| Radio play by Tom Stoppard on the Small Stage of the Moscow Art Theater The most significant thing in the play “The Artist Descending the Stairs” is the passage of time. The action begins in 1972, jumps to 1922 and 1914, and returns back. Sometimes time slows down, and the count is no longer in years, but in days and hours, but Sir Tom Stoppard (the playwright was awarded a knighthood in 2000) in all cases offers to first find out the outcome, and only then explains why everything happened exactly the way it did. how happened. From the result to the reasons: the logic of the classic detective story. Stoppard uses this logic deliberately: in his play the corpse is invisibly present from the very beginning.
Two elderly and penniless avant-garde artists (Bitcham - Stanislav Lyubshin, Martello - Boris Plotnikov) are trying to understand how their old comrade (Donner - Evgeniy Kindinov) died. They have a tape recorder at their disposal, which accidentally recorded the noise of footsteps, Donner’s exclamation “Aha! I see you!” and two strikes. With the second, everything is clear: the body fell over the railing of the stairs and slammed onto the floor. Who struck first, that is the question.
Artists also have at their disposal: a tendency to squabble and mutual accusations (a natural result of fifty years of friendship); grumpy old age; somewhat sclerotic memories of a wonderful blind girl whom they each loved in their own way (Sophie - Ekaterina Solomatina); and in general about the wild avant-garde youth. Oh, how fun life was, how much came naturally! "Cabaret Voltaire", Dada, Tzara, exhibitions, trips, perky manifestos: "Skill without imagination is inherent in the artisan; it gives us many useful things - such as wicker baskets for picnics. Imagination without skill is inherent in modern art." This maxim, by the way, was not composed by the Dadaists, but by Stoppard personally, who once cheerfully said that he himself thought so (see Mel Gussow’s book “Conversations with Stoppard,” 1983). Whether he lied or not is a separate question.
I won’t tell you how Donner died or why Sophie committed suicide: that’s not how you treat detectives. It is important to say, however, that random events, misinterpretations, errors in choice, etc. play a huge role in Stoppard's plays. In his world there is always a place for chaos: cheerful, like the Dadaists, or gloomy, like Beckett; The task of man in this world is to create or at least invent some semblance of order. In Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the hero says that there may be no system in the universe, but there is a little system in his own head. Stoppard's lifelong task - an intellectual, a master, a virtuoso - is to show how this system works. Or why it doesn't work. This should be kept in mind by all who stage and perform his plays.
Director Lena Nevezhina did a poor job of the first act, which was completely devoid of internal tension. Strangely dressed elderly people (hardly old people) are doing something incomprehensible, talking about something incomprehensible, quarreling: all this is fussy, petty and boring. In Stoppard, however, the dialogue between Bitcham and Martello is meaningful and passionate, like the agon in a Greek tragedy. If the intensity of this verbal duel is not transmitted to the audience, if the viewer does not have a need to find out why the hell these crazy people are arguing so furiously, the exhibition can be considered a failure. The jump to 1922, which promises some kind of explanation, loses all interest: young actors Maxim Matveev (Bitcham), Denis Bobyshev (Donner) and Sergei Medvedev (Martello) simply have no reason to go on stage.
However, Medvedev has found an excellent occupation for himself: he delicately and wittily appropriates the characteristic gestures and intonations of Boris Plotnikov. It doesn’t copy, doesn’t imitate, but somehow inhabits it from the inside. There is no doubt: the characters of Plotnikov and Medvedev are really one and the same person. Stoppard has repeatedly argued that there is no point in transferring things written for radio to the stage; the acting allows you to argue with him. Probably, Matveev and Bobyshev should take a closer look at their “senior comrades” and look for roll calls that would make the performance much more entertaining.
In the second half of the performance, when it comes to explaining the reasons, the action picks up noticeably. All the unexpected answers planned by Stoppard are presented to the viewer with passion and taste by the director: and that’s it! and that's why! and not him at all! - and the triumph of the calculations would have been very cheerful, if not for the overall result, which is very characteristic of Stoppard. Life, the author states, is a good thing, but it is so confusing and awkward that a person always remains a loser. In the end, it will definitely turn out that you did everything wrong and inappropriately. And if we assume that the Dadaists and other art indulgers tried to compete with life in inventing absurdities (its favorite sport), then is it worth asking who killed the avant-garde artist? The answer is not only simple, it is known in advance. Alexander SOKOLYANSKY |
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