Dina Goder. Everyone will die

When Nyakrosius's performances come to Moscow, the hall is tightly packed with celebrities: writers and film experts come, who usually do not favor the stage, directors who do not want to know anyone but themselves in the theater. Famous actors agree to sit modestly on side chairs, while students stand for hours in the aisles and dangle from the tiers in clusters. When Nyakrosius brings performances to St. Petersburg, a crowd of students tears down the doors to the theater, and the Moscow-St. Petersburg night trains are packed with Moscow theatergoers. In small Lithuania, at the premieres of Nyakrosius, the elite is present in full force, including ministers and the president. It's clear: a genius.

He himself does not bow, does not accept bouquets, and at receptions in his honor does not give speeches and tries to go somewhere in a corner, away from the cameras. The world has never seen such a non-public person in this public profession. Journalists know that it is unbearable to do an interview with him: you give him a whole speech, and he only says “yes”, “no”, or “I don’t know”. Now, under pressure from the producers, he at least began to come to the press conference, but before that was not the case. However, it’s the same there: he refuses to explain his directorial position, he thinks it’s ugly. Doesn't want to argue with opponents. He shocks his admirers with the words that “the theater is not the most important thing in life”, that if he could earn money by doing something else, he would stop doing it, and, for example, would plant forests.

For three days - February 17, 19 and 21 - on the stage of the Mossovet Theater, as part of the anniversary tour program of the Golden Mask, we will be shown Shakespearean performances by Eimuntas Nyakrosius. Three tragedies - " Hamlet " of 1997, "Macbeth" of 1999 and " Othello " of 2000, which have already taken their place in some imaginary anthology of the best performances of the past century. All three performances by Nyakrosius have already been in Moscow, and for most theatergoers they will not be such a shock as it was the first time. And yet, ticket cashiers at the Golden Mask say that theatergoers are snapping up tickets very quickly, many buying for the entire trilogy at once.

Once upon a time, a young graduate student Alexey Bartoshevich told about Shakespeare to a student of Goncharov’s GITIS directing course, Nyakroshus. For the current arrival of the trilogy, the best Russian Shakespeare scholar Bartoshevich will give two lectures on the topic “Shakespearean tragedies in the modern theater” and show video performances with brilliant English actors, which will confirm the scale of the event.

Those who have seen these performances will come to them again. They will come to see how a disheveled Hamlet in a paper shirt stands under a huge chandelier hung with garlands of ice. And icy water drips onto his head and chest, the soaked blotter tears, sliding off the boy’s shoulders, and he, in a fever, mutters about revenge: “to be or not to be?” Nyakrosius acts on what is certainly the first signaling system: we all feel pain, cold and heat. This is not a movie, you won’t smile here when Hamlet, listening to his father, stands on an ice block - and it melts under his warm feet, or when, swearing to himself to take revenge, he holds his hand over the fire for a long time.

They will come for the second time to see “Macbeth,” which has turned into an inexorable and hopeless tragedy of fate. They will come to see the terrible hallucinations of Macbeth, the merry former soldier and hero - smiling dead men with axes in their backs, running around the yard at a goose-step and cackling. And among them is his best friend, who has saved him more than once in battle - the laughing Banquo, who was also killed by Macbeth, who followed a terrible prophecy. They will come to hear how all the characters in the play, lying down on the ground in the finale, as if covering the battlefield with their bodies, start Miserere. As the young witches begin in high voices, then the rest join in, the music begins, and the funeral song sounds in a powerful chorus: “Have mercy on him, Lord,” begging for forgiveness to Macbeth.

They will come to Othello for the second time to see the ship's strangling waltz once again. When, again and again, not believing the accusations of the stern, middle-aged Othello, thin Desdemona, played by ballerina Egle Špakaite, throws herself on his chest. And he, at first unable to control himself, grabs her by the neck, presses her, and then throws her away from him. She falls and rushes towards him again. So they unstoppably circle around the entire stage among the soldiers and household members to the trumpet and piano, to the soul-exhausting waltz of Faustas Lathenas.

Most recently - in November - Nyakrosius brought to Moscow " The Seasons of Donelaitis " based on the Lithuanian classic Kristionas Donelaitis. This duology, as has already happened twice with Nyakrosius’ productions, was recognized by critics as the best foreign performance of last year in Russia. "Seasons" will also be brought to the "Mask", only in April, for the finale. It was in this “peasant” performance, where there is not a single Lithuanian star, but only unknown youth, in a performance similar to a plotless series of fresh sentimental sketches, which are often done in theater universities, that the “farm” roots of all Nyakrosius’s productions became so obvious. Its direct connection with archaic thoroughness, the stability of life “on earth” was revealed, where there is no place for ambiguity and nothing is more important than love, family, home and simple work associated with nature. In fact, he always staged plays about this.

According to Nyakrosius, the world rests on a man, a father, a husband. On a hard worker and protector. This was Macbeth - a happy soldier returning home victorious, carrying, like a trophy, a wish tree, decorated with bright paper lanterns and wish notes. Macbeth - strong, conscientious and pure - was never able to overcome the witch's curse, but he walked his terrible path to the end with open eyes, carried the body of his wife from the "battlefield" and himself appeared for execution. So was Othello, played by the main actor of Nyakrosius - the reserved and powerful Vladas Bagdonas - a middle-aged general, a grey-bearded, healthy, wiry worker, for whom war and the sea are real and familiar work. Nekrosius staged Shakespeare's "Hamlet" as a story about a father and son, and the same Bagdonas played Hamlet the father - strong, imperious, taciturn. He came from the afterlife not for revenge, but for the sake of his son, to raise him as a man.

In the noisy, crowded scenes of "The Seasons", where young people pour out into the street under the first cold sun, where one of the boys breaks his head at the skating rink, or everyone in a crowd crosses the flood on a thin bridge, where they listen to the nightingale whistle, quarrel and eat Maslenitsa pancakes, one of the heroes also acquires the archetypal features of a father - he turns out to be an elder and protector, teacher and pastor. The strongest, the strictest, the smartest, the kindest. The head and support - a real man.

The woman in Nyakrosius's performances is almost always a girl. Tall, thin, flexible: she runs, laughs, plays pranks and entwines a man like a branch - a powerful trunk. Shakespeare's Desdemona and Ophelia, Chekhov's Irina and Anya are gentle and defenseless men who make up the joy of life and perish without him. They speak in high voices and walk in a special way - on their toes - with a very light and somehow childish, bouncing step. Nyakrosius loves it when there are a lot of girls on stage - their antics and coquetry, their chirping, similar to the chirping of birds, their hustle and bustle. Laughing Desdemona is running around with her friends, riding the submissive hulk Cassio, the three village witches from Macbeth are jumping, squealing, babbling, the Prozorov sisters are fooling around and making fun of each other, the funny girls from the dying "Cherry Orchard" are playing pranks and playing hide-and-seek, the lively suitors are being fooled and the snooty peasant girls from The Four Seasons.

There is also a teenage son in Nyakroshus’s universe. Cheerful and daring, cocky as a rooster, fearless and stubborn. And adoring his father as if he were God. This is Hamlet, played by Nyakrosius by the Lithuanian rock singer Andrius Mamontov - a boy in an elongated sweater, with a punk hedgehog and an earring in his ear. However, as Nyakrosius says, the point is not that he is a teenager in years: “a man under 35 is still a child, he has not yet developed.” He knows - he has two sons.

But the most important thing for Nyakrosius is home, family. A house with its own way of life, with familiar rituals, old nicknames, games, roles. With a warm atmosphere of universal support and friendship. In all Chekhov's productions of Nyakrosius - the Lithuanian "Three Sisters", the Russian "The Cherry Orchard", the Italian "The Seagull" - the hospitable and loving house attracts to itself. When in “The Cherry Orchard” Gaev sits his nieces around him on the floor, dumps a bunch of candies out of their pockets in front of them and starts old home games - with shooting candies and sticking candy wrappers on their foreheads, the audience goes wild with delight. In the warm and cheerful house of the “Three Sisters” of the Prozorovs, a joke thrown by one is immediately picked up by another, deceptions, in which everyone, even the old nanny, participates with the most serious faces, are discharged with general laughter and do not offend anyone.

The house is the foundation of the world, and - according to Nyakrosius - there is nothing worse than the destruction of the house, the severance of family ties. In terrible Shakespearean performances, the heroes, destroying the house, die themselves. Wanting to avenge his father, the maximalist teenager Hamlet is filled with destruction, like a bullet, destroying his mother, his beloved silly Ophelia, and himself. Othello, who so dreamed of a family, cannot come to terms with the fact that his young wife has more fun with her young friends. Both will die. The damned Macbeth cannot protect his fragile wife from fate, which touches her with its wing. And after her death he himself goes to execution. The house will disappear, everyone will die: a man - father and husband, a defenseless woman and a disobedient son.

And if “purification through suffering” still happens in our theater, which is called catharsis, then it is here, in the performances of Nyakrosius. In his Shakespearean performances.