The bear has come: Piglet was chased on Moscow stages and Khlestakov was met
In the season finale, Moscow theaters decided not to take any chances and showed performances based on proven texts, from Gogol to Gorin. However, there were some surprises, which were also introduced to readers by the critic Vlad Vasyukhin in his traditional review for Izvestia.
"The Shepherd and the Shepherdess"
Theater of Nations
In Moscow, this performance, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory, has so far been played only "for dads and moms," and the premiere took place in June in Tobolsk as part of a festival created ten years ago on the initiative of Evgeny Mironov and supported by Sibur.
Viktor Astafyev called the genre of his military novel, written in 1967, "modern pastoral" and, in his words, tried to combine symbolism, sentimentality and crude realism. Director Sergey Sotnikov did about the same thing. The story of the sudden love of Lieutenant Boris (Konstantin Fridovsky) and a village girl Lucy (Tina Stoilkovich) is played out in a conditional timeless and complexly constructed space (set designer Anastasia Bugaeva). The naturalism of war is replaced by explicit love scenes. The high feelings of the heroes conveyed in poetic language turn out to be stronger than death.
"Goodbye, entertainer!"
Anton Chekhov Theatre
The play by Grigory Gorin, which appeared 40 years ago, had a happy start. It was first staged at the Satire Theater by Andrei Mironov, a favorite of the audience, and he himself, in turn with Mikhail Derzhavin, played the main character — a kind, peaceful and already elderly man, hereditary entertainer Nikolai Burkini. The action takes place from June to October 1941. The war is shown here through the artists of the front—line concert brigades - unremarkable, childishly naive, wayward, but so necessary in difficult times. The capital's entertainers, having gone to perform in front of the soldiers, fall into an enemy encirclement, and then into captivity. And the master of the Burkini conversational genre, risking his life, accomplishes the feat.
The role of the entertainer became a benefit for Andrei Ilyin, known for his work at the Vakhtangov Theater. Together with director Mikhail Citrinyak, he made his character charming, ironic, and soulful. The play, which employs two dozen artists, plays on the stage of the Variety Theater, in collaboration with which it was created, the artistic director of "Estrada" Gennady Khazanov became the producer of the production.
"Petersburg – Petrograd – Leningrad"
Theater of Music and Poetry under the direction of E. Kamburova
To paraphrase Stanislavsky, we can say that "there are no small theaters, there are small directors." Ivan Popovsky's play, already recognized as one of the stunning events of the current Moscow season, is being played in the cramped space of the Kamburova Theater, but the director (he is also a set designer) manages to achieve epic scale. Several decades of the city's life — from pre—revolutionary to post—war - literally float by in front of the audience, since the main place of action is the Neva River.
There are no monologues or dialogues in this mesmerizing, metaphor-filled mystery, except for a fragment of Khrushchev's speech recording. Only the music is by Dmitry Shostakovich, it is based on, as well as Vladimir Dashkevich, Reinhold Glier (how to do without "Hymn to the Great City") and the musical director of the production Oleg Sinkin. Only the vocalization of five actresses and the voice of the artistic director of the theater, Elena Kamburova, who recorded a song based on Mandelstam's famous poems about "fish oil of Leningrad river lanterns."
"The Auditor"
Nikita Mikhalkov's Workshop 12
It's worth going to this version of the immortal Gogol comedy for the sake of the cast. Director Vladimir Pankov, who took over Lenkom in January and is still implementing previous agreements, has not introduced anything fundamentally new to the reading of The Auditor, and, what is sadder, after watching his performance, no high official will repeat the phrase of Nicholas I.: "Everyone got it, but I got the most!" The performance is expectedly decided in the genre of soundrama with a live orchestra, which is characteristic of Punk. Perhaps the attraction with two Khlestakovs and two daughters of the mayor will seem unexpected: in the first case, these are the twins Danila and Pavel Rassomakhin (the best in this show), and in the second, Galina and Polina Medvedeva.
Several Russian folk artists are involved at once: Sergey Garmash as the Mayor, Elena Yakovleva plays his wife, Ivan Agapov (Lyapkin-Tyapkin), Sergey Stepanchenko (Strawberry). However, it cannot be said that in these roles their talent has shone with new facets. Interestingly, the role of landowner Bobchinsky is played by Sergei Gazarov, who brilliantly staged The Inspector General at Oleg Tabakov's Theater, and before that, in 1996, he embodied a textbook story on the screen with a stellar cast.
By the way, at the same time as Pankovsky, "The Inspector General" was released (and also with an abundance of live music) at the Theater of the Russian Army. The production was performed by composer Gleb Matveychuk, and the Mayor is played by Alexander Baluyev. It's interesting to compare!
"Winnie-the-Pooh and everything"
MTUSE
At the end of the season, the main director of MTUSA, Peter Shereshevsky, offered the audience from eight (not earlier!) until the age of eighty and later, take a fresh look at the story of the good-natured teddy bear Winnie the Pooh (Dmitry Agafonov) and his friends. To do this, Peter, under the pseudonym Semyon Sakseev, wrote a dramatization of Alan A. Milne's fairy tale, carefully supplementing Boris Zakhoder's retelling with modern realities, relevant subtexts and postmodern allusions, in which the artist Nadezhda Lopardina helped him. For example, a Wonderful forest is a picturesque Soviet courtyard surrounded by prefabricated houses, with a sandbox and similar attributes.
The emotions of the characters are broadcast on a huge screen hanging above the stage, and the songs, more precisely, the shouts and screams, are performed by the Wrong Bees ensemble. It turned out to be a funny and lyrical performance about the importance of friendship, about the permissibility of otherness, about the inevitable farewell to childhood.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
