About

A comedy based on Le Libertin by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, a French contemporary playwright and novelist widely translated in Russia. Schmitt himself described the play as the funniest he had written; it was drafted in a spring that comes through in the writing. The Petersburg staging places the philosopher Denis Diderot at the centre — charming, sharp, and disinclined to change — until an intrigue he did not start pulls him into a game of passion, jealousy and self-parody that he cannot quite steer. Kabare Buff plays it as fast-cut boulevard comedy: quick dialogue, situations balanced on the edge of decency, actor improvisation in the flirtation scenes. In Russian; around two hours with interval. Audiences are drawn into the action more than most productions in the house.