Written by Aleksandr Ostrovsky Playwright Alexander Ostrovsky | Originally published 1868 | |
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Date premiered 13 November [O.S. 1 November] 1868 Comedies The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, The Marriage of Figaro, A Month in the Country, Fortune's Fool | ||
enough stupidity in every wise man by alexander ostrovsky
Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man (Russian: На всякого мудреца довольно простоты; translit. Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovolno prostoty) is a five-act comedy by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The play offers a satirical treatment of bigotry and charts the rise of a double-dealer who manipulates other people's vanities. It is Ostrovsky's best-known comedy in the West.
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Production history
1868 – Alexandrinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg.
1868 – Maly Theatre, Moscow.
1885 – Korsh Theatre, Moscow.
The seminal Russian theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky directed the play with his Moscow Art Theatre. The production opened on 23 March [O.S. 11 March] 1910. Stanislavski played General Krutitsky and Kachalov played Glumov.
A production of the play was the most significant of the early theatre work of the Russian Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. The playwright Sergei Tretyakov transformed Ostrovsky's text into a revue (what Eisenstein called a "montage of attractions"), which was entitled Wiseman (Mudrets). Eisenstein and Tretyakov's approach was part of the Russian avant-garde Futurist movement known as "Eccentricism," which sought the "circusisation" of the theatre. In celebration of the centennial of Ostrovsky's birth, the production opened in April 1923. It was staged by the First Workers' Theatre of the Prolekult in its theatre in an ornate mansion on Vozdvizhenka Street, with a cast that included Maxim Shtraukh, Ivan Pyryev, and Grigori Aleksandrov. Eisenstein drew on popular theatre techniques from farce and the commedia dell'arte in his staging, which sought to make every metaphor concrete and physical; he wrote:
A screening of Eisenstein's first film, entitled Glumov's Diary, concluded the performance. Writing in 1928, Eisenstein explained that he had aimed "to achieve a revolutionary modernization of Ostrovsky, i.e., a social re-evaluation of his characters, seeing them as they might appear today."
Boris Nirenburg and A. Remizova directed an adaptation of the play for television in 1971.