Mr. Bunin's Puppet Circus

Dmitry Krymov staged "Dark Alleys"

The play “Katya, Sonya, Fields, Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya…” (School of Dramatic Art Theatre, Meyerhold Center) is a product of the same synthesis of directing and scenography, golim performance and textbook replica, parade-alle of nostalgia and .. .

The play “Katya, Sonya, Fields, Galya, Vera, Olya, Tanya…” (School of Dramatic Art Theatre, Meyerhold Center) is a product of the same synthesis of directing and scenography, a golim performance and a textbook replica, a parade-alle of nostalgia and a flea market with palace fireworks, which is what Dmitry Krymov's Laboratory became famous for. The imprint of their style is unmistakable: the premiere came out of the same retorts as "Innuendo", "Donky Hot", "Trading", "Opus No. 8", "Death of a Giraffe", "Tararaboombia".

About Chekhov's Tararaboombia by Krymov, premiered in January 2010, the audience is still arguing. They will also argue about Dark Alleys. Perhaps not so fervently.

Gentlemen, the actors, seven souls, in their black and white of the 1910s model, in fabricated mustaches, bowler hats and hats, sit facing the audience on Viennese chairs. Huge boxes covered with delicate paper in pastel roses are scattered around the stage. Busy stagehands are sawing the box in half... there's a "Oh!" Half of the lid falls off, under it is a beautiful doll in a white Art Nouveau muslin. A human-sized doll shines with the eyes of a student of the Russian Academy of Theater Arts Masha Smolnikova.

Oh ... no oh ... - the men are busily sawing the Masha doll to the ground. Until it breaks in two and the pile of newspapers in the box turns scarlet with blood. Until the waxy legs in cream stockings and garters fall off, something rubbery will come out of the sawn waist, in plaits - flowing, naturally, with cranberry juice.

Is it necessary to stipulate: the intellectual theater here has mastered some of the techniques of a traveling circus in the arena? Ladies will disappear under their cloaks, rumble with wheelchairs from the time of the Civil War, exchange (with the same big top chic) ​​embroidered batiste of the 1910s for obliquely cut snake dresses of the 1920s in beaded scales.

The spectacle and intellectual inventiveness of the Krymov performance, the freedom of whimsy, the sharp foolishness of the trick still know no equal.

This is how the novella based on the story "Madrid" was made. With sharp heels, elbows, a head in a crazy hat, the Doll of the Field (Anna Sinyakina) breaks through the cardboard of the box, climbs out, squeaks Petrushka: “Will you treat me with a cigarette?”

The replies of the writer, who took off the street girl on the snow-covered Tverskoy Boulevard, will flare up with letters on the back. And yes, it's effective.

...A charming little model of a Russian provincial town at night will also be rolled out onto the stage (with dusty wires mercilessly exposed, connected to ripe stars). The revived Doll Masha - Smolnikova will be on the verge of a foul, on the break of a cruel romance, she will play the heroine of the story “Revenge” - a gentle, confused, grazing voice from the Civil War choir: “My husband was in the Volunteer Army, first with Denikin, then with Wrangel, and when we reached Paris, became, of course, a driver, but began to drink too much ... I saw him for the last time in Montparnasse, at the door of the Dominique ... It was night, it was raining, and he was in butts, trampling in puddles ... ”For some reason, gentlemen in tailcoats will speak French ... Pieces of dolls will fill up the stage. An absurd young lady of our days in a dull skirt and a beret that is desperately not suitable for her will become a guide in the Bunin Museum - and a monstrous crowd of monkey-like teenagers in puffy bright jackets blowing gum bubbles will listen to her crazy: either skiers in the vicinity of Grasse, or high school students of something something very paid ... it doesn’t matter. The picture of "heirs in a straight line" will come out in any case hopeless.

Fragments of dolls, scraps of newspapers, scraps of an era, life, country (a completely new topic for Dmitry Krymov: the audience of "Tararabumbia" has already seen off Wrangel's transport with emigrants of 1920) ... Stylization of Blok's "Balaganchik", fatal tango - and the wolf grin of the grotesque 2010 -X. It is extremely difficult to juggle with so many objects and themes. And now they are pouring out of the hands: motives are lost, mysterious voices read small fragments of diamond stories: “Galya Ganskaya”, “Ida”, “Business cards”, “Tanya” ...

From these dolls - alas - only a piece of cambric remained in the performance.

There is nothing to cover the topic. But then - why did they take it?

"Dark Alleys", by the way, was staged in Moscow. About two years ago and not for long at the GITIS Educational Theater there was a graduation performance directed by the director's group of Sergei Zhenovach. The scenography there was the most modest - but how carefully Zhenovach worked (with future directors, not with actors!) The same "Madrid", the same "I'm Coming", "Cold Autumn", the same "Mordovian Sundress". And how cleanly and accurately Ekaterina Polovtseva, Sigrid Strem Reibo, Egor Peregudov played these short stories.

... It is impossible to compare two completely different theater schools.

But - in this particular case - it is impossible not to compare.

Anyway, it seems to me that Krymov's prime minister should be watched. Such theatrical ingenuity, self-will, such generosity, such a free rain of subject metaphors - with a sharp, recognizable, precisely calculated plasticity of the heel, bow, newspaper heap, black sapoklyak in a pile of sawdust, black and white play of shadows on the back, colossal dolls and the like - none there is no other director on the Russian stage. Krymov works in a genre that he himself recognized above himself ... and he must be judged solely by case law. There are no similar "Laboratories". And this, Krymov's, the law of staging is not written.

And yet this experiment is not the most successful. Somewhere in the middle of the two-hour action, did the shovel flicker? - and crumbled across the stage into fragments.

... What does I.A. himself think about this premiere? Bunin, I'm not going to guess.

But I remember: he did not like the surrealists.