Nine Days of One Mozart: Moscow theatergoers were shown an unexpected classic
In the last month of the year, Moscow theaters got into classics ranging from the old Molière to the almost modern Vampilov. However, few of them kept from the desire to adapt familiar texts and plots to the current events of the day. What came out of it, evaluated the critic Vlad Vasyukhin specially for "Izvestia".
"Eldest Son"
Chekhov Moscow Art Theater
Hardly anyone expected to find a new angle in Alexander Vampilov's play. "Eldest Son" (1967) staged so many times - and as a melodrama, and as a situation comedy, and as a tragifarsa - that it seemed that all possible concepts exhausted. The story is about a young man named Busygin (Kirill Vlasov) who accidentally finds himself in an unfamiliar house and - "Ostap was carried away!" - declaring himself a relative of people he doesn't know, seems unlikely. Especially if the action is transferred to our time.
But the director from St. Petersburg Andrei Kalinin presented this sentimental Soviet fairy tale about good people as a dream of the main character. Old man Sarafanov (Alexander Semchev), whom the audience sees already gathered in the hall, falls asleep in front of the TV. And all the further action - and the sudden acquisition of his son can be compared to an Indian movie - could well have been a dream.... One of the advantages of the performance - a wonderful cast: Ilya Kozyrev, Alexei Varushchenko, Anton Loban, Anna Zateeva and others.
"Overcoat"
"Space Inside."
43-year-old Anton Fedorov is increasingly being called the country's first director. And although he works mainly in small venues, critics and avid theatergoers are eager to get to each of his new performances. This year's "The Overcoat," played in a 100-seat auditorium, has also caused a stir.
This is not the first time Fedorov has taken on Gogol - at the Okolo Theater he staged the phantasmagorical "The Inspector", where all the officials resembled rats and explained themselves with interjections. And now the textbook story is reinterpreted by the author of the play (Fedorov also acts as a playwright and artist) in his trademark manner. All the characters have ridiculous costumes, jerky plasticity, incoherent, confused speech, sighs, puns, and repetitions of lines. And if in Gogol's story the worthless official Bashmachkin (Sergei Shaidakov), who gets his long-awaited new overcoat stolen, is of low stature, in this complexly composed performance he is placed on stilts. And this makes the little man even more helpless and insecure. After this "Overcoat" every spectator will acutely feel the message that the director so likes to convey: "You are not the only one so unhappy."
"Tartuffe"
Theater of Nations
It is not the first time Evgeny Pisarev presents comedy as drama and even tragedy. Before that he managed to make unfunny Bulgakov's "Zoyka's Apartment" and Eduardo de Filippo's "The Great Magic" at the Pushkin Theater, and now - Moliere's "Tartuffe" at the Theater of Nations. What we have before us is a tragedy of positions. Of course, a classical text can be read in this way. All the more so Sergei Samoilenko has made a new translation, delicately bringing the story, written in 1664, closer to a modern audience. And the characters were transferred to the present day, to a two-level bourgeois apartment (set designer Zinovy Margolin).
The director added irony, absurdity, subtext and increments of meaning to Molière, but this did not make the generally sturdy play any more exciting. The text resists, and the staging raises questions both in the interpretation of the characters (is Tartuffe a liar, and what, is he really in love with Elmira?) and in the logic of what is happening: if there are gadgets like cell phones and surveillance cameras, why stage a scene with Tartuffe's (Sergei Volkov) unmasking, where Orgon (Igor Gordin) hides ridiculously under the table on the orders of his faithful wife (Anna Chipovskaya)? And this is far from the only inconsistency. But the play with such a participation of stars (in addition to those listed, it plays Denis Sukhanov, Olga Naumenko / Irina Kupchenko, Alexander Sirin, Anastasia Lebedeva) is still doomed to success.
"Mozart"
"Theater of Moscow"
Staging this biographical play, the director of the independent "Theater of Moscow" Ivan Titov himself wrote the stage composition, where quite freely and even ironically treated historical facts. For example, the characters quote lines by Nikolai Nekrasov, who was born 30 years after Mozart's death. The director dispenses with the main character's music, the leitmotif of the spectacle being Shostakovich's "Russian Waltz". And although Dmitri Podadaev, who plays Amadeus, tries on a white wig at the beginning, there is not even the slightest desire for a portrait resemblance: Mozart is bald in the performance. And he is not at all an "idle bachelor" or a glamorous handsome man from the wrappers of famous sweets. But nevertheless quite convincing.
Nine days taken out of the 35-year life of the great Austrian composer will present Mozart, both young and mature, from an unusual angle: his complex relationship with his father is at the center of the story. Leopold Mozart (Vyacheslav Timerbulatov) was so revered by his son that as a child Wolfgang used to repeat: "After God, only Daddy". Along with professionals, young artists are employed in this populated production, and they play wonderfully.
"Days of the Turbins"
Theater "MOST"
Theater "MOST" is located a stone's throw from the apartment where Bulgakov lived, and therefore the thought of how the playwright would have reacted to this premiere, involuntarily suggests itself. I dare to think that he would have liked it, because the director Georgy Dolmazyan made in the chamber space a rare production for these times - "as the author", with taste and measure, without rejuvenation and similar radical experiments.
The story of the collapse of a quiet harbor - the home of the Turbin family - unfolds on a small wooden platform, to the left and right of which are several rows of spectators. The theme of family is the main theme for the director, although the clash between the Whites and the Reds, the events of the Civil War and the atmosphere of German-occupied Kiev in 1918 are naturally reflected. The play "The Days of the Turbins", which became a landmark for Soviet theater (Stalin saw it at the Moscow Art Theatre as many as 17 times!) and has not lost its relevance, is not often staged today, and the premiere at MOST is an opportunity to see this legendary work.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
