Perfect Misfits: Armed with a good dose of Russian stoicism, Woody Allen's New York-style neurotics make themselves at home on the Moscow stage.

"Most of the show's first half passes in fits and starts as the characters bicker with one another, complain about the bad play they are performing and suddenly slip into ruminations about sex when meaninglessness and the inevitability of death overwhelm them. The actress, crushed by the realization that there is no God, goes into the audience seeking someone to give her a reassuring hug -- and at least is able to find that much. When Trichinosis unveils his deus ex machina, a wooden horse on which a god can ride down from the heavens to solve any knotty problem, it seems there may be hope for this crazy play after all.
Hepatitis' play, "The Slave," tells the tale of a man who is happy to remain an indentured servant until he learns that the Jewess of his dreams will not consider sleeping with him until he gains his freedom. All he must do is deliver a message to the king, and, encouraged by his awakening sense of dignity and his increasingly nagging libido, he sets off to win his liberty and claim the girl. How this all pans out is best left undescribed, although it doesn't take a scholar to realize that Allen has plenty of tricks in store for both mortals and divinities.
Perhaps one of Shamirov's shrewdest moves was to steer clear of the trademark Woody Allen neurosis. The people in Shamirov's version of "God" are half-baked and fully confused, but there is something distinctly Russian about their bewilderment. These are not Allen's fragile urban intellectual psycho cases, but rather rough-edged, tough-skinned Moscow-dwelling skeptics. Everything else fits perfectly: the penchant for big questions and grand statements, the willingness to self-destruct to make a point and the desire to repent and take it all back.
Shamirov, playing the writer inside the play, takes on a more suitable role when the author who claims to have created him in the first place puts in an appearance -- he sits off to the side and grumpily directs the action. His lack of expression, his utter colorlessness and his mastery of understatement make for some hilarious scenes, especially when he works in tandem with Kutsenko's jaded actor. Kutsenko, who also impersonates the slave, brings to his work the ideal comic combination of total conviction laced with heavy loads of self-parody."