Money for Nothing

Comedy

Director: Andrus Vaarik
Author: Michael Cooney
Translator: Hannes Villemson
Set designer: Andrus Jõhvik
Costume designer: Marta Vaarik
Lighting designer: Karmen Tellisaar
Music designer: Reigo Ahven

Cast: Nils Mattias Steinberg, Triin Brigitta Heidov, Mauri Liiv, Priit Loog, Enn Keerd, Astra Irene Susi, Kleer Maibaum, Andrus Vaarik, Carmen Mikiver, Kati Ong

For two years, unemployed homeowner Eric Swan has been swindling all kinds of benefits from the social services department in the names of fictitious tenants. As the daily cheques, slips and forms for family, child, single-parent, housing, maternity, large-family and widows’ benefits; old-age and disability pensions; carer’s and holiday pay; and Christmas and workplace accident compensation—and his army of imaginary people—begin to overwhelm him, Eric decides to put an end to the fraud. But just then, a social services officer turns up needing the signature of a tenant who does not exist.

An utterly ordinary October morning in house number 344 on Chilton Road, in rainy East London, turns into a whirlwind of mistaken identities, costume changes, misunderstandings and increasingly outrageous lies.

In the old days, it was quite common for actors from Pärnu to soon move on to shine on the stages of the capital, and it was not unusual for stars from the capital to come and work at the resort town’s theatre for a while. In fact, this still happens today, but the old custom of staging the same plays in every theatre has almost entirely disappeared. It is all the more delightful, then, that for Endla Teater’s 115th anniversary, Andrus Vaarik—who came to Pärnu a few years ago to “make it”—is bringing his most successful comedy as a director to the stage here in a new guise.