Roman Dolzhansky. Saga without voices

Saga without voices
Director Strelkov did not bring Joan of Arc to the stake

Roman Dolzhansky

Publication date: November 22, 2000

In terms of duration (three and a half hours), the performance really comes close to the saga. With genre the situation is much more complicated. Although for such a story it is the question of genre that should be key - otherwise how to understand why modern young people would suddenly delve into such historical jungle? Several years ago, Pyotr Fomenko’s student Harold Strelkov already staged a play about Joan of Arc, but not about her heroic days, but about her childhood. It was then that the director and Inga Oboldina, who played Zhanna, were greeted and kindly greeted by the theater community, hungry for young talents. Everything seemed to work out well with the style and format then, especially since there was less demand from students. The performance, now described in the program as the first part of a duology, in genre gravitated almost to the life of the saint, for whose role the girl Zhanna was preparing.

If anything has remained the same since then, it is the undoubted talent of Inga Oboldina. One could consider the new performance a kind of benefit performance, but such young actresses are not entitled to benefit performances. To deserve it, you need to have a long trail of roles. But Mrs. Oboldina does not have it. Although there really may be a lot on stage - even for those who have never seen it on stage before, the talent becomes obvious already in the third minute of "Saga". There is temperament and organicity, lyricism and eccentricity, concentration and freedom, good technique and emotional mobility, that is, a set that is rarely granted to anyone through the joint efforts of nature and school. But it’s just wasted in stories about military campaigns.

The style in which most of the “Saga of Miracle, Love and Faith” is staged is difficult to define, but is well known to Soviet schoolchildren. At the time, skits were performed in this way for all-Union television lessons on the history of the Middle Ages: abstract theatricality, wooden stages, costumes, red velvet curtains, simple dialogues, ingenuous efforts of the performers (among them suddenly flashed someone “people’s” or “honored”, so in "Saga" Valery Barinov and Ramses Dzhabrailov appear) and some appropriate voice-over melody. Aesthetic tasks are rightly overshadowed by didactic ones: the material must first of all be well absorbed. So at Strelkov’s performance, it seems that now a smart guy in an unfashionable jacket will appear on the front stage and in a kind voice will talk about the true socio-historical significance of the event illustrated by the actors.

But there is no uncle, and you have to guess on your own about the director’s true intentions. Oboldin adds a little irony - yeah, you think there’s a postmodern game buried here somewhere. Then the virgin will remember about heavenly voices and saints - no, the people gathered are serious, and even spiritual, but they still sincerely want to live. If one of the actors from the stage show adds, it means they are just throwing a theater festival for us. They play out one of the scenes in silent rapid-fire - yeah, they remembered about stylization (especially since one of the literary sources, along with Mark Twain and the mysterious M.J. Krug von Poturtsin, named the script by Gleb Panfilov). An angry Jeanne will inflict a cruel and unjust trial on a soldier - it seems that morality is about to appear in the play, and at the same time character development will occur. However, this is where it all ends. The scene of the girl being burned at the stake is not shown to the audience - so it’s definitely not a thriller. It’s hard to vouch for the rest. What is clear is this: young people will never find a clear intonation. Well, there are no voices from above, what can you do?