The Play “Man with No Name”
In March 2025, several years after its original premiere, “Man with No Name” will return – one of the last plays created within the walls of Moscow’s “Gogol Center.” This revived project will embark on a theater tour across Tallinn, Berlin, Duisburg, Frankfurt, and other European cities.
The creators of the play – Kirill Serebrennikov, Nikita Kukushkin, Pyotr Aidou, and Alexander Barmenkov – have crafted a portrait of the “Russian Faust,” Prince Odoevsky, as he might have been seen by his contemporaries and as he appears to us today.
As part of this production, composer Pyotr Aidou not only wrote the music for the play but also created a unique, one-of-a-kind instrument called the “Pangharmonicon.” This autonomous instrument, a musical automaton inspired by Odoevsky’s own ideas, is capable of playing music with minimal human intervention.
The protagonist, portrayed by Nikita Kukushkin, undergoes a series of transformations, akin to a wandering soul from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, traveling from a metro carriage to the past during Beethoven’s time or to an as-yet-unrealized future, whose outlines emerge like a mist into the present day.
