Dina Goder. End of the season

The Chekhov Theater Festival - the main event of the theater summer - is ending, and with it the 2004/2005 season is ending. Since the troupes stopped going on tour for the entire summer, the border between the seasons looks blurry, and few people know that it was officially established at the turn of July and August. On the thirtieth of July the last performance of “The Forest”, brought from France, will take place, and from the first of August some Moscow theaters will begin to open. The next season will begin for them - 2005/2006, but until September, critics will still be summing up the results of the previous one.

In the second half of July, only three performances were performed at Chekhovsky. There were supposed to be four, but the production by one of the most important European directors - the Swiss Christophe Marthaler - was never brought, which became clear only before the start of the festival. The premiere of the play “Protection from the Future” took place in Vienna only in May, those who saw it said that the performance turned out to be wonderful. We were supposed to play it in the premises of the Lenin Museum, and the poster still says that the Chekhov Festival is one of the co-producers of this production. Now they promise that Marthaler's performance will come to Moscow for the next festival, in 2007.

Of the three productions shown, two were truly hits.

Firstly, “ A Play Without Words ” (I don’t know what to call it: a musical performance or a modern ballet) staged by the very famous British choreographer Matthew Bourne (or Bourne). I hesitate to call it a ballet because dance in it was not the goal, but only a way to tell a specific story. And the story was the heavily transformed plot of the film “The Servant,” filmed in the early 60s. Stylish London 60s with bottle dresses, stiletto heels and alluring looks of aristocratic prudes were combined with the brutal atmosphere of pubs, strip clubs and hot plebeian sensuality. Ballet critics, who wrote enthusiastically (like everyone else) about Bourne’s performance, recalled his previous famous productions, just as permeated with sex as this one. Tatyana Kuznetsova in Kommersant talked about the male “Swan Lake”, where “the romantic Swan gives the Prince the first joys of love, and his black, irresistibly attractive double literally drives the entire royal court, headed by the queen and heir to the throne, crazy.” And Olga Gerdt in Izvestia noted that “only in the credits for Bourne’s ballets can you find “children under 12 are prohibited from watching,” as if scenes of homosexual love are recommended for children over 12.” And that Bourne “defines the genre of his other play, “Car-Man,” as an “erotic thriller” (the main character here is not a gypsy from a tobacco factory, but a brutal bisexual jock who fucks everything that moves).”

“A Play Without Words” was staged to specially written jazz music by Terry Davis, and the main dance “trick” of this performance is that the director-choreographer brought each of the five main characters of the performance onto the stage in triplicate. All three decent, shy young men in suits and ties, three of his charming socialite girlfriends, three insidious and domineering servants, three sexy maids and three brutal, healthy plebeians were on stage at the same time, their dances did not repeat, but complemented each other and, intertwining, formed There are incredibly beautiful and energetic compositions on stage. The dancers (who are also actors) were magnificent, and everyone agreed that, even if the production of the most fashionable Bourne in Europe was in the department of “box office” rather than “high” art, a more high-class entertainment performance had never been brought to Moscow.

The second and last hit of the festival was " The Forest " brought from France, directed by Pyotr Fomenko. The excitement around this performance in Moscow was incredible. The beloved Russian director staged Ostrovsky in the Comedie Française, where the plays of the main Russian playwright had not been staged before. Then, they say, both the public and critics received the comedy from the life of the Russian outback of the 19th century very well, but since then the play has managed to leave the repertoire, and had to be restored to be brought to the Chekhov Festival. God knows whether this is the reason, or that Fomenkov’s fine art does not tolerate travel well, but the French “Forest” was rather boring in Moscow, very much reminiscent of the solid but mournful productions of the Maly Theater, where individual acting successes do not greatly influence the result. (However, I heard that it was only very sour at the first performance, then the actors played themselves out.) But even in this, not entirely successful, performance, the hand of the master was recognizable. Moscow theatergoers, laughing, pushed each other in the side, hearing how Gurmyzhskaya, like Maksakova the Countess from “The Queen of Spades” (which Fomenko staged at the Vakhtangov Theater), responded to everything with an senile “Mnnya”. And St. Petersburg residents recognized Fomenko’s production thirty years ago at the Comedy Theater, where there were similar sets by the same Igor Ivanov and Gurmyzhskaya was played by Yunger, and Bulanova was played by a very young Gvozditsky. It was a performance, I think!

On the day after the first performance of "The Forest" at the residence of the French ambassador in Moscow, Pyotr Fomenko was awarded the Order of the Commander of Arts and Letters, France's highest award in the field of culture. And I think even those who did not like the French “Forest” rejoiced at this.

The third festival performance in the second half of July was the Korean "DudRock" , the appearance of which looked like a tribute to the general sponsor of the festival - the company "LG". From the theater's point of view, the thunderous drum performance looked like a lively amateur performance with rather pathetic attempts to portray clowning. But in terms of percussion, at least in the eyes of a non-professional, everything was more honest: dashing drummers energetically switched from modern aggressive rhythms to meditative ancient Korean ones, and there were not so few spectators who enjoyed this performance.

That seems to be all about the current festival. No, I’ll tell you a little more at the end.

Yesterday, without waiting for the end of the program (and the last performances of “The Forest” are still on), the general producer of the festival Valery Shadrin met with the press and told a lot of interesting things. In particular, he responded to numerous complaints from critics about the program: why is there so much weak Brazilian theater this year, why so much of the East and why are there so few European masterpieces. He said that “the theaters of the world in Moscow” are not only the theaters of Europe, that who, if not Moscow, should connect the West with the East, and that, perhaps, theater in Brazil is not very good, but where else would you see Brazilian theater? And the most interesting thing is this. Shadrin said that the organizers of the famous Vienna Theater Festival (with whom negotiations are currently underway about bringing Marthaler in two years), having looked at the Moscow program, said that most of all they would like to bring it to Vienna... You’ll never guess what! Or rather, you will guess one thing - “A play without words”, but this is a very expensive pleasure. And also wild, stupid and brutal Brazilian performances. "The Golden Grin" (staged in the countercultural spirit of the 60s - I wrote about it) and "Rehearsal. Hamlet" from Rio de Janeiro. The same performance where completely naked Rosencrantz and Guildenstern plopped down on the laps of elegant spectators, and the drowned Ophelia on stage was depicted as a piece of raw meat, grass was laid out on the side instead of her bouquets, and then the meat was ironed, filling the hall with the smell of fried meat. As you can see, the Viennese find their drive in such art. And it’s true that the Slavs are not the only ones responsible for vitality in European art, as has been the case in recent years.

Meanwhile, the program of the Chekhov Festival 2007 is almost completed. And it will again feature seasons of theatrically unknown countries. For example, Canada. First of all, almost five performances by Robert Lepage will be brought from its Francophone part. “If you want,” Shadrin grinned, “you can start swearing now.” I understood that from that moment on, everyone who had heard about the eccentric Lepage, equally busy with theater and cinema, would not swear, but would anticipate.

This ended the theater season. It's time to go on vacation.