The Theater Yunogo Zritelya opened its season with a spirited new production of Edmond Rostand's comedy, "The Fantasticks," first produced 100 years ago at the Comedie-Francaise. Directed by Andrei Droznin Jr., it tells of a young couple whose sentimental, bumbling fathers create adventurous obstacles to "romanticize" their beloved children's courtship. Nikolai Denisov marvelously plays a comic-book-dashing bandit who is hired to kidnap the girl.


After a short entr'act, rehearsals of a dramatization of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novella, "No One Writes to the Colonel," will soon resume at the Stanislavsky Drama Theater. The break occurred when Pyotr Mamonov, who will play the lead, jetted off to Hollywood for a few weeks to shoot in a movie. Starring opposite the rock-star-turned-actor at the Stanislavsky will be Yelizaveta Nikishchikhina, whose performances in "The Marriage" have garnered her several votes for Best Actress of the Year in a recent Nezavisimaya Gazeta critics poll.


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More on Marquez. Director Vyacheslav Spesivtsev and Columbian Ambassador Gonzalo Bula Hoyos hosted a special performance of Spesivtsev's adaptation of Marquez's novel, "One Hundred Years of Solitude," at the Spesivtsev Experimental Theater last week. Spesivtsev, who has been a fixture on Moscow's youth theater scene since the 1970s, produces shows that mix prof-


essional actors with children.


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