The Cīruļi family receives news that they have won a huge sum of money in the lottery. The unexpected prize turns their normal life upside down. The missus plays a real landlady – she no longer allows her brother to marry his intended, a simple maid, and almost drives her mother-in-law out of the house.
Who hasn’t thought about winning the lottery and getting something bigger than an umbrella? And who, hand on heart, is ready to say that they can pass the test of big money?
Rūdolfs Blaumanis wrote his folk play The Evil Spirit in 1892. Director Inese Mičule, staging the play today, reflects: “If we look beyond the usual label of “folk play”, we cannot fail to notice that Blaumanis is talking about something very important – who are you to this world? Dust, or something more? Are you your name, your land, or your possessions? At the beginning of the play, the author cleverly throws in the phrase that happiness cannot be separated from money, just as the sun cannot be separated from the day. And he creates a thorough whirlwind in which the characters of the play try to balance between happiness and possessions, between feelings and reason. People get confused and, again quoting Blaumanis, walk like cats through smoke, and this happens both in the author’s time and today.”
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The performance is supported by the Borisa and Ināras Teterevu Foundation for Valmiera Theatre’s 2025/2026 season. Continuing the powerful collaboration, four new productions will be staged in the new season.
To date, nine new productions have been brought to audiences with the support of the foundation. Five of these were staged during the 2024/2025 season: Romeo and Juliet (directed by Inese Mičule), Blue (directed by Māra Ķimele), Sprīdītis (directed by Reinis Suhanovs), Four White Shirts (directed by Jānis Znotiņš) and The Magic Mountain (directed by Toms Treinis).
The friendship between the theatre and the foundation began in the theatre’s centenary season 2023/2024 when four classics of Latvian drama were staged: The Boys of Valmiera (directed by Jānis Znotiņš), The Widow’s Son (directed by Viesturs Roziņš), as well as publicly and critically acclaimed Joseph and His Brothers (directed by Inese Mičule), and The Prodigal Son (directed by Reinis Suhanovs).
