Girls

The play “Girls,” based on a cycle of early stories by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, is today a rare example of literary theater, in which prose and the author’s tone are not material for adaptation, but something like the main character (as “laughter” is the “only positive hero” in “The Inspector General”). The action takes place in the Stalin era, whose optimism is expressed in songs (which is why the performers of the Variety Theater came from the musical theater faculty), while the pessimism dissolves in the context. The setting is a girls’ school, which by the end will turn into a coeducational one, and men will appear in the women’s production—though they will remain in the background. The world seen through the consciousness of a child—a girl who is awakening into womanhood—turns out to be somber and slightly frightening, yet it also constantly provides reasons for irony.