The biggest success of the current premiere is Mikhail Filippov who was invited to the Hermitage Theatre to play the role of the dismal Professor. The actor vividly enjoys his character and the work as a whole. The production is built upon the enthralling clash between the two strong individualities – the perfectly mature actor with a distinctive style of his own and the director who is no less charismatic and talented but also demonstrates the characteristically directorial kind of tyranny.
A part of director Mikhail Levitin is present in each of his actors. It is a very big part because his productions have been not just made by him. They have been inspired by him and fully impregnated with his personality. Therefore Mikhail Filippov at the Hermitage is not only a guest star. He is also fresh blood. He is as much a stranger on this stage as his character is in the little world of his. This ironic coincidence has come very opportunely. The real circumstances sharpen and effectively accentuate the situations on stage where the ‘the last man standing’ gets desperate as he fails to see his future or fix up his present. In a word, he is unmistakably our dearest and most likable ‘good guy.
Alyona Danilova, «Vash Dosug»
In this production Filippov demonstrates both unmistakably Chekhovian uprightness and out-and-out eccentricity. He is capable of both making the audience collapse with laughter and bringing them to tears. The actor has never demonstrated this kind of performance in film and only very rarely has on stage. The cast of other actors – Alexander Livanov (as Professor’s aide and deceived husband), Yuri Amigo (as Doorkeeper), Daria Belousova (as the protagonist’s wife) – are both bouncy and convincing. They erect weird structures out of chairs and at times look like caricatures of the man from Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings decorating the backdrop. And toward the denouement it is getting increasingly clear that having staged Chekhov within a different system of theatrical coordinates, Levitin showed that he doesn’t think too highly of the human race and regards life as something quite unpleasant. Essentially that makes the two of him and Chekhov». Olga Romantsova, «Gazeta» «In the course of almost three hours we are listening to a very simple and in fact quite a dreary story about how life is slowly dripping out of the man. The modern theatre has long broken us of the habit of such intent watching of the man, peering into his face, listening to how he intones his lines and feeling the sympathy that makes us suffer. This is perhaps one of the greatest traditions of the Russian psychological theatre that seemed to have been long fallen into oblivion. But Mikhail Levitin is painfully and inescapably bringing it back to us
Natalya Staroselskaya, «Kultura»
