Pool scene

Theater Moscow, which so loves the English director Declan Donnellan, tries so hard to get each of his new premieres on tour, so enviously watched him stage Dodin’s “The Winter’s Tale” in St. Petersburg, finally received its own Donnellan performance. Now, probably, a whole novel could be written about the long history of its preparation. About how producer Valery Shadrin persuaded him to change the play because “Boris Godunov never works out for us,” about how Donnellan’s resident artist Nick Ormerod changed the design concept. About how the French (who love Declan no less than we do after the Avignon production of “The Cid”), together with the British, decided to become co-producers of the Russian production. About how the selection of actors was carried out, and the result strikingly coincided with the cast that played in Stein’s “Hamlet” (which was also produced by the Confederation of Theater Unions, headed by Valery Shadrin) - with Alexander Feklistov and Evgeny Mironov in the leading roles, right up to the selection for the main female role of Chulpan Khamatova, which later had to be abandoned. Even in this novel, it would definitely have been written about how everyone who worked with him fell in love with the charming Declan, and how he, laughing, said that Russian actors, accustomed to discipline, consider him Mother Teresa, and after returning from Russia to In England, his native actors tell him that he is "rehearsing like Stalin." And finally, that during the months spent in Moscow, Declan, according to the British, has become completely Russified, eats borscht and philosophizes in the kitchen until late at night. But that's all in the novel.

Moscow fans left the premiere satisfied: “Our Donnellan is better than the St. Petersburg and French ones.” I will not compare "Boris Godunov" with "The Winter's Tale" and "Sid", but the fact that Pushkin's large and difficult play has turned into a compact (two and a half hours without intermission), lively and energetic performance with excellent actors is pure truth. Actually, there are no striking concepts in the play, and Donnellan’s directorial techniques remain the same (fans will immediately recognize his signature “dissolve” of episodes, when one scene has not yet ended, and another is already beginning). So that's not why we love him. Donnellan's strength lies in the freshness and spontaneity of his view of a work loaded with many years of tradition and universal reverence, in his interested and irreverent attitude towards the classics as if they were texts written yesterday. This approach does not necessarily give his productions power and depth, but Donnellan is so insightful and witty in detail that his productions always seem unexpected and new.

There is no need that the heroes of “Boris Godunov” are dressed modernly, that Pimen types his chronicle on a typewriter, that the tavern near the Lithuanian border looks like a provincial diner with shabby girls, and the bailiffs look like presumptuous policemen. That Otrepyev is constructing his appeal to the army and allies as a vulgar propaganda television show with the donation of a watch from his hand and a photograph with his autograph, with a boy in a red satin shirt clutched to his chest, who hesitantly greets the new Tsar on behalf of the Russian people. That the army of False Dmitry is running around in camouflage with machine guns, and the final appeal to the people with the demand to recognize Otrepyev as tsar is pronounced from the TV screen, as during the State Emergency Committee. Some of this, of course, can be perceived as a trick (there were similar things in Stein’s boring Hamlet), but never as vulgarity. The intonation precision of the performance is amazing. Everyone assures Declan that he was referring to the current situation in Russia - in particular, the slippery topic of the legality of succession to the throne. They usually tell him about the same topicality in England when he stages Shakespeare. The only thing is that, as the director quotes Oscar Wilde: “Life always imitates art.”

Declan highlights the main thing: “Only two people - Boris and Gregory - understand the importance of popular opinion,” and puts on a performance about the ability to manipulate this opinion. Alexander Feklistov plays Godunov unexpectedly (especially if you remember the best Godunov of recent years - the tired and wise Efremov). He represents an intelligent and cynical ruler, a man who knows exactly how to achieve power (this is the first time I’ve heard Boris’s main monologue read this way: “I have achieved the highest power”—it’s “me” and not someone else). Only one thing torments him and deprives him of confidence: neither with free housing, nor food, nor anything else, he can buy the love of the people he despises.

Donnellan does not believe in the possibility of the existence of a good tsar, so understandable to a Russian person, with a “single stain” on his conscience - the murder of the prince. For sincere and pure Declan, conscience is never “a little dirty.” Godunov is a politician, with all the ensuing consequences. However, the snake-haired Otrepiev (played by Evgeny Mironov, also wonderful), with his impatient boorishness and provincial pressure, is from the same breed.

And a few more words. I highly recommend going to this performance (although it will probably not be easy to get to it: the hall, which is built right on the stage of the Doronin Moscow Art Theater around the narrow platform where the artists perform, can accommodate only 600 people). One of the most remarkable and, oddly enough, funny scenes that you will see in it is the so-called fountain scene, which turned into a “pool scene”. Evgeny Mironov plays her with the hitherto unknown Irina Grineva from the Stanislavsky Theater in the role of Marina Mnishek. This textbook scene turns out to be so unexpected that its ending is accompanied by general laughter and applause. Otrepiev, who before meeting his mistress threw coins into the water for luck, after she leaves (if the luck has already come true) climbs into the pool to return the money. This will be the “tsar in Moscow.”