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Crime without punishment: Rozovsky directed a drama about the murder of Simon-Demanche
Phantasmagoria, a mystical detective story and one of the most mysterious plots in the history of Russian bohemia, settled on the stage of the Nikitsky Gate Theater for a long time. Its artistic director Mark Rozovsky staged the play "Who killed Simon-Demanche" about the real tragedy of playwright Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin and his French lover. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
What happened to Sukhovo-Kobylin and his mistress
In the deep autumn of 1850, the body of a Frenchwoman, Louise Simon-Demanche, the mistress of the nobleman and playwright Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin, was discovered in Moscow. According to investigators, the murder was not a robbery: the jewelry remained, the body was found in a field near Moscow. Sukhovo-Kobylin was under suspicion. The case was investigated for about seven years, during which time the playwright was arrested twice. It all ended with his acquittal, but the final clarity never happened. They blamed not only the playwright, but also Louise's servants. However, they later admitted that they had testified under pressure from the investigation.
This tragic story left a dark mark on the writer's work, and later Sukhovo-Kobylin created a trilogy: "Krechinsky's Wedding," "The Case," and "Tarelkin's Death." The director of the production and the author of the play, Mark Rozovsky, has the characters of his future plays judge the playwright on stage.
— In general, the happy literary fate of Alexander Vasilyevich was overshadowed by a long-term, almost lifelong, slanderous accusation of the murder of his mistress, the Frenchwoman Louise Simon-Demanche. The mystery of this murder has not yet been solved. That's why it has a detective connotation. Our theatrical work is an attempt to reflect on the topic of justice in the tsarist system of bureaucracy, arbitrariness and violence against an extraordinary human being. It is also a very useful experience of combining the spectacular theater of representation with the theater of experience, the Meyerhold method with the Stanislavsky system, which is what modern theater, in particular the one at the Nikitsky Gate, is based on, says Mark Rozovsky.
The director takes from a real case primarily a detective framework — the disappearance, arrest, investigation, public opinion — and against this background builds not so much a reconstruction of the truth as a series of hypotheses and stage dramatizations. There is no attempt to reach a final verdict in the play — it is not a court reportage, but rather a chronicle of accusations and doubts.
The viewer is offered not so much to solve a crime as to experience how society works: who is suspected, who benefits from being accused, how fame, power, and reputation work.
How did the performance turn out
Stepan Zohrabyan's scenery and set design are emphatically theatrical: the atmosphere of Moscow in the middle of the 19th century is interspersed with the office interiors of Sukhovo-Kobylin's living room and various officials. Such trips became possible thanks to the visual projections of Alexander Zhuravlev and Sergey Starovoitov. Mass scenes alternate with private conversations, with drama in private. The actors seem to be playing not only characters, but also society, the court, and rumors.
Interestingly, Sukhovo-Kobylin himself exists in two ages, and he is played by two artists: the young one is Rashid Kaziev, the old one is Yuri Golubtsov. From the first minutes, they complement and replace each other in the narrative. Thus, the viewer either becomes a direct participant in the events of a long time ago, or can look at the tragedy from the outside.
Sukhovo-Kobylin's portrayal is not so much about psychological self—portraiture as about creating an image of a "tester of social mechanisms," a man whose fate unfolds under a magnifying glass, and this suits a performance where mass is more important than nuance. However, at the moments when the intimate drama of the protagonist himself comes to the fore — the love triangle with Louise Simon-Demanche (Alice Tarasenko) and Nadezhda Naryshkina (Natalia Troitskaya) — a sense of pain and vulnerability nevertheless breaks through the theatrical makeup, and this is one of the strongest points of the production.
The cast works easily and precisely, with a clear desire to emphasize the verbal sharpness and irony of the situation. General Varravin (Denis Yuchenkov), official Tarelkin (Bogdan Khanin) and investigator Rasplyuev (Stanislav Fedorchuk) appeared as absolutely Gogol characters. It is not for nothing that the playwright himself was called the heir of Nikolai Vasilyevich's satirical humor during his lifetime.
Interestingly, another landmark production is being prepared in parallel in the Moscow theater season: the Satire Theater plans to show a version of the Sukhovo-Kobylin play "Krechinsky's Wedding", so that the audience will get two views on the same story.
Mark Rozovsky's new play asks more questions than it answers. In some places, it becomes more of a theatrical show than a deep psychological drama, turning into farce and phantasmagoria. Once again, he publicly asks the question that has tormented not only Sukhovo-Kobylin, but also the entire metropolitan society for many years.: So who killed Simon-Demanche?
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