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 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 defrauding the social services department by claiming all kinds of benefits in the names of fictitious tenants. As the daily stream of forms, cheques and applications for family, child, single-parent, housing, maternity, large-family and widow’s benefits; old-age and disability pensions; carer’s and holiday pay; and Christmas and workplace-injury compensation—and his army of invented people—starts 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 of the nonexistent tenants. What follows is an entirely ordinary October morning at number 344 Chilton Road, in rainy east London, filled with mistaken identities, costume changes, misunderstandings and ever more outrageous lies.

In the old days, it was quite common for actors who had started out in Pärnu to move on to shine on the stages of the capital, and it was no less unusual for stars from the capital to come and work for a while at the resort town’s theatre. That is still true today, but the old custom of staging the same plays in every theatre has almost completely disappeared. All the more reason to celebrate 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.