Dina Goder. Symbolic premieres

Symbolic premieres
Dina Goder

Publication date: December 29, 2004

In the second half of December, all publications rush to sum up the results of the year as if they had been undermined. You might think that something depends on this. That this could change something. After all, what a year, let’s at least finish December! But for some reason, while the thought of how to sum up the year is spinning in my head, all the last performances of December seem symbolic for this very year of 2004.

Here is the main event of the second half of December: the tour of the Pina Bausch Dance Theater in Wuppertal. Bausch, the creator of a whole movement in modern dance, and in theater in general, was in Russia a very long time ago, in 1989 and 1993, and those of her performances were: “Carnations”, “Cafe Müller”, “Kontakthof”, “The Rite of Spring” - tough, desperate, nervous - impossible to forget. Now she has brought " The Window Cleaner ," a production about Hong Kong from her series of plays about the cities - an incredible fusion of dance, music, drama and clowning, as is always the case with Bausch. But such as we have never seen from her - happy and gentle, trustingly addressed to everyone.

Pina found the image of this performance when she saw a tiny window cleaner suspended high on the glass wall of a Hong Kong skyscraper. This washer also appears on stage, washing a transparent plastic curtain that looks like glass right up to the ceiling. For Bausch, it was the two-sidedness of the metaphor that was important: you won’t understand whether we are looking, whether they are looking at us, from the inside or from the outside... And the performance itself, amazingly beautiful, circling around a mountain of red flowers that cover the stage like snow, was so two-sided, combining Eastern meditativeness with Chinese kitsch, a sense of the wild life of the metropolis - dance halls, restaurants, erotic services, airports - with loneliness, childhood memories, photographs and letters.

We can talk about Pina Bausch for a long time - later, looking back, we will certainly understand that the main theatrical event of the second half of December will be among the two or three main events of the year. But this is what I meant when I talked about symbolism. Last year, almost all the most important things were not from Moscow, but from visitors. And, if the capital’s touring life, thanks to various festivals, had not developed so rapidly in recent years, I’m afraid we would have little to remember about the past year.

Of the premieres, the main December hopes were pinned, perhaps, on “ Gedda Gabler ”, reanimated by Mindaugas Karbauskis at the Fomenko Workshop. He staged it four years ago in his course at GITIS, the performance was considered very successful, and now it was decided to repeat it, especially since the performers of the main roles became actors of the Workshop. The result is an amazing thing: everything seems to be fine, the actors are appropriate and Natalya Kurdyubova, playing Gedda as arrogant and ruthless, looks stylish. And the “picture” is noble: an expensive circular sofa, a gramophone, striped wallpaper is visible in the distant rooms. But what seemed fresh from a student, from an “adult” director, crowned with numerous awards, became... boring. Critics were perplexed: “Karbauskis’s performance is practically invulnerable to critical arrows, since the director has not made a single gross mistake and each role in the chamber space is constructed with filigree precision. The title of an error-free performance would, perhaps, be the highest praise for a course work, but in a repertory performance this infallibility serves as a reason for uncontrollable, albeit respectful, yawning " ( Gleb Sitkovsky, Gazeta ); “His performance would be most suited to the epithet “respectable”. It (the performance) is protected from sharp criticism on all sides” ( Marina Davydova, Izvestia ); “...Sometimes I painfully want to follow Gedda’s example, and even shoot myself out of boredom ” ( Alena Karas, Rossiyskaya Gazeta ).

It must be said that Karbauskis still did not completely repeat his student opus. He tried to be tougher and more sarcastic. In the previous production, the director himself played Gedda’s former lover, the vicious and talented Levborg. Then it was difficult to imagine a tendency towards depravity in the young, clear-eyed creature that Karbauskis looked like, but there was still some impulse that made it possible to suspect talent in him. Now Levborg is played by Maxim Litovchenko, a student in the same course, who most of all, with his slicked-in parted hair, resembles the ridiculous bore Sergei Filippov in the role of Kisa Vorobyaninov. And in general, the men from whom Gedda so wants spectacular gestures and beauty of actions, Karbauskis, as if taking revenge on the heroine for the excessiveness of her claims, turned into a trio of clowns in striped suits. Not only Kisa-Litovchenko, but also her paunchy husband Tesman (when talking about Alexei Kolubkov, not a single reviewer forgets to mention how Gedda took him out of his corset), and lover Brakk (the wonderful comic actor Nikita Zverev, who looks like a clever entertainer) are not worth it, to become the heroes of someone's novel. From the very beginning, this is as obvious to Gedda as it is to the audience; she has no reason to delude herself, and therefore the smart heroine is cold, disgusted and completely empty. There is no passion or desire for poetry in her, and why she decided to shoot herself remains unclear. Just like why Karbauskis decided to make a remake of his student production. “The new performance is tailored like a good-quality frock coat. It fits the actors and for some reason the director needs it, but I can’t find a reason why “Gedda Gabler” is a must-see…” ( Oleg Zintsov, “Vedomosti” ); “ Where the director’s soul goes and what she would like to tell the small piece of the world gathered in the auditorium are questions that remain unanswered” ( Olga Egoshina, “Novye Izvestia” ).

If we continue the same conversation about the significance of the latest December premieres, then “Hedda” will symbolize the productions of young directors, which are now in great demand and which do not live up to expectations (I must say, this applies to Karbauskis himself to the least extent - for him 2004 was rather successful). The second premiere from the same series will be “ Dream on a Wild Night ” by Nina Chusova at the Pushkin Theater.

Shakespeare in Chusovsky's version completely amazed me with its senselessness. Here the director’s task was clear: to please the audience before the New Year, to make a cheerful gift for the Christmas tree. And Nina threw all her irrepressible vitality into achieving this goal. The director's main creative move was that the action of the comedy was transferred from Athens to Africa. Accordingly, the design became African (Viktor Platonov covered the stage with multi-colored vines, grew a palm tree from cheerful ribbons and came up with a huge glowing niche-moon, against which African dances looked especially impressive). The costumes were African (Evgenia Panfilova painted the half-naked actors in chocolate colors, put short skirts and loincloths on them, hung them with beads and bracelets, and braided their hair in many African braids). Of course, the behavior also turned out to be African (the actors jump to the drum, growl wildly, purr and roll their eyes with passion). The performance, in which Shakespeare's text was cut almost in half, really turned out to be full of frantic and some kind of deranged energy. And it marked another type of production this year - performance-shows, in which the main thing is a single technique, which, moreover, has little to do with the meaning of the text.

A continuation of this theme was the musical comedy "Jolly Fellows" - an enterprise product of Irina Apeksimova's theater company. I won’t go into details - all the birth traumas of the domestic enterprise are obvious in this work, it’s not even worth listing them. Another thing is curious: the play, which was conceived in an interesting way - the director was Viktor Kramer, the libretto based on the script by N. Erdman and V. Mass was written by Vadim Zhuk and Igor Irtenev, the missing numbers were added to the music by Isaac Dunaevsky, his son Maxim, notable actors were invited, including Irina Bogushevskaya for the role of Anyuta - turned into a costume show by Yuri Kharikov. Moreover, these costumes - brightly colored in the first, summer, act and white in the second, winter act - were really witty, inventive and varied, as is always the case with Kharikov, but the performance was absolutely not visible behind them. However, maybe this is for the better.

And finally, as the final chord to the Moscow show premieres and tours, there is the Latin American show De La Guarda, for which the workshop of the Ordzhonikidze plant was specially rebuilt. A performance where there is no division into a stage and a hall, connecting a circus, a disco, a shadow theater with a variety of effects, in which water, music and light participate on equal terms with passionate Spanish-speaking actors and draw the audience into its flow - this is the very synthetic interactive action that which theater living in alternative venues has recently been striving for. And although the “De La Guarda Show” itself is entertainment for teenagers, I am sure that there will be more and more similar shows designed for viewers of all ages. (It’s not without reason that even in the most classical theater, the Pushkin Theater, in Chusova’s play, the actors portraying elves flew on circus pendants.)

At this point, I think I’ll stop the permissible speeches about the symbolic significance of the premieres at the end of December and move on to the actual results of the year. The most convenient thing in such cases is to see what premium layouts look like. But, since in general theatrical life is considered not years, but seasons, then we are left with only three awards: the private Moscow “Chaika”, which represents more of an “audience” rather than an expert opinion (it is given in December, evaluating exactly the year, not the season ), the prestigious “Stanislavsky Prize” (it is also given at the end of the year) and the most representative and respectable - the Russian “Golden Mask” (at the end of December it announces the nominees for the prize for the last season, which will be awarded next spring).

It is significant that the vast majority of “ The Seagull ” laureates are very young artists and directors. This is not the first time this has happened, which fully reflects the current general hopes for young people. And the laureates of the older generation are related to the same trend: the “best duet” Alla Pokrovskaya and Andrei Myagkov play the young Kirill Serebrennikov in “The Bourgeois”, the “best producer” Oleg Tabakov is building the repertoire policy of the Moscow Art Theater counting on the new generation of directors and mainly thanks to he turns out to be successful. The “merit” award was given to the remarkable Shakespeare scholar Alexey Bartoshevich, who taught the history of theater to several generations of theater critics, directors and actors, some of whom are already considered patriarchs themselves, while others are just making their debut in the profession.

The Stanislavsky Prize , on the contrary, is famous for the fact that it is given, as a rule, to people who have long been deserved, whose right to receive awards does not require confirmation. And even its wording sounds very general: “For the performances of recent years” or generally “For the contribution...”. What else can you say if they are awarded, as, for example, this year Maya Turovskaya, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, Yuri Pogrebnichko, Alisa Freundlich or David Borovsky? But even on this list today there are two young names: in the category “The Art of an Actor” - Galina Tyunina, and in the “Art of a Director” - Mindaugas Karbauskis.

The opinion of the Golden Mask experts does not fully confirm that the young are in the lead in all areas, but gives in its own way an expressive picture of the past season. According to the Golden Mask version, the main theatrical events took place in Moscow. There are seven productions on the list of the best performances from the capital, two from St. Petersburg, another from Yakutsk, one from Omsk and one from Sovetsk. Among the Moscow performances, four were staged by directors who are generally considered young. The same Mindaugas Karbauskis with two productions: the mournfully ironic “When I was Dying” in “Snuffbox” and the tender “Uncle Vanya” in the Moscow Art Theater. Kirill Serebrennikov with the massive and controversial "Philistines" - again at the Moscow Art Theater. And Yuri Butusov with the grotesque “Richard Sh” in “Satyricon”. Outside the capital, there is only one young nominee - Mark Zakharov's student Sergei Potapov staged Ionesco's energetic "Macbeth" in Yakutsk, in Zakharov's style.

But there are no directors of the middle generation in Moscow - this is also indicative. Forty-year-olds are performing in St. Petersburg: Bulgarian Alexander Morfov is nominated for the paradoxical and, in my opinion, not very successful “Don Juan” at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater, and Andrei Moguchiy is nominated for the absolutely charming improvisational “PRO Turandot” in “The Comedian’s Shelter”. Evgeny Marcelli is also from the middle generation - he staged “Three Sisters” in his “Tilsit Theater” in Sovetsk. The older generation of directors again lives in Moscow: Kama Ginkas was nominated for the dry and hopeless “Rothschild’s Violin” at the Youth Theater, and Yuri Pogrebnichko was nominated for the piercingly nostalgic “Stairwell” at the OKOLO theater. Vyacheslav Kokorin, who staged “The King is Dying” in Omsk, is also among the elders.

As for the actors, there are almost no young ones here at all. Perhaps Irina Pegova (Sonya from “Uncle Vanya”) and Nelly Uvarova (Lecturer from the RAMT play “Rules of Conduct in Modern Society”), and with some stretch, Alexander Bargman, who played the title role in the St. Petersburg “Don Juan,” can be considered young. .

- What is the result? - an inquisitive reader will ask. God knows, there is no result. If the main premieres of the last year, as the Golden Mask assures, took place in Moscow, and you can see for yourself what Moscow stage life is like, then I am not particularly optimistic about our theatrical prospects (after all, in order to determine the prospects, they usually ask about the results of the year, right?). On the other hand, every year everyone whines that things are bad, but by the end of the season, as a rule, everything somehow improves. That's what we'll think about when we go on vacation.