Theater reopens as Donetsk residents rebuild their lives

After the bombs, the fur coats. After the air raids, the air kisses. After six months of war, even the fighters attending an opening night at the Donetsk theater traded in weapons for a rare moment of refinement.

The steps of the Donetsk National Academic Ukrainian Musical and Drama Theater, empty for months, rang out over the weekend as 700 well-heeled theatregoers rushed up to enjoy a long-delayed start to the season.

But despite the clear excitement on the opening night of Nikolai Gogol's Marriage, the shadow of Ukraine's conflict remained.

The theater entrance was adorned with a sign saying, "No weapons inside".

Five rebels who attended the performance complied, arriving without Kalashnikov rifles, yet still dressed in combat fatigues.

But for others, it was a chance to don their Sunday best - girls in dresses and stockings, men in button-down shirts and some in suits, ladies in their finest frocks, perfume wafting into the air.

Friends kept apart by the fighting greeted one another and caught up, while a pre-performance murmur rose through the grand hallway to the imposing crystal chandelier above.

"They couldn't have come up with a better idea than to perform a classical comedy" like Gogol's, said Alexey, a 43-year-old in a well-ironed suit.

"Nothing helps more in our situation than a bit of humor."

With the conflict raging, the main theater in east Ukraine's rebel-held city was forced to close in late May, two weeks earlier than planned.

Five or six members of its troupe, without work and amid the unrest, left Donetsk. Others took odd jobs to survive, performing at birthday parties or working in construction.

But, the staff said, each day residents called in during the long interlude, anxious to see the curtain rise again - as it finally did a month after the start date of a normal season.

In the dark, the show began with applause, and for nearly three hours the 19th-century Russian comedy on matchmaking and marriage provided a sanctuary from the tragedy they have been living outside.

A grateful crowd tittered with the first moments of farce, then raised their laughter to a roar, with spontaneous applause for each scene, gag and song, topped by a five-minute standing ovation for the players taking their bow.

Actors and audience knew the teary-eyed reactions at Saturday and Sunday's shows went beyond the performance itself.

"An opening is always a special day but this one brings up the most beautiful emotions - including for us, the actors," said 34-year-old Anna Yakubovskaya, who had not been on stage since June. "We've missed our audience."

Audience member Lilia Bondareva, a 49-year-old child care worker, said: "We have missed this so much - the joy, this beautiful place, this calm life."

(China Daily 10/14/2014 page10)