Published on: 2026-10-04
Source: Moscow Government – Правительства Москвы –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
Stas Namin Theatre stage showed “Eight Loving Women”. Robert Thoma’s detective story has turned into a funk extravaganza: to the world hits Stayin’ Alive, Stand by Me, Proud Mary, and others, the heroines settle their scores, and the investigation of the family head’s murder becomes a conversation about passion and betrayal. And the color pink permeates everything—from the decorations to the costumes. Actress Olga Terekhun, for whom this play became her directorial debut, shared how the idea for the production was born and what turned out to be the most challenging part of the work.
The house where voices are heard
The performance begins in complete darkness. The auditorium and stage merge into one black space — the viewer is left alone with silence, as if standing on the threshold of a stranger’s house and not knowing whether they will be let in. Deep in the stage, pink neon flashes. A light turns on in one window, then another, then another — hurriedly, at random. Such bustle creates an ambiguous feeling: of mystery and slight tension. Somewhere, women’s voices are heard: “Merry Christmas!” In these words, there is both celebration and mystery at the same time.
The door swings open, and a stream of light bursts out. Sharp, almost blinding, it falls on the floor and walls, suddenly evoking the impression of a winter night: an empty street, thick swirling snow in the lamp’s beam. The snow does not fall quietly: it whirls, tosses about, it seems the very night cannot stand still. A low, heavy roar of the wind is heard — like an echo of a blizzard. Nearby, a turned-off television whispers: fragments of phrases, melodies, foreign voices — as if the past is seeping through the interference. In front of the eyes — the living room. What will happen next is unknown, and it is precisely this tension that creates anticipation.
The twilight recedes. The space fills with light, energy, and something almost homely. The first to take the stage is the matriarch Gabi (Vera Zudina) — a striking blonde in a white suit. Following her are her assistants: Chanel (Yulia Grigoryeva) — sweet and charming, seemingly simple only at first glance, and Louisa (Olesya Levina) — elegant and refined, blondes in white and soft pink outfits. Pink and white here are not just colors, but the language through which the play speaks about the heroines.
Shortly after, Augustina (Karina Kolitinova) appears — strict, composed, the eternal spinster. The gaze latches onto details: a bright dress and a pink bow in her hair. This accessory is a crack in the image: it reveals that beneath the external strictness lie coquettishness and a desire to be noticed. Following her comes the grandmother (Ilyina Shmakova) — striking, ironic, with a strong character. A woman of authority who has accumulated a decent fortune, which she is in no hurry to share.
Then the daughters appear: the elder — student Suzonne (Irina Lakhnovskaya), who arrived for vacation from a London college, and the younger — rebel Katrin (Emily Gambrill). The plot thickens, and it becomes increasingly clear how each heroine in this house brilliantly plays her usual role. Gabi is the impeccable hostess, a woman of high morals, pedantic, authoritative, respectable in terms of public morality. Chanel is the soul of the house, kind and responsive, but harbors a fiery character inside. Augustine is impenetrable, strict, and at the same time insanely envious and lonely. The grandmother is a woman largely focused on herself. Louisa is a nimble maid, who appeared in the house under very dark circumstances. And the cherry on the cake is the house owner’s sister Pieretta, a woman of dubious reputation. As the action unfolds, each heroine is forced to remove her mask and show her true face — vulnerably hurt.
Paradoxically, it turns out that watching this type of characters is a distinct pleasure: not so much for what the heroines say, but for how they stop pretending. The hand trembles a little more, the gaze slips away, the pause becomes too long. Behind every mask is its own story, its own pain, its own truth.
This is how the play begins Stas Namin’s Theater. It is based on Robert Thomas’s play ‘Eight Loving Women,’ but the director works with it freely: while respecting the original, Olga Terekhun seeks her own voice.
A detective who became a funk musician
Robert Thomas wrote the play in 1961. The classic detective story has undergone many productions and film adaptations. One of the most famous is François Ozon’s film featuring Fanny Ardant, Isabelle Huppert, and Catherine Deneuve. In it, the viewer sees a festive evening in a snowy mansion, a Christmas dinner — and gradually a feeling grows that something is hidden behind the family’s outward prosperity. These women are too perfect, hiding something too well and too carefully behind a mask of merriment.
Olga Terekhun did not choose to translate the story literally onto the stage. “We made it inspired by Robert Thomas’s play,” she explains. “The task was to integrate musical material in the form of funky variations on famous world hits into the eccentric play. To understand how this would reveal each heroine, what the music could emphasize or bring out — to build a kind of dramatic springboard from which each participant could leap.”
But before delving deeper into the history of the play and the production itself, it is worth telling about the creator of the performance. Olga Terekhin is an actress for whom “Eight Loving Women” became her directorial debut. She has been with Stas Namin’s Theater since 2010 and during this time has appeared on stage in various roles — from the Snow Queen in the eponymous musical and Dionne in the legendary performance “Hair” (at the first and only production of the iconic rock musical in Russia) to the countess in The Queen of Spades. In this role, she managed to combine two different characters, demonstrating superb grace, beauty, and a powerful voice.
This is exactly the approach seen in Olga’s directing work. She says she had long been thinking about creating her own play: “I wanted to make a story about women. To write something of my own where all the main characters are female. We spent a long time turning and thinking about how and from what to best craft the plot. And at some point, Karina Kolitinova, the future performer of the role of Augustine, said: ‘Why? Olga, there is the play “Eight Loving Women.” Let’s take it and work our magic.'” So from the dialogue between the director and the actress, the play was born. “World dramaturgy, let’s be frank, does not abound in female plays,” Olga remarks. “We thought: why not?” (Laughs.) Why not create your own version and your own interpretation of the famous plot?
It turned out to be a truly authorial interpretation — Olga Terekhun’s production features many musical inserts. Each heroine sings a special song that describes her character and reveals her nature. Importantly, the musical foundation of the performance is not just a collection of hits. “Our team proposed a pool of well-known compositions — this gave rise to a sort of jukebox. (a musical project assembled from already well-known songs, rather than original compositions. — Editor’s note). This gives grounds to call the performance a musical. Our production combines works by at least 16 authors,
Some songs were reworked, some were supplemented, and ensembles appeared in some places. “Then we took the reworked sound — not the original, but the modified version — and based on it, we made a new cover. It turned out to be a cover of a cover: the same song went through several layers of reinterpretation. This process was almost endless — a great many versions of the soundtracks accumulated,” the director continues. This is how a unique and new sound of recognizable compositions was born: they unfold in the performance in a special way and create a mood that you won’t find anywhere else.
Olga Terekhun had planned the performance with live sound, but new inputs arose during the work process: “Initially, the entire drum part that the audience hears as the musical component of the dramatic scenes was supposed to be played live. But then we would have needed men’s presence, which required a separate, special solution. I weighed everything and realized: we will still record the sound in the studio. This option, in my understanding of the structure of the performance, was the most organic.” The idea of live sound gave way to another solution — not a compromise, but a more precise fit to the image. There is nothing accidental in the performance at all.
Pink color as a language of storytelling
The musical fabric is not the only thing that makes the performance recognizable. The visual language, and first of all the color, speaks just as much about the heroines. The structure of the color scheme (pink and white) was born spontaneously. “Everything happened by chance. I observe a lot, take a few photographs. At some point, I accumulated a folder of references — things that inspire me. Back then, I was intuitively drawn to silvery snow-white shades. I wanted to convey the feeling of a snowy house, but not an ordinary one. I remembered Barbie doll’s house and thought: why not try?” — Olga shares. This is how the image of a stylish space and a true visual spectacle was born.
In addition to color, the uniqueness of the performance is given by details: in “Eight Loving Women” the devil is in the hairstyles. Here, a simple rule applies: intricate hairdos are an integral part of the character’s image. They are all unconventional, striking, and original. “The creator of all the looks is makeup artist Euphrosinia Efimova. She spent two months making wigs: assembling, searching, coloring — enchanting. And she created unique hairstyles — distinctive, functional, a hundred percent spot on,” says Olga.
Upon closer examination of the hairstyles, a question arises: how is color distributed? Why is someone a blonde, and someone else has pink hair? The principle turned out to be not as simple as it might seem. “Look closely: everyone related to Marcel, the owner of the house, has pink hair. Two daughters, a sister. This means Marcel himself had pink hair. We found this genetic code,” emphasizes Olesya Levina, who plays the maid Louise.
The hairstyle is supported by the costume style. All the heroines interact harmoniously, but each is in her own shade, her own role, and with a completely different appearance. “The costume reflects the character. Even down to the silhouette: a narrow pencil skirt or a bell skirt — that’s a different heroine already. Every detail was taken into account. Some need comfort for dancing — and that’s also part of the image. That’s why we discussed the costumes for a long time, tried them on, and sewed them. It’s partly a co-creation,” says the director.
And the collaboration extends not only to the static, but also to the movement. There are many dances in the performance — the plasticity here becomes another language through which the heroines speak to the audience. The choreography was created to fit the musical number and the pivotal plot twist, but taking into account the wishes and physical capabilities of each actress. The most mesmerizing and magnetic dance is by Pieretta (Nadezhda Bodrova) — it strikes with the beauty of movements, grace, and dramatic effect. In it, costume, lighting, and music converge — everything that makes the performance a cohesive statement.
Eight characters, eight masks
Color and sound create the mood, but there is something that cannot be recorded in a score or a diagram — and it is precisely this that determines whether a performance will succeed or not. Sometimes it seems that the roles have distributed themselves, that the actresses have perfectly embodied the characters. In reality, this is backed by precise calculation and a director’s intuition, which Olga Terekhun clearly possesses.
“There was totalitarianism on my part,” she laughs. “I based it on how the vocal material fit the voice. It was important to understand which song suits whom, how it would sound in a particular timbre. Everything else followed from that: the distribution of roles and the selection of pieces. Plus texture, of course.”
Voice, physicality, temperament — these determined which heroine each woman would portray. As a result, each woman on stage represents a specific type that gradually transforms. Gabi is the impeccable hostess, whose elegance becomes armor. Chanel is feigned naivety. Augustina is strictness as protection from her own desires. The grandmother embodies irony towards power and domination. The daughters are a generation that does not want to repeat mistakes but ends up repeating them. And here’s what’s important: the heroines are revealed not only from their formal side; at some point, the shadowy, hidden part of their personality emerges, the part they perhaps even concealed from themselves. All the fabrications gradually fall away like husks. And soon, living women remain on stage who can no longer pretend. It is this transformation that the audience watches.
What remains afterwards
Throughout the entire production, up to the final curtain, the viewer is accompanied by references and hidden meanings — those very details that you don’t notice immediately, but then can’t unsee. They are hidden in hairstyles, in color, in random lines, in the television whispering in the corner of the stage. And in this lies a special pleasure: the play is more complex than it seems. Behind the bright comedic form, funk, and liveliness hides a conversation about women, family, and what each conceals. This is a production about women who loved, or perhaps tried to love…
“It’s important for me that the story reaches the heart,” notes Olga Terekhun. “Even when the audience is silent, you can see that they are engaged. For the performers, this is more important than any words.”
“Eight Loving Women” is a play that requires no prior preparation from the audience, yet it leaves no one indifferent. It can be watched alone, but it seems designed for a gathering of friends, when it is important that the evening is memorable. Funk, snow, and the color pink all work together so that the viewers return home with a story they will want to tell.
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