"Courier" with "Nail": Mashkov presented the prize to the performance of the artistic director of Lenkom

For the 24th time, crystal nails were distributed at the Gogol Theater to the best performances of the previous season. Among them are "The Sun of Landau" by the Vakhtangov Theater, the play dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory "Was not on the list" (Oleg Tabakov Theater), the rare opera "Andre Chenier" at the MAMT. The main award was won by the team of Vladimir Pankov, artistic director of Lenkom Mark Zakharov, for the play "Courier" based on the story by Karen Shakhnazarov. Izvestia visited the ceremony and congratulated the winners.

"The Nail" by Landau and the opera about the French poet

The Helikon Opera orchestra and soloists were responsible for the mood of the ceremony. They performed popular arias, appearing directly from the auditorium. The leading characters were the characters of Ostrovsky's play "The Forest" — the Lucky and the Unlucky. They brought "nails" with them in their bags: six small and one large, all made of crystal.

The awards were intended for performances created during the last theatrical season. This year, six productions were shortlisted: "The Landau Sun" (Vakhtangov Theater), "Andre Chenier" (MAMT), "Arcadia" (Pyotr Fomenko's Workshop), "Not on the list" (Oleg Tabakov Theater), "Courier" (CDR, now a structural division "Lenkom by Mark Zakharov"), "Petersburg — Petrograd — Leningrad" (Theater of Music and Poetry under the direction of Elena Kamburova).

The creators of each one receive a glass prize in the form of a globe rotating around a nail. The main intrigue is which of the performances will win the big crystal award.

The play "Landau's Sun" became a hit, despite the fact that it is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of quantum mechanics. An abstruse topic, it would seem, does not imply increased public interest. However, Anatoly Shulyev, the chief director of the Vakhtangov Theater, presented Lev Landau, an outstanding theoretical physicist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize winner, not as an "icon of science", but as a contradictory, internally fractured genius.

The production avoids the format of a biographical lecture, focusing on personal drama and conflicts. In many ways, this is the merit of Pavel Popov, the performer of the main role. His Landau — harsh, ironic, intellectually ruthless — simultaneously attracts and repels, leaving the viewer no opportunity to remain indifferent. The actor has already received several awards for this work, including the Crystal Turandot Award. The production is complemented by a strong ensemble: Julia Rutberg, Alexander Ryshchenkov, Denis Samoilov, Yana Sobolevskaya.

— It's difficult to buy tickets for this performance, go to the box office, they are no longer there, — Kirill Krok, director of the Vakhtangov Theater, told Izvestia. — The director managed to present this topic in a very popular, evidence-based, and theatrically interesting way. And believe me, many people may discover the name of the great Russian scientist Lev Landau after the performance.

The K.S. Stanislavsky and V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater received its "Nail" for the production of "Andre Chenier" by Umberto Giordano, a rare opera for the Russian stage.

— The repertoire of our theater is absolutely exclusive: half of the playbill is something that is not played anywhere in Moscow today, including Andre Chenier," the director of the production, Alexander Titel, told Izvestia.

Giordano's opera tells the story of a French poet from the era of the Great French Revolution. Andre Chenier's fate is tragic: singing the ideas of freedom, equality and fraternity, he finds himself on the scaffold with his beloved and becomes a symbol of the revolution.

The main prize is for the Courier

The Pyotr Fomenko Workshop was awarded for its production based on Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (directed by Evgeny Kamenkovich). Many theatergoers remember his earlier version of the play with Evgeny Tsyganov and Irina Pegova. In the early 2000s, Pyotr Fomenko's students became critics' favorites thanks to this work. A new generation of artists — Ekaterina Novokreschenova, Fedor Malyshev, Pavel Yakovlev — also found their audience.

The play "I wasn't on the list" (Oleg Tabakov Theater), based on the novel by Boris Vasiliev, seemed to come off the screen. The artistic director of the theater, Vladimir Mashkov, together with the troupe, first starred in the film of the same name by Sergei Korotaev, where he played the role of one of the defenders of the Brest Fortress. After the release of the film, he transferred this work to the theater stage.

The performer of the main role Vladislav Miller became the discovery of the year. The play combines theater and cinema, and the main female role is played by Alyona Morilova, a student at Oleg Tabakov's School. She and the director of the theater Sofia Golik received the "Highlight of the Season".

The Theater of Music and Poetry under the direction of Elena Kamburova added the play "Petersburg — Petrograd — Leningrad" to the poster. Director Ivan Popovsky dedicated the production to the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory and the 120th anniversary of Dmitry Shostakovich's birth. This is a work at the junction of genres: music, puppet theater and drama are combined here.

Vladimir Mashkov, chairman of the Union of Theatrical Figures, personally presented the main "Big Crystal Nail" to the creators of Vladimir Pankov's production "The Courier" based on the story by Karen Shakhnazarov. Many people remember the director's film of the same name about the strange young man Ivan Miroshnikov. Pankov staged The Courier at the Center for Drama and Directing, and soon after the premiere he headed Mark Zakharov's Lenkom, whose repertoire eventually expanded this play.

The production is performed in the director's signature SounDrama genre. The live orchestra performs hits of the 1980s: songs by Viktor Saltykov and the bands Resurrection, Nautilus Pompilius, and Alliance are played. This is one of the most crowded performances of the theater: almost the entire troupe is involved, as well as invited artists — Natalia Shchukina, Sergey Yushkevich, Taisiya Mikholap, Andrey Kazakov and others.

At the end of the ceremony, the presenters announced another news: next year, the jury of the "Nail of the Season" will consider not only Moscow premieres, but also productions of theaters near Moscow. This means that the competition will increase.