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This well-paced production opens on Ascel, a girl on a country road in Kyrgyzstan, who sells apricots from a bucket with her brother. It’s quickly understood what a self-determined, practical, and energetic girl Ascel is as she avoids one man, marries another, and runs off on her wedding night to make her way to the big city. “They’re tough in Moscow too,” a relative warns Ascel, and sends her off to live in an underground shelter and factory which she enters through a mythical hole in a wall. Ascel tries, with her small bag of tricks, to “make it.” But you can’t make a person street smart, no matter how practical and adaptable they are, if they’ve never been outside their tiny village. Though she’s no innocent, she’s barely a mature individual and doesn’t comprehend that dreams of success can come at a high price. Pustoi Dom is a surprising and touching micro-odyssey of a woman’s first step into the intersection of village life and modernity.