Dina Goder. Risk group

In fact, all the main elements of the concept of this performance were very risky. In each case, the risk could turn into additional success. Didn't turn around.

The first issue was the idea of ​​​​turning the script of Fellini's "Nights of Cabiria" into a musical (Bob Fosse had already done this once in "Dear Charity", but this has nothing to do with our case). Or rather, not even the script, but the plot outline. But the story about a little prostitute who fell in love and was deceived, let’s be honest, is worth three pennies in itself - geniuses, as you know, often work with low genres and common plots, raising them to their own level. Using a plot after them will not add scale to your work, but you will definitely expose it to unfavorable comparisons.

In the case of Alla Sigalova’s production , the point is not even that the film with Juliet Mazina constantly comes to mind. And the fact is that the director, probably intentionally, turned her performance into a bouquet of Fellinian commonplaces. Or rather, into a set of cliches of perception of his films. There are numerous cheerfully flashing light bulbs, monstrous prostitutes with huge fake butts, and a circus (all characters perform with whitewashed faces and brightly outlined eyes and lips). The stage is an inclined circle of the arena, the characters walk in a mincing and absurd Chaplin-style brace, evoking phrases from a textbook about “little people in bourgeois society”, they all wear specially made clown shoes with long toes and even in the most dramatic moments of the plot they remember that they are working in the style: "- Hello, Bim! - Hello, Bom!". Add to this the thin heroine, who looks like a disheveled sparrow, who, like the circus performer Gelsomina from “The Road,” drags a huge drum behind her. The result is a memo “everything you need to know about Fellini.”

The second element of risk was inviting Alla Sigalova, previously known exclusively as a choreographer and dancer, as director. The appearance of new people sometimes greatly refreshes the theatrical atmosphere, but this did not work here. Probably, Sigalova is not a new enough person, and she did not turn out to be a real director, so she began to hide behind all this clownery with light bulbs. A third element of risk also comes into play, which is used by everyone these days - staging a musical with dramatic actors. Another failure. And the fact that Sigalova and the actors apparently put a lot of work into this production makes the impression of the performance even more painful. Numerous dances, which are clearly not easy for actors, voiceless singing into radio microphones (although we are already accustomed to this, but listening to these sounds for two actions in a row is difficult), and even deliberate plasticity and grotesque makeup hiding the face - all this deprives the actor of any opportunity to be alive and play something. That is, to really do your own thing. I especially feel sorry for the new prima of the Pushkin Theater - the young, talented and spontaneous Alexandra Ursulyak. Hobbling inwards with her toes, pulling her head into her shoulders, furrowing her thickly smeared eyebrows and singing in a hoarse voice monstrous lyrical nonsense (more on which later), she tries very hard to be touching, as the director demands. But this heavy artillery of acting cliches, previously unusual for young Sasha, can only captivate a very inexperienced viewer.

Few people called the choice of the composer risky in this performance - it seemed that the old maestro Raymond Pauls would never let him down. And the music turned out to be standard and extremely inexpressive. God knows what has to do with the modest capabilities of the actors, who are forced to not sing most of the parts, but almost recite melodiously, and what has to do with the merits of Paul’s dull motifs. One thing I can say is that those two or three lyrical duets that somehow stuck in the ears and where one could count on the audience humming them as they left the hall sounded so out of date, as if they came directly from the stage of the 70s. And the fighting “Mambo Italiano, mambo about love,” which the prostitutes sang in chorus, was more reminiscent not of the recently fashionable “Hey, Mambo!”, but of the peteush “And we, like that, are rocking!”

Now about what made the strongest impression. About poetic texts, although, it would seem, why listen to what the heroes of musicals sing? Well, there was absolutely nothing to be distracted by here. The merits of the poems of many times ridiculed Russian musicals rise like unattainable mont blancs next to the work of Elena Sigova and Vladlen Dozortsev. Here the figurative freshness (the accountant’s aria “without stars and without flowers in the nightmare of cities has not seen dreams for a long time” or the love duet “a house with windows for spring, with windows for a dream, with windows for love”) can only compete with the power of thought (Cabiria’s aria “to love is more difficult than to despise” or “not to love is just waiting for death”). But all this pales next to the scene in the actor’s house (remember in the film: the film actor, offended by his mistress, brought Cabiria to his place, and then his beauty came running to make peace, and the little prostitute was shoved somewhere out of sight). So, in the reconciliation scene, Sinatra’s “Strangers in the night” suddenly began to sound and the lovebirds began to sing: “I love you - I love you - I love you very much - I love you...” - and so on... I hope that these They were paid for the poems line by line.

As for success, I think there will be success. Think for yourself: there is a heart-warming plot, there is singing, there is dancing, there are bright costumes and sparkling light bulbs - such a set has never been left without an audience. I only wish this for the Pushkin Theater, which invested a lot of money and effort into the premiere of “Nights of Cabiria”. Do you just know what the audience hums as they leave this performance? Strangers in the night.