In jazz only flies: Obraztsov Theater released "Tsokotukha"
The Obraztsov Puppet Theater presented a premiere based on Kornei Chukovsky's fairy tale "The Fly-Tsokotukha". Director Vladimir Berkun decided to make the performance in the style of jazz. He takes the audience to the era of the NEP. Under the spotlight the cockroach bugs dance a twist, and their buzzing and chirping to Tsfasman's music takes the audience back in time. The performance is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the publication of Kornei Chukovsky's fairy tale "Mukha-Tsokotukha". "Izvestia" visited the premiere and assessed the musical abilities of insects.
Jazz performance
In the foyer to jazz compositions guests were greeted by Grasshopper-blogger and a fan of Mukha. Everyone could take pictures with the fairy tale characters and buy souvenirs. The play was created in collaboration with "Soyuzmultfilm". The animated picture "Fly-Tsokotukha" created in 1960 by Vladimir Suteyev and Boris Dezhkin was taken as a basis.
The artist of the theatrical embodiment of the favorite fairy tale was the winner of the national theatrical award "Golden Mask" Eugenia Shakhotko. She was inspired by cartoon characters and transferred them to the puppet theater. The fly is exactly the same as from the screen. The same brunette with a bob and blue saucer eyes. The cane puppets and marionettes are operated by 27 performers. Among them: Andrei Nechaev, Viktor Voevodin, Vladimir Berkun, Konstantin Dubichev, Lyubov Teper, Tatiana Sergeeva, and Alexander Gorodinsky.
A blossoming forest glade spreads out on the stage. On the left is a grand piano. On the right behind a velvet curtain there is an orchestra with the loud name The Tarakans. Black musicians in straw canotiers, red tuxedos and checkered pants were strumming on sax, double bass and drums the melody of Tsfasman's "Unlucky Date". The lines of this song - "I asked you to be on a date,/ I dreamed of meeting you as always./ You smiled, slightly embarrassed,/ Said: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!" - are known to everyone thanks to the movie "Pokrovskie Vorota".
The space of the performance was created in the tradition of Sergei Obraztsov, so that the puppet lived and acted not in a plane, but in perspective. Four plans appear before the audience. The actors work with the puppets from behind four screens. In this way a volume is created, with which the belief in the reality of the fairy tale appears. The insects in the glade live their own lives. Komarik paints a portrait of Fly, with whom he is secretly in love. The ants bring order by collecting garbage in a plastic bag. The frivolous Butterfly is working as a makeup artist. Horned Beetles are rushing somewhere with shopping. Grasshopper with a camera takes pictures of nature.
How Krupskaya banned "Tchokotukha the Fly."
The plot of Chukovsky's fairy tale is known even to little children: "The fly went through the field, the fly found money. Fly went to the market and bought a samovar..." And all this action to the cheerful jazz compositions of the legendary Alexander Tsfasman. Music is one of the important elements of the production. It creates a special atmosphere.
- The composer's native brother worked in our theater as a puppeteer, - told "Izvestia" theater director Elena Bulukova. - And Alexander Tsfasman himself is not a stranger to us. He wrote the music for Sergei Vladimirovich Obraztsov's performance "Under the Rustle of Your Eyelashes" in 1948. We invited the Big Jazz Orchestra conducted by Pyotr Vostokov for the production of "The Tskhinpotukha Fly". He recorded Tsfasman's music for the play.
Together with his jazz orchestra, the maestro recorded a dozen tunes. Pyotr Vostokov even restored completely unknown works by Tsfasman. The performance also includes compositions from Mikhail Kozakov's film "Pokrovskie Vorota" and Stanislav Govorukhin's TV series "The Place to Meet Can't Be Changed".
- Appealing to the work of Alexander Tsfasman is a very important, meaning-forming decision," says Vladimir Berkun. - The founder of Soviet jazz, composer, instrumentalist, he made jazz a part of our culture.
Vladimir Berkun, director of the musical performance "Fly-Tsokotukha" based on the fairy tale by Kornei Chukovsky
Since the publication of Kornei Chukovsky's fairy tale "Mukha-Tsokotukha" in November 2024, it will be 100 years. Kornei Chukovsky considered it his funniest, most musical and successful children's work. But few people know that for more than thirty years the innocent story about the life of insects was banned. Scholars gathered in council and parsed Chukovsky's poems line by line. In the phrase "And the beetles are horny, - Men are rich" the commission saw sympathy for kulachestvo and merchants. The officials also considered the book's illustrations to be cromulent. It seemed to them that Komarik and Fly stand very close to each other. Tsokotukha was called a flirtatious person. Negatively assessed the fairy tale and critics. A mass of denunciatory publications were on the pages of Soviet newspapers.
- For the first time the fairy tale was published under the title "Mukhina Wedding", and only three years later the story received its current name "Fly-Tsokotukha", - said the director of the performance Vladimir Berkun. - And through the efforts of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya, Kornei Chukovsky's book was put on the shelf for decades. She banned "Mukha-Tsokotukha", considering it frivolous.
The widow of Communist Party leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was the chief ideologue of Soviet education and communist upbringing of young people. She agreed that the insects in Korney Ivanovich's tale were a prototype of degenerate bourgeoisie. Such a tale would have a pernicious influence on children. Even 30 years later, when "Fly Tsokotukha" was printed, it was not immediately accepted. Criticism was criticized by the merry bugs at Fly's birthday party, who at the tragic moment, when the birthday girl was attacked by Spider, abandoned her. The press wrote that the author did not condemn them enough in his work.
But all this faded into oblivion along with the critics. And Kornei Chukovsky's fairy tale continues to live. The world of insects created on the stage of the Obraztsov Puppet Theater does not leave indifferent in the audience. Adults turn into children for an hour. They laugh, sing along, empathize. And they are surprised that in the author's lines not only the fate of a frivolous fly that accidentally got rich, but also unrequited love, and even kidnapping and attempted murder by a monster. That's exactly how the old man Spider is presented. And this is no longer a banal story, but almost a horror.
Even an artist can become a savior, as Komarik appears in the play. In a moment of danger he threw down his brushes and paints and defeated the Spider-Kidnapper.
- It would be necessary to reread Chukovsky, - a mother confessed to her little daughter, leaving the auditorium.
- Didn't you read "Tchoukotukha the Fly"? - surprised the girl. - So I'll retell it to you!
Next time you can come to the performance "The Fly-Tsokotukha" at the Obraztsov Puppet Theater on November 27.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
