Visual associations based on the novel by Sasha Sokolov.
Performance by Formalny theatre
Director – Andrey Moguchy
Fringe First of the Edinburgh Fringe and Grand prix of BITEF
The Major Characters:
The boy – Nymphea
Mama and Papa
Sheyla Solomonovna Trahtenberg, communal block neighbour (also the witch Tinbergen)
Veta Arkadievna, biology teacher (female)
Pawel Petrovich Norvegov (Saul), Geography teacher (male, barefoot)
Perillo, Special School Director
Rosa Vetrova, the tiny schoolgirl (who loves Saul Petrovich)
(boy’s voice made by 10 year old Ewan MacDonald, Edinburgh, Scotland)
Come, enter a 1950’s Soviet communal apartment block wherein resides a nameless family and a nameless boy – an autistic child [played by two actors] suffering from split personality. And yet there is such a great beauty in his soul that he can will himself into becoming Nymphea, a water lily floating on the ponds of life.
As the screens of his memory draw open, look through the boy’s eyes and enter into his deepest, darkest childhood recollection. Dwell for some moments in the family apartment, meet Papa, a Soviet judge so obsessed with his profession that Mama seeks a lover’s affection after visiting Grandma’s grave. Meet the hilarious old Jewish neighbour, Sheyla Solomonovna Trahtenberg also known to the boy as the witch Tinbergen who reappears later in black dress, boots and white cane as the kommisar schoolmistress
Now enter the classrooms of the cruel Special school system. Here you will meet the harsh disciplinarian principal Perillo, a former World War 11 Red Army veteran who refers to the children only as numbers. Meet Veta Arkadievna, the beautiful biology teacher and supreme object of Nymphea’s affections, and then encounter the tiny little schoolgirl Rosa Vetrova is she alive or dead? Also meet Saul Petrovich, the eccentric barefoot geography teacher who is both mentor and a figure of hope to the schoolchildren until his dismissal. Somehow, he will die, be resurrected, and then enter Nymphea and little Rosa’s daydreams – talking to them across the biblical river Lethe.
Do not let the Russian language distract you as you float into and through Formalny-Baltic’s hugely impressionistic production. This is all a deeply interpretive and atmospheric dream √ way beyond languages – and charged with the most compelling poetic imagery, tenderness, pathos, joy and hope.
