Funeral and love

Poky mama ne pryishla (Before Mom Comes) is the Ukrainian title of a joint project of the Youth Theater, French Embassy, and French Cultural Center in Ukraine. It is based on Remi de Vos’s popular play Jusqu’e ce que la mort nous separe (Until Death Do Us Part), translated into Ukrainian by Neda Nezhdana. The French stage director is Christophe Feutrier and the Ukrainian production and wardrobe designers are Volodymyr Karachevsky and Larysa Chernova; music is by Serhii Sharlai. This production stars three Youth Theater actors: Kyrylo Bin (Simon), Viktoria Avdeienko (as his mother Madeleine), and Rimma Ziubina (Anna). The plot is typical comedy noir, with the key character attending his grandmother’s funeral after having been absent from his home for a decade, to discover that a girl, his forgotten sweetheart, is still waiting. The funeral, the engagement procedures, death and love are tied in a knot of dark humor, tragicomedy, and laughter through tears.

Christophe Feutrier says: “Remi de Vos is a very popular playwright, he is the author of some twenty plays. His Jusqu’e ce que la mort nous separe has been staged by several French drama companies at the same time. Its Ukrainian version will be a pleasant surprise for your theatergoers. Remi asks deep-reaching questions in his plays. He strongly reminds me of Marivaux (i.e., Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, a 17th-century French novelist and dramatist who helped French dramaturgy rid itself of classical canons and established a new kind of theater by adding markedly light, refined and lyrical plots, with virtuoso characters and refined dialogues, what came to be known as the Marivaux approach; in his plays he applied the Italian commedia dell’arte technique — T.P.) In our Before Mom Comes production we address simple and at the same time sophisticated questions to the audience: Is there true love? What do we mean by saying that there is true love? The playwright’s style allows us to treat these questions with good humor, and I expect our production to offer answers to some of these questions.”

Rehearsals lasted for a month, a record time in a drama company’s practice. The French-Ukrainian team quickly found a common language, and the theatergoers will see the result at the Youth Theater, on February 12-13.