| Nina Chusova continues to amuse the audience Having staged Tartuffe at the Art Theater last fall, Nina Chusova seemed to have set a record for the rollicking meaninglessness of classic comedies. The savory, juicy, loud, selflessly stupid performance appealed to the audience for whom it was made; Oleg Tabakov played the fool to his heart's content; the critics doused the director with a well-deserved bucket of slop and tried to reproach him. If you, madam, want to push pop music, it’s your choice, but why insolently? Every outrage must have its own decency; Let it be all up to you, but at least pretend that you have worked with your brains and the pain of creativity is included in the price of the services. At the next premiere, when you bow, be kind enough to put on an intelligent face. If Chusova were a fool, she would have done so.
She is smart; this means he knows how to deceive expectations. From “The Inspector General,” staged by Chusova at the Mossovet Theater, one could expect almost everything, except that the play would surpass “Tartuffe” in recklessness, fieryness and complete un-stitched mare-tail. In Chusova’s situation, a simpler person would definitely begin to delve into the mystical depths of Gogol’s comedy, which is one of the impeccable and truly divine plays. Chusova remained in her favorite shallow waters, where she lived a fun and satisfying life. And our Lorelei splashes with redoubled force.
Her element is a carefree theater of optional decisions. The viewer is not given the opportunity to understand their logic until he comes to terms with the rights of female whim. To the question of why it was done this way, there may be a detailed answer, or there may not be any answer other than: that’s how you wanted it. At the same time, the voluntarism of Chusovsky’s “I wanted it that way” is cooler than the selfishness of the good old “and that’s how I see it” - the fighting slogan of the idiots of the past era. “I wanted it that way” does not imply any permanence; If the rehearsal had started not on Wednesday, but on Thursday, everything might have come up differently. It could have been better or worse - it makes no difference.
Why in the play Chusovoy the mayor (Alexander Yatsko) announces the arrival of an inspector on a fishing trip? No reason why. Because the frontal mise-en-scène is convenient: fishing officials are positioned along the ramp, a bodyguard and a maid are walking a short distance away with a supply of warming drinks - they enliven the composition. After all, no one has had anything like this, right? So it will be. And if anyone asks why fishing, and not skeet shooting or some other safari, for example, the gospel “fishers of men” will help answer the question.
Chusova belongs to that breed of talented suicidal hacks who perceive each new success as a signal: yeah, you can try even less. Her directorial moves are becoming more and more primitive before our eyes, the number of entertaining little things that she so generously scattered throughout her previous performances is melting before our eyes. In The Inspector General, Chusova does not find many reasons for fun. Gogol’s laughter has, I think, already been given thirty-five thousand definitions, but only Chusova’s performance allows us to call it “strained.” She came up with so little that every joke inevitably had to be pedaled, every small thought had to be chewed out.
The leading theme of the performance was Khlestakov’s comic resemblance to the mayor, that is, Gosha Kutsenko and Alexander Yatsko. A similar similarity was worked out in previous work. The difference is that Tartuffe-Tabakov and Orgon-Semchev play equally, and the iconic Kutsenko is absolutely not suitable as a partner for the excellent artist Yatsko. The performance obliges us to assume that Kutsenko is generally not very suitable for the stage: a dull voice, flabby or, on the contrary, overly sweeping gestures, a complete inability to understand the role as a sequence of emotional events. Khlestakov’s role for Kutsenko is an amusement park where he can show off this way and that; Perhaps someday everyone will play like this, but I hope not to live to see that.
Yatsko's work is interesting. The best moments of his role are the scene in the tavern, when the mayor is relieved to recognize a kindred spirit in Khlestakov. Did you take a bribe? I took it. Therefore, it’s yours. Therefore, he has the right - come on, let me see what our brother is now being taught in the capitals. Mayor-Yatsko openly admires Khlestakov: what an art of lying, what enchanting shamelessness! When it turns out that Khlestakov is nothing more than Khlestakov, Yatsko’s character has no time for personal experiences - the foundations of the world have collapsed.
Always urging readers to watch the premiere if there is anything worthwhile in it, this time I make an exception for those who love Gogol: you shouldn’t. You will begin to feel sick even before the artists Martirosov and Glebova pull back the gray half-curtain and present to your eyes their personal version of the other world: a station supersam in a provincial town. They think that their lives are somehow better now. Chusova thinks so too. And Gosha Kutsenko, apparently, too. Laughter, and that's all. Alexander SOKOLYANSKY |
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