My first role on stage was a tree.
A quarter of a century ago, in a school production of The Adventures of Pinocchio, the director entrusted me with a small but crucial part: an oak tree, making a dramatic entrance with two fellow forest comrades at the most pivotal moment of the musical.
Among ourselves, we called it The Dance of the Little Oaks. I must say, it was perfect casting—before or since, I’ve never had a role that matched quite so well with my somewhat wooden stage presence. The costume department did their part too, dressing us in tight grey bodysuits with a large green leaf stitched onto the, shall we say, most prominent area.
Frankly, I think we outshone the leads. But critics, for reasons known only to them, chose to ignore my thundering debut.
Naturally, I was undeterred.
A couple of years later, I lit up the stage as Gulliver in a production of the same name. Another triumph—there’s no other word for it. The only hiccup came courtesy of the costume team, who handed me a pair of boots with enormous ornamental cuffs. These marvels of footwear engineering refused to stay up, slumping repeatedly towards my ankles. The solution? The cuffs were pinned to my trousers with safety pins.
Astute readers can probably guess what happened next. For the entire performance, Gulliver gesticulated furiously with one hand while holding up his trousers with the other, desperately trying not to end up in his underpants in front of an audience of small children. A narrow escape, let’s call it.
After such a success, nothing, it seemed, could stop my budding stage career. In 2001, I took on two roles in an English-language production of Lord Dunsany’s The Jest of Hahalaba: a pompous butler and an evil spirit. To this day, I’m convinced someone from Downton Abbey saw a recording, because a few of their butlers bear an uncanny resemblance to mine.
In 2004, I joined a musical adaptation of Tom Sawyer, playing the school caretaker and town drunk, Muff Potter. According to the script, my character was rarely without his flask, so I sensibly filled it with tea. The show ran three nights. At first, all went well: I delivered my lines, moved across the stage with my usual oak-like grace, and sipped my tea. But something felt off. Muff Potter wasn’t coming through. The audience saw Elia Kabanov in a funny costume with a flask—not a tragic, drunken outcast.
The solution came to me before the third and final performance: I replaced the tea with a more character-appropriate whisky.
And just like that, Muff Potter came alive. My intonation sharpened, my improvisations grew bolder, and my movements—no longer wooden—turned positively feline. By Act II, it was clear who the real hero of the play was. Not Tom Sawyer. Not even Becky Thatcher. No—this was Muff Potter’s story, his suffering, his inner search. I helped the audience understand it by inserting a few new monologues and borrowing some lines from other characters (which, frankly, suited Muff better anyway). I even added him to one of the dance numbers, bringing a modern flair to the otherwise conservative choreography.
It was, without question, an award-winning performance.
After the show, the director put an arm around my shoulders and told me, kindly, that while my interpretation was certainly “interesting,” alcohol on stage was perhaps not the best idea. I couldn’t accept those terms—so I took a long, indefinite break from theatre.
Since then, I’ve only broken that sabbatical once. In the summer of 2012, my glamorous life as a blogger led me to a regional heat of the Grant’s True Tales storytelling competition in Novosibirsk. The brilliant Ukrainian director Valentina was running things and turned my tale—about badger-hunting with my grandfather—into a potential hit. After a few glasses of sponsor-provided whisky, I crawled onto the stage of the once-iconic jazz club and told the story with such flair that the audience had no choice but to vote me through to the finals.
Off to Moscow I went. The final took place at the independent TV studio, with storytellers from across Russia. Sergey Chonishvili hosted. Leonid Parfyonov was the guest of honour. The audience was packed with socialites and minor legends. Even that star-studded backdrop couldn’t save me—I lost the final. But by then, I’d had enough sponsored whisky that losing felt oddly irrelevant. A few of us commandeered more bottles, crossed the bridge, settled on the steps of the colossal Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and proceeded to violate public order and insult the feelings of the faithful with all the gusto of true theatre folk.
Really, what else would you expect?