Veniamin Smekhov - 75

On August 10, Veniamin Smekhov turned 75 years old. In the program "Red Dry" actor and director talks about music and alcohol in the theater and on the screen.

What is in common with Gerard Depardieu, Alena Delona, Pierre Richar, Francis Ford Coppola, except for working in the cinema and the theater? That's right - they are all winemakers. Wine and cinema, wine and theater connects at least one word - a game. Actors play, play wine. Benjamin, actors feel kinship with wine?

Veniamin Smekhov: The people of the theater did not feel this until Boris Leonidovich Pasternak prompted them. In the famous work "Bacchanalia" he answered your question in this way:

How much courage is needed

To play for centuries,

How the ravines play

How the river plays,

How diamonds play,

How wine plays

How to play without refusal

Sometimes destined.

It was at the very beginning of my life, when I played Narkis from the “Hot Heart” in the diploma performance of the Schukin Theater School, and the junctarians who adored me could not resist the temptation to make muck. Narkis, on the penultimate action, gets drunk in the forest, and the robbers led by the bastard Khlynov are amended by his infinite amount of alcohol. Usually it was water, I drank it. Somewhere in the last performance, they divorced me English salt. In short, I drank and pretended that life was ongoing. How else can you tint water, except for the ancient method - tea or cranberry, but this is already a question for requisitions.

Igor Pomerantsev: It seems to me that the actors playing on the stage of the drunk are often used by stamps. Some of the actors managed to say a new word in this role?

Veniamin Smekhov: When the artist of the Vakhtangov Theater is very drunk and degrading before the eyes of the artist, and there it was seriously accepted to get drunk half to death, while going on stage, led by the main artist too, one was completely bad and degraded ... He was called to the carpet. He, surrounded by the embarrassing gaze of the artists, said nothing nothing hesitated by the winged expression: "I drank, I drink, I will drink."

Igor Pomerantsev: Does alcohol help actors or destroy?

Benjamin Smekhov: In the south, nothing destroys. Italians, Spaniards, Georgians drink from childhood and for some reason it did not harm anyone. And in our north it becomes either a disease, or it is a struggle against depression on even greater depression. And also, maybe in the theater, nervous cost and embezzlement is increased - it is like an antidepressant or tranquilizer.

Igor Pomerantsev: Konstantin Stanislavsky did not drink at all. It is known that Oleg Efremov drank willingly. These are the director’s alcohol addictions, do they affect the atmosphere of the theater?

Benjamin Smekhov: As for Stanislavsky, who did not drink, indeed there are all anti -pertants, although they say that it has always been champagne from the Moscow Art Theater. As for Oleg Nikolaevich, I had the honor to drink with him several times. And I must say this about the atmosphere: in the "Contemporary" a bright atmosphere of drinking. Here is the company of Igor Kvasha - it was all tender, bright drinking. Taganka, as a rule, had dark company drinks. I don't know why. Individual people, like Vysotsky, for example, always in a drink were excellent, gentle, kind, however, did not remember his address.

Igor Pomerantsev: You worked with Czech, American, Western European theaters, actors. Are their alcoholic manners differ from Russians?

Benjamin Smekhov: they are no different, and all together differs from the French. In France, immediately as I came there, the play “Two Sisters” there immediately surprised us how they were ceremonial in this, how they take them at 12 o’clock for two hours, and we ourselves shared these joys of life. These wild fire extinguishers stand, huge quarters, and all this somehow drunk cheerfully, cheerfully. And I forgot to make myself some comments on behalf of Stanislavsky.

Igor Pomerantsev: Your movie hero Athos, in my opinion, is an inveterate drunkard. I remember he bought a dozen bottles of smuggled Spanish wine.

Benjamin Smekhov: Is that true?

Igor Pomerantsev: Yes, the source says about it. But your ATOS turned out, it seems to me decent. Why?

Benjamin Smekhov : You touched me now, touched my drinking ambition. I did not drink much, so I did not decorate the movie screen, because the entire acting gang of this film was always on the platoon thanks to the Shmarovidle Vladimir Balon. Here is Volodya Balon, our fifth musketeer, he is de Jussak and, on the contrary, he is our brilliant fencing coach, film actor, athlete, champion, Volodya, who already started us all from the aircraft flight to Lviv, where we shot, he carried his own swill, which was called the Shmarovidla. Tasty, you don’t notice how you get drunk, and then the horses do not notice that you were drunk. We were warned that it was impossible to sit on a horse drunk, it turned out, this is not so, we all sat down under the “shmarovidla”, and the horses were tolerant of this. Once Aramis did not have time to drink Shmarovidla, and the horse carried him. Finally, having trusted the cognac propaganda of the composer of Dunaevsky, when I recorded the famous Ariya Athos “there is a black pond in the count of the count, there are musketeers,” I drank cognac before recording. Then, when I heard that I was mistaken, at the insistence of Dunaevsky I drank more, but his recipe was ugly towards me, I began to sing worse and worse, as a result, I did not sang this song. It's okay, they still say: the best that I did in Athos was sang this song.

Igor Pomerantsev: Benjamin, with which of the people of the Moscow Theater World you are especially pleased to drink?

Benjamin Smekhov: with many. It is a pity that we drank only in Prague, I know how remarkably you are versed in wines. In Moscow, we did not drink. But in Moscow I drank with actors and many times and good. I am pleased to recall the booze and the interpreter with Left Durov, Kolya Karachentsov, many older artists. But it was always noble. But with whom I was pleased not to drink, so it is with Vysotsky. Still, I saw on the stage, and there was a case when I had to say my text and for Volodya in the play “Fallings and Living”. These are sad memories.