What the "Quartet I" is talking about: the life, theater and cinema of the collective

The Moscow theater "Quartet I" was created by graduates of the variety faculty of GITIS — Leonid Barats, Kamil Larin, Alexander Demidov, Rostislav Khait and their friends. The first performance was called "These are just stamps" and was, in fact, a student skit, which in 1993 aspiring actors staged on the institute stage. Many years have passed since then, and now in the creative biography of the Quartet And there are fourteen successful performances, seven films, participation in many television projects, shooting in music videos and their own theater.

Source: domkino.tv

In fact, there are five participants in the "Quartet And". In addition to Barats, Chait, Larin and Demidov, the team includes the main director of the theater, playwright and screenwriter Sergey Petreikov (pictured). He also studied at GITIS, where he met future actors.

Leonid Barats and Rostislav Chait knew each other long before the institute — they studied in the same class and came to Moscow from Odessa together. Kamil Larin graduated from the Volgograd Power Engineering College before entering GITIS, and Alexander Demidov came to Moscow from Yekaterinburg. The student trip "on potatoes" made friends with the team.

The name of the collective should actually have been written "Quartet and...", since it implies all the friends and colleagues of the founders of the theater who take part in their projects. The troupe currently consists of thirty actors, including Fyodor Dobronravov, Alexey Kortnev, Valdis Pelsh, Ekaterina Strizhenova, Georgy Martirosyan, Eduard Radzyukevich.

"Quartet I" constantly cooperates with the musical groups "Bi-2", "Chaif", "Accident" and others, whom it considers full-fledged co-authors of performances and films.

The first performance that moved from the stage to the cinema screens was "Election Day" — one St. Petersburg businessman, a big fan of their work, offered the actors to screen the play.

The script for the film about the difficult gubernatorial elections was written by Sergey Petreikov, Leonid Barats and Rostislav Chait, directed by Oleg Fomin. The film turned out to be very successful, but the idea to shoot a sequel to the Quartet And did not appear immediately, but a few years later — after an ambiguous reaction from the audience to the adaptation of their play "Faster than Rabbits".

"Quartet I" decided to return to the audience's favorite brand humor and recognizable characters, and after almost ten years released "Election Day — 2" about the re-election of Governor Tsaplin.

The second film, which turned out to be even more popular than the first, was "Radio Day". The comedy about one day in the life of the radio station was released seven years after the premiere of the play of the same name with the participation of Alexey Kortnev and the band "Accident".

On the theater stage, the singer performed all the musical parody numbers alone, and in the film version he was accompanied by famous rock musicians - "Chaif", Ilya Lagutenko and "Mummy Troll", "Beavers", Diana Arbenina and others.

The employees of the radio station were played by the participants of the "Quartet And", the actors who were engaged in the play — Dmitry Marianov, Nonna Grishaeva, Maxim Vitorgan, Mikhail Politsemako, the real radio producer Mikhail Kozyrev and the former classmate of the participants of the "quartet" and now also the ex-wife of Leonid Barats Anna Kasatkina.

While working on the play "Faster than Rabbits", the members of the Quartet recorded many of their revelations on topics that are close to anyone over 30 years old: about age, unfulfilled hopes, successes, money, their own and other people's women and much more.

Only part of the material went into "Faster than Rabbits", and everything else became a separate performance — "Conversations of middle-aged men about women, cinema and aluminum forks". "Conversations ..." became wildly popular — tickets were sold out for six months in advance, and after a while the performance turned into films "What men talk about" and "What else men talk about".

It was decided to shoot the sequel almost immediately after the loud premiere of the first part — eternal themes hooked a huge number of moviegoers. The second part of the film in the first weeks of rental collected a record amount for the "quartet". Now we are working on the film "What else do men talk about. Continued".

The surreal comedy about the afterlife "Faster than Rabbits" is the fourth and currently the last film made based on the play, and not on the original script. To the frequent audience question: "Faster than rabbits — what?", the authors answer: "Everything! We work, have fun, get acquainted, love, break up, fuss, and eventually live..."

Two versions of the ending were invented for the film — the author's, coinciding with the theatrical version, and the director's, shot specifically for cinemas and TV screenings. According to the rental results and critics' reviews, "Faster than Rabbits" turned out to be less successful both than previous films and than a theatrical production.