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Lev Dodin staged a political performance

Hydropathic in the outback. Patients flock to the waters, rediscovered and already declared miraculous. The head physician sends samples for examination. Chemists find out: the water is poisoned. You can’t drink it, you can’t swim in it: industrial discharges near the resort get into it straight (this is how the water supply is laid). Terrified, the doctor sounds the alarm, writes memos to all levels of government. And he makes another discovery: the authorities do not want to hear about the closure of the harmful hospital. We need to think about the city, about the losses in the budget, about the future. Anyone who neglects this in the name of such an abstraction as "people's health" is an adversary, a harmful element. The doctor is trying to fight. Then his daughter is fired from her job, the family is evicted from the house, and he himself is relieved of his post.

For those who believe that this is the plot of Russia-2013, I sadly inform you that it is 131 years old, and it is set out in the play “Enemy of the People” by Henrik Ibsen. It has just been staged by Lev Dodin in his Small Drama Theater - the Theater of Europe.

I took an old Norwegian play and staged a play about today's Russia. So much so that the classics on stage, according to Tovstonogov's well-known formula, are as fresh as today's issue of a newspaper; after all, the concept of "enemy of the people" on our soil does not lack examples: from Bukharin to Chubais, from Rykov to Navalny.

... The family at the table, as if we were looking at it from the street, behind a translucent curtain: they sit with the guests, dine peacefully, soft light, comfort, only the head of the family is still worried if there was a letter. It turns out that the postman handed it over to the doctor's daughter in the morning ... Stockman had just talked about how glad they were that their well-being had grown and even appeared ... a lampshade. But then he comes to the forefront, opens the letter, and from that moment on, everything that is behind him: his wife, daughter, lampshade, hangs over the abyss, as if tilted.

The university laboratory found bacilli, microbes, putrefactive bacteria in the healing water. The doctor foresaw this: there were too many severe, inexplicable cases ...

The mayor of the city, his brother, comes to the head of the hydropathic clinic. Their dialogue is the core of the first act. The doctor (Sergey Kuryshev) is in a long knitted sweater and a soft round hat, the mayor is in a tightly buttoned black coat and a black bowler hat, with a cane. One is trustingly soft, the other is concretely stubborn. One tormented question is what will become of the sick. Another - what will the city and him personally inappropriate rightness of his brother cost? Actor Sergey Vlasov as the mayor is almost unrecognizable: a stone chin, fury under the mask of calmness, rotten eyes - the very ones that we see every day in dozens of stories on TV.

They sit down on the sides of the stage as the mayor reads the doctor's report. The poisoned spring is the source of the city's well-being. Between two conclusions - “we will have to close” and “we will ruin our hometown!” distance, as between falsehood and truth. The mayor threatens: the family (think of the boys!), presses with arguments - "economic component", "common good", "administrative secret". But the doctor does not agree: "I will read my report at all crossroads!" He has a bomb in his hands, and he is determined to throw it: the moral law inside him requires an act - the disclosure of the truth.

Profit, personal security, family care - everything ceases to exist: "... I discovered that all spiritual and vital sources are poisoned." During the two hours of the performance (the theater shortens everything in Ibsen's long play, which does not lead to the elucidation of the main thing - the conflict between the truth of man and the lies of the state), all the characters change. The wife, frightened by the scandal, becomes the main support of her husband, family friends become traitors, and the doctor himself from a provincial intellectual becomes a detractor of time.

The way Kuryshev slowly, but in such a way that the audience catches every word, talks about what he has come to (“... our entire civil and social life is based on soil contaminated with lies”), painfully reminds someone.

As if we had already seen this person: a little strange, delicate, as if apologetic, inflexible. And suddenly you understand: not an imitation, but an example is visible in the artist's game. A portrait of Academician Sakharov hangs in the office of the MDT chief director.

A discovery that brings death becomes the unrelenting torment of the protagonist. It reveals what surrounds us every day: for its own sake, the authorities are ready to sacrifice citizens; patriotism is the refuge of the greedy; the state is against justice and goodness.

And further. For us, on the one hand, the suppressed vote of the electorate, and on the other, so fascinated by the mass reactions of the Network, it is useful to hear how in response to the declarative: “The truth is always on the side of the majority!” the doctor says with mild conviction, “That’s a lie! Fools make up the majority of the entire globe!” - and after a pause says:

Just look at our...

The hall is exploding!

In the second act, the theater deals with the liberal public. Stockman is supported by the newspaper editor, the head of the homeowners' union, the director of the printing house, and big business. Elections of city authorities are coming, the opposition is seizing on compromising evidence, the doctor's scandalous report is ready to be printed and distributed. But the desire to serve the truth quickly drowns in selfish considerations: subscribers will refuse the editor, real estate prices will fall, the city will become impoverished. Yesterday's revolutionaries (Igor Chernevich, Alexander Zavyalov, Sergey Kozyrev are doing wonderful work) are turning into dignitaries, cynical and impenetrable, deputies of all current calls. Citizens smash the house of the enemy of the people with a roar, fragments of a shattered veranda hang on the frames.

The "solidary majority" rejects the truth. The “solidary majority” pushes the smart ones aside. The "solidary majority" today still "chooses Barrava".

In addition to the text, the performance radically builds a context: life outside the walls of the hall sharpens all its core thoughts. The reputation and moral authority of Dodin work for the artistic result. Another theater, perhaps, would not have been able to withstand the frankness and harshness of such a conversation with the audience.

... Before the finale, a terrible thing will happen: Stockman's father-in-law will leave him all the shares of the hydropathic resort he bought out, and the shadow of suspicion of speculation will fall on the doctor: he deliberately brought down the price, assuring that the water is bad. From now on, he is a rich and powerful man.

The doctor puts on his coat, sits in an armchair, the diseased sun lights up in the place of the destroyed lampshade, the stage goes out, and Stockman quietly says: “The strongest person in the world is the one who is absolutely alone!”

Open ending - open choice.