Just extend your hand

A new play was staged at the Youth Theater

“Like a Cat Walked Where He Wanted” is the first performance in a series of works planned for this season at RAMT by graduates of Sergei Zhenovach’s directing course. The Norwegian Sigrid Strøm Reibo, who studied in Russia, retells Kipling's fairy tale - and the performance she staged turns out to be a smart and funny spectacle at the same time.

If someone is confused by the “cat” (several generations of Russian readers are more familiar with “the cat who walked by itself”), then it should be noted that Reybaud is only returning to Kipling: his independent tailed impudent man was male (The Cat Who Walked by Himself). True, the director does not consider 100% correspondence with the author obligatory - Kipling’s Dog is also him, but in the play the role is given to the actress. (In the fairy tales of the great Englishman, a man’s world is generally described; let us remember that Bagheera is a man in the original.) But it is clear that these changes are not noted by the “target viewer” of “The Cat,” because this is, of course, a children’s play.

More precisely, an ideal performance for going to the theater with a child. A very small child will simply laugh, watching how the Dog recognisably freezes at the first stroke, how happily the “face” becomes stupid when the side is exposed for scratching. Squeal with delight when the Wild Man crawls around the stage “in search of food”, and nod understandingly when the Woman calls everyone to order and before entering the cave everyone - both the Dog and the Horse - takes off their shoes. An older descendant will appreciate how the Bat conveys secret messages to the Cat by signaling with a flashlight (a real spy story), and how the Dog adapts to his role as a guard while sauntering in front of the cave entrance. And the mother who brought the child to the theater will simply sob with laughter at the moment when the heroine on stage is trying to do a hundred things at once, the heroine’s baby is screaming, she needs to wring the head of a chicken to cook it for dinner, and the general exhaustion is no better, than this same chicken with her head already curled up - it doesn’t occur to her to entertain the child.

However, there is no chicken on stage. It is played, indicated by the actress's hands - with three gestures literally, but one hundred percent recognizable. And there is no baby - more precisely, he is played by the same guy who was the Horse a few minutes before. And there is no cave - a piece of space is simply fenced off with a colorful carpet; the same thin carpet, if necessary, turns into both a bone thrown to the Dog and an armful of hay needed by the Horse. Pure theatrical play, its thrill, its great pleasure fill this performance, specially designed to explain to children what Theater is. (Here it should also be said that they play “The Cat” in the “Black Room”, on the smallest stage of RAMT, and the actors work literally two steps away from the audience; and for children this is so important when everything happens not somewhere out there, but just extend your hand.)

Does "Cat" have any disadvantages? Well, the scene in the night forest has not yet been finalized: it was invented as a “shadow theater” and the talking animals are represented by shadows on the wall. These shadows are collected in the simplest way from the fingers - just as our parents showed us all in childhood, but so far the picture is not very accurate, sometimes blurry and slightly fluctuating. Everything else is done very well, and it is only fair to name all the participants in this work.

Denis Balandin is an elegant, slightly flirtatious Horse. Alexander Devyatyarov is a melancholy Cow (however, the actor manages to play Mantis and Turtle, not intended by Kipling). Anna Kovaleva is that Woman who is always a diplomat, always a mother and always a little bit of a witch. Maria Ryshchenkova - A dog with strange, anxious eyes, and it even becomes somehow uncomfortable when a Woman easily “calls her into service”, something seems wrong in the status of “first friend” - they don’t put a collar on friends. Roman Stepensky - A man, the head of the family, a good-natured Neanderthal, whom his wife spins as she wants. And, of course, Alexey Mishakov - the Cat, an imposing and self-satisfied clever man, after his triumph (permission to drink milk in the cave “always-always-always”), lounging on the carpet, clicking an invisible remote control at an invisible TV and taking out a bottle from an invisible refrigerator is unlikely Is it with milk?

“The Cat” will be played in September both during the day and in the evening, in October - only during the day. And the next premiere of the “Young Directors for Children” project will be Ekaterina Polovtseva’s play “Almost for Real” (based on Toon Tellegen’s fairy tales). It's less than a month away.

Anna GORDEEVA