Money Trouble

Money Trouble
Comedy

Director: Andrus Vaarik
Author: Michael Cooney
Translator: Hannes Villemson
Set designer: Andrus Jõhvik
Costume designer: Marta Vaarik
Lighting designer: Karmen Tellisaar
Musical director: 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 defrauding the social services office of all kinds of benefits in the names of imaginary tenants. When the daily stream of cheques, slips and forms for family, child, single-parent, housing, maternity, large-family and widows’ benefits; old-age and disability pensions; caregiver and holiday payments; and Christmas and workplace accident compensation—and his army of imaginary people—begins 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 one nonexistent tenant. An 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 ever more outrageous lies.

In the old days, it was quite usual for actors who had come up through Pärnu to move on soon afterwards to shine on the stages of the capital. Nor was it unusual for stars from the capital to come and work for a time at the resort town’s theatre. This is still true today, but the old custom of staging the same plays at every theatre has almost completely disappeared. All the more reason to be pleased 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.