Evgenia Borisova. Ten performances of the week

Ten performances of the week
Evgenia Borisova

Publication date: January 8, 2002

On Monday and Tuesday - January 7 and 8 - the Workshop of Pyotr Fomenko in the premises of the Vakhtangov Theater will perform its not very new, but still wonderful performance “Wolves and Sheep” by A.N. Ostrovsky. Smart, light, ironic performance. Here Ostrovsky does not smell of day-old cabbage soup and does not play through merchant beards and clerks' tunics. Neither Fomenko nor his actors insist on the richness and weightiness of the created images, or on the intrigue of the play associated with bills of exchange. The characters and story are there, of course. Only something else becomes the main thing - theatricality, lightness, the lace of the game, which brilliant actors weave before our eyes - Madlena Dzhabrailova, Galina Tyunina, Polina and Ksenia Kutepova, Yuri Stepanov.

If we take into account that “Fomenki” played in Moscow once in December, and only two performances were announced in January, this “Wolves and Sheep” becomes a significant event. The absence of theater in the regular Moscow repertoire noticeably impoverishes the latter and greatly burdens not only loyal viewers, but also ordinary lovers of stage art. It's sad when samples disappear.

On Wednesday, January 9, at the Theater for Young Spectators there will be an old and very good performance - “Heart of a Dog” based on Mikhail Bulgakov. It was once a real hit, but now it runs once a month, but it still attracts its audience. The bright and passionate direction of Henrietta Yanovskaya, on which, in fact, the entire performance is based, has only benefited over time. The framework has been laid bare, and such bright ideas as the appearance of the characters from “Aida” (and it is this opera, as you remember, that Professor Preobrazhensky goes to the Bolshoi) are read much more voluminously than before.

On Thursday, January 10, at the “School of Modern Play” - “The Seagull”. Famous name. Only this time the author is not A.P. Chekhov, but the most popular fiction writer B. Akunin. His “The Seagull” is a continuation of Chekhov’s, and it is based on a detective investigation, because, according to the author, the Kiev tradesman K.G. Treplev did not even shoot himself, but was killed. By whom, how and why - this is what the play of our contemporary is dedicated to. A few years before the premiere of The Seagull 2, Joseph Raikhelgauz directed the classic itself. Akunin's version is played here as a continuation of Chekhov's and with almost the same actors - Lev Durov, Tatyana Vasilyeva or Irina Alferova, Albert Filozov, Vladimir Steklov and others.

On Friday, January 11, Mikhail Bulgakov again. This time - "Theatrical Romance", one of the last premieres of Yu.P. Lyubimov . The performance is extremely controversial, but Lyubimov, as usual, is ironic, paradoxical and often does not consider it necessary to finish the thought he has begun.

On Saturday, January 12, the last premiere of the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya, released for the anniversary of Lev Durov, is “Meteor” based on the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It's based on a good old sitcom plot: the hero plays dead to find out who's who around him. Durov is the soloist, several other artists are allowed to play around him, many of whom have not appeared on stage for a long time, and the new chief director Andrei Zhitinkin brought them out...

On Sunday on the small stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater - the play "Snuffboxes" "Deadly Number". The fame of director Vladimir Mashkov began with this work. The story of four clowns is played truly brilliantly. It’s both funny and sad... The artists don’t pretend. They do not illustrate and do not hack, and the main thing that distinguishes this “Number” from other works of Vladimir Mashkov is that they go on stage not only so that the viewer relaxes and rests. There is also room for reflection. Let the smallest ones.