We flew over the nest: a madhouse was built in the Obraztsov Theater

This is not a production based on Richard Bach's novel "A Seagull named Jonathan Livingston." Rather, we are talking about a controversy. The original gives a recipe for how to break out of the ordinary, overcome boundaries, and free yourself. In Boris Konstantinov's play, the action takes place in a psychiatric hospital, where an elderly test pilot is being tried to revive with the help of shock therapy. But for some reason, he still claims that he is a seagull. Izvestia went to one of the most conceptual performances of the season and shares their impressions.

Why isn't it Richard Bach

The key move of the creators of the play "The Seagull by the name" is maximum immersion in a short time. The performance lasts only an hour, so the process starts long before the third bell. Even in the lobby, the viewer sees the issues of the newspaper "Sky-high Vedomosti" everywhere, which reports on the exploits of the legendary pilot with the call sign "Chaika". This is not a program, but a separate printed product, a real newspaper that you can read in an armchair and take home. There are huge puppet seagulls at the entrance to the hall, the room is decorated like the room of an elderly pilot, guests are offered several types of cider, which adjusts to the correct perception of the performance.

Since the performance is designed for viewers over the age of 16, it is assumed that the audience is familiar with the cult novel by Richard Bach and most likely came for it. In general, it is precisely this part of the audience that needs to be reconfigured the most, because although the puppet theater is best suited for bringing "Livingston" to the stage, the author of the play and the director of the play, Boris Konstantinov, made the story the second plan, and the first plan, the events in a separate mountain psychiatric hospital about a hundred years ago, was played live actors.

Another thing is how skillfully game and puppet events are soldered together, but the Obraztsov Theater has always been able to do this filigree, and one of the best demonstrations of this is the super hit of recent years "I am Sergey Obraztsov" with Evgeny Tsyganov, which the whole of Moscow has visited (or dreams of visiting, depending on the possibilities).

So, a man is sitting in a vintage wheelchair, doctors are scurrying around him, led by the infernal Dr. Cheng, which gives the action a pronounced oriental flavor. For Cheng, this case is a professional challenge, the former pilot does not react to people and does not talk to anyone, and it is necessary to restore his mind and make him "normal" with the help of newfangled electroconvulsive therapy.

How did the play "A Seagull by the name" turn out?

Such a plot opens up great opportunities, firstly, for choreography, first of all, for vivid individual performances by doctors and patients, among whom a mysterious one-armed man stands out. It's more difficult with group performances: the authors of the play deliberately narrowed the stage to about 15-16 square meters, it's so crowded that when the doctors roll out the electrical equipment, they have nowhere to move. This creates the claustrophobia necessary for the viewer, contrasting with the pilot's idea of an ideal flight.

The pilot himself is interested in an idea that Bach does not have, but which, of course, will be very understandable to the Moscow thinking public. Is the pilot trying to figure out at what point and when things went wrong for him? After all, everything was going great! After all, it was clear where and how to fly, the goal was visible, and a little more — and the perfect flight route would have turned out! It is necessary to find out where the mistake was, and for this you can endure all the tortures and ridicule, all this gray and joyless life, your senile infirmity — whatever you want. Just to have an epiphany, just to find out where the mistake was.

This is where we turn to Richard Bach, and suddenly the hospital turns into a nest, hospital gowns into wings, walls into rocks. And the same seagull appears, which does not want to live like others, to eat, to continue the family and to make room for new generations of birds as soon as possible. A seagull for whom Love and Flight are one and the same thing, who is ready for exile and contempt for the sake of a great goal. Who eventually, as we remember, defeats a rigid society, becomes a messiah and becomes — probably a bodhisattva, judging by Bach's hints, but in any case a being of a different order. And those who want to be just seagulls can decide for themselves whether to follow him.

In parallel, this conflict is extrapolated into the space of a psychiatric clinic, where the pilot (brilliantly, minimalistically and gracefully played by Adil—Iskender) plays They also manage to gather a small sect around them. The only difference is that they are attracted by the poetry of his task, while he fanatically calculates the angle of the wing and the flight path. He still thinks that if you understand where the mistake was, then you can fix something else, and this naivety of his seems touching, bitter and hardly excusable for those who have not yet been imprisoned in casemates with electric shocks. However, it is possible that the author of the play is arguing not only with Bach, but also with the audience, who, however, do not always want to argue about anything after cider.

In this performance, precise, aphoristic solutions are attracted, which for the most part very organically fit into two parallel stories. Everything is absolutely perfect with dolls, and most of the time with people, too, although Dr. Cheng could have gotten a little more words and actions so that he wouldn't keep repeating the same thing.

Perhaps it was a mistake to force the artist to sing an entire song in English, which only makes the action more difficult. The pantomime with the toolbox might not have been repeated twice: there are a lot of refrains for an hour-long performance, although it is clear that this was supposed to inform the action of the rhythm of the poem, where repetitions are necessary.

The problem is that when a landmark work is taken as a basis, it is always risky to add or rewrite it. It is noteworthy that the creators of the play often succeed, but when "gaps" arise, the viewer's reaction to this can be too acute. Although a performance can smooth out the rough edges in a few performances, and those who have read Bach but want more will include this show in their obligatory cultural baggage.