Two theatrical premieres

Sergey Vasiliev

December, according to a long-standing tradition, is perhaps the most generous month for premieres in the theater season. In a couple of weeks, fairy tales will flow from all Kyiv stages, which, like a hospitable grandmother with chocolates, will begin to be fed to children at New Year's matinees. In the meantime, we need to hurry up and release new performances for their parents before the Christmas holidays. As usual, these will be good and different performances. Critics prone to skepticism most often pronounce this phrase with irony, not particularly expecting strong artistic shocks from “good” performances, and by “different”, as a rule, meaning, if not slightly flawed performances, then some kind of militant hack.

But we really want the good to be good, and the theater menu to be not only nutritious, but also rich, and so that in the capital’s consolidated playbill you can find a show for every taste. Fortunately, the upcoming Kyiv premieres fully meet these requirements. The two performances in question are decidedly different from each other, and the audiences recruited are completely different.

"Andrei Varhola. Fiction", which will be shown on December 6 at the Kinopanorama cinema by the independent theater KROT, was composed by director Andrei Kritenko. This bully and erudite has been living in Germany for twenty years now, but periodically returns home and stages performances, in particular at the Drama and Comedy Theater on the Left Bank, under whose director Eduard Mitnitsky Mr. Kritenko once studied. The director became known to the general public thanks to his collaboration with the writer and artist Les Podervyansky - it was this director who was the first (and so far the only one) to bring his friend’s scurrilous plays to life on stage. During the period of work on the performances "Pavlik Morozov" and "Dreams of Vasilisa Egorovna", in fact, the performing ensemble of the KROT theater took shape. This, by the way, is the youthful nickname of the director himself, although at the same time it is also an abbreviation of the slightly foppish name of a collective that exists on the principles of partnership and does not have any official status - the Kiev Revolutionary Fucking Theater. Here, however, they are not so much experimenting as trying to surprise and even frappe the audience. The life story of the pop art icon, a Rusyn by birth, Andy Warhol, about whom people still continue to debate whether he is a genius or a charlatan, is an excellent reason for this. However, the play is not a biopic in its purest form. Here, of course, a significant place is devoted to the assassination attempt on the artist, who was shot in June 1968 by the radical feminist and lesbian Valeria Solanas, but, apparently, the director is much more interested in an artistic study of the very phenomenon of fame, fifteen minutes of which Warhol predicted to anyone who dreams of it person. Apparently, in order to achieve it, one must not recognize taboos and boundaries. In this sense, Andrei Kritenko is a faithful follower of his hero - in his performance he boldly collages texts of different genres and eras, starting from Warhol's diaries and documentary stories of his actors Mykola Veresnya and Oleg Primogenov and ending with fragments of "Stolen Happiness" by Ivan Franko and "Verona" Alexey Shipenko. Whether these disparate elements will unite into a single whole is still a question, but the fact that viewers are in for an unpredictable spectacle can be firmly stated.

For predictability, you should go to the National Theater of Russian Drama. Lesia Ukrainka, where on December 8 they will play the premiere of Branislav Nusic’s satirical comedy “Dr.” This is not the first time that the name of the Serbian classic has appeared on the group’s poster - for twelve years now the same caustic play “Madam Ministersha” has been shown on this stage. As befits a reputable academic theatre, which sees its mission as sowing “reasonable, good, eternal” and “entertaining and instructing” the public, the Russian Drama approached the production thoroughly. There is no doubt that everything here will be of good quality - the scenery and costumes of Elena Drobnaya, the music of Yuri Shevchenko, the mise-en-scène of Irina Barkovskaya. And the actors, who are practically the best forces in the theatre, will deliver their characters’ lines juicily, which, by the way, sound surprisingly relevant. At least this: “Nowadays everything is for sale: honor, conscience, love, power, friendship, beliefs.” The story itself, composed by the author, by the way, is not at all didactic or boring. The plot about a rich idiot, instead of whom he studied at the university, receiving a PhD in his name, a poor understudy, is dashingly twisted, the intrigue jumps like mad, the characters are finger-licking good. In short, admirers of traditional theater and the classical style of acting, having attended this performance, are unlikely to be disappointed.

"Kinopanorama" / 6 (19.00)

National Theater of Russian Drama named after. Lesya Ukrainki / 8 (19.00)

Philosopher on the Boulevard