«Secret» materials of the MDM theatre

The musical Fear nothing, I’m with you solves the mystery of its creation for the audience.

Or rather, it opens the curtain so that the audience themselves can get onto the stage and even behind it. The guide is the actor Artemii Sokolov-Savostyanov, who plays the main role of Slava in the musical.

What is the Secret-musical?

Fear nothing, I’m with you is a musical based on the hits of the legendary Soviet musical band Secret. The production was undertaken by the Broadway Moscow company under the leadership of producer Dmitry Bogachev – the most professional musical theatre team in Russia. For more than 20 years, Bogachev and Co. has presented a lot of world musicals with the biggest titles at the MDM Theatre, including The Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia!, Chicago and many more. Moreover, the MDM theatre itself is considered “the main musical stage of the country.” The plot and the play for Fear nothing, I’m with you has been created by Mikhail Mironov and Sergey Kaluzhanov.

Three St. Petersburg comrades

After staging replicas of legendary world-known musicals, it was necessary to try hard not to lose face by creating an original performance based on our own musical material. And the result exceeded all expectations: light, but not frivolous, the musical speaks to its audience about the most important things – true love, devotion and friendship, faith in dreams, determination and justice. And, of course, all these bright ideals are impossible without freedom, the spirit of which permeates the entire production. Add everyone’s favorite music to the exciting plot, and now hundreds of phone flashlights from the audience during the curtain call turn into a tradition.

Three friends — Slava, nicknamed Easy Rider, a quiet graduate student Anton and soon-to-be diplomat Denis — hang out at secret rock gigs, “catch” the waves of Western radio stations, illegally sell rare vinyl records and dream of traveling to the homeland of their favorite music band The Beatles. In such an atmosphere they live, make friends and try to find happiness and love. Thus, Slava meets a beautiful stranger on the roof and falls in love with her right there and then. Anton secretly pines for Denis’s older sister Kritisna, who organizes the coolest secret gigs in the city, and Denis has a love affair with a ballet dancer, but he does not believe in their happy future, because his father decides to arrange a marriage of convenience for him with a professor’s daughter and to send him to England as a diplomat. After one of the secret gigs, the friendship suddenly begins to crumble as Denis's future wife...however, we’re not going to make spoilers!

What does Beyoncé have to do with it

However, no less important than the plot, music and even the atmosphere of unity between the audience and artists, as at a rock concert, is the spectacularity of the musical. Production designer Maxim Obrezkov came up with a lively and three-dimensional image of Leningrad with recognizable granite embankments, walk-through courtyards and sloping roofs, while lighting designer Ivan Vinogradov provided an almost tangible St. Petersburg atmosphere – with the haze of white nights and a leaden sky hanging over the Neva, thousands of stars, snowflakes. The musical also has its own “falling chandelier”, like in The Phantom of the Opera – at the most emotional moment the main characters soar above the stage on... a trolleybus! The audience takes their breath away. The technical supervisor of the performance, Stano Kusik, who has helped bring all this beauty to life, worked on dozens of the world’s best shows – including Olympic ceremonies, concerts of Beyoncé, ABBA, Maroon 5, Mylene Farmer, etc. It’s no wonder that the complex stage machinery works like clockwork, and the scenography impresses even spoiled theatregoers!

How to get backstage

Many viewers, who have already watched Fear nothing, I’m with you, have a lot of questions, such as: how do artists manage to change their costumes in just a couple of minutes? where does the flying trolleybus go? where does the ship come from? why is every word so clearly heard even in choirs, but microphones are not visible – is this just a lip-sync? where, after all, is the orchestra? and how does everything work?

If you consider yourself one of those interested, then we have good news: now you can get behind the scenes of the musical by simply purchasing tickets on the website. The leading actor Artemii Sokolov-Savostyanov will tell all the secrets of the production and share funny backstage stories. Visitors will get a chance to take a closer look at the props and the costumes Moreover, they will know the secrets of the the transformation of the scenery set, which allows the characters to be transferred from the deck of a huge steamship to the embankment of the frozen Neva or from Alice’s apartment to the Leningrad television studio. So, welcome backstage!