburg. He has many famous productions to his credit.

Kontora has become for a successful artist and already recognized director not so much an opportunity to earn extra money as a chance to do something extravagant and new on stage, to express themselves and open up to the audience a genre that is almost unknown in our country. As the director himself says about his work - "a good comedy and office clowning." His words are the most accurate description of the play "Office". Feedback from grateful viewers confirms this.

Who's on stage?

The attention of the audience for an hour and a half is held by only five characters - the "boss" and employees. Although there are only five heroes, the artists involved inthe project is much larger, and the line-up on the stage is constantly changing.

Since there are no stars in the performance on which the viewer is walking, the change of participants remains invisible and does not affect the perception of the performance and its quality in any way.

Among those employed in the production are Alexei Sarychev, Oleg Prusakov, Bagrat Melkumyan, Alexei Viktorov, Maxim Al-Names, Anton Filipenko, Andrey Korobov, Pavel Sibiryakov, Anton Lapenko and many others.

If for some reason it is important to know who exactly will be on stage on a certain date, you can always find out by asking a question on the pages of the performance in any of the social networks.

What is the play about?

On the stage, scenery depicting a typical office. The play "Office", whose actors portray employees and their boss who did not have time to finish their work and stayed in the office in the evening, tells not just about funny situations that you can laugh at.

In the course of action, the characters notice the appearance of various superpowers in themselves and those around them, which they immediately begin to use. The first person targeted by these new superpowers is, of course, the boss.

As employees of one of the Moscow advertising agencies wrote about the content of the play "Office" in the reviews: "Whom are we friends against, guys?", Adding that what is happening on stage is so typical and recognizable, despite the grotesque and lack of words, you can literally feel like you are not in a spectator chair, but at your desk.

What genre?

Thiscomedy, but not for easy viewing. Not only pantomime reigns on the stage, accompanied by well-known musical hits of the 80s and 90s, but also the grotesque. The performance raises a serious philosophical topic, explaining to the audience that this whole world is one gigantic office in which a person is an insignificant cog. And if the “cog” forgets about how it is to dream, think, create, then it turns into a wastebasket or a printer.

The main idea of the production is conveyed through the transformations and metamorphoses taking place with the characters, shown by the artists unambiguously and clearly, in the best traditions of pantomime. Therefore, questions about what happened there, on stage, do not arise in the auditorium.

Although the idea of the performance is quite global and raises very serious questions about the play "Office", the reviews of those who watched it invariably note - they laughed to tears. Therefore, speaking about its genre, we can safely say that this is a comedy built on the techniques of pantomime, with elements of acrobatics, farce and grotesque.

What are they saying?

The responses of the audience to the "Office", of course, are contradictory. Conservative patrons of theatrical performances accepted the performance with difficulty, but people who rarely look into the centers of culture leave extremely enthusiastic reviews.

Among famous people who came to the premiere, Oleg Menshikov's statement was the most concise and meaningful assessment of the work of the ProJect team.

Quite interesting and evensuch a moment is paradoxical - the performance is completely devoid of text, but despite this, the majority of viewers enthusiastically retell the plot of the action in their comments and reviews, often endowing the characters with certain statements.

Such a feature in the perception of the production confirms not only the fact that the performance was a success, but also the fact that everything that happens on the stage is quite recognizable and life-like, and not just funny.