Young Directing: January Premieres It seems that since the theater workshops at the STD, which died quietly in the early nineties, there has not been such an upsurge of young directing in Moscow. Now everyone takes on the role of these "experimental studios" ...

Young director: January premieres

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It seems that since the time of the theater workshops at the STD, which died quietly in the early nineties, there has not been such an upsurge of young directors in Moscow. Now the role of these "experimental studios" is assumed by each theater individually, trusting yesterday's GITIS graduates with their stage.

"T

abakerka" paid tribute to the fashion for a midlife crisis, showing "The City" based on the play by Grishkovets directed by Alexander Nazarov. At the Youth Theater, Nina Chusova continues to explore the space of the Small Stage - a student of Alexei Borodin staged John Sing's play "Hero", better known as "The Brave Boy - the Pride of the West".

Nazarov very carefully and diligently transferred the heroes of Grishkovets's play The City to the toy stage of The Snuffbox.

It seems to a thirty-year-old husband and wife (Alexander Belyaev and Evdokia Germanova) that they have been living together for so long that the husband is dying to leave work, leave the city, change clothes for life. Alexander Belyaev, who plays a thirty-year-old hero, has shouldered the burden of separating the physical Grishkovets from his literary hero, and he is having a hard time. Due to the fact that in the play "The City" there are few branded concentrated images, which the hero of Grishkovets traditionally clings to when traveling along the river of time, Belyaev has to rant about a midlife crisis. The brilliant grotesque actress Evdokia Germanova, who lives next to this whining thinker, has nothing to play at all: the role of a quietly rebellious woman with a bored husband occupies a tiny part of her acting abilities.

The Daring Boy, aka The Hero, is John Sing's clever and scary root play about the Irish village with its ignorance and cruelty.

Director Nina Chusova made a peppy tragic farce out of her. A vagabond who turns out to be a parricide breaks into the house of a capricious and sharp-tongued marriageable bride (Tatyana Matyukhova), who is cared for by a handsome cowardly neighbor (Alexander Grishaev). The bored village begins to worship him as a demiurge: he fills up with food, the women line up, the bride's father spits in the neighbor's face, the bride lies flat in the dressing room.

The killer does not understand anything, but is happy beyond measure. He tells everyone over and over how he killed a parent in a potato field: "Just cut his head in two with a shovel." There is no limit to the joy of the listeners (somewhere out there, far away, problems with annoying relatives are solved so simply), until the unfinished father comes and the hero kills him again. In one second, everyone recoils from him: it’s one thing - he killed somewhere, maybe he lied, but it’s interesting to listen to, it’s completely different - in front of you. Difficult moral conflicts are accompanied by the most vigorous compositions of Tiger Lillies, which makes the blood boil on its own, and the groovy play of the actors even pales a little, so obviously the director prefers musical accompaniment in the compositional bouquet. But nevertheless, the actors brilliantly coped with the task, and there was hope that the viewer would remember the names of both Sing and Chusova.

The performances of Nazarov and Chusova are devoid of the pathos of a moralizing sermon, often characteristic of "mature" directors. They just put on performances that are interesting to watch. Because the language they use to speak to the viewer is still unsettled, and therefore alive.