Black and white

Vladimir Pankov staged Romeo and Juliet

Recently, the premieres of Vladimir Pankov's plays have been released in Moscow one after another. The director with his team of musicians and actors, developing a hybrid musical-dramatic genre, which he himself called sounddrama, is today at the heart of festivals and theater centers. No sooner had they played the third part of Gogol’s “Evenings” on the stage of the Meyerhold Center (this time the center was the plot of “The Evening on the Eve of Midsummer”), when the Saundrama troupe was already playing “Romeo and Juliet” under the banner of the Theater of Nations. And in a week, the Chekhov Festival will present “The Wedding,” which Pankov and part of his team staged in Belarus in the same “musical-dramatic” genre. The demand of festivals for Pankov’s productions is growing, and this is understandable: his densely musical shows are quite international and, in essence, without any translation, are equally understandable (or incomprehensible) to anyone, since the speech in them works not for meaning, but for sound and rhythm and the artists' voices are used primarily as instruments. Here it is worth remembering Tsvetaev’s obscure, but very effective bilingual “Well done,” which the director staged together with the French. Romeo and Juliet follows a similar path.

The premiere of the Theater of Nations, made as part of the Shakespeare@Shakespeare project, is being played on a square podium, surrounded on four sides by rows of spectators (artist Maxim Obrezkov). There are only two harmoniums on the stage, similar to school desks, and when the audience is allowed into the hall, the schoolboy Romeo (Pavel Akimkin), sitting at one of them, is playing the fool, and the beginning of the performance, where Father Lorenzo (Alexander Gusev) is edifying, with clear articulation , reads the prologue in English, looks like a lesson. This is the start of the “linguistic” plot, which continues in plot number two - the social one.

The balance of power in the play repeats that in West Side Story, only with our specifics. The Montague family is white (that is, in our understanding, Russian), everyone here is dressed in light clothes, with fur collars and gold sparkles, and the sexy blonde mother (Alice Estrina) sports shorts and a transparent cape. The Capulet family is black (that is, literally everyone in a bunch who does not look like the titular nation, Caucasians, Asians - in total, as they say, five nationalities). They are all in black, with white stripes, like on tracksuits, the women are bundled up and in hijabs, Capulet's father (Marat Abdrakhimov) is in a skullcap. The Montagues speak Russian, the Capulets mostly do not, and the Russian-speaking viewer does not understand whether they speak one language or all different ones. The language of communication between the warring families in many scenes becomes English, and the music mixes the works of European composers (primarily Prokofiev with his “Romeo and Juliet”) and conventional southeastern ethnics.

The director is not too interested in the details of the national characteristics: just once the Capulet men will squat down in a circle to discuss something, as Asians do here, and, having seen a company of Montagues at the ball, dressed as frivolous blondes, the Capulets begin to whip them completely in Caucasian spirit. Prince Veronsky brings an additional modern note: in this role, Yevgeny Mironov appears on the screens of several televisions, as if in news programs. In his first appearance - smoothly combed, in a suit, at a table, he looks like a tough president, promising TV viewers that he will fight crime uncompromisingly. For the second time, the report is already coming from the street after the murder of Mercutio and Tybalt, and the prince gives an angry blitz interview from the scene before getting into the car.

However, everything connected with the national conflict looks more like a declaration, since the plot develops extremely inconsistently. For some reason, Father Capulet is clearly pursuing Signora Montague and even, to the amazement of the audience, invites the entire enemy family to his ball. Romeo, having briefly met Juliet (Seseg Khapsasova) on the street, teases her, widening his eyes: “Shaurma!”, and the girl in response shows him an unambiguous sign from her elbow. But, having seen her in exactly the same way, briefly, at the ball, Romeo is already captivated by her Asian beauty, and she is eager to kiss. It’s hard to understand what suddenly changed. To be honest, everything connected with psychological motivations, and indeed with Shakespeare’s tragedy itself, looks in Pankov’s performance, on the one hand, inexplicable, and on the other, extremely redundant. Why, for example, does Senor Montague duplicate many of the love scenes of his son Romeo, as if he were Romeo, the first to admire Juliet, the first to rush to Father Lorenzo for advice? Why does Benvolio turn out to be a tomboyish girl in love with Romeo, and why do the long-dead Tybalt and Mercutio jump onto the stage again at the end and begin to talk about that fatal fight again? All these endless repetitions, mysterious in meaning and very slowing down the action (and even after cuts it lasts almost four hours), speak of one thing: for the director, sound is more important than meaning. And “Romeo and Juliet” loses a lot from this.

Even the pair of lovers themselves, played by cute young actors - former “curly boy” Pavel Akimkin and Buryat student from RATI Seseg Khapsasova, remains just a part of Pankov’s sounding and moving theatrical brew. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, Akimkin is the same funny and spontaneous handsome boy as always, very energetic, musical and motor-driven, but not at all in love with his Juliet. And Seseg Khapsasova, who at first looks like a girl with ponytails and a polka-dot dress, as it turns out, is more inclined to play the roles of mad, roaring heroines like Medea, but even in such a picture, where the passionate Juliet growls, shakes and kisses her little Romeo, there is no real feeling , she is rather formal. So there is no touching love story in Romeo and Juliet, just as there is no tragedy here. However, it’s too early to talk about the actors; they may still develop their roles. In the meantime, the best thing here is the active and rhythmic musical and dance parts (choreographed by Sergei Zemlyansky) like the Capulets' ball or the duel between Tybalt and Mercutio under the thunder of many drums. Everyone will definitely understand this.

Dina GODER