An Anxious Box Keeper’s Sketch-Book - one-man performance directed by the Distinguished Artist of the Russian Federation Igor Volkov is the second piece of the Monologues at the Tsar’s Lobby cycle opened by the Monologues performance (currently named Faces and Roles) directed by the Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation Nikolai Marton and based on pieces of the classic repertoire.
Igor Volkov is an outstanding one-man performance expert. His individual works have received a number of awards, praised by critics, and adored by the audience. The most significant one-man performances in the Theatre’s repertoire are The Joyful Graveyard based on A.P. Chekhov’s works, The Confession of a Grumbler based on F.M. Dostoyevsky’s diaries, and The Last Dream by N. Gogol.
All those performances have something in common – a wide amplitude of emotional narration – it involves tender lyricism and severe grotesque, subtle humour and tragic compassion towards the main character.
An Anxious Box-Keeper’s Sketch-Book performance is based on the Madonna, Case Record, and other stories by Mikhail Zoshchenko. Igor Volkov directs many of his own one-man performances. He is the author of literature and scenic compositions of An Anxious Box-Keeper’s Sketch-Book, as well as he plays the role of the main character of Zoshchenko’s stories – Vasily Bylinkin, a person of little mark.
The first night took place on the 7th December 2013
Media about the
“In this performance Volkov manages to achieve an amazing thing – fragments of Zoshchenko’s very well-known stories are so masterfully encrusted into the stories told by this man supposed to be a box-keeper, that it turns out that our contemporaries can speak this way. Zoshchenko’s absurd has not become outdated. Moreover, the awkward, crippled human soul seeking (in its own way and to the best of its ability) for something sublime can leave the main character’s body and inhabit any of our contemporaries”.
Dmitry Tsilikin. Duped. An Anxious Box-Keeper’s Sketch-Book at Alexandrinsky Theatre
Delovoi Peterburg, December 2013
“Igor Volkov uniquely combines lyricism and eccentricity in his very nature. His sense of Gogol allows him to combine humour and tragedy within one role he plays, even in the role of a person of little mark”.
Zhanna Zaretskaya. An Anxious Box-Keeper and Co.
Vechernii Peterburg, December 2013
