Nikolai Klimontovich has waited a long time to see a Moscow theater produce his play, "Without Mirrors," written during the springtime of perestroika in 1986. Over the ensuing eight years, several theaters have rehearsed it, but Iosif Raikhelgauz at the Contemporary Play Theater -- who spent several years working on the play -- is the only director who could get it as far as a premiere.


But if Raikhelgauz deserves an "A" for effort and stick-to-it-iveness, what he created can only get an "F" for flop. It strips Klimontovich's strange, allegorical fantasy of everything but its bare, purposefully silly plot, leaving behind a plodding, excessively literal and utterly unconvincing performance.


The action occurs in a run-down dacha where the young Pavel (the pointlessly fidgety Mikhail Yefremov) has retreated for a winter's eve with his even younger girlfriend (Olga Gusiletova). But, before things get beyond some banter about Pavel's forebears and the kind of lives they once led, a woman named Anna (Olga Yakovleva) makes an unexpected appearance. Confusing Pavel for his father -- the electricity has conked out -- Anna reminds him of the night they spent together here 20 years ago, while the young man plays along with the blunder, pretending to be his dad and drawing out the details of the old tryst by feigning faulty memory.


Klimontovich transcended the impossibility of the situation with a bit of magic. When Anna is shocked to see that Pavel looks no different than he did 20 years ago, the resourceful young man claims to have invented an ointment that returns youth to aged bodies. He convinces Anna to try it too, and, with no mirrors around to prove otherwise, she buys the ruse.


It's great theatrical magic, one chimerical stroke brushing aside reality, and making way for flights of fancy that are no less persuasive than dreams. But, as handled at the Contemporary Play Theater, there is no magic; there is only the bald dictate of the text and a cast that doesn't believe in its own powers of transformation.


As the show progresses, it is buried under a pile of questions to which it resolutely refuses to give answers.


Does Anna really believe in the ointment? If not -- as it would seem here -- then what is she doing? Why does the young Pavel go to such lengths to deceive her? (Can it really be just because he is a smart aleck?) What compels the bland young girl to go along when she walks in to find the odd scheme in full motion? With no hints of answers to any of these questions, one can only wonder what an idiot Anna's lover must be to sit out in the car waiting for her for two hours with only an occasional meek beep of the horn to remind her of his existence.


Yakovleva is one of Moscow's best-known actresses. Her performances for the great director Anatoly Efros in the 1970s and 1980s are considered classics and her role as Josephine in last year's revival of Efros' "Napoleon I" at the Mayakovsky Theater brought her to the public eye again after several years spent in France. But no amount of past accolades can hide her flat failure to make Anna even marginally believable. Yefremov and Gusiletova are equally uninspired.


Only Albert Filozov's single scene at the end as Pavel's father hints that this play might conceal beneath its surface an interesting exploration of youth, aging, love and death. But by the time he appears, even magic couldn't save this show.


Boris Lysikov's set plays with mirror images by splitting the audience in two and seating the spectators face to face across a narrow stage depicting an interior with transparent walls.





"Without Mirrors" (Bez zerkal) plays Friday, Saturday and Monday at 7 P.M. at the Contemporary Play Theater, Trubnaya Square. Tel. 200-0756. Running time: 2 hours.