The opening night for the performance "The Sheep and the Wolves" took place in 1998 (director - V.N. Ivanov, production-designer - A.K. Glazunov), and ten years later this performance still is one of the most favorite comedies of the Saratov theater audience.

For a modern person A.N. Ostrovsky is an undoubtedly great dramatist, acknowledged classic of Russian theater, but sometime ago he was a great reformer. Ostrovsky deepens the psychological truthfulness of the scenic characters, making them to be very different from what was before him. The open separation of the good and bad characters was slowly disappearing; his characters became more like real people, whose behavior is often contradictory and ambiguous.

The play "The Sheep and the Wolves" is one of the great examples of Ostrovsky's innovations. All events in the place take place in a little country town. In the center of the plot there is a young wealthy widow Kupavina. While dreaming of love and happiness she can not see a tricky web that is growing around her, the web which is being weaved by high-handed and clever Murzavetskaya and forehanded moneymaker Berkutov - her neighbors-landowners.  Murzavetskaya wants to marry the widow to her nephew, Berkutov wants a profitable fiancée for himself. Their intrigues and plots are the wonderful material for a comedy to Ostrovsky. He is equally pitiless in his laugh to the struggle of the provincial wolves for a "titbit" and to the powerless, running from reality sheep. There are no borders of "the dark kingdom" which separate good and bad, each spectator forms his or her own understanding of the events in the play.

In the performance the comic, almost farcical competition of “noble” predators of all the kinds, ages and ambitions is brilliantly and venturous played in a dashing and breathtaking tempo. A struggle in treachery, dishonesty, shameless and cynical aggression, turned into a carnival performance is presented on the scene. In this patchy carrousel of mutual imposture there are no right ones or wrong ones. There only could be ones more successful in trickery, lie and impudence. And ones who was left in this situation –at least for now – without any captures.
Actors:

Murzavetskaya	Lykova Tamara Konstantinovna
Murzavetsky	Fedorov Alexander Dmitrievich
Glafira Alekseevna	Lukina Tatyana Anatolievna Fedorova (Kutina) Olga Valentinovna
Kupavina	Vovnenko Elena Vitalievna Shanina Victoriya Victorovna
Anfusa Tihonovna	Chupikova Tatyana Pavlovna
Tsugunov	Volodarskiy Ilya Borisovich
Lynyaev	Solovyev Alexander Yakovlevich
Goretsky	Skachkov Dmitry Valentinovich
Berkutov	Varenov Alexey Nikolayevich
Pavlin Savelyich	Konev Vladimir Ivanovich
Harmonist	Rotachkov Alexey Gennadievich Shchedrin Anton Yurievich