The first performance - "Neighbors" of the Khakass National Puppet Theater (director and artist Sergei Ivannikov) - just fell in love with everyone. Because love was his super-plot! The good-natured tight-headed Bear and the cunning Fox (Andrey Timofeev and Elena Timofeeva) are recognizable folklore masks, but the matter is not exhausted by the characteristic, colorful performance of the acting duet. Characters can not live without each other. Here, how much humor, so many lyrics. The fox is sly and thievish, just can not be different - but she desperately misses the Bear, and he, no matter how angry, is forever captivated by his charming neighbor. Something like "Old-world landlords" or "Philemon and Baucis" is being played: an eternal, inseparable pair - and a children's morning party contains this meaning. The actors' hands in this play are the hands of the characters, the conjugation of the doll-fairy-tale and inner human plots arises. "Neighbors" are perceived as a capacious, incredibly warm theatrical parable.
Nadezhda Tarshis
Petersburg Theatre Magazine
Children's fairy tale about sly fox and simple-minded Medvedev turned into the author of Sergei Ivannikov's play in the communal history of the endless clarification of the relationship of two lonely elderly beings. Therefore, the performance is quite suitable for family viewing. Parents will be interested in carefully reproduced signs of a departed life: saucepans, gramophones, curtains. And children will be amused by funny skirmishes of animals and cheerful dance numbers. Two characters exist on stage so virtuously that the audience is invariably surprised when seven actors go on a bow. Three for each doll (the head, hands and feet of the character are carefully played by a separate performer), plus one - as the puppeteers say, for help. And with all the technical complexity of the work, the Abakans do not forget about the psychology of their characters, as if they fit into the Russian proverb: "Lovely people are scolded - they just play."
Bouklet "The Golden Mask"