Spread his wings: Konstantin Khabensky made his first appearance as a director

Konstantin Khabensky presented his reading of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's play, a landmark for the Moscow Art Theatre. He has assembled a reliable company for his directorial debut. In the lead roles are Christina Babushkina, Igor Vernik, Anatoly Kot and the talented young people of the troupe. This is the sixth production of "The Seagull" in the Art Theater. Before Khabensky, the play was staged by Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanitsyn, Livanov, Efremov and Korshunovas. In the Green Foyer to the premiere opened an exhibition "From Constantine to Constantine". "Izvestia" appreciated the swing to the classics.

Laughter through tears

Chekhov wrote "The Seagull" as a comedy in four acts. Few people manage to make the audience laugh at the characters of the classics. According to Konstantin Khabensky, he got a comedy with a sad tinge, where people do not understand and do not hear each other. In the play there is not a single passing role, all the fates are quite convex and everyone is pitiful. It is also a play about youthful maximalism and other "beautiful" human qualities.

The main roles the director entrusted to the young artists of the troupe. Nina Zarechnaya is played by Sofia Shidlovskaya, Konstantin Treplev by Ilya Kozyrev. The pair on stage looks like brother and sister. Blondes with blue eyes. Kozyrev is actively engaged in the repertoire. His texture likes the directors, so the artist can be seen in "Masquerade", "Suicide", and December 12 in the premiere of "Eldest Son" Ilya will also play one of the main roles.

Treplev Ilya Kozyrev light-hearted, worried, eager to please his mother - the famous actress Irina Arkadina. He wrote the play and now puts it together with Nina Zarechnaya. She is not only the protagonist, but the muse and favorite. But the feelings are not mutual.

- I like to dig into the role, to find something new in it from play to play - admits the actor. - Kostya and Nina are about to have the premiere of the play. New forms, vision. We need to surprise and please mom.

This nervous environment is reflected in the characters. Kostya is ready to bang his head against the closet. And it's not the first time he's done it. Plus superimposed feelings for Zarechnaya. For Sofia Shidlovskaya, "The Seagull" is a play about love. The actress has a lot in common with the heroine: selflessness, courage.

- She does not really care what others will think - says about his Nina Sophia. - After all, she has a dream, and she goes to it. Nina is in love with Trigorin. Therefore leaks the play to Kostya, at the premiere in front of the assembled guests. And this act makes everything worse.

Is she talented? Or maybe it's not about her, but about the untalented Kostik, whom she let down by disrupting the performance. Shidlovskaya's Zarechnaya could have been on a par with Arkadina, if she had taken a direct course towards perfection in her profession, but she threw away her ambitions, her dreams of the stage and her talent for the sake of Trigorin. Nina falls in love with a man whom Arkadina has already chosen. And this attraction becomes fatal for Zarechnaya.

A child's question

The director, as a psychologist, sees all the problems of adults in children's traumas. Therefore, he begins the narrative with time displacement. On the stage, two girls and two boys in white clothes are playing salki. These are little Nina, Kostya, Masha and Semyon. Even then Zarechnaya dreamed of the stage, reading to friends from improvised scaffolding. Every summer the boys spent near this lake, overgrown with reeds. The theme of childhood is embedded in the performance.

The artist Nikolai Simonov created a multifunctional space on the stage. It is a pier, a manor house and a summer theater. But everything is as if inanimate. Even the reeds on the lake and the apples on the apple tree are blackened. And even though the boats are swaying on the water, they will never leave the wharf, no matter how much you row.

Konstantin Khabensky admits that he is an impudent person in creativity. Change is not in his rules.

- I have not found a director who would agree to direct "The Seagull", - he says. - Well, I got up the nerve and went myself.

In his creative biography was already this play by Chekhov. In 2011, Konstantin Bogomolov staged it at the Theater under the direction of Oleg Tabakov. For the role of Trigorin, the director invited Konstantin Khabensky. Marina Zudina is Arkadina, and Oleg Tabakov is Dorn. The play was on the Main Stage of the Moscow Art Theater. And then the audience took it in the bayonet. Bogomolov's free interpretation of Chekhov's dramaturgy was not to the taste of theatergoers. And the director remade the play, releasing an ascetic version of The Seagull three years later.

Perhaps remembering this, director Khabensky did everything with due respect for the author. Nothing was removed from the play, except for sentences that the viewer today does not understand.

- What is a Kiev bourgeois? - he gives an example. - It does not sound now. We had to buy it. Even in the classics there are phrases and concepts that are not very relevant.

Cherchez la femme

Khabensky admits that he wanted to get away from the "tunefulness" of Chekhov, tried to find the main words, important pauses in dialogues.

- I thought about it and realized that the main characters in the play are women, all of them, without exception," says the director. - Thanks to their attention or inattention, men become happy or unhappy, capable of high flight or fall.

One of such fatal heroines is certainly Arkadina. The passions boil next to her.

- It was important for me to tell about an ordinary woman, - said the performer of this role Kristina Babushkina. - And this is the key to the fact that this is not a fictional character, not some ephemeral artist, but a woman with her own experiences, her pain and problems. We tried to get away from the formulaic perception of this story. And it is an amazing experience - to work with a "playing coach".

At the first rehearsal, the director suggested unexpected acting moves. But, as the artists admit, with respect for the nature of each, did not limit the improvisation. Actors involved in "The Seagull", in his opinion, are able to magnetize, keep the attention of the audience with internal monologues. The director thought only about who could become Shamraev.

- I tried to find a solution and think up why this man is tolerated here," he says. - This is a kind of game of tolerance - that's why, as it seemed to me.

As a result, the director invited a small-sized actor Vano Mironyan to play the role of Sorin Shamrayev's manager. His wife Polina is played by the beautiful Alena Khovanskaya. Her heroine tells Treplev that a woman does not need anything - just look at her affectionately. And daughter Masha, afraid of his feelings, grabs a gun. This role was played by a young artist Polina Romanova.

- When Konstantin Yurievich said that he wants to do "The Seagull", in my soul was confusion, because recently I played Trigorin and thought that again it will be him - shared People's Artist Igor Vernik. - And then he says it's Dorn. I still remember Smoktunovsky in this role in the play Efremov. Wise, lost interest in life, understanding everything, cynical, waving at himself. Khabensky offered Dorn hot, which is close to me.

At Vernik this character is a life-lover and believes in love. He is a gambling man. Having lost, gives up his relationship with Polina, Shamrayev's wife. As Igor Vernik says, Dorn is like a giraffe - he sees everything and says nothing. He is sure that it is not necessary to incriminate anyone, teach anyone, it is useless, because everyone must go his own way.

Not the word of a patsan

Trigorin the director found in the Moscow Youth Theater. Andrei Maximov moviegoers remember him for his role as Yellow from "The Word of a Patsan".

- This is a challenge for me - to go to the legendary stage, a test of strength - says the actor. - It doesn't matter to me what kind of director Khabensky is, what matters is that he is a good man. Amazing, sensitive, very kind. Human qualities allowed to rehearse in love and trust. And Trigorin is cunning, passionate and looking for his place. The one Arkadina has defined for him does not suit him. But he tries his best to match his great companion.

Konstantin Treplev sees next to his mother a man of the same age as him. But his Arkadina considers him incredibly talented and beautiful, and her own son does not notice. Therefore, the conflict between son and mother intensifies.

Another find for the play is Anatoly Kot as Pyotr Nikolaevich Sorin - Arkadina's brother. From the very first scene it is impossible to take your eyes off this artist. His character walks in sweatpants, shirt and jacket. In the army binoculars he observes the inhabitants of his estate. Calms Treplev and tries to convince him that his mother loves him. Dorn calls Sorin an "old broad" for his lack of character. Anatoly Kot plays a character 12 years older than himself. In Efremov's 1980 play, this role was played by People's Artist Vladlen Davydov. And when in 2001 Nikolai Skorik returned Oleg Nikolayevich's production - People's Artist Vyacheslav Nevinniy. Then in "The Seagull" shone Evgeny Mironov, Irina Miroshnichenko, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya.

Chekhov's comedy was first staged on this stage in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. This performance marked a new milestone in the history of Russian and world theater. And the silhouette of a seagull based on a sketch by Fyodor Shekhtel later became the emblem of the Moscow Art Theater.

You can learn more about different "Seagulls" at the Art Theater at the exhibition "From Konstantin to Konstantin" in the Green Foyer. The Moscow Art Theater Museum presented unique exhibits - a director's copy of the play by Konstantin Stanislavsky and an engraved medallion presented by Chekhov to Nemirovich-Danchenko. On it are the words "You gave my "Seagull" life. Thank you!".