| The festival “New Drama 2006” has begun The entire Center named after Vs. Meyerhold, from the doors in the elevator to the mirror in the toilet, is now painted with some kind of whitish, hopefully easily washed off rubbish. Everywhere you look, everything is scribbled crookedly: “Drummer Wanted”, “Big Grub”, “Chernobyl Prayer” and much more: as if a teenager, stupefied with boredom, had been hanging around here all day. Any inscription, regardless of its meaning, looks like trivial wall obscenity. It is not difficult, however, to make sure that we have before us the names of the performances included in the festival poster: the first is American, the second is Polish, the third is Moscow. There will also be Romanian, Lithuanian, and Yakut - a total of 19 in the main program and some more in the special program. Being in a bad mood, we can say that graffiti made in the style of “I’m imbecile at my mother’s” is set as a general aesthetic factor.
In a good mood, you can also say that. Before the start of Richard Maxwell’s play “Drummer Wanted” (USA, New York Citi Players), artistic director of the Praktika theater Eduard Boyakov reminded the audience that in addition to the theater program, “New Drama 2006” also presents a club program: rappers, hip-hoppers, MC poets . What the guys are doing on the streets of Moscow, Boyakov said with restrained pathos, is real modern drama. No more, no less.
Well, so much the worse for modern drama. My superficial (thank you, I don’t want any more) acquaintance with rap allows me to see in it only the simplest, i.e. the lowest form of artistic life, which legitimized and declared aggressive ignorance and feeblemindedness as the natural norm. There is no point in once again scolding the consumer society, which is always looking for something to occupy the irritable lumpen: say, guy, whatever comes into your head, feel like a creative person, equal to your peers, and slowly dive into the cycle of consumerism. The trouble is not consumerism, but the fact that any artistic environment is terribly polluted. The number of poets, musicians, playwrights, directors (critics, too, of course) is growing at an alarming rate, simplifying their tasks to the utmost. In the end, everyone becomes so similar to each other that the enemy of the human race could not wish for anything better.
Richard Maxwell's simple performance aroused sympathy simply because it was done competently, calmly, and cleanly. Not such great advantages, but we must be grateful for them too: now this too is only possible in isolation.
A hollow parallelepiped (light plywood or, most likely, some kind of plastic), no decorations as such. The drum kit moved away from the back wall, the piano was pressed against the right. Two performers, one hour of conversations between son and mother, interrupted by alternating singing. Vocal skills, to put it mildly, are far from professional; That’s how it’s supposed to be. Special mention should be made about acting skills.
Pete Simpson plays a young drummer who gets into an accident with his motorcycle and breaks his knee: athletic build, intelligent and somewhat capricious face, long dark hair combed in the middle and slicked down in front, almost glued to the skull. Ellen Le Compte is his mother: lean, light, rather old-fashioned, very assertive, sometimes to the point of deafness. They are strangely similar to each other, and both know in advance almost everything they can say to each other: here the logic of an invented life coincides with the logic of an actor’s work.
What happens on stage seems boring at first: the characters simply exchange inexpressive (just like in life) remarks. And the feeling of physical pain, and maternal feelings, and the attitude of the characters towards each other are only indicated, and rather sparingly. “Do you want me to sing for you?” - “Ma, don’t!” “And when you were little...” says Ellen Le Compte, sitting down at the piano. And he sings, not paying attention to the drummer’s plea. “Do you want me to read to you?” -- “Shit!..”
Richard Maxwell gives the audience not a panorama of experience, but only an outline map, which everyone must color with their own pencils. This game, I must admit, is addictive, but as soon as you get used to it, the director offers you new rules: and now - karaoke!
Again: when Le Compte and Simpson take turns voicing some sentimental drag (sounds like early 70s folk rock, but I'm not sure), the first thing I want to ask is: should you have picked up the microphone in the first place? Listening to this flimsy, although not out of tune, singing to a soundtrack is a dubious pleasure. These songs seem to have nothing to do with the plot. Or do they?
And no and yes. The musical numbers in the play “Drummer Wanted” are a tricky thing: they flaunt the gradual divergence of life relationships, the discord in the relationship between mother and son, leading to an inevitable break. While the crippled drummer nurtured his own depression, showed off, shouted about his hatred of numbers, lawyers and the world in general, philosophized about the ability to overcome pain, etc., the mother of her son endured. When a broken knee turned out to be an insurance policy of 150 thousand dollars, she said: I think you wanted to leave home? Well, go ahead... (her parting words sounded ruder in American). Which, in addition to the direct meaning, meant: it’s time for you, boy, to become an adult.
Let's give credit to Richard Maxwell, his smart and easy director's hand. Having come up with a tragic story despite all its ordinariness, he built a theatrical plot on light touches: the cause never hits the effect head-on, it only slightly corrects the course of events, turning the most probable into the only possible. Let us appreciate the intelligence and tact of the actors, who perfectly understood the nature of the proposed game; Let us note in passing that their manner of conducting a musically conditioned, almost dispassionate dialogue suddenly, but quite clearly evoked dialogues from Maeterlinck’s plays. This is not only amusing, but also reassuring. Alexander SOKOLYANSKY |
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