The play «The Cabal of Hypocrites,» which was significant for the Moscow Art Theatre and fateful for Mikhail Bulgakov, has returned to the stage where it was first performed and soon banned in 1936. Times change, but circumstances remain the same — the life of the comedian and theatre director Jean‑Baptiste Molière turns into dramatic material onto which the author projects his own relationships with power, society, and fate.
The brotherhood of actors and court intrigues, the relationship between the artist and the authorities, the duality of freedom and slavery, truth and hypocrisy, love and betrayal—all intertwine into a theatrical phantasmagoria, where tragedy is no longer distinguishable from farce, and reality from performance. «The outward splendor and adventurous content» of the play reveal to the viewer a fractal of time eras: the golden age of Louis XIV, the Soviet 1930s, and the present day — laying bare the eternal and insoluble paradoxes of creative life.
The new stage version of the «Cabal of Saints» includes fragments of Bulgakov’s novel «The Life of Monsieur de Moliere», «Reflections on the First Philosophy» by Rene Descartes, «Moral Letters to Lucilius» by Seneca, «On Human Slavery and Freedom» by Nikolai Berdyaev, a sermon by Girolamo Savonarola, «Confession» by St. Augustine, «Visions of Hell» St. Teresa of Avila, «I cannot be Silent» by Leo Tolstoy, transcript of remarks on the rehearsal of the play «Moliere» dated May 4, 1935, a memo from Platon Kerzhentsev to Stalin and Molotov about the «Bondage of Saints.»
The role of Molière is played by Konstantin Khabensky, the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre.
