Theater poster - reviews of the performance. Performance Savage Story-impression in two parts

Believing the laudatory article on the occasion of the premiere with unequivocal exclamations of “a true classic,” in the best traditions classical production", we bought tickets for the performance of the Moscow Art Theater named after Gorky "Savage".
The hall was full. Whether holidays or an equally naive trust in the theatrical press contributed to this, I don’t know. And so, the action begins: bright scenery, beautiful costumes and everything seems to be according to the text. Appears main character, Varya Zubareva. And away we go... The actress runs, or rather flies, onto the stage and begins to frantically roll around on the floor, moaning and bawling about how hot she is. Frankly, this caused us some bewilderment, but, of course, we stayed. Then everything only got worse. The heroine screams and rushes around the stage as if possessed, and all the other characters laugh admiringly at her so-called childish spontaneity. This embodiment of the girl’s character in the play is probably based only on the title of the play and nothing more. There is no sense of meaning intended by the author here.
Yes, of course, the heroine is a savage, but she should not just be an empty-headed fool jumping madly through the forest, she should be a bright character, albeit ignorant and uneducated, but interesting, free and unbridled. A nature that is far from convention, which “lights up” everyone around and encourages everyone else to laugh heartily, even contrary to decency, if you want... Well, what is not there is not.
All action develops according to a known scenario. A young girl is seduced by an old womanizer who has squandered his fortune. She rushes into his arms, but is saved by her own unbridledness and the love of a much more worthy man. Then a sharp transition: the savage, just in uncontrollable despair (which, by the way, you will never see on stage) running away from her home, suddenly finds herself in the house of her future groom and even managed to agree to marriage. And here’s the ending: the loving groom says that he will buy the offender’s estate along with the grove that he bargained for earlier. Everyone dances, everyone dances. All! The spectators burst into feeble applause.
Of course, the play was initially announced as a comedy, but not to the same extent! All this was reminiscent not of Ostrovsky’s play, but of some kind of ridiculous farce, a mockery of the author. Ostrovsky does not have empty stories. Whether it is a drama or a comedy, there is a certain morality, a key idea everywhere: New times are coming and New people are creating the future...
“- So we will live “somehow.” I didn’t know that.
“But wait, in two or three years, you and I will buy this estate from them, with the park and Milovida!”
But even such a bright finale is crumpled and filled with daring dances. A pun and nothing more.
If you want to see a truly real production of Ostrovsky on stage, it’s better to go to the Maly Theater, the Sphere Theater or the Theater named after. Mayakovsky. I highly do not recommend this performance.

A strange comedy about the impossibility of happiness in 2 acts (1h50m, no entrepreneur) 16+

J. Anouilh
Stage director: Vladimir Shcheblykin
Artists: Elena Obolenskaya, Mikhail Basov, Igor Ivanov, Nikolay Korobov, Alexey Elizavetsky, Evgeny Osokin
and others S 05.06.2017 There are no dates for this performance.
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Review of "Afisha": A small orchestra plays famous melodies, delighting the ears of restaurant visitors. The musicians are led by Mr. Tarde (Alexey Elizavetsky), among the performers are his wife, Mrs. Tarde (Anna Dankova), daughter Teresa (Elena Obolenskaya) and her friend Zhannetta (Maria Fedosova). There is also a pianist named Gosta (Igor Ivanov), who often drinks a flask of cognac before hitting the piano keys with his fingers. That evening Gosta is very excited. He prepared a gift for the lovely Teresa - a box of perfume. But the girl has no time for an admirer. She is waiting for her lover to appear - famous composer, the rich and noble handsome Florent (Nikolai Korobov), whose imminent marriage will bring an end to the poor, hard, humiliating life that Teresa led before meeting her Prince. This is exactly how the performance begins in the “Commonwealth of Taganka Actors” theater, in the genre of pure melodrama.
The plays of Jean Anouilh, and “The Savage” is no exception, are unusually insidious for stage implementation. They have many hidden motives, plot twists that are illogical at first glance, and the characters sometimes seem either too “flat” or, on the contrary, unusually multifaceted. And this is not without reason. Anui's characters are unusual personalities because they bring into the usual course of life, into the established world order their own, unique reflections on the meaning of existence on this earth.
Teresa in “The Savage” performed by Elena Obolenskaya is just such a person. She longs for happiness, but cannot afford it because she considers herself unworthy. She is pure in soul, generous, capable of the most sublime feelings, but at the same time, she is unable to abandon her terrible past. She hates that dirty, greedy, vulgar and cruel world in which she grew up, but she does not have the strength to abandon it, to forget that in this world there is still so much pain, need, grief, injustice. And Teresa feels all this, and therefore only there she feels like a truly living person. And she has no choice but to leave the luxurious palace with snow-white columns, expensive furniture, magnificent paintings in gilded frames, leave your beloved and go away. Leave to live and suffer...
Directed by V. Shcheblykin. Set and costume designer I. Gorshkova. Choreographer V. Ignatyuk.

About "Savage" M. Gorky Moscow Art Theater

A story-impression in two parts

It so happened that I came to the premiere at the Moscow Art Theater after reading the now fashionable and undoubtedly smart theater book by Hans-Thies Lehmann “Postdramatic Theater”. I admit, I was in the deepest depression. Lehman’s thoughts about the “death of drama”, combined with the abundance of cruelty, violence, nudity, simply lifeless nonsense that I recently watched on stage, being alien to my soul, nevertheless tried to break into my mind and justify themselves as means of shocking, means designed to awaken the viewer from moral, spiritual and even physical slumber in our time of post-postmodernity (call it what you want), when no one remembers anything, no one cares about anything and we are faced with cruelty at every step, and so on and so forth further... And conversations about the “fading” repertory theater, about the inability of realism on stage to awaken some feelings in the viewer, greatly tormented my imagination, which loved Russian psychological theater, and even appeared to me in a dream in the person of Komissarzhevskaya and Meyerhold, who were heatedly arguing about art... I woke up I am fully confident that I learned something important from the dispute between these great people, but everyday life carried away this important thing, and what remained was the Internet, in which well-known theater critics steadily followed their line, easily repulsing my timid comments.

I come to the Doronin Moscow Art Theater. A real theater house. All of us, the spectators, that evening - without knowing each other, smiled when our eyes met, we had some inexplicable desire to congratulate each other, we were all in an elevated, excited and joyful mood, and it was a real theatrical and true spiritual unity: it doesn’t matter who we are and where we come from, through what entrances we entered the hall, where we sat throughout the performance - we were one, our eyes were burning, our hearts were beating joyfully, smiles, smiles all around... And I happily lost myself in this a sea of ​​love that accepted me into its warm embrace. Whatever you say, a person in the post-post era, no matter what, remains a person. Under whatever masks of indifference he tries to hide it, he wants love, he is open to goodness and he enjoys living life, warm real communication.

She appeared in the box, Tatyana Doronina - that evening - the director of the premiere of "Savage", but at all times she is a people's actress. That is, an actress whom the people love, and they do not need any reasons to express this love - they love passionately, directly, with all their soul. How they were waiting for her! How they wanted to see her! How she was greeted! In one impulse, the audience stood up and applauded, and even when the curtain had already opened and Tatyana Vasilievna settled into a box, people were standing, and there was only a general feeling that the performance had begun, that is, the sacrament had begun - a sacred, mystical action that we will all now come into contact with - seated the audience Art Theater in places. And she sat in the box, with us, above us, and shone in the darkness of the hall, snow-white, beautiful, kind - as if she was protecting us, protecting us, as if we were all her children...

Critics once said that we should rush to watch Doronina kissing Luspekayev in the play “Barbarians” of the BDT. I am a person of a different era (which is post-post...), I did not see this kiss and can only judge it from photographs and short videos of those years. But I can boast that not so long ago, on December 1, on the first snowy day of winter at the Art Theater, I saw Korobeynikova kissing Titorenko, and this kiss made me sweat... She is a young girl, still a girl, fell in love with the “folder” (I now clearly understand why the poster states the category is 16+). And he is a man who has been married for many years, whose heart has already grown cold, but was drawn to the young creature, inspired by youth, the beauty of her body, the fire of her eyes... He picked her up by the armpits - just like a dad takes his little daughter in his arms, his beloved child - but he just doesn’t have the same feeling for her that a father might have for his daughter... And she went limp in his hands like a rag doll, and he put her on a chair to kiss... A barely audible dull noise crept into a light melody, gave the heart a chill of anxiety... And the backdrop of the stage “floated”, drawing the reflection of water in the fountain, “melted” from the heat... These two stand and reach out to each other. There are so many prohibitions behind this kiss that has not yet happened! He is married, and therefore it is impossible. He is much older than her, and therefore, “folder”, “another father”. His wife is a beautiful woman, and, moreover, almost her friend - and therefore, betrayal... And in general - well, attractive, sexy, of course, the word “mistress” is - but does it really suit this young tender girl, heart which blooms in the rays of love like spring Flower? This all fills your thoughts, and you tremble with fear - you almost don’t want them to kiss... And then the inevitable happens. Everything is gone, everything is over - she kisses him herself, tightly and energetically clasping his neck with her hands... Sweat appears on her forehead... You see: God gave this girl the right to this love, simply because this is a true feeling, it does not know the barriers created people... It’s getting hot, very hot... And despair is already rushing in my soul... Bitterness for this ruined girl, for the plucked flower of her soul... For her own father, she is not a toy, not a source of “short artistic pleasures,” but a dear beloved daughter, daughterthe only one ! Which he raised, cherished - and then so that it could easily be used by a married man? Artist Vladimir Rovinsky, Varya’s father, could play a purely comic figure, and some characters in the play perceive him that way, with irony. But he played a real tragicomedy. Deceived by his own daughter, placed in an awkward and even helpless position by those around him, he - without actually knowing anything about what exactly happened to his daughter - always intuitively very accurately senses her state of mind, he feels the main thing: she is in trouble . And therefore it is impossible to laugh at him... Rovinsky has many strong scenes in the play. “After all, the only one, sir. I have only one in the world, that’s all!” - he says about his daughter, and this is the strongest argument; after these words it is impossible to blame the unfortunate father for anything: neither for the fact that he wanted to marry Varya to the insensitive Vershinsky, nor for the fact that, perhaps, he once did not understand. Rovinsky revealed in this role the true content of parental love. This anxiety-filled care for his daughter is the meaning of a father's life. He loves blindly, yes. But he loves her! And how this love manifests itself - no one has the right to judge this, because it is from God and that’s all. In general, this family, Varya and her father, personify in the play the spiritual principle, the basic meaning, the law on which human life has been built from time immemorial. So the father says to Varya: “But books are written for entertainment; I read it and gave it up. They don’t live by books, but by their parents’ instructions.” Or about raising a daughter: “Know how to sew, knit, cook cabbage soup and honor your parents - that’s the whole women’s course!”: What is this? Ignorance? No. For Rovinsky, behind these words is the root of life. There is a sense of wisdom here, not invented by people, but proven and true over centuries.

Ostrovsky saw the key to the success of the play in the fact that it fulfills the main duty of any writer at all times: to destroy the ideals of the past when they have become outdated and false. The romance of idealism became false, but the new pragmatism also turned out to be alien and hostile. I will note in parentheses that the idea of ​​​​putting a “savage” girl at the center of this story belonged to N. Ya. Solovyov, but Ostrovsky completely, from beginning to end, rewrote this play, putting into it “all his knowledge, all his experience and the most conscientious work".

But what interested me in Doronin’s performance was this topic, which, in my opinion, is extremely relevant. Why is this young beautiful girl did you choose him, the “folder”, as your lover? What is in this word, “folder”? Varya also had other suitors: both young, like Malkov, and promising, like Vershinsky. Why exactly a married man? And why does she like to call him that, “folder”? The oddities and quirks of Varya’s character could be taken into account, but they are entirely contrived by those around her, and if Varya is called a “savage”, it is only because they do not know how to understand the sincerity of her nature, roughly speaking, because they themselves are actually wild . What delighted me endlessly in the play was the genuine drama that the actress and director revealed in the image of Varya. Varya is crying, her little lips are trembling when she says: “That’s what I’ll call you, daddy!” If it were possible to express the content of these tears in words, we would hear: “Folder, I finally found you! Your love is so dear to me, I’ve been waiting for it so much, I need it so much! I was so waiting for you to appear in my life, for you to protect me! I won’t give you away to anyone, I will love you more than anyone in the world, I will obey you in everything, dad!” It seems like a cheerful girl, walking through life with humor and ease, in this scene in one second she turns her soul inside out, and we see: this soul is simply tormented by suffering. This “folder” is her personal drama... Which, taken in the scale of understanding female nature, female love for a man-hero, a man-winner, a man-protector - makes this topic truly tragic. Perhaps the fact is that her own father moved away from Varya because he works a lot; perhaps the crack in their relationship was also determined by the choice of the groom: her father wants Varya to marry a man who is disgusting to her. The only, beloved daughter, she yearned for her father's love at the moment when she met Ashmetyev. She yearned for a real man. Who, in the dreams of a young girl, must first of all be like her father so that she can respect him. And then this “folder” himself took and caressed her... In her eyes, he is so smart, so subtle, so mature: he knows everything, he can do everything, he is so strong - well, he’s just wonderful, how can you not love someone like that? In comparison with him, all suitors lose, and this is only natural. I looked back at the audience in the hall. Some laughed, others cried... This is a real theatrical experience, at such moments you almost physically feel the strength and power of art... An amazing play, amazing topic, oh yes Ostrovsky... It’s subtle here, very subtle, just on the verge... Be able to stage it in such a way that there is no transition into bad taste, “sticky” infernity taboo topics- but to stage it in such a way as to expose the beauty of Varya’s feeling for the “folder” - this is the task that the Moscow Art Theater successfully implemented.

I was sitting in front of a closed curtain in the dark... The Seagull was burning in front of me, surrounded by brown waves embroidered with gold thread... I was drowning in a green, cozy and soft chair... Just now Varya (I’m sure a scene that is terribly understandable to every woman from whom ever the beloved man left) - she begged the “folder” to stay, fell on her knees in front of him, grabbed his leg, trying to hold him... And in the song, which with a gentle female voice caressed the soul, a wondrous, soulful thing was sung...

O All-Sung

Wonderful girl

Virgin is pure.

Most Holy!

I pray to you

Most Holy,

Hear the prayer

My sinner.

Lean on me

To pray,

Hurry to me

For salvation.

A strong hand

You reach out to me

Generous mercy

Show it on me.

Oh, I’m thinking hard here!.. The performance is not sad. On the contrary... It is all permeated with the subtlest humor, the viewer laughs a lot, emotionally... But this prayer touched me to the very bottom of my soul... It touched despair, the most sinful, insoluble - and dispelled, took away... “And such you as You exist, with all your passion and stupidity turbulent inside, with all your mistakes - this prayer whispers - and I will love you like that... Because I know you, I understand, I regret... And I will save you, calm down, I will save you”... Eh, Tatyana Vasilyevna... For many such “crazy” girls, beautiful, talented, modern, who know how to love passionately, giving themselves over to feelings both physically and emotionally - girls - at whom our absurdly arranged, cynical life in many ways laughs so often - she, Tatyana Vasilievna, in I interceded with this prayer...

For an actress Elena Korobeynikova that's for sure new page creativity. If earlier her heroines expanded the once-found palette of feelings and means of expressing them, then her Varya reveals fundamentally new character traits and personal qualities that suit the actress extremely well both textured and internally: a sense of humor, cheerfulness and youthful carelessness combined with maturity and a sharp mind , cunning, determination and even toughness. She sits down like a boy, spreading her legs wide, she basks in the delight of love, throwing her arm back on the façade of the gazebo and stretches sweetly, opening her chest to the sky and throwing her head back... She is very different and interesting in this performance. If we look at this work by Elena Korobeynikova in a historical context, we will see the following: the role of Varya was played by real stars of the Russian stage: N. A. Nikulina and M. G. Savina at the Maly Theater. Let me suggest that these roles, in my understanding, could hardly have been a great success in their essence, no matter what the reviews said, for two reasons: the first actress, with all due respect, was, according to Ostrovsky himself, “positively old” for Varya, and the second (also with all due respect) - I see him as a person who is “too” integral, walking confidently through life and through his acting career. The role of Varya is complex in that, in addition to great dramatic talent, it requires “getting into” the texture and character of the actress herself, some kind of correspondence to her psychotype. Such a hit in history has already happened: in 1899, after a ten-year break, associated, among other things, with the ban of the play, Vera Fedorovna Komissarzhevskaya played Varya at the Alexandrinsky Theater. A personality with a soul full of the most bitter despair, but not passive, but loving life, energetic, torn from side to side like tongues of flame, a contradictory personality, in constant movement, search, a woman who is highly intuitive, deeply felt with her heart and with all her who lived through a short life that was suddenly cut short and suffered through every aspect of this conflict with Meyerhold that I have already mentioned - a deep conflict in the theater and in art in general - the essence of which can be expressed in one phrase: Vera Feodorovna “did not accept theater as an elite glass bead game.” It was a conflict in which art remains to this day, and this conflict is insoluble: on both sides there are forces that see the purpose and meaning of art differently, and the question of the victory of one or the other side is a question of the impact of the result of the artist’s creativity on that who comes into contact with his work. With Elena Korobeinikova, this very “hit” in the texture and psychotype happened: Varya’s “oddities”, her crazy boyish prowess “becomes” the actress extremely, there is something so mischievous and at the same time deeply tragic in this pure look of blue eyes, in this fragile small body, in this melodic voice. It is obvious to me that Komissarzheskaya was a flesh and blood actress of the Art Theater, although fate never brought her to its stage, and therefore it is deeply symbolic for me that the Art Theater staged “The Savage” today, which is playing to sold-out houses with enormous success - this means that in the theater (and in our time) there is Varya. In the era of terrifying, rapidly developing events of the current theatrical reality, Doronin’s “Savage” is a huge victory for Russian realistic theater. A victory that clearly showed: a real artist is capable of awakening the viewer’s soul by other means than something roughly done on a quick fix- absurdity and low-grade shocking. And he is capable of this in any era - because true art is universal in its nature and in its power of influence. That's the whole secret, that's the answer to all the questions.

I can say with confidence that there are no unsuccessful or not great acting works in the play. Dialogues and pauses are filled with such a huge amount of such richly rich acting that if I tried to express everything that all the characters felt throughout the entire performance, right down to the servant Sysoi Pankratievich performed by the magnificent Boris Bachurin, who is completely speechless, I would have to would write a solid essay of many pages. You need to see this with your own eyes. This is a stunning, well-coordinated, carefully chosen ensemble cast that works well as a whole. Where each role is not only thought out, but developed. Where the director's decisions are not hung in random order like beautiful toys on Christmas tree. Working intensively with meaning, penetrating into the very depths of the author's text, the director reveals its richness, inexhaustible diversity, opens up space for the imagination of the viewer and artist - which ultimately gives a powerful impression.

Perhaps one of the most interesting roles in the play was the work of the actress Yulia Zykova. Ashmetyev’s wife was seen by Ostrovsky as a character needed only as an “addition” to Varya’s fiancé - Varya has a fiancé, and Ashmetyev must also have a wife. But in the Art Theater production, this is a character with whom the viewer falls in love from the first scene. First of all, she is very beautiful. Some kind of strict restraint and nobility in clothes, in manners - and at the same time big eyes, lush eyelashes, sensual lips and an endless wealth of emotions that we read on this beautiful face. Its first scene is at the same time one of the strongest and best scenes of the play. Meeting with my husband. She went for binoculars, brought them, and already knows that he is here, cast a short glance at him, which no one noticed, but first gives the binoculars, then calmly looks up at her beloved husband. The hall exploded with applause... Do you understand? This is skill! When an actress stands motionless on stage, she plays with one look, and the audience applauds this look! How much is in it! “I feel sorry for you”... How Zykova feels sorry, how tenderly she loves her husband!.. She is a “young farmer”, breeds bulls and calves, she has her own business in her hands, which brings profit. She is not understood by those who live in the “former” world of artistic dreams mixed with cheap romanticism, who have no time for her problems and Varya, drowning in the passions of youth, will not understand her completely and Vershinsky, for whom her words of pride: “they come a hundred miles away to buy my bulls" would sound like an incomprehensible relic of the emotional past. But she stands firmly on the ground and gets things done. And tomorrow she will become even stronger. Having heeded the nanny’s advice, she “spits” on her husband’s infidelities, whom she will leave and will find the strength to live and continue to do what she loves. She will only be broken for a minute. Having seen with her own eyes her husband’s betrayal, she will sit on her knees on the floor and lament her unhappy fate before God: “How much... rubbish... there is in a person,” she will say slowly, after a pause. The hands are lifelessly dropped on the knees, the palms are open helplessly, but in the words “so much rubbish” left hand comes into motion, and as if physically touches and weighs this amount of horror filling her soul. And this will be another powerful scene from the actress, energetically charged to the limit, and in the way this scene penetrates the soul, comparable only to Varya’s first kiss.

Here it is necessary to say about the actress Tamara Mironova, “involved” in the action episodically, but carrying with it the nationality, so the performance goes on, where everything is wonderfully beautiful outfits created by E. F. Kachelaeva, dances, soulful songs, a wooden hut, icons in the Red Corner, wreaths of flowers on the head - everything is so dear to the Russian soul. The entire performance is permeated with a religious, purely Russian, that is, characteristic of the Russian soul, feeling of the cosmos of the Universe; the characters continually turn to God with a prayer in a moment of despair. She is Mavra Denisovna, Varya’s nanny. So she entered the upper room, and her heroine still has no words. On the face: “What is it, a mess?” And he sees Varya sitting, playing the guitar and singing a song. “No, everything is fine, well then we can listen to the song,” the actress’s facial expressions tell us - and she squints her eyes, stands and listens. Mironova does not have cynicism here, not neglect or condescension - but such a very good calmness, calmness that combines humor and kindness, a warm feeling: that everything is as usual, there is order in the house, and the pupil is singing - so be it. In the end, she will look just as calmly at the wedding of the newlyweds: as something that is in the order of things, and therefore good. This attitude does not exclude emotionality, but does not reveal it either. She will retain this same sobriety of mind in the scene with Marya Petrovna, when she asks her for advice - and sits next to the question: what to do if her husband cheats? The wide, energetic gesture of Mironova’s open arms and the low notes of her confident voice will say better than words: “There is no penalty from the man, he is a horse.” I won’t tell you how this dialogue developed further, but I will say what delighted me: Ostrovsky in this short scene gave a complete description of the cause-and-effect relationships in a situation with betrayal, ending with a karmic, as Eastern philosophy would say, understanding of the meaning of life:“Why should I suffer for other people’s sins? I wouldn't care." And the Mironov-Zykov duet looks perfectly played, it’s an actor’s pleasant interaction. “Don’t blame me, mother, we don’t speak like a scientist, but whatever comes into our heads, we chat,” Mavra Denisovna apologizes to the lady, and then a thread is stretched between her, Mavra Denisovna and Varya: she, too, whatever comes into her head, then and not only talks, but also does. This makes them related, and this is a national character trait. Because in fact, we know very well what they do and say, not at all what comes into their heads - but what their heart tells them - this is the only way they live and no other way, otherwise they don’t know how to live.

I saw some “breaking out” of the image of the role in the performance of the amazing me always Maxima Dakhnenko. His hero, Vershinsky, is a negative character, yes. But talented - like all of Ostrovsky’s heroes without exception. And the artist feels this diversity, the complexity of character and wants and is eager to play. The director probably placed him and Ashmetyev’s hero on two opposite poles, both simultaneously opposed to the personality of Malkov’s hero. But if the viewer can sympathize with Ashmetyev’s hero with a smile of condescension in the moments when he recognizes the futility of his existence or in comical to touching scenes, when he almost had an attack of paralysis when he wanted to respond to Varya’s young passion, and it seems that the artist Alexandru Titorenco This sympathy of the viewer is quite enough to reveal the image of his hero, then Maxim Dakhnenko feels completely differently in the role of Vershinsky. He clearly wants to play more positive than what is inherent in the scene where he recognizes Varya’s rightness and her ability to think. The artist plays almost only in the “minus”, but, as it seemed to me, he often wants to “plus”. Like everything dubious and suspicious about the Muscovite Ostrovsky, his hero Vershinsky arrived from St. Petersburg, his rationalism and desire to throw off the ship of modernity everything Russian in the way of life, including the names of villages, are at least unhealthy. “To sow the new, you need to uproot the old” - these words make Vershinsky similar to Lopakhin from “ Cherry Orchard“, but Lopakhin has “hands like an artist.” These “hands like an artist’s” - not in the literal sense, of course - but Maxim Dakhnenko is looking for something positive in the image of his hero. He sees: a lot of reasonable things, and even things that could coincide with Malkov’s thoughts, sound in the words of his hero. For example: “And we have apathy, laziness or a calculation for profit, and often just a hostile attitude towards the matter. One is joking, the other is resting.” But, watching the artist in three performances in a row, I saw that he had softened, they say about it: he played out. When Dakhnenko is “good”, he is magnetically irresistible. So, he became softer in the scene of explanation with Varya, he not only understands her, but something even similar to respect, even sympathy appeared in him for her. Varya very seriously, opening her heart, tells him: “I don’t want any game, I want to live!”, and he is sincerely amazed, but such words, based on his worldview, could definitely be classified as “sentimental trash” . And we see: he is able not only to appreciate someone’s sensible thoughts, but also to understand and accept the sincerity of a young girl in a purely human way.

Per artist Alexandra Khatnikova you pay attention from the first scenes for two good reasons - because he is handsome and because he is a “newbie” among the Gorkyites. Big expressive eyes... These eyes look straight into your soul. The look seems defenseless, open - but instantly disarming. Clean and direct, without artifice. Probably, from this look alone you can guess Varya’s hero, Malkov, in him. But what is he like? Blatnovat, drunk in the first scene, rarely participates in conversation, and when he does, he laughs at Vershinsky. But his humor is not evil, it is direct humor, not offensive, so to speak, “to the point” humor. He also talks to Varya rather rudely, even cheekily. But you start to truly feel his love when he passionately hugs her in private. And it doesn’t matter what he says at that moment (and he says the following words: “bird, fish?”) - he is full of passion for her, suffocated with love, hugs her tightly, wants to kiss... And you begin to see a lot more. You can read how kindly, how carefully, with what love he treats this girl. “She already has no intelligence, and he’s still forcing her to fool around,” he will tell Varya, and this, of course, should be offensive to the girl (and funny to the viewer) - but what, if not such words, can pull Varya out of that ridiculous situation , which she got into? Someone has to do it! Khatnikov is magnificent in the final scene. He comes to Ashmetyev, and with exactly the same humor and directness as before - but already harshly and uncompromisingly lays out all his conditions to him. He is serious and tense to the limit, we are talking about the most important things: about the woman he loves, about honor, about business - but outwardly he tries to behave as usual. Varya’s choice becomes clear: this is a real man. He bears the surname Malkov - because he still has to “grow up”, he is just beginning to live. There is both objectivity and a share of the playwright’s irony, but to the question “will it really grow?” The Art Theater confidently answers: “exactly!”

This is the story the Moscow Art Theater tells in the words of Ostrovsky. I want to say a special warm thank you to choreographer P. S. Kazmiruk for the final dance! Strengthening the impression of a happy ending, it connects us with the rhythm of modernity, which we will all plunge into when leaving the walls of the theater. It looks very impressive and it works great!

How hard it is to live in an era of change - the break of centuries - and what features of our capitalist time Ostrovsky’s play reveals - I don’t want to write - let others write about it. I do not share the hopeless (and worse, inactive) apathy of some other authors about the fact that “everything is bad.” Just as Ostrovsky found Malkov and Marya Petrovna, so in our time there are people who earn money with their labor and direct their capital for the benefit of society. Therefore, yes, yes, everyone will be right when they say that this is very modern play. But writing about this, to some extent, means trying to tendentiously interpret Ostrovsky’s play, forgetting about the performance of the Art Theater. But I don’t want that, Ostrovsky for me is great without any explanation, and all I wanted to talk about here is the performance itself. In my opinion, it is primarily about love. About love for a man, about parental love, about love for the work you do, for the country you live in, and for God. The performance is sensual. Beautiful. Strong.

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