Performance at the Maly Theater from the novel by the Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky.

The young part-time student Boris Kulikov, upon arriving in the village of Kardymovka, learns that Buneev, the pier chief who lived there until his death, was his father. Interested in his father’s past, Boris discovers that Buneev once gave up his career as an architect after his bridge design was rejected. Boris strives to prove that his father’s ideas were innovative and valuable.

At the center of the comedy are two neighboring families: the merchant widow Kruglova with her dowryless daughter, and the wealthy Akhov, a sixty-year-old millionaire.