The play “The Red Cup” was written on January 10, 2005 by Mikhail Durnenkov, the brother of the classic “new drama” Vyacheslav Durnenkov. Durnenkov himself speaks about his works with captivating directness: “I, like Munchausen, am dragging myself out of the swamp of postmodernism for cause-and-effect relationships, for simple and important meanings for me.” The simplicity of his “meanings” is truly disarming. It’s as if Mikhail Durnenkov managed to catch by the tail that vague guess that visited the entire reasonable population of the country when watching a commercial for Nescafe coffee. Two polar explorers living in the Far North made of cotton wool and paper, who choke down cups of coffee one after another and groan from the eternity, meaninglessness and namelessness of their existence, are Russian Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, nervous, tired, with frozen eyelashes and hair, fleeing from the unreal bear...