Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man

Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man
Stanislavski (left) and Kachalov (right) in the Moscow Art Theatre production in 1910.
Written by	Aleksandr Ostrovsky
Date premiered	13 November [O.S. 1 November] 1868
Original language	Russian
Genre	Comedy

Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man (Russian: На всякого мудреца довольно простоты; translit. Na vsyakogo mudretsa dovolno prostoty) is a five-act comedy by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. The play offers a satirical treatment of bigotry and charts the rise of a double-dealer who manipulates other people's vanities. It is Ostrovsky's best-known comedy in the West.

Production history

1868 – Alexandrinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg.

1868 – Maly Theatre, Moscow.

1885 – Korsh Theatre, Moscow.

The seminal Russian theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky directed the play with his Moscow Art Theatre. The production opened on 23 March [O.S. 11 March] 1910. Stanislavski played General Krutitsky and Kachalov played Glumov.

A production of the play was the most significant of the early theatre work of the Russian Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. The playwright Sergei Tretyakov transformed Ostrovsky's text into a revue (what Eisenstein called a "montage of attractions"), which was entitled Wiseman (Mudrets). Eisenstein and Tretyakov's approach was part of the Russian avant-garde Futurist movement known as "Eccentricism," which sought the "circusisation" of the theatre. In celebration of the centennial of Ostrovsky's birth, the production opened in April 1923. It was staged by the First Workers' Theatre of the Prolekult in its theatre in the Arseny Morozov House, an ornate mansion on Vozdvizhenka Street, with a cast that included Maxim Shtraukh, Ivan Pyryev, and Grigori Aleksandrov. Eisenstein drew on popular theatre techniques such as farce and the commedia dell'arte in his staging, which sought to make every metaphor concrete and physical; he wrote:

A gesture turns into gymnastics, rage is expressed through a somersault, exaltation through a salto-mortale, lyricism by a run along a tightrope. The grotesque of this style permitted leaps from one type of expression to another, as well as unexpected intertwinings of the two expressions.

A screening of Eisenstein's first film, entitled Glumov's Diary, concluded the performance. Writing in 1928, Eisenstein explained that he had aimed "to achieve a revolutionary modernization of Ostrovsky, i.e., a social re-evaluation of his characters, seeing them as they might appear today."

Boris Nirenburg and A. Remizova directed an adaptation of the play for television in 1971.