If you're on the corner of Sretenka and Sretensky Bulvar on a weekend night and see beautiful people getting out of shiny cars and queuing on the pavement, that's because Yugoslavian nightclub promoter Sinesha Lazarevich has just opened his latest baby, Teatralnaya Kvartira.

There are no signs, just security men on hand to enforce the face control and dress code. More security men await guests inside on the third floor, as do a hostess, and Sinesha himself. The club, decorated with "Teatralnaya Kvartira" posters, comes after that.

This club is really an apartment in an old building, hence the name. The are several rooms, with minimalist design and light-colored walls. The room with the bar has pink walls and furniture plus a piano. Then there's a long corridor leading to a room with a small dance floor, where DJ List and his assistant Inna play quiet house music. Several tables stand on a raised area by the dance floor. A corridor from this room leads to a chill-out room and, from the bar, you come out onto a veranda, with an excellent view of the sky and the neighboring roof.

Teatralnaya Kvartira is reminiscent of 19th-century society salons. Sometimes modern plays are staged here, once again in keeping with the name. Unlike in a normal theater, the audience is allowed to smoke and drink champagne. Sinesha also organizes literary salons. Last week, for example, society beauty Olga Artemyeva won the audience's heart, reading her deeply feminine and emotional poetry. Most of those present were boutique owners, glossy magazine editors and people from artistic circles. Artist Dmitry Alexeyev organized an exhibition of graphics depicting naked female bodies in Artemyeva's honor.

Prices at the Teatralnaya Kvartira are among the highest in town — 150 rubles for ordinary mineral water, 300 rubles for 100 grams of whisky and 920 rubles for Hennessy XO cognac. Champagne costs up to 10,000 rubles a bottle. The guests drink, dance and eat fruit, but not much else. Mostly they are there just to see and be seen.

TEATRALNAYA KVARTIRA
1 Sretenka
Metro: Turgenevskaya
Hours: Fri./Sat. 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Cover: None
Strict Face Control