In a striped suit

Oleg Menshikov was seen in a new play at the Chereshnevy Les festival

The most secular of Moscow's cultural events - the Chereshnevy Les arts festival, which Bosco di Ciliegi is organizing for the seventh time - will truly open by the beginning of May. The art on it, as always, will be of good quality and solidly elegant, the names will be only verified. The motto of this year's festival sounds significant and vague - “Awakening the presentiment, the presentiment of the awakening” - and, judging by the program, it primarily implies a family theme. Here and in the Pushkin Museum, the exhibition from Chagall and Tropinin to Pieter de Hooch and Grez was called “In the Family Circle,” and musical evenings were given to entire families of performers, and the film retrospective “Adult Children’s Cinema,” including films by two dozen classics, is dedicated mainly to childhood. There are two theatrical premieres at the current festival. In mid-May, the Moscow Art Theater will play the musical play “The Little Humpbacked Horse” directed by Evgeny Pisarev - arranged by the Presnyakov brothers to music by Sergei Chekryzhev and with lyrics by Alexei Kortnev. And now, even before the grand opening of the festival, they showed the Russian premiere of Oleg Menshikov’s new play “1900” based on the play by the popular Italian Alessandro Baricco.

The most elegant Russian artist Oleg Menshikov is an ideal choice for Chereshnevy Les, and given that his new performances are rare (five years have passed since the last premiere, Lermontov’s Demon), he always chooses “politics” short-term shine”, very quickly removing new productions from the repertoire, it is clear that the interest in “1900” is enormous. And the secular public rushed to the Mossovet Theater at the first call.

“Novecento” is a short monologue story written by the writer and musicologist Baricco specifically for performance accompanied by a live orchestra. They play it often, they have played it in Russia too, but more often in concert form, since the music is really important here. After all, we are talking about a brilliant pianist - a foundling who was born on a ship, who received the absurd name 1900 after the year of his birth and who never went ashore in his entire life. And blown up along with the ship that had served its purpose.

In the program for the performance, Menshikov writes that he has long dreamed of a one-man show, that Baricco’s story captivated him, but he is still scared to be alone on stage for the first time. And here, it seems, he is not disingenuous: at the premiere it was clear that he was tense, that the more he wanted to seem at ease and tried to amuse the audience, the less it was possible for him, and the hall full of secular audience was expectantly silent, unable to take the lead. sense: what are we talking about?

Menshikov plays the narrator - a trumpeter and friend of Novecento, along the way he briefly tries to transform himself into the other heroes in question: he basses like a huge black sailor Danny Budman, who found a foundling, chatters like a ship's entertainer, skeptically ironizes like a witty waiter, walks bent over and hangs his arms to the floor, and looks with an arrogantly rotten gaze, like the “inventor of jazz” Jelly Roll Morton, who decided to have a musical duel with Novecento. In essence, Menshikov is never left alone: ​​stage attendants in sailor costumes scurry around him and carry out plywood figures of some of the heroes in question; a double actor appears in one or the other corner of the stage, creating the feeling that Menshikov is at the same time everywhere. Well, the most important thing is that the orchestra is constantly playing in the back of the stage, illustrating, among other things, episodes that should be percussive: a musical duel and Novecento playing a piano rushing across the deck during a storm. But the orchestra was sluggish, the original music of Andrei Razin, like Jelly Roll Morton and Earl Gardner, sounded pale, and no matter how Menshikov tried to convince us that his story was about a genius, it did not work out. And that’s why everything that was screwed on top: the piano swinging on trapezoids, and the stage rising at the corner of the deck, and tiny ships passing in the depths, and even the stage model shining with lights, which suddenly appeared in the actor’s hands - everything was to no avail. what. And why the famous actor needed this whole story, what he found in it, remained unclear.

The list of authors of the play indicated in the program looked like a mass grave, and only a specialist would be able to understand who was responsible for what here: probably it was Igor Popov who composed the triangular stage-deck with a mast-cross, probably Galina Dubovskaya was involved in directing, and what was done the rest of the people - God knows. Well, if it’s not clear who did what, then you won’t understand who to turn to with questions, as in Raikin’s miniature about the atelier.

Menshikov himself, of course, looked great: all these striped suits of the jazz era, hats and raincoats suited him very well, he was, as always, musical and even danced a little, or rather, planned a tap dance routine. And he did not spoil the Bosco di Ciliegi holiday: whatever you say, Menshikov’s elegance and taste remain with him even in the most losing situations.

Dina GODER