This “Your Gogol”

The last days of the great Russian writer in the interpretation of Valery Fokin became the event of a European theatrical celebration

Petersburg in mid-April became the site of the main theatrical event in Europe. For the first time in Russia, the European Theater Award was presented (organized by the Baltic House Theatre-Festival). A quarter of a century ago, the award was established by the European...

Petersburg in mid-April became the site of the main theatrical event in Europe. For the first time in Russia, the European Theater Award was presented (organized by the Baltic House Theatre-Festival). Founded by the European Commission a quarter of a century ago, the award is recognized as the most prestigious award for achievements in the cultural field. The laureates were Pina Bausch, Peter Brook, Harold Pinter, Robert Wilson, Lev Dodin. The 2011 laureate is the living classic of world director Peter Stein. The Organizing Committee's special prize for theater figures "who stand out for their commitment to European ideals" was awarded to Yuri Lyubimov. One of the events of the Russian program was the premiere of a performance by Valery Fokin on the small stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.

The hall is black. A man in underwear crouched on the platform. He is trembling violently. The death cramp, on which the light of otherness is already falling, is surrounded by obsessive phantoms, immersed in the final flashes of imagination. Visions burst into consciousness on the verge of disintegration, themes emerge. And the vision of paradise is the first to appear: the arched wall opens, behind it there is a theater-nativity scene, a cave of miracles, a green garden shines, huge ears of corn sway, a tight poppy head sticks out, a surrealistic butterfly closes and opens its wings, theatrical characters flicker (a brilliant work of stage designer Maria Tregubova) . And then, among the clear, painful brightness of the pictures, Petersburg will rise, ghostly and magnificent, filled with house-ships, a crowd of black silhouettes. The dazzling Italian sky will flash and in it - slowly approaching vultures with shaggy wings.

"Your Gogol" is the name of the play. So Nikolai Vasilyevich signed his letters. But this Gogol is departing, no longer ours and, in fact, little known to us; a connoisseur of patristics and patristic literature from St. Augustine the Blessed to Ephraim the Syrian, who dreamed of entering a monastery, absorbed in confession and preaching - and today is known only to a narrow circle of the best readers. “A lot of time will pass before the whole deep and strict meaning of this monk-artist, Christian satirist, ascetic and humorist, this martyr of lofty thought and an insoluble problem, is fully understood!” - said a contemporary of the classic Annenkov - and turned out to be a uniform prophet.

... A shaven man in a knitted scarf, draped over his head and shoulders like a woman, shuffling towards the pot, trembling, lost - this is Gogol. Not a fantastic realist who gave birth to a new trend in world prose, not a brilliant observer, from whose “Overcoat” Russian literature emerged. Secret Gogol, with his painful secret - Fokine's performance is dedicated to him.

Text - fragments of "Selected places from correspondence with friends" and letters. Time is the last hours of life. The plot is a rosary of images composed by the director.

As you know, Gogol died strangely. He lay down against the wall, in boots and a dressing gown, and stopped eating. There were plenty of oddities and inexplicable things in his life. What is one incredible suspiciousness worth, which gave rise to real ailments: “Having decided that he was decrepit, at the age of 35 he became an old man. Having decided that he was dying, he died.

Both contemporaries and later interpreters are looking for the cause of death in character. “... Love for hoaxes, defeatist psychosis, an inferiority complex associated with exorbitant pride and faith in one's mission. And flight, as a single medicine against all these diseases. The ruthlessly sober Melshior-Bonnet considered death to be Gogol's last flight. Andrei Bely formulated differently: “The soul yearned for Gogol; Gogol yearned for his soul, but an abyss lay between them ... "The split in Gogol's consciousness was much thought in the Silver Age:" He wanted to be Raphael, but he was Bosch. The futility of the search for harmony was felt the more acutely, the more religious he became.

Fokine explores the "inner man", the path by which Gogol, "almost not knowing how, came to Christ" and on which he suffers his defeats incompatible with life. Not wanting to recognize the "flowers of evil", he only wrote them convincingly. And no matter how hard he tried, the “flowers of goodness” in the second volume of “Dead Souls” came out inanimate. This became a crash. The hero of the play drops: “Yes, what about the paper “Dead Souls”, when the soul of oneself becomes dead ...”

The writer was reproached for the ingenious painting of external forms, and the director gives these "external forms" a detailed fussy ritual life. There are dissectors in the performance, there are strange creatures with beaked faces, there are “doctors” - they all inexorably do their job, wrap up, undress, tap out, put leeches (black clots hang in a glass jar on the stage), stuff them with medicines - torment. Others tempt, suffocate with an abundance of earthly fruits, calling out in a singsong voice: “Focaccia, carpaccio, spaghetti, parmigiano”; the platform will be filled with dishes, fruits, game. An olive will be put into Gogol's mouth, he, unable to chew it, will spit it out. The only person besides the devilry spinning around is himself, young and cheerful.

The double is Fokine's favorite theme, and there are two Gogols in the play. At the very beginning, a young man in a tailcoat sits over a tormented body. Intoxicated by the success of his first compositions, he (Alexander Polamishev) will enthusiastically describe the wonders of Nevsky Prospekt, deftly cut through a tiny stage on a gondola-roller, follow his double with alarmed eyes; in his hands the manuscript will flare up and burn...

But the "main" Gogol, an adult and dying, is played by Igor Volkov. We see him at a distance of a step - sweat on his forehead, jerks born speech. Behind the dying monologue, behind the heavy physiology of the finale, there is a huge effort made by Gogol, who is born into eternal life; the thrill of this effort is one of the main values ​​of the performance.

“If you don’t die, you won’t come to life…” whispers Gogol. And stretches out on the platform. A huge exaggerated bust of Pushkin in a lilac glow becomes the background of the funeral. And someone’s voice says loudly: “Lukomorye has a green oak ...” (Nikolai Vasilyevich, as you know, had a jealous passion for Pushkin from the first moment of his acquaintance, when, anticipating his Khlestakov, he ordered his family to write to him at the address of the first poet).

The body is showered with flowers of poisonous, unnatural brightness. The lush hill will grow and grow to the strange music of a small orchestra standing over the deceased. And then he, having scattered this hill, will rise. With a half-smile on his face, he opens the window. From behind the croups of the triumphant quadriga, the city illuminated by the sunset will look at the spectators. Gogol will step onto the roof and disappear into the air of Petersburg.

Full-fledged components of the performance are music and light. Rustle, dissonant harmonies, singing, the sound of rain - the most subtle work of the composer Alexander Bakshi and the complex intense light score of Damir Ismagilov - give the production the effect of three-dimensional polyphony.

Valery Fokin staged his shortest performance, dedicated to the "longest" internal theme. From the student's "Nose" to the present hour, the recent "The Overcoat" and "Marriage", Gogol is its invariable author. Work at the Alexandrinsky Theater began with rehearsals in the foyer of the fifth tier, where the author once read The Inspector General to the troupe. Now, after eight years in the theater and six performances on the big stage, Fokine has risen even higher - to the seventh tier of the Alexandrinsky, to the small stage, in order, using the freedom of laboratory experience, to bow to the classics. Open and encode your understanding of his drama.

"Your Gogol" sums up the relationship with the genius and, in a sense, sums up Fokine himself on all his current paths. Through Gogol, he outlines and goes through the most painful oppositions of his own world, explores the most important theme of departure. The hour-long performance condenses, as in a collection of works, the techniques that go through many of Fokine's performances, which have become signs and markers of his theatricality.

But, the master of rigid form and refined thought, here he is completely captive to his mastery. The calculated performance contradicts the irrational untamed elements that he explores. Everything here is reduced, thought out - but there is not enough of a certain irregularity, which turns art.

Gogol's phrase "If you don't die, you won't come to life..." is somewhat equal to Grotovsky's famous and often quoted by Fokine formula "A debut is possible at any age." Why not now?