Fantazii Faryateva

Averbakh's adaptation of a play by Alla Sokolova, *Faratyev's Fantasies*, follows the story of a man surrounded by four women. Faratyev is madly in love with one of them, Aleksandra, while compassionately caring for another, her aunt, and indifferent to the other two—Aleksandra's mother and her sister, Lyuba. The characters inhabit a world of dreams, with each person's dream interconnected to the others, and each responding differently to this shared dream world. Faratyev is a man of dreams, living in a world of fantasies. Aleksandra and her mother listen to him but do not take him seriously, while his aunt listens and believes him but does not encourage him. Only Lyuba truly understands him, though to him, she is merely a child. He is madly in love with Aleksandra, who is a realist and does not love him. For the sake of her own prosperity and that of her mother and sister, she agrees to marry him, only to later run away with the mysterious Bedhudov.