About the dangers of anniversaries

If Chekhov knew that he would get into the school curriculum and many generations of schoolchildren would dream of how to pluck this hateful seagull with Nina Zarechnaya and drown Kashtanka with Mumu! And if he knew how his anniversary would be celebrated in Taganrog...

President Medvedev gathered for Chekhov's anniversary in Taganrog, taking with him five hundred representatives of the theater community. All local authorities, factory directors, officials, city authorities said "Yavol!" - and laid a mass of wreaths at the monument to Chekhov. At night, the city fathers removed them so that five hundred representatives from the capital could stick their wreaths. And when it came to laying a precious presidential wreath, the authorities also removed the theatrical and public flowers ...

And in this Kharms reality, Dmitry Krymov staged an evil, sharp and ironic play "Tararabumbia". Insipid and miserable school programs made a good-natured man out of Chekhov. And he wasn't at all. An evil humanist, that's what he was.

Have you noticed that Chekhov's heroes, for all their suffering, do not deny themselves the pleasure of drinking and eating well? The hero of "The Lady with the Dog", despite great love, eats a pan of hodgepodge. Laevsky from "Duel" dreams of escaping in St. Petersburg with the help of beer and sturgeon. Chekhov's heroes are either all losers and loafers, or they don't believe in their job and do it through force. They do not know how to love, they execute each other with love. Although in The Seagull: Masha loves Treplev, Treplev loves Nina Zarechnaya, Nina Zarechnaya loves Trigorin, and Trigorin does not love anyone. And now, on a giant conveyor chain, as if on a timeline, they all run and cackle: the vulgar Natasha with the vulgar Bobik, the fool Andrey, the brother of three sisters, the fool Irina, eager to join the life of the capital, the vulgar brawler Arkadina, the worthless Treplev, the fool Nina Zarechnaya , all in white, with wings and feathers. The White Army will pass in the form of a Verkhininsky regiment, shown without reverence: it was not necessary to swim across the seas, to cockroach races, to become taxi drivers - it was necessary to fight.

Dmitry Krymov tries on the Soviet future on Chekhov's heroes. Throughout the performance, two officers drag the corpse of Tuzenbach around the stage: “They killed the baron, can I go through here?” Barons will be killed in the Russian-Japanese, in the First World War, in the Civil War; they will be shot in the cellars of the Cheka... The barons will not leave. And no one can go anywhere. The prisoners were transported in covered trucks with the inscriptions "Bread" and "Meat". Doesn't it suit the gourmet taste? And now a Stolypin wagon with the inscription "Oysters" is rolling along the stage-transporter. The Cherry Orchard will be boarded up, and Chekhov's characters will futilely beat against this door in order to get back.

The great conclusion of Chekhov and Krymov: the people of the Silver Age were not made of silver. No test. Short-lived flowers in a fragile vase, decoration of living rooms. It all ended when the rough hands of time broke this vessel.

And then the Chekhov beyond the grave will go, from textbooks and from Soviet anniversaries: to the peppy music of Dunaevsky, planes with red flags of sovpis, in some way lit up against the backdrop of power, will fly from Alexei Tolstoy to Bernard Shaw, ballerinas in tutus and jackets with orders of Lenin, will be held in earflaps by the Red Army, the most beloved institution of society. We don't have friends besides the army and navy, do we?

Chekhov saw life as a provincial theater: with squabbles, with vanity, pettiness and vulgarity. And now the conveyor belt will clang and empty, into the darkness, and only rubbish will remain from the Silver Age. “So wind up the ropes and load the wagon wobbly: there is only one stage left until the very last overnight stop” (N. Gorbanevskaya).