Catch
Dovlatov

The play is based on «Ours» and on memoirs about the writer. It premiered at the «D Day» festival in August 2025: a full house, with more tickets sold than the room holds. In the autumn of 2025 it was played at the museum three more times — on 18 and 25 October and 15 November. It starts at the front entrance of 23 Rubinstein Street. The chairman of the house committee assembles the «responsible tenants» — a role that goes to the guests — and leads them up the stairs to the third floor: to get into the flat of citizen Dovlatov.

The central figure here is not the writer but his mother, Nora Sergeyevna. Tikhomirov the neighbour is busy with soup in the communal kitchen. The search is led by Major Vladlen Alekseyevich, who is also the chairman of the house committee; the guests search alongside him, talk to the tenants and go into the rooms. Dovlatov himself never appears: that is not a spoiler but the premise.

There is no scenery: the flat is lived in, with real neighbours behind the walls. Nora Sergeyevna’s room is one of the museum rooms. The kitchen is the communal one itself. In the writer’s room stands a green tiled stove; Elena Dovlatova recalled how, during a quarrel, he threw his manuscripts into it and she pulled them out of the fire. The stove still works. The house register remembers the Dovlatovs by name.

We meet at the Dovlatov monument in front of 23 Rubinstein Street. In the entrance hall the chairman of the house committee, Major Vladlen Alekseyevich (Alexander Savchuk), assembles a group of responsible tenants — that is you — and leads it up to the third floor, to apartment 34: to get in to citizen Dovlatov, parasite and brawler. Then come his rooms, the neighbours’ rooms, the kitchen, a conversation with the writer’s mother Nora Sergeyevna (Galina Lokshina) and with Tikhomirov the neighbour (Andrei Zhukov). On the door of the room hangs a plaque: «Apartment of Exemplary Order and High Standards of Domestic Culture». The whole group searches for Dovlatov; the tenants never get an answer about the son and leave in indignation. He never appears.

The soup in the communal kitchen is real: the neighbour cooks it throughout the show, and the «pot full of mutual irritation» from «Ours» bubbles in front of you. The house registers listing the Mechik-Dovlatov family from 1934 are kept right here — the parasite’s residence registration is confirmed on paper. The stove in the writer’s room is green and tiled: as his wife Elena recalled, Dovlatov threw his manuscripts into it during a quarrel, and she pulled them out of the fire. Behind the wall are real neighbours; their doors are closed, and that is not part of the script. Tikhomirov the neighbour also comes from the book: the young Dovlatov talked about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky at the communal telephone, and the colonel listened and shouted: «Writers like that should be shot!» Dovlatov wrote that this cry set the course of his life for years ahead.

Alexander Savchuk — director and Major Vladlen Alekseyevich. The chairman of the house committee who leads the «responsible tenants» up to the third floor. Founder and artistic director of the Lusores theatre, director at the Inclusion centre, curator of the «Taetr» school. More than twenty productions; special prizes of the «Golden Sofit» and «Proryv» awards, nominee for the «Golden Sofit» and «Arlekin». In this same flat he stages «Dovlatov’s Communal Salon».

Galina Lokshina — Nora Sergeyevna, the writer’s mother. The central figure of the show: Dovlatov is absent, his mother is here. Nora Sergeyevna Dovlatova (1908–1999), née Dovlatyan, an Armenian from Tiflis, an actress and later a proofreader. She is played by a stage and screen actress: Lusores, the Finnish Theatre, the St Petersburg University theatre; on screen since 2016 — «The Committee», «Hypocrites», «Tenderness 2». A graduate of Alexander Savchuk’s «Taetr» school.

Andrei Zhukov — Tikhomirov the neighbour. Not an invented character: the flat warden, a colonel in Dovlatov’s «The Craft» and «Ours», a real tenant of apartment 34. He cooks soup in the communal kitchen for the whole show — the pot from «Ours», a real one, on a low flame. Born in 1954 in Leningrad. Neurologist, cultural theorist, photographer, performance artist; on stage — Osobnyak theatre, Teatro Di Capua, Lusores. In film — A. German’s «Dovlatov».

You are met by the flat’s keepers: the museum is run by Ivan Eikhenbaum and partners, for whom this communal flat is not a set but a place they look after every day.

A play in a lived-in communal flat gets written about before it opens: Metro covered the production two days before the premiere. Kommersant shot a photo report at the premiere performance at «D Day» 2025, and the city’s TV channels aired stories from these rooms. Below — a selection of publications on theatre in apartment 34.