| The tragic farce of Sukhovo-Kobylin became the main play of the season In the Kalyagin theater Et cetera, the play “The Death of Tarelkin” (see “VN” of April 4) was staged by Oskaras Korsunovas; Almost simultaneously, Alexey Levinsky produced a play based on “The Death of Tarelkin” on the Small Stage of the Ermolova Theater. As far as I know, a couple more premieres are expected. In the theater, the most sensitive of the arts, this often happens: talented and different people for some reason suddenly seize on the same play. The Moscow public should remember how Peter Stein and Robert Sturua staged Hamlet simultaneously (the first with Yevgeny Mironov; the second with Konstantin Raikin); how the Moscow Art Theater and Lenkom produced “The Last Victim,” and Mark Zakharov postponed the premiere of the completely finished play until the beginning of the next season. Such coincidences should not be taken lightly: if sensitive people have discovered a topic, it almost always turns out to be important.
The theme of “The Death of Tarelkin” can be defined very simply (the play is difficult for directors, but not difficult for readers and the public): the author announces that everyone except him has received the complete one, it starts with the letter “p”, with the letter “c” ends; sit and get ready, and I’m off to die in a more decent way. This is not about decline and destruction, but precisely this, with the letter “p”. The disintegration of morality leads to the disintegration of logic; then the disintegration of the soul begins - and then Sukhovo-Kobylin takes up his pen.
Levinsky was not the first to realize that stylistically “The Death of Tarelkin” gravitates towards the old Russian raeshnik (but not at all accepting his good morality), that the characters in the play are only partly people. These are mostly dolls and scarecrows, insisting on their humanity and therefore doubly mediocre. Note: mediocrity does not prevent them from being invincible. This is undead in the most eternal sense of the word. The trouble in life, if you believe Sukhovo-Kobylin, is not that another “vuydalak, ghoul, mtsyr” rules the district or the country; The misfortune is that evil spirits have their own honor - the economy will be transferred only from decrepit clawed paws to the corresponding paws. This is clear; Levinsky's merit is that he came up with a chain of excellent stage solutions and managed to convince the actors: now you will have to do a lot wrong, nature will resist. Don't worry, trust: in the end everything will work out as it should.
Oddly enough, almost everything worked out. Levinsky staged, I think, his best performance in the last ten or fifteen years. Actors Andrei Kalashnikov (Tarelkin), Sergei Vlasenko (Rasplyuev), Alexander Kovalev (Varravin), Valery Zotov (janitor Pakhomov), Lydia Shubina (the nameless Wife of the Janitor) - well, that is, everyone, everyone (it’s not possible to completely rewrite the program! ) - they got a lucky ticket: they understood the principle of the game, got a taste for the work and made something they could be proud of. “The Death of Tarelkin” on the Small Stage of the Ermolovsky Theater is a smart, well-done, elegant and, for those who understand, a rather scary performance.
It begins with a song by a washed-up, but knowledgeable quartet (guitar, accordion, tambourine, maracas): Citizens, listen to me. / Gop with a bow - it will be me, etc.: along the way they will sing for us both “Bagels” and “Bricks” ( Every night, oh, we met / Where a brick forms a passage ), and several more songs of the same disgusting folk origin. I am by no means trying to become a Russophobe, but I clearly feel the difference between a real folk song and all sorts of “Bricks” - just like the difference between Vysotsky’s songs and the nonsense that Radio Chanson puts on listeners. What is sung in Yermolov’s “The Death of Tarelkin” are the songs of a decayed, rotten people. It is quite understandable why Levinsky stuffs them into a theatrical action, in which from the very beginning there is a fake, but naturally smelling corpse - a coffin, which Tarelkin and his idiotic accomplice Mavrusha (Nadezhda Borisova) stuff with rotten fish. It is quite understandable why Levinsky and the artist Viktor Arkhipov build a kind of puppet screen on the stage (the material is shabby gray benches). On the front stage, Sukhovo-Kobylin’s characters look almost like people, and when they run behind the screen, how they stick out from behind it up to their waists, you can immediately see: what the hell kind of people are there here - they’re all damned out loud! We are talking about life, which is worse than death: it is indecent to call it “life”.
Dance macabre, or what else: Levinsky carefully and brilliantly fulfills the author’s assignments. There are fewer and fewer people in the theater who feel the music of detail; Levinsky is a master of overtones and glazes. It happened that the gift ceased to obey him; An enthusiastic collecting of oddities and details prevented the construction of a performance. In “The Death of Tarelkin,” all the inventions miraculously came to fruition: galoshes with thick woolen socks (all male characters wear them), and the crimson, pioneer-style tie of the police stenographer, and the Warravin inscription above the left breast pocket of the general’s camouflage jacket - - for some reason it seems that everything is as it should be, everything is on topic.
Almost the only thing that Levinsky came up with in his own way was the role of Candide Tarelkin. I’m not sure that Andrei Kalashnikov’s face and acting style are known to many. To imagine this artist in the role of Tarelkin, you need to somehow combine in your mind the features of Sergei Makovetsky with the features of the young (from the time of “His Excellency’s Adjutant”) Viktor Pavlov. The result will be an incredible, disgustingly charming, slightly loose creature that glares all the time. Of course, he is a fraudster, but he is the only relatively normal person in the world of the possessed. The role was understood and played wonderfully; Unfortunately, those times when a brilliant theatrical work immediately after the premiere made a person famous have sunk into oblivion. However, what to regret: we will all be there. Alexander SOKOLYANSKY |
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