AWOL

Former course of Oleg Kudryashov played “The Swedish Match” at the Theater of Nations

Amorous Moscow theatergoers have a new hobby - a course by Oleg Kudryashov, who graduated from RATI (GITIS) a little over a year ago. This course had a rare feature: the master prepared students for work in musical theaters and for the usual disciplines required of dramatic actors, and added extra hours of vocals and plastique. The actors really turned out to be amazingly trained; this was even especially noted by critics, who are accustomed to the fact that with the current decline in education, young artists do not speak their voices and move poorly. And here they can sing, dance, roll over their heads, and can even play musical instruments.

“Curls” in their student days were considered a strong and friendly course, but they failed to become a theater: state patronage or a private sponsor is a rare success, and without it it is very difficult for the actors, scattered among different theaters, to do anything together. Oleg Lvovich lamented: “It’s not just about talent, the point is that they really want to be together, and this doesn’t happen often.” But something amazing happened: there is no theater, but performances still appear.

It began with the fact that in the spring, on the stage of the Theater of Nations, which had recently received new management, the graduation performance of Kudryashov’s course “Bullfinches” based on the novel “Cursed and Killed” by Viktor Astafiev was resumed. It was staged by course teachers Timofey Sopolev and Mikhail Chumachenko in a sixties style, suitable for student poverty - on an empty stage with benches-boards from which you can build anything you want. The story about boys starving during the war in training, about how the Snegirev twins were shot because they ran AWOL to their mother to drink milk, and others were killed almost in the first battle, was staged with somewhat excessive sentimentality compared to the hard Astafievsky tone. But the guys were good, and their sweet young faces suited the story about teenage soldiers who had not yet shaved with their absurd boyish inventions and dreams. And Evgeny Tkachuk, who played the main character - the only surviving “cheerful soldier”, a tongue-tied and conscientious boy - Khanty resident Leshka Shestakov, was so open, bitter and piercingly defenseless that the audience literally flooded with streams of tears during his monologues.

Yevgeny Mironov, who promised to make his theater an open platform for young directors, took “Bullfinches” into the repertoire of the Theater of Nations, but could not accept actors into the staff: the charter says that this is a project theater and operates without its own troupe.

And then in the fall, on the same stage, the second premiere of “Curls” appeared, staged not by the teacher, but by his fellow student-director Nikita Grinshpun - “The Swedish Match” based on the stories of Chekhov. The director called his student-inventive performance a “farce-detective.” And there were no more tears - just pure fun and fooling around. The story about the investigation of a failed murder, where more than two dozen characters act, is played by nine actors, and the champion of them is the former “bullfinch” Pavel Akimkin, who portrays six. Here he comes out between episodes as a street musician in a bowler hat, strumming an accordion - a balalaika strums on the right, a tuba thumps on the left. Here he is, a drunken servant, trying to give evidence: unable to stay on his feet, the drunkard does somersaults like a circus, and then the table with the investigators, as if reflected in his brain, tilts and turns over. Here is an actor, standing in a row with others on all fours, swaying rhythmically - these are horses in a harness jogging. But, having stuck a dashing mustache to his lip, he becomes a “living corpse” Klyauzov, stolen by a jealous pretty “stanchion” (Yulia Peresild). Akimkin managed to play a lot last season: on Malaya Bronnaya, in TsiM, in Et cetera, but it seems that in his own company his capabilities are revealed more widely. Or Evgeny Tkachuk, in the last performance the young Leshka, and in this one the old, pot-bellied and touching cuckolded husband Chubikov. In his own team, he clearly works deeper and more diversely than in someone else’s, even much more famous (the audience first saw Tkachuk in Zholdak’s “Phaedra. The Golden Ear”). However, there is no news in all this - your own company helps everyone.

There is no theater, but the performances of the former “curls” are already in great demand at festivals, and the young hall receives them with the same fervor as their student friends received at RATI before. In essence, the audience doesn’t care where anyone’s work record is, and as long as the “curly ones” scattered across different theaters have the strength to stay together and prepare their performances even on someone else’s stage, they can be considered a theater. In the end, what do we need: checkers or driving?

Dina GODER