Translated material
Hard nut to crack
The theatrical and circus show “Krakatuk” was finally shown in Moscow
The date of the capital's premiere of the famous St. Petersburg project of producer Oleg Chesnokov and director Andrei Moguchy was changed twice - they still could not gather the audience. The press release blamed the relevant plant, which was unable to produce them on time. It was probably because of these transfers that the audience in the hall at the Sunday performance was small - approximately two-thirds of the seats remained empty. The people must still be somehow unsure that they will still be shown what they were promised.But the big top is standing, the stands are assembled, the performance is going on. You can gather in Kolomenskoye. Is it necessary?
Yes - if you like adult handmade toys. At the same time, they are defiantly handmade - so that they do not pretend to be factory-made or even “exclusive”, but so that one ear of the animal sticks out in one direction, the second in the other, the color depends on the color of old jeans, and the facial expression is such that a small child and if you don’t give it, he’ll get scared. These are toys specifically for adults; toys made in advance with a grin (real ones, for children, made with a pure heart). We seem to be playing as children, but we are still adults and we can laugh at our own game. “Krakatuk” is woven with jokes that are understandable only to those over 40 (the same age as director Andrei Moguchy and older). Those who are younger will not react to the fact that one of the scenes of the play is called “Flight into the Stratosphere” (remember in which old Soviet film the hero’s number was called exactly that?); and to today's children, the pioneer ties on several acrobats will seem just a strange decoration. That is, if you go to a circus theater to detachedly watch the parade of riotous costumes, homely hints and staging imagination that does not constrain itself by any boundaries - this is the place for you.
No - if you love pure genre and the purity of the genre experience. The idea of “Krakatuk” is drama theatre, circus and ballet intertwined in one show. There is less ballet there - well, towards the end, one girl in a tutu gets out and walks, suffering, on pointe shoes along the barrier enclosing the arena. Ballet appeared here in general only obviously because of the music - they took Tchaikovsky and transferred it to electronic instruments. But they didn’t just rearrange it, first they tore out several topics, chopped them up in the most unexpected place and attached them to the wrong place in the plot for which each of them was written. Well, of course, they (Oleg Gitarkin and Igor Vdovin) know better than Pyotr Ilyich what will be useful for what.
But it’s not even about Tchaikovsky. He will grin, this is not the first time for him. The fact is that there is also a problem with the drama theater.
It seems to me that the director wanted to tame the endless vitality of the circus, this daily fanfare blow to the eardrums. He tried to call the circus to humility, to make it one of the components of the picture: here I have a parade of costumes, here a man walks, chatting in a mixture of all languages, creates a “mood of strangeness”, with squeals of intonation periodically reminiscent of Zhirinovsky, and here is a girl in the air spinning. But the circus does not encourage humility; people go to the circus (both to work and to watch the performance) for something completely different. Behind the pride of overcoming.
And the circus eats up the “drama” in the performance, crunches on it. The first act, where there are fewer actual circus acts and more exercises by the artist (Alexander Shishkin), drags on sleepily and sluggishly. It is absolutely impossible to understand what is happening in the arena without a libretto. Here are some white crinolines hanging in the air; so they descend into the arena as if they were sitting down at a table. They just showed a cartoon where a red-haired girl was riding a bicycle; the same red-haired girl suddenly descends from the screen and finds herself in a large plate. The plate begins to fly. And now the question is: who are all these people in tights with red streaks that are trying to get to the girl? No, I understand that they are trampoline acrobats. And in “history” - who? We read the piece of paper: “In Masha’s dream, the guests at a magical feast suddenly turn into rats, and she realizes that she has found herself in the underworld of the Mouse King.” To the underworld? Flying under the canopy? OK, where are we - the audience - then? And why are these creatures that look like they have chickenpox rats? Tell this to a child - he won't believe you.
Drosselmeyer (in this performance he himself is the Mouse King) turns the hero not into a Nutcracker freak, but into a robot: on the man’s shoulders there is now a box with three screens, in each of which one giant eye blinks, the actor’s head is hidden in this structure. He fights not just with rodents, but with “cyber mice” - Drosselmeyer’s products. But as soon as you start working as a circus in the second department, all these notions seem to disappear from sight. What difference does it make that the jugglers are in pioneer uniform - their clubs fly accurately and clearly. The power juggler takes the stupid TV off his head and rolls a heavy ball over his muscles, places it on his head and places a little man on top. Aerial acrobats fly at risk (this, however, was still in the first section). Giant hares playing the role of clowns travel through the rows and willingly allow themselves to be stroked by children, and adults also enjoy it (a furry paw quietly falling on the back of the shoulder contributes to the release of adrenaline). And in the finale, having sent all sorts of concepts away, the children are simply given an entertainment: a large foam production machine is working, this foam soon fills the entire arena, and everyone can tumble heartily in it. The little one, I must say, is delighted. They will be asking why there were two Nutcrackers (one fought, and the other got married in the finale) at the metro. Well, you will explain that power jugglers do not fly, but the director needed the hero to fly. Or you won't explain. You will say: this is what the uncles came up with.