| The third “Last Victim” appeared in Moscow Less than a year has passed since Yuri Eremin staged this play at the Art Theater; about a month ago she under the pseudonym “All-in!” showed up in Lenkom; The Maly Theater has just shown its play based on “The Last Victim”. Ostrovsky's comedy once again returned to its historical homeland: on the Maly stage, as is known, its first performance took place on November 8, 1877. The heroine was then played by Glykeria Fedotova, the honest capitalist Pribytkov was played by Sergei Shumsky (mostly a comedian, but one who twenty years earlier could have taken the role of Chatsky), the production was directed by the author himself.
All this is worth remembering simply because theater is a forgetful art. Not one of our three theaters thought about the fact that the young widow Yulia Tugina should be really young (Fedotova, at thirty-one, looked twenty-five years old, no more). None of the three theaters thought about the properties of Russian life in the 70s of the 19th century - the properties that determine the nerve and rhythm of “The Last Sacrifice.” The first can be explained by all sorts of behind-the-scenes circumstances; the second is only an atrophy of interest in history, in the “connection of times.”
Let us remember: in the same year as “The Last Victim”, “Anna Karenina” was written. Konstantin Levin’s thoughts on modern life, which has lost its former certainty and has not yet acquired a new one, are known to everyone. “Now that all this has been turned upside down and is just settling down...” is a very serious feeling and very close to Ostrovsky. Two years earlier, Dostoevsky in “The Diary of a Writer” would call the 70s “rushing time.” The fate of Yulia Tugina in Ostrovsky's play is precisely such a fate, where everything is turned upside down, scattered, and only towards the finale begins to arrange itself anew.
Vladimir Dragunov, who directed “The Last Sacrifice” at Maly, is not one of the best directors. However, he should have felt that the nervous swiftness of the action and the sharpness of the plot twists prohibit the performers from posing pompously and pressing on the text, no matter how bright and juicy it may be. Many Maly actors are guilty of this, especially Lyudmila Polyakova (Glafira Firsovna): she openly, to the fullest. Every significant word in her remarks is boldly underlined, every intonation is exaggerated: judging by the film performances, this is how Ostrovsky was played half a century ago. I'm not saying you can't play like this anymore, but there simply isn't enough time for it in The Last Sacrifice. Moreover, it was not worth posing for the director, who stubbornly slows down the action with vague introductory scenes. Passages from backstage to backstage, fussing with an archaic three-legged camera - why all these bursts of flabby imagination? Dragunov wants to show that he knows how to use standard directing techniques of the 70s? Let him do it himself. He, apparently, will never understand the properties of “rushing time” and the people living in this time.
The Maly Theater's performance is not that long (three hours), but it seems drawn out. It is arrhythmic, stupidly constructed, and very trivially designed by the artist Larisa Lomakina, who knows how to be cheerful and inventive (let’s remember her scenery for Grishkovets’ “The Siege” at the Art Theater), but also knows how to be faceless. However, watching “The Last Sacrifice” at the Maly Theater is very worth it. It is decorated with the acting works of Lyudmila Titova and Vasily Bochkarev: the first is very good, the second is simply wonderful. Remembering the previous couples (Zudina and Tabakov, Zakharova and Zbruev), we can confidently say: in the very average performance of the Maly Theater, both Yulia Tugina and Flor Fedulych Pribytkov are understood and played better than in the Khudozhestvenny and Lenkom.
Titova plays a mature, intelligent woman, completely stunned by love for a vicious boy: there is no doubt that the handsome Dulchin (Oleg Dobrovan) is a whole generation younger than her. This is what is dear to Yulia Tugina: feelings that previously had no one to turn to come to life in her; Together with Dulchin, the brightness of her experiences, boiling blood, and cheerful love of life return to her. Tugina-Titova does not come out, does not even run in - she flutters onto the stage. Is it any wonder that the rich man of the new generation, Flor Fedulych (note: this is not a name, but a whole biography!) was so attracted to a woman radiant with a second youth. Is it any wonder that he is so shocked by Tugina’s passionate, grateful kiss (act 2, scene 7); she babbles something about a saved life, about happiness - but he doesn’t care about the words, he’s stunned by the feeling: it’s still like that without pretense! However, it only takes him one minute to come to his senses, reassess his values and start acting in a new way.
Bochkarev's character is endowed with a remarkable quality: readiness for change. It's easy to guess that it made him rich. The ability to quickly understand which way the wind is blowing and adapt to the wind without changing your rules is the key to honest success in “rushing times.” At first, he comes to Tugina as a bon vivant (white summer suit, extraordinary lightness in gestures), but he accepts the refusal to join him as a kept woman intelligently and calmly. No, since you are getting married, then this is a different matter; however, I like you, and I want to be useful to you: should I find out about the groom, is he reliable? Don't want to? Well, come over for lunch sometime. Particularly noteworthy is the delicacy of Pribytkov-Bochkarev: he knows how to make and remove an obscene proposal without the interlocutor being embarrassed.
Unlike Tabakov and Zbruev, whose characters are completely balanced and, therefore, static, it is important for Vasily Bochkarev that his Flor Fedulych changes all the time, and changes significantly. Pribytkov always achieves his goal precisely because he knows how to be different. Bochkarev's character does not have “character” in the theophrastic sense of the word - fixed, unchanging behavioral traits (he has stable moral standards, but that’s different). The subtle change of mental states - from action to action, from scene to scene - constitutes the content of the role and the main value of the performance. So far, the actors of the Maly Theater have least succeeded in the fourth act, where Titova-Tugina honestly and monotonously plays out the melodramatic climax, and Bochkarev-Pribytkov, strictly speaking, has nothing to do.
When the actors realize that Ostrovsky’s “The Last Victim” is, in terms of genres, a complete refutation of the laws of melodrama, they will have work, the tasks will change and the acting will get better. What a mediocre director failed to suggest, a brilliant text will naturally suggest: at least that’s what one can hope for. Alexander SOKOLYANSKY |
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