xWhen Natalya Vdovina was still a girl dreaming of becoming an actress, she thought all there was to it was starring in popular plays and basking in the adulation of the public.


"I was very mistaken," says the soft-spoken young woman, who stars in one of the season's biggest hits, Pyotr Fomenko's production of "The Magnificent Cuckold" at the Satirikon Theater, and -- in addition to becoming a favorite with the public -- was the recipient of this year's Crystal Turandot award for best acting debut.


What she didn't know then, but knows quite well now, thank you, was how much blood gets shed and how much luck it takes to get that far.


Flashing a charming, reticent smile, Vdovina, 25, tells of nearly getting kicked out of theater school ("I just wasn't mature enough"), of spending her first two years as a professional actress on maternity leave ("Having a baby is what gave me the life experience I needed"), and of spending the next two years playing walk-ons and bit parts in productions of fairy tales.


In short, when she finally got her big break -- an offer to play a lead for Moscow's top current director -- the rather shy, thoughtful native of Simferopol was ready. She had to be, for parts don't come much more complex than Stella in Fernand Crommelynck's gripping play about love, passion and the terrible consequences of violating human trust.


Stella is a young bride driven into wanton promiscuity by a husband so jealous and so in awe of her beauty that he is convinced she must have a lover, and stops at nothing to find out who he is. Vdovina is breathtaking as the ill-fated heroine, allowing her to pass from the joyous, carefree early scenes to the psychologically wrenching finale without ever losing her incorruptible, wholesome delicacy.


Rehearsals lasted nine months. "It was like giving birth all over again," Vdovina says, adding that the last three, the actors worked without days off, "literally living in the theater day and night." There, the actress finally abandoned her simplistic childhood impressions of the acting profession.


"It was bloody work for everyone," says Vdovina, who went through periods of such severe doubt that she even suggested getting a back-up for her in case she didn't have what it takes. But she was pulled along by experience -- at first the experience of Fomenko and her co-star, Konstantin Raikin, and then by her own tenacity and growing belief in herself.


"Even Raikin had problems," she says of the Satirikon's artistic director, leading actor and son of Arkady Raikin, the legendary Soviet comic actor. "And when I saw him struggling with them, I realized I didn't have the right to give up. I used to think talent is something you either have or you don't. But Konstantin Arkadyevich showed me that's not true. You have to work to bring talent out."


And what about Fomenko?


"Fomenko is incredible. He doesn't put any pressure on you, and he is always positive and encouraging. If you do something that even hints at what he's driving at, he smothers you in praise."


The irony of Vdovina's story about the myths of an actress's life is that it looks as if her future may come out resembling her childhood dreams.


She is already slated to play that pearl of all female roles, Juliet, in a production of "Romeo and Juliet" slated to open at the Satirikon next spring.


Not bad for a young woman who once stood on the brink of expulsion from theater school because she seemed unfit to be an actress.





"The Magnificent Cuckold" (Velikolepny rogonosets) plays July 31, August 7 and 14 at 12 P.M., and August 4 and 10 at 3 P.M. on the small stage of the Satirikon Theater, 8 Ulitsa Sheremetyevskaya. Use stage door at rear. Tel. 289-7844. Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes.