Evgenia voluntarskaya to whom it is good to live in Russia. “Who in Russia should live well” staged by Kirill Serebrennikov is the story of the collapse of the “Russian world. And garden vegetables
Already prepared by talking to the students, I was not surprised. At first I thought that the inability to divide history into periods and see the differences speaks of their lack of education, but gradually it began to seem to me that the matter was different: time for them is like space in a movie shot with a long-focus lens - it seems that a person is walking (that is, time passes, space passes), but the movement is not noticeable to the viewer.
Or maybe this insensitivity to the movement of time is a special psychological state that occurs during periods when history makes a traumatic leap. Another explanation can be accepted, i.e. a completely different understanding of time and space, to reinforce the thought I will quote Helena Blavatsky:
“Eternity can have neither past nor future, but only the present, just as boundless space, in its strictly literal sense, can have neither distant nor near places. Our conceptions, limited to the narrow arena of our experience, try to adapt themselves, if not to an end, then at least to some beginning of time and space, but neither of these actually exists, for in that case time would not exist. eternal, and space - boundless. The past exists no more than the future, as we have said; only our memories survive; and our memories are only rapidly flashing pictures that we grasp in the reflections of this past, reflected in the currents of astral light ... "
Now I'll turn the other way. Recently I was at a concert of a brilliant musician and friend Vyacheslav Ganelin. He improvised on the piano. Suddenly, his left hand went to the synthesizer, and his right could suddenly be on the drummer for a second. Listening to the musical plot, which the composer-performer told without words, I thought that, probably, Ganelin was an ambidexter, however, after the concert I forgot to ask him about it.
The performance “Who Lives Well in Russia” was staged by Kirill Serebrennikov as follows: 1. there is no distance between the past and the future, it is compressed - an imaginary long-focus lens deliberately chosen for work. 2. This is an ambidexter performance, because the director's right and left hands (like Ganelin's) worked differently, creating an incredibly subtle, complex and powerful mechanism of the performance.
Almost all the works of Kirill Serebrennikov are about the Motherland, i.e. about the country in which he was born and wants to live, and therefore tries to understand it with his mind, while avoiding the knowledge that "one can only believe in Russia." He is engaged in intellectual psychoanalysis of Russia. Being an educated person of his generation, and at the same time having a pure and deep respect for the experience of those who came before him, Serebrennikov demonstrates the results of his psychoanalytic session in the language of world culture, not tied to a specific historical period. Who created this language? I will name only a few directors (although there are artists and musicians): Lyubimov, Efros, Fellini, Tarkovsky, Balabanov... An example? One of the first actors of the last Lyubov's Taganka, Dmitry Vysotsky appears in the play "Who Lives Well in Russia" with a trumpet, as Leonid Kanevsky performed with her in the play "104 pages about love" by Efros, and all this is rented from the final scene of the film "8 ½" Fellini (Efros also quoted Fellini). Some may say that I make everything up, but Serebrennikov has portraits of ancestral directors in the foyer of the theater just as portraits of Stanislavsky, Vakhtangov, Meyerhold and Brecht lived on Taganka.
If Serebrennikov reads this text, he will say that I am wrong and that he did not think of anything like that. Yes, he probably didn’t think about it, but his subconscious thought about it, and to a person from outside the work of someone else’s subconscious is more noticeable, therefore, even if Serebrennikov disagrees with my ideas, I will not lose confidence in my guessing of his performance.
This is a performance about Russia, about its micro and macrocosms, about the Russian abyss between the real and the unreal. In “To whom in Russia” Russia is a prison, by analogy with “Denmark is a prison”, so somewhere in the distance there is barbed wire, from which the name of the play is woven. It periodically lights up with neon, imitating the sign of a modern store.
The first action is "Dispute". Here, a fight between two men turns out to be a form of Russian dialogue, and a group fight is a manifestation of Russian catholicity. Everything is built on the traditional dualities described by Yuri Lotman and Boris Uspensky in the article "The Role of Dual Models in the Dynamics of Russian Culture". They derived Russian dualism from the Orthodox tradition, in which there was no place for purgatory and where only heaven and hell remained, and therefore, although the Russian hero stands at a fork in three roads, he has only two to choose from: life or death; There is a God, and I am a servant of God; or there is no God - and everything is permitted.
The main Russian dual model in the performance is the opposition of men to women. The two gender groups are mixed in only two scenes. In this regard, I would like to recall one more topic, described by the remarkable scientist Mikhail Epstein, about the peculiarities of Russian friendship. I quote:
« Of course, not under Soviet rule, but even earlier, in the Tatar steppes and in the Russian countryside, this separate life and same-sex addictions developed. The men, as expected, with the men, and the women - with the women, and God forbid the first to get rich or demand equality for the second. From here it is not far to the asceticism of the Bolsheviks, not in the least of the monastic, not of the Christian type, but precisely implicated in spontaneous peasant homosexuality. "I messed around with a woman at night - I myself became a woman the next morning." And then the proud Razin gets rid of his shame - he throws a Persian princess at Mother Volga in order to re-enter the male circle. So the revolutionaries threw their families and other male "weaknesses" into the Volga, so that, God forbid, they would not get mad and not arouse the contempt of their comrades. This is how teenagers flock and giggle at girls. This is the nervous stage of immaturity, when they have already gone from childhood sexual non-discrimination, but have not yet come to adult sexual intercourse, and now they walk in flocks, boys and girls separately ”.
Here in the play, men and women are separated. The chiffchaff bird promised to make a self-assembled tablecloth, and the men are waiting for a miracle from heaven, and from there falls ... a soldier's uniform. The army is a form of a male team, where the soldier is fed and washed, as the warble promised, however, as a result of the active actions of this team, more than one generation of Russian boys is brought up exclusively by women, because male fathers remained lying in the land of the vast expanses of our homeland. This will be in the second act: drunken night».
The second act is built on a female singing that "there is no death" and on a male somnambulistic dance. It begins as if it were not “Who should live well in Russia”, but “Bobok” by Dostoevsky, i.e. with zombie movements. Gradually, this dance turns into a confession of a foolish body, then into a dance of barge haulers, into the funeral of a revolutionary, so that at the very end of the act suddenly into the depths of the stage, which seems to be an endless, tragically defenseless gait, the Russian boys who grew up from zombies, whom someone sent "to death unshakable hand." To what death? It is not known, there were many chances to kill, as we know, in Russia in the twentieth century alone: Civil, 1937, Patriotic, Afghan ... something, but there were enough wars. The boys leave, and the rain pours down from above, which is overgrown with fog. The fog seems like an endless beard of God, so long that a Russian person cannot reach where it grows from.
This final act of Sereberennikov's second act reminded me of a scene from Rimas Tuminas' Eugene Onegin at the Vakhtangov Theatre. Tatyana Larina was on her way to Moscow in a wagon, and for some reason the wagon, without changing visually, seemed like a black funnel of 1937. How this happened, I do not know, but I clearly saw it, or maybe it was an imprint of family history on the retina of my eye.
The third act is the fate of Matryona (Evgenia Dobrovolskaya), which grows to the fate of the country. In the first act, it was Evgenia Dobrovolskaya who played the bird that sent military uniforms to the peasants, i.e. "The motherland is calling." In the final episode, the actress's monologue raises the performance to the level of a folk tragedy.
In the third act - two fashion demonstrations. Women's, where the folk costume, in all variations, remained true to the theme and red color. With one exception - mourning black. And the men's - at the very end of the performance, when men in khaki pants, according to a musical phrase, as if on command, put on T-shirts with different inscriptions one on top of the other. The inscription speaks of belonging and addiction to a group, an idea, a leader, a drink or a handful of apofigists. Just like the Baron in "At the Bottom": “It seems to me that all my life I have only changed clothes ... but why? ... and that's it ... like in a dream ... why? ... a?"
It suddenly seemed that
« Who lives well in Russia» - a performance about women, about their stoic immutability, and about men who come to death in search of happiness. And he is also talking about (I will say in the words of Nikolai Erdman):« into the mass of a degraded person» .Kirill Serebrennikov, like once Lyubimov, gathers like-minded people - and his students, and representatives of other theaters, and musicians, and artists, and singers. He invites Anton Adasinsky. Serebrennikov does not lean with the whole body of his talent on other people's points of view, does not crush them under him, but seeks his own point of view, working with and in the team.
Serebrennikov is a brilliant collage artist, he is the Russian theatrical Kurt Schwitters, who works with different layers of the performance. Here there is an overlay, and mixing, and transparency, when one theme, time, idea shines through another theme, time and idea. And not only themes - there is also a historical carnival with clothes from different times and social strata, and a musical mixture of folk, pop, classical and rock melodies from different periods. And here Serebrennikov, if not the heir of Lyubimov, then a direct conductor of the term that Lyubimov brought from emigration and was the first to use in Russia -
"Assemblage" .The layers in Serebrennikov's performance are the products of free associations on a given theme, that is, this is what the surrealists called automatic writing. He works with impulses coming from the subconscious. He is an inquiring medium, a contactee, and the play “Who Lives Well in Russia” is a channeling session for both actors and spectators. The answers come in the form of images. Theater - as a magical means of purifying a person, returning him to a state of innocence. What happens at the play "To whom it is good to live in Russia" is redemption by art.
February 9, 2017, 20:57Leaving the hall of the Gogol Center, I realized that I had seen something sweeping and immense. Exactly the same epithets could be used in relation to the Russian soul.
To prepare for the production of “Who Lives Well in Russia”, Serebrennikov arranged an expedition with his young actors to cities and villages, more precisely, to the native places of the author of the poem and its heroes. The purpose of the experiment is to exhale the air of the capital and inhale the air of fields, meadows and villages. Otherwise, people's Nekrasov cannot be understood by the mind of Moscow youth. I don’t know if this field study is the cause or just the talent of the Gogol Center troupe, but for my taste the performance revived the classics.
The action is divided into 3 sections.
The beginning of the first part, which is called "The Dispute", is a question familiar to anyone sitting at the school desk Who lives happily, freely in Russia? He will be answered by motley men, sitting on chairs, dressed in whatever they want. With a microphone, a narrator will walk between them, with his message and mannerisms more reminiscent of the leader of some kind of training or even an anonymous circle of the afflicted. And the lines he voiced are addressed to the hall:
In what year - count
In what land - guess
On the pillar path
Seven men got together...
The spectator chuckles. The viewer remembers school, a lesson in literature about Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov, a history lesson about the abolition of serfdom.
And on the stage at the microphone, an imposing girl already appears and starts a song. The program says it's Rita Krohn. All the judges of the Voice would have turned to her. She will be the decoration of the first part of the performance. 
On the stage, they will play tricks, play tricks, search for the truth, and poor men will be frank. Nikita Kukushkin, Ivan Fominov, Semyon Steinberg, Evgeny Sangadzhiev, Mikhail Troinik, Philip Avdeev, Andrey and Timofey Rebenkov love their roles, subtly capture the simple essence of the peasantry and convey the energy of rural prowess to the hall. 
The director's find was the warbler, speaking with Nekrasov in a human voice and promising the peasants a large ransom for her chick that fell into their hands. The stage does without birds. They are played by the youngster and his mysterious wanderer-mother, which is performed by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya. It will only be a seed for the viewer. The actress is wrapped in a black robe from head to toe, her eyes are hidden behind black glasses. Still, the acting power is palpable. Her grand exit will be yet to come, in the third part.
The entire first act has many nerve endings, but the main nerve is Nikita Kukushkin. The fact that this actor is a nugget and not of this world, I realized even when watching (M) student. 
You see it on the street, you'll think that this guy has been to penal colony, and if you see him on stage, you will be ashamed of such a judgment in appearance. 
I would say that he plays somehow in a Christian way, as if with an eye either on the Gospel, or on Dostoevsky.
And the audience cannot hold back the applause when he finishes the monologue to the master with the strongest refrain Everything is yours, everything is master's, in which a dangerous accusation is heard from one side, and humility and submission from the other:
Everything is yours, everything is master's -
Our old houses
And sick bellies
And we ourselves are yours!
The grain that is thrown into the ground
And garden vegetables
And hair on unkempt
Man's head -
Everything is yours, everything is master's!
And finally, the music. I would like to say a big respectful thank you to those who worked on the musical arrangement of the performance. This is so high quality that even if you blindfold everyone sitting in the hall, flowers will bloom in your ears. I'm sorry, but I can't help but list these names:
Keyboards and vocals - Andrey Polyakov
Drums - Roman Shmakov
Trumpet - Dmitry Vysotsky and Vladimir Avilov
Bass guitar, vocals - Dmitry Zhuk
Brilliant vocalists - Rita Kron (also a saxophonist) and Maria Selezneva performed “Where can I get such a song”, “Oh, I’ve got it, I’ve covered it”, “I look into the blue lakes”, “I am the earth”, “A snow-white cherry blossomed under the window ".
The musical composition with improvisation on “The House of the Rising Sun” (The Animals) was compiled by a post-graduate student of the Moscow State Conservatory named after I. P.I. Tchaikovsky Denis Khorov.
We leave at the 1st intermission. For entourage, you can pretend that you are in a buffet - go to the call of the refrigerator and make yourself a sandwich.
Call. Part two - "Drunk Night". It lasts a little for the viewer, about 25 minutes. The actors don't say a word. We will watch the choreography of drunken bodies. Anton Adasinsky, a well-known musician in certain circles, the founder of the DEREVO theater, an actor, was responsible for it (in 2011, he received a standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival for his Mephistopheles in A. Sokurov's Faust). But it turns out that he is also a choreographer. 
When I watched what was happening, I could not help but compare it with what I saw in 2013 in the Big Controversial Production Holy Spring. 
Chaos of movement and complete freedom of anatomical plasticity. Drunk men move to the a cappella singing of 7 girls. Thin and very pretty. Still, this is a musical event, and not just a performance. 
The music for this part was written by Ilya Demutsky - composer, conductor, performer, head of the vocal ensemble Cyrilique.
The second part is talented as brevity related to it. 
Spectators are escorted out of the hall to the 2nd and final intermission, while we go further behind the wandering men. In the third part, they arrange a "Feast for the Whole World."
Matryona (Evgenia Dobrovolskaya) will cover the tablecloth in front of them. True, even before the meal, they will turn to her with a question that torments them about happiness, since “It’s not all between men to find a happy one, let’s feel the women!” (feel = ask). At the beginning of her response, the men film Matryona on camera. The viewer, even sitting far away, sees on the screen at first the timid and puzzled face of a simple woman.
Dobrovolskaya's game is scalding. 
What Nekrasov put into Matryona's mouth is certainly poignant and tragic in itself. But it is one thing to read about this grief on the pages of a poem, and another thing is to see Matryona in front of you. 
Evgenia Dobrovolskaya authentically embodied the image of a humble outwardly, but from the inside, incinerated by the misfortunes of a village woman, and soulfully revealed to the peasants and spectators the bitter episodes of her life hidden in the depths of her memory, the most painful and tragic of which was the death of the infant son Dyomushka, whom the old grandfather did not look after, while Matryona was at the hayfield, and the pigs ate him. The curse that she sends to her offenders is torn deeper than from the throat. 
I thought that tears would spurt from my eyes like from a watering can, and those sitting in front of me would think that it was rain.
The moral of her confessional monologue is addressed to the peasants - it’s not good to ask a Russian woman a question about happiness:
And you - for happiness stuck your head!
It's a shame, well done!
Go to the official
To the noble boyar,
Go to the king
Don't touch women
Here is God! pass with nothing
To the grave!
Matryona's misfortune is black, but not everything is so gloomy in the third act. There are bright and fabulously beautiful costumes that women demonstrate
like on a podium. Why not Moscow Fashion Week? 
We do not always perceive the poem as something grandiose, but through the production of Serebrennikov you understand what an epic canvas Nekrasov wove. At school age, it was rare for anyone behind Nekrasov's sonorous, cheerful syllable to discern the scale of prose, and not poetry.
I was touched by Kirill Serebrennikov's care not only for the original text, but also for Nekrasov's special love for Russia:
You are poor
You are abundant
You are beaten
You are almighty
Mother Russia!
While writing this post, I realized that soon I will definitely go for the second time. This rarely happens to me, but here a lot coincided. And further. So far, the performance has become one of the leaders of what I saw in the Gogol Center. 
P.S. Above the hand did not rise to remember one fly in the ointment. But any praise is good when a pinch of criticism is added to it. I did not like at the very beginning of the 3rd part of the "going to the people" actors with a bucket of vodka and bread. They offered a stack to someone who would name the reason for their happiness. Well, that's overkill guys. You can do without these circus tricks.
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Photo by Ira Polyarnaya |
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Grigory Zaslavsky. "To whom in Russia it is good to live" in the "Gogol Center" ( NG, 21.09.2015). Elena Dyakova. . In the Gogol Center - "Who should live well in Russia" ( Novaya Gazeta, 09/18/2015). Anton Khitrov. . "Who in Russia should live well" in the "Gogol Center" ( TheatreALL, 19.09.2015). Vadim Rutkovsky.: Kirill Serebrennikov staged Nekrasov ( Snob., 21.09.2015). Olga Fuchs. ( Theatre., 23.09.2015). Alena Karas. . The poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" came to life in the Gogol Center ( RG, 24.09.2015). Xenia Larina. . The long-awaited premiere of the "Gogol Center" "Who Lives Well in Russia" turned out to be cheerful and creepy, as befits a Russian fairy tale ( The New Times, 09/28/2015). Maya Kucherskaya. . “Who in Russia should live well” staged by Kirill Serebrennikov - the story of the collapse of the “Russian world” ( Vedomosti, 06.10.2015). Marina Shimadina. Premiere of Kirill Serebrennikov's performance based on Nekrasov's poem ( Theatrical, 21.09.2015). |
Who in Russia live well. Gogol Center. Press about the play
NG, September 21, 2015
Grigory Zaslavsky
No vein not pulled
"Who should live well in Russia" in the "Gogol Center"
“Who Lives Well in Russia” is the first premiere of the Gogol Center in the new season. Yesterday they played the second one - "Russian Tales", which included both the classic "Turnip" and no less classic, but less known in Russia - from the collection "Russian cherished fairy tales", collected by the same Alexander Afanasiev, but published, as you know, Abroad. And “To whom it is good to live in Russia” is the very poem by Nekrasov, which is still being taught at school today and which, despite all the horrors of Russian life described in this epic poem, did not suffer from censorship. However, in the program, Kirill Serebrennikov is rightly named as the author of the play (as well as the stage director and set designer).
“In what year - count, / In what land - guess, / On the pole path / Seven men met: / Seven temporarily liable, / Tightened province, / Terpigorev district, / Empty volost, / From adjacent villages: / Zaplatova, Dyryaeva, / Razutova, Znobishina, / Gorelova, Neelova - / Crop failure, too, / Agreed - and argued: / Who has fun, / Is it free in Russia? / Roman said: to the landowner, / Demyan said: to the official, / Luka said: to the priest. / Fat-bellied merchant! - / The Gubin brothers said, / Ivan and Mitrodor. / The old man Pakhom strained / And he said, looking at the ground: / To the noble boyar, / To the sovereign's minister. / And Prov said: to the king ... ”- these very words from the prologue of the epic Nekrasov's poem the performance begins. No, it's wrong. The performance begins with a look at the stage, on which there are uncomfortable, heavy school chairs, with metal legs and an inclined back, from end to end of the stage from right to left, a pipe of an unknown “gas pipeline” or heating main runs, so often even in Moscow crawling out to the surface. Above the wall, which will later open up the entire depth of the stage, but for now - marking another obstacle behind the pipe, barbed wire twisted in rings sparkles. In one place, however, a carpet was laid out right on the pipe. But in general, you think, there is a well-arranged space for talking about who in Russia has a good life. This is where the men come from different villages, all of them are recognizable types. The picturesque old man Pahom (Timofei Rebenkov) can’t make up his mind in any way, rushing about with his thoughts from the boyar to the minister and back ... When, after the question “about whom”, there is a pause, a slight chuckle runs through the hall: looking at these peasants, it is clear that they will now be confused in answers, since they have nothing to say about themselves in this respect. None of them, for sure. Everything - "according to Nekrasov."
The new play by Kirill Serebrennikov has a very rare quality of today's theater - there is no fuss in it. Kirill Serebrennikov's various experiences of the last difficult months were not reflected in it in any way - about the absent director, various other difficulties. It could be assumed that in response, wanting to prolong the life of the theater, he would do something distilled, “quiet” or, conversely, give out something so scandalous (Nekrasov just gives reasons for this!) That will allow him to slam the door loudly . The play has neither. It contains not a prudent, but a very natural combination of the horror of Russian life, told by Nekrasov, and the beauty of Russian folk intonation - music, melodies ... to live ... Those who read the poem, probably noticed how Nekrasov, who felt and well imitated the melody of a folk song, moved from naturalism and physiological outline over the years towards symbolism that was not yet announced. In the lyrics of the late Nekrasov, this movement is very noticeable. And “To whom it is good to live in Russia” is the last thing he managed to write, the last lines were written a few days before his death.
“Who Lives Well in Russia” is a large three-act performance that ends at about 11.00, but it looks easy ... Well, as far as one can talk about lightness when it comes to - almost without exception - bleak, terrible, tragic things. Serebrennikov, one might say, returns pure, genuine tragedy to the stage, not relieved by any irony, self-irony or reservations. In the third part - "A Feast for the Whole World" - the weight of the tragedy is taken and carried by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, to whom the director gives the role of the peasant woman Matryona Korchagina. The very story of this half-woman-half-boy in sexless ski pants is terrible, terrible - to deathly silence in the hall, to the point of fading, but the outstanding (in this scene there is no doubt about that) dramatic and even tragic actress is not left alone with the public. Her story is simultaneously in dialogue with the dreary, drawn-out song of Marina Poezzhaeva. In this scene, in general, a lot of things were invented, a lot of things - but nothing superfluous. When Matryona is just beginning the story, the camera is adjusted, and we see her face in close-up on the screen, and the initial almost stupid joy of the peasant woman “giving an interview” does not immediately allow us to realize the horror of her story. Behind her is a table and loaves of bread, which she divides among the peasants - a completely religious and mystical scene of communion with her inhuman suffering, her and - Him.
In “To whom in Russia ...” Serebrennikov again works with the composer Ilya Demutsky, who wrote the music for “(M) Pupil”, and recently for the ballet “A Hero of Our Time”, here Demutsky is again the author of ballet music for the second act of “Drunk Night ”, on which the director-choreographer Anton Adasinsky worked with Serebrennikov, in which a drunken round dance instantly transforms into a terrible cancan, and the round dance is the same extreme and scary ballet. More about the musical side of the performance: Serebrennikov tries different keys, and, I must say, the iambic trimeter of the poem sounds good, both when it is “tested” by Russian rock, where the guitar strings are tried to break, and when it sounds like rap, and jazz harmonies to Nekrasov verse - also in suit.
There is a lot of different things in the performance, farcical, kaleidoscopic, as Nekrasov drapes for the time being with the farcical intonation and variegation of conversations, hides the hopelessness of the local "road movie", the fundamental misfortune of the peasant, and in meaning - any other life "in Russia". Because no one in the city or somewhere up there can consider himself happy if this happiness is built on such tragic "bones". “Who in Russia…” is a very beautiful performance, where, when the men, to the refrain of the women’s choir “There is no death…”, go into the streams of water illuminated by theatrical light, you inevitably recall Bill Viola’s “water” series. And the exit of the “drunks” to the public before the start of the second part, as well as before the start of the third - the exit of two “muzhiks” into the hall with a bucket of vodka and asking the audience to tell about their happiness, following the director’s intention, diversifies the action, but does not relax.
Novaya Gazeta, September 18, 2015
Elena Dyakova
Matrenin yard from Perm to Taurida
In the Gogol Center - "Who should live well in Russia"
The performance by Kirill Serebrennikov came out exactly on time. This is important: neither another change of management, nor oral and printed rumors about the theater's economic difficulties prevented the Gogol Center from opening the season with a premiere.
Three-part. Three o'clock. Multi-genre and patchwork - like Nekrasov's poem itself. By the way: no one before the Gogol Center has tried to put it on the dramatic stage.
The set designer is Serebrennikov himself. A blank wall with thorny curls of thorns on top replaces the backdrop. Across the stage, a gas pipeline shines with a warm glow of people's well-being.
In the shadow of the chimney, there is a simple household of the Tightened Province of the Terpigoreva Uyezd: a sewing machine, an ironing board with a white office shirt, an old TV, a kitchen table, plaid shuttle bags, rugs - a parental blessing, a shortage of the 1970s.
In the coils of barbed wire on the backdrop, a poor white neon flashes, as in a roadside cafe, an advertising inscription: "Who in Russia should live well." And what's behind the wall? Unknown. But she, the wall (this is somehow immediately obvious) is not a prison wall. And ours, dear. It is we who sit behind her, keep the defense. It does not stand on the border of the state, but in our mind.
But in the world outlined by the wall, there is will-will. And seven men, a self-assembly with strong drinks under the pines, can freely roam there in search of meaning.
The “muzhiks”, the young actors of the “Seventh Studio”, are, of course, not the peasants of the 1860s. Their gang moves around the stage smoothly, like an artel of barge haulers. At the same time, everyone has their own type and character: a security guard, a shuttle, an “individual entrepreneur”, covered with the first gloss of well-being, a slicker, a sucker ... And one more thing - grinned, forever uncertain that he is respected.
And yet - a bespectacled man in a T-shirt with the inscription "THIS SOCIETY'S DAYS ARE NUMBERED" and a pioneer tie.
... But their wives are all alike: long-legged beauties in stale flowered flannel robes.
The world is quite recognizable. The world is native to the edge. And somehow, in his own way, he is comfortable on stage.
« The whole poem by Nekrasov, written after the abolition of serfdom, asks questions of freedom and slavery. It is about the impossibility of gaining freedom and the convenience of habitual slavery.”, - writes Kirill Serebrennikov, anticipating the premiere. The first part of the performance - "Dispute" - is all about this. The Nekrasov episode "The Foundling", in which the liberated peasants of the aged Prince Utyatin ecstatically, biliously, deceitfully, with a foolish trick continue to play serfs to console the old master (the Petersburg heirs-guardsmen promised to give water meadows to the "Opchestvo" if the priest dies happy without learning about reform of 1861), - grows on the stage of the Gogol Center into a real bestiary. Again - a bestiary, native to shiver.
The false burgomaster Klim (Nikita Kukushkin), who is ready to steer this farce (a serious man will not undertake such a thing), the hungover rebel Agap (Evgeny Kharitonov), the “peace”, outgoing poison, laughter, gossip, but habitually playing “faithful slaves” in the aspirations of the future benefits, the "young elite" of the princes Utyatins, favorably watching the sycophancy of the courtyards (in fact, legally, they have long been free people). Nekrasov’s lines, biting like rods, and a stately blond beauty in the costume of the Snow Maiden (Rita Kron), who sings at the footlight in a deep chest voice “I look into the blue lakes ...”, surrealistically accurately inscribed in this nonsense.
Russia burned, Russia unfaithful, Russia, always ready to bow down to the ground - and take out a knife in a bow from behind the top. Russia, in which Nekrasov himself sometimes seems to be a character of the same bestiary (who will call our crowd to the ax without a popular intercessor?!).
... Nevertheless - the first act of a long performance flies by in one breath.
Part two - "Drunk Night". There are no words here: only a choir of girls in black, with half-mourning, half-kupala wreaths on their heads, sings vocalises to the fragments of Nekrasov's lines: hungry, dear, hungry... with Nekrasov into a terrible plastic study, into Russian purgatory. The artel of actors from the Seventh Studio, the company of free truth-seekers from Zaplatov-Dyryavin-Razutov-Znobishin turns into a single, strong and exhausted, half-naked body, to which even a mortal shirt is not given: only ports!
Whether this is a famine - but not Nekrasov, but the Volga region, 1921, one of the most terrible. Or a camp bath. Or lumberjack. Either a execution ditch, a foundation pit, Chevengur, infantry with three-rulers under machine-gun fire. Or the fresco "The Last Judgment" in the village church. Pine trees are felling here in the hellish frost. Here the dead are carried out on bent backs. Here they are tormented silently, ridding all the people of the merry sin of half-drunk servility and the insane holiday of rebellion.
... In the third act - enlightenment comes. He is wearing a padded jacket, rubber boots and a scarf.
Matrena Timofeevna, the mother of the innocently murdered baby Demushka and five living sons, a Klin peasant woman nicknamed the Governor, is played by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, one of the best actresses of the Moscow Art Theater. He plays, making Nekrasov's poetic monologue as natural as breathing. Humanizing the gang of wanderers with their story: they wipe away a tear and sniffle, listening, they take heavy faience plates of cabbage soup from Matryona's hands, pour a stack for the hostess, cut a loaf. And here every gesture is recognizable: what Russian did not sit at such a table? And the black-and-white video of Matryona's story about her youth does not accidentally look like a "severe style" movie of the 1960s.
It’s not that “it’s good to live in Russia” ... It’s more about the fact that a village cannot stand without a righteous man. And if ours - from Perm to Taurida - stands against the sky on earth - the reason for this is Matrenin Dvor.
... Strange people cross it in Kirill Serebrennikov's Nekrasov dream. Beauties in Russian costumes, in kichkas and embroidered shirts of museum beauty, take out stacks of good-quality colored shirts, serve with a bow to the peasant truth-seekers. But this is not the needlework of the Frog Princess.
The men unfold and put on themselves - in seven layers - T-shirts with pictures. Of those that hang on every resort, bazaar, railway station tray throughout Russia. Here are polite people, and the Hedgehog in the fog, and beer with vodka, and fishing with a bathhouse, and a church with a cross, and an ax with a kolovrat, and Vysotsky with the signature "It's not like that, guys," and President Putin with the slogan "It's for you NATO?”… “Russian means sober”, “Call Russia to the ax”, “I don’t remember insults - I write them down”…
Everything that we carry from the market instead of Belinsky and Gogol. And now instead of my lord foolish.
All that - incompatiblely motley, but somehow tightly packed in almost every head - protoplasm, which slowly sways in the brains of the entire population of the Terpigorev district.
And no one seems to know which enzyme in this mixture will be the most important for synthesis.
... And who will try to catch Russophobia in the patchwork quilt of this performance (with all its brocade, matting, soldier's cloth and barbed wire) ... he, gosh, did not live in Russia.
I didn’t talk on the train with fellow travelers. Did not stand on the pioneer line. He did not tell jokes about Brezhnev. I didn’t eat naval pasta - spaghetti bolognese performed by midshipman Zhevakin. I did not go to the small-scale wholesale market for Poshekhonsky cheese and stationery. I couldn't swallow as I watched my parents watch 1960s black-and-white movies on TV.
And for sure - I didn’t pass at Nekrasov’s school.
TheaterALL, September 19, 2015
Anton Khitrov
Fall in love with Nekrasov
"Who in Russia should live well" in the "Gogol Center"
The new performance by Kirill Serebrennikov, which will become the headliner of the Territory festival, is by far the director's biggest victory as artistic director of the Gogol Center.
Kirill Serebrennikov began working on Nekrasov's poem more than a year ago: in the summer of 2014, he traveled around the Yaroslavl region in the company of his former students from the Seventh Studio and artists of the oldest in Russia Volkov theater(it was planned that the production would be a co-production of two theaters; the Gogol Center had to release the premiere alone, but Muscovites expressed their gratitude to their Yaroslavl colleagues). The actors interviewed farmers, librarians, district police officers, went to museums and prepared excerpts from the poem. Every evening a group showed a small sketch. One of them even entered the play, but in fact Serebrennikov pursued a different goal: he wanted to try different approaches to Nekrasov with the artists and reject dead-end tricks in advance.
Maybe even then the director was sure that “Who is living well in Russia” is a text to which it is not enough to pick up any one key. Serebrennikov, one of the art directors international festival“Territory”, an artistic director who is well aware of the most diverse areas of modern theater, demonstrates his man in opera, drama, ballet in new job unprecedented genre diversity. There has never been anything like it in his career - except perhaps for "A Midsummer Night's Dream": this Shakespearean performance consisted of four short stories with different atmospheres. And yet the latest premiere is much bigger. Here are stylish European directing with video cameras, and rude political satire, and opera, and physical theater, and unscrupulous acting improvisation, and even the good old "Russian school" with feelings.
The director-choreographer of the performance is none other than Anton Adasinsky, the creator of the avant-garde theater "Derevo". His contribution is especially noticeable in the second, plotless act, based on the chapter "Drunk Night": wet, half-naked men perform a wild, brutal dance, accompanied by a choir and a live orchestra. It's hard to believe that after the intermission, the same artists will run around the hall with a bucket of vodka and offer a drink to anyone who can convince them that he is happy.
Nekrasov does not indicate either the place or the time: the poem, as we know from school, begins with the lines "In what year - calculate, in what land - guess." Serebrennikov has even less specifics. If "Idiots", "(M)student" - his performances of the period of the "Gogol Center" - clearly referred to the "here and now", then in the new work the signs of modernity are combined with the realities of tsarist Russia. Nekrasov has all seven representatives of the people who are looking for a happy person in Russia - peasants, peasants; the director, realizing that the farmers have long ceased to be the majority, makes them people of different social groups - here are both "creakles" and proletarians from the conditional Uralvagonzavod. It is clear that they get along badly - but Nekrasov also described skirmishes and fights between his heroes.
In search of happy compatriots, a motley company learns about various curious, absurd and terrible cases, of which Serebrennikov staged four: “Judas sin” by the headman Gleb, who sold his fellow villagers; the revenge of Jacob the faithful, an exemplary serf, to his cruel master, expressed in suicide in front of the offender; an unusual deal between peasants from the village of Vakhlachin and the heirs of their madcap landowner; the terrible life of a peasant woman Matrena Timofeevna Korchagina. Matrena is played by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, who has absolute control over the stage for at least fifteen minutes, and for this role she will most likely be awarded the Golden Mask.
AT last years Serebrennikov is his own production designer; and, as an artist, he gives a simple, intelligible solution: on the stage - an oil pipeline and a fence with barbed wire, two reasons why someone in Russia lives well, and someone not so much. However, as a director, he does not separate the “people” and “power”, the exploited and the exploiters: the actor playing the master will become a serf in the next story, and the peasant, on the contrary, will be the master. Nekrasov wrote the poem shortly after the abolition of serfdom, and the worst of all that he describes is voluntary, not forced slavery. In one of the most terrible chapters, the heirs of a wealthy landowner promise land to the peasants so that they pretend to be serfs and not upset the sick old master - and free people they gladly accept the offer: in the corresponding episode of the performance, the young artists of the Gogol Center dress up as Soviet pensioners, causing understanding laughter from the audience.
In life literary work there are turning points, and perhaps the premiere at the Gogol Center will be one for Nikolai Nekrasov's poem, which lost the interest of readers due to the fact that the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government took it into their own hands. The point is not only that Nekrasov (it turns out) wrote about the choice between freedom and sausage, about domestic violence and women's rights, the point is in his very style.
Nekrasov's poetic language turned out to be surprisingly flexible: at the behest of the director, the verses began to sound like everyday speech, and like an oratorio, and even like hip-hop. Dobrovolskaya, who plays an old peasant woman, apparently watched a lot of interviews from various ethnographic expeditions - in any case, the poetic rhythm does not in the least prevent the actress from reproducing the characteristic "village" intonations. The prologue familiar to everyone - the one where “seven men converged on a pillared path” - Serebrennikov decides as a talk show, breaking it into replicas of the host and guests of the program: Nekrasov easily allows such an operation to be performed on himself. The classic gives composers Ilya Demutsky and Denis Khorov no less opportunities than a director with artists: musically, this premiere is even more diverse than those going on the same stage " Dead Souls» Serebrennikov with hit songs by Alexander Manotskov. There is a performance for every taste - from classical choral singing to pop music. The artistic director of the Gogol Center, among other things, did a good service to the classics, about whom everyone has forgotten - isn't this what connoisseurs and defenders of Russian literature should do?
Snob., September 21, 2015
Vadim Rutkovsky
Circus, cabaret, tragedy:
Kirill Serebrennikov staged Nekrasov
"Gogol Center" opened the season with the premiere of the play "To Whom in Russia to Live Well" according to a friend from the middle school age poem. Interpretation Russian classics, proposed by an outstanding domestic director, does not fit into the Procrustean box of the school curriculum.
The first naive thought: is Nikolai Nekrasov's poem really so interesting - both scary and funny, a fairy tale in an embrace with a physiological essay, a pamphlet - with lyrics? Is that her? Did we study fake at school? Not a fake, of course, but a greatly reduced version that flew past the eyes and ears. Yes, I remember both the miserable and the plentiful, powerless, all-powerful Mother Russia, but here is the burning story of the “happy” village woman Matryona about her son Demidushka, eaten by pigs and opened up as part of the investigation (“and they began to tear and plast the white body”), from the last Soviet schoolchildren were definitely hidden. And the whole text, in fact, was hidden behind bureaucratic formulations, selective quoting and a haze of omissions.
Second thought: it is strange that bureaucrats, at least in words, propagate Russian classics, but it’s high time to leave only Tolstoy’s “Filipok” in public use (and only “Resurrection” - under a barn lock), because the classics were not distinguished by either political correctness or chivalry . And the beginning of the performance/poem, where seven men come together, arguing, "who lives happily, freely in Russia", decided as a political talk show. Chekist-trained narrators-investigators (Ilya Romashko and Dmitry Vysotsky) attach numbers-badges with names to the participants and insistently extort: “To whom?”. About poor Prov (Philip Avdeev), the youngest and most courageous, the one who said: “To the Tsar!”, wears glasses and a T-shirt “The days of this society are numbered”, is forgotten all the time (and when they remember, they immediately break their nose). Luka's answer (Semyon Steinberg): "Ass!" - in the light of the inexorable merging of the state and the church, they are hushed up. This is very funny - and excellently invented: Serebrennikov creates a dramatic miracle, turning Nekrasov's dense, massive, like a guitar sound wall in the songs of "Civil Defense" into an essay, as if specially written for the theater - distributes the text into roles, without changing a word, exclusively placement of accents and intonations. There is a lot of singing in the performance (both the lines of the poem and borrowed songs - in particular, Russian folk songs and patriotic stage of the times of the USSR), but the whole sound range flows like music. And every hero, even people - men Roman (Ivan Fominov) and Ivan (Evgeny Sangadzhiev), Pahom (Andrey Rebenkov), Demyan (Nikita Kukushkin) and Mitrodor (Mikhail Tee), even fabulous creatures - Bird (Evgenia Dobrovolskaya) and Little Bird ( Georgy Kudrenko) is a detailed and witty thought-out character. But if you choose the main role in this ensemble performance, then it will belong to Evgenia Dobrovolskaya - she is given the meaning-forming monologue of the third act, the story of Matryona.
In terms of style, this is perhaps Serebrennikov's most uninhibited and unpredictable performance; contrasting with respect to the rhythmically homogeneous poem; steep hills or, if you use the images of Nekrasov, a self-assembled tablecloth. The first act, "The Dispute", is a dashing but relatively traditional staging with elements of cabaret, a genre that the director tried out in the Moscow Art Theater "Zoyka's Apartment". The parade of Soviet songs begins with the arrival of the peasants in the land of master Utyatin; “now the order is new, but he is fooling around in the old way”: there are children who are afraid that the father-tyrant will deprive them of their inheritance, “take it and blurt out to the gentleman that the peasants were ordered to turn back the landowners.” A brilliant stage move illustrates the return to the old days - the men change into clothes that I have already forgotten about: mohair scarves, muskrat hats - from which wardrobes were they pulled out? And the meeting with the magic tablecloth ends with dressing up in khaki: self-assembly sends armed men to war - and in this courage there is, of course, a painful reference to the war in Ukraine, but there is also a timeless snapshot of a male fighting spirit, eternal as the world; a metaphor akin to the one used by Vadim Abdrashitov in the "Parade of the Planets" - his heroes went to military training, and found themselves neither far, nor close, nor high, nor low, in a surreal space where a man is looking for himself - "what a bull": “having argued, we quarreled, having quarreled, we had a fight, having a fight, we decided not to go apart, not to toss and turn in the houses, not to see our wives, or the little guys, or the old men, until we find a solution to our dispute.”
The second act, "Drunk Night", is preceded by a riot of heroes who received coveted buckets of vodka from the warbler: during the intermission, the guys rampage in the hall, bullying the seated spectators - as the "beggars" once did in the Moscow Art Theater production of "The Threepenny Opera". The action itself, on the contrary, is majestic, strict, ascetic: here the poem turns into an oratorio (the composer of this part is Ilya Demutsky, who worked with Serebrennikov on the recent premiere of the Bolshoi Theater, the ballet A Hero of Our Time, the original music for the other two actions was written by Denis Khorov ) and plastic performance. Declared in the program as “Women”, the actresses in evening dresses sing - and the lines of “Soldier's” become a refrain: “The world is sick, there is no bread, there is no shelter, there is no death.” "Men", dressed in underwear, plunge into a painful bodily trance (the choreographer of the performance is the legendary Anton Adasinsky, the creator of the "Derevo" theater).
The third act, "A Feast for the Whole World" is a slap in the face of good taste: it begins with a crude circus, smells of vodka and is generous with desperate clowning. And it is precisely from this multi-colored rubbish that a high tragic episode is born - a long, terrible, heartbreaking and soulful story by Matrena (an outstanding work by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya), entering into a dialogue with drawn-out and bitter Russian songs (a wonderful young actress Maria Poezzhaeva demonstrates a remarkable vocal gift)
And in the finale - contrasting, sharp, one could say “knocking down”, if the audience in the theater weren’t already sitting (by the way, the production is so exciting that you forget how hard the chairs are in the Gogol Center) - they sound in a row two songs by Yegor Letov. The bravura "Motherland" (of which the author himself spoke as follows: "This is one of the most tragic songs that I composed. A song about how the motherland rises from its knees, which, in fact, does not exist, which is not something that rises from its knees, but it gets bogged down in an unprecedented asshole deeper, and tighter, and more hopeless. And at the same time, singing about how the homeland is rising is very powerful"). And sounding like a pistol shot, "The bullet will find the guilty one." The heroes, frontally lined up along the stage in a row, put on dozens of T-shirts - that kitsch rubbish that littered the souvenir tents of new Russia, with stormy prominences popular consciousness- from "the most polite president" to "a belly belly is better than a hump from work." Is this satire? Bitterness? mockery? The beauty of the ugly? Just beauty? Who lives - a damned rhetorical question; even a hundred iron shoes stop, but you will not reach the answer. And if you still try to define the genre of a polyphonic performance in one word, then this is not a quest in search of an answer, but a portrait of the country. With unofficial, but root, innate as a blood type, patriotism. Woven from the struggle of stylistic opposites, from horror and joy, pain and hops, Vano Muradeli and Yegor Letov.
Theatre., 23 September 2015
Olga Fuchs
Happiness - where is it?
Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" is a school program, it is held in high school, when teenagers are by no means interested in Russia after serfdom. I do not remember that any of the adults, poisoned by school didactics, voluntarily returned to this text. stage history the poem does not seem to have quite. Nevertheless, when the Gogol Center announced this production, there was a feeling that the idea lay on the surface. But no one, except Serebrennikov, took it.
Russia - darkness, endless and boundless captivity, inexorable fate, shadows of the past, absurdity and pain, old songs about the main thing and new songs about the eternal - this is the cross-cutting theme of Kirill Serebrennikov's work. "Forest", "Petty Bourgeois", "Dead Souls", "Gentlemen Golovlevs", "Yuriev's Day", "Kizhe" in various ways proved how inexhaustible it is. Most of the rehearsals took place not in the rehearsal room, but on a trip around the Yaroslavl region - to the places where the Nekrasov estate Karabikha was located, to the modern villages of Razutov, Neelov and Neurozhayki, among the descendants of Nekrasov's characters. Serebrennikov and his actors were looking for stage authenticity, like the early "artists", Dodin's "brothers and sisters", Shukshin's "freaks" of Alvis Hermanis - in a word, those for whom theater is a process of learning. But the performance of Kirill Serebrennikov, of course, is not limited to authenticity, it sweeps away any genre restrictions, including everything: documentary accuracy, political satire, online shooting, oratorio, modern dance, methods of psychological theater, performance - a whole anthology of the new theater is being published.
The musical score of the performance is as multi-layered as the dramatic one: from the repertoire of Lyudmila Zykina performed by the colorful and vociferous Rita Kron to the crystal oratorio by Ilya Demutsky. The score is also built for numerous dressing up - from underwear to luxury haute couture a la russe (costume authors Polina Grechko and Kirill Serebrennikov). The code for this ready-to-wear is the rhythmic dressing of actors in T-shirts with various symbols: “polite” Putin flickers on a pink background, Lenin on a red one, “Russian means sober”, Che Guevara, “The days of this society are numbered”, “ I don’t remember insults - I write them down”, “Happiness is where?” - all that thrash mix that boils in the heads of our poor compatriots. The views of the population change easily, like T-shirts with symbols: he was a special officer - he became Orthodox, he was a nobody - he became everything.
The first layer of this multi-layered performance is the most relevant, peppered. Head-on collision with today. Having also acted as the stage designer of his performance, the director led Her Majesty the Pipe (with oil, with gas?) across the stage - the ridge modern Russia. The dwellings of Nekrasov peasants are molded to it - in fact, not even dwellings, but places around televisions. In the first scene, the peasants turn out to be participants in a talk show, the host of which (Ilya Romashko) asks a provocative question: who lives happily, freely in Russia. The peasants reluctantly mumble their name and version of the answer into the microphone: to the boyar, to the noble dignitary, to the fat-bellied merchant ...
On the answer “popu”, the presenter stumbles and prefers not to repeat the seditious answer aloud - well, how they will be attracted for insulting the feelings of believers. And he is clearly in no hurry to approach the frail bespectacled man for an answer - he feels that this subject was called in vain. He feels correctly: the bespectacled man silently pulls up a crumpled poster with his answer - "to the king." He will be beaten more than once by his comrades in misfortune: for swearing at the sacred - they understand everything about local crooks and thieves, but they don’t want to pull the thread further. True, the intellectual has nowhere to go - he has no other people, and, with a bloody nose, he trudges along with everyone, fascinated by the great goal - to find at least one lucky person in Russia.
Scorched by the "television truth", the peasants return home, where their wives are waiting for them, ready to throw off their shabby robes at the first call of their husbands. But, hurt to the quick, the husbands no longer look at the women, but ardently look into the distance - they change their worn clothes for a brand new camouflage and even raise the flag of the DPR: the soldiers of the "Russian world" are again running from the ordinary, again reaching out for a ghostly goal - whether to make others happy, whether to find a happy one. And pave the road to hell with more good intentions. However, this is perhaps the most controversial point - after all, it is not easy to put an equal sign between the epic peasants of Nekrasov and today's separatists.
Having paid tribute to topicality, the performance in the second act breaks out into Russian space - into the enchanted realm of being-drinking, frozen for centuries (chapter "Drunken Night"). The ugly pipe, surrounded by barbed wire and overgrown with everyday rubbish, disappears, everything remains - only emptiness, height, angelic voices for Ilya Demutsky's chorale (this is their second work with Serebrennikov after "A Hero of Our Time") and the plasticity of floating in airless space, freed from gravity of bodies (choreographer Anton Adasinsky). “There is no death,” the angels admonish the drunken men. Of course not - after all, it is not known whether there was life.
The performance flies like a kite, now falling to the ground, then soaring up. The story of the terrible revenge of the lackey of the exemplary Yakov the faithful, who hanged himself in front of the formerly adored gentleman-offender, is given in close-up: Serebrennikov's games with video projections coexist perfectly with the psychological theater and even more - give him a new impetus for development. The episode about Prince Utyatin, whose numerous offspring - golden youth - persuaded the peasants to continue playing serfs out of themselves (so that the old tyrant would die in peace) is staged as an eerie farce. Nekrasov's bitterness is perfectly projected today: the men agree to break the comedy and play slavery for a very reasonable price. The protagonist here is Klimka Nikita Kukushkin - a slob and a liar, rapidly turning from a dashing lumpen into a steel functionary, ready to step over any life.
And yet the center of the performance is the episode with Nekrasov's Matryona, a woman with many children, who suffered a lot, who survived the loss of her first child. Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, Anninka from Serebrennikov's "God Golovlyov" and Julitta from his own "Forest", plays in such a way that all her parts enter into a nuclear reaction: village intonations - with a poetic line, a powerful theater of experience with a conditional form, pain passed through yourself - with the delight of the game. To look at this is happiness.
Only a very free person could stage such a performance. Free from a lot. But from the wretched and plentiful, mighty and powerless Mother Russia, from the almost hypnotic feeling of the forces seething in her, he cannot free himself. And he doesn't want to.
RG , September 24, 2015
Alena Karas
Sang in the voice of Nekrasov
The poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" Comes to Life in the Gogol Center
The idea to compose a joint performance with the Yaroslavl Theater. Fyodor Volkov arose from Kirill Serebrennikov not by chance. Yaroslavl land is the birthplace of Nekrasov. And his never-ending lamenting poem, laughter-poem, verbatim-poem "Who should live well in Russia?" seemed to fall into the very heart of current Russian problems. Accompanied by enthusiasts and "stalkers", they walked through abandoned villages and amazing nature, past stunning museums and a broken, long-gone life.
We began, of course, with Karabikha, Nekrasov's homeland, and then moved deeper into the province. "Small towns - Rybinsk, Poshekhonye, Myshkin, the once rich villages - Prechistoye, Porechye, Kukoboy - still somehow barely live, but around them the space overgrown with forest, weeds, cow parsnip, where there is almost nothing else," - Serebrennikov said.
It might seem to many that the performance would move towards verbatim, documentary, dangerous conversations with those who now live there and are looking for an answer to the question of the Nekrasov peasants. Isn't it for this reason that the Yaroslavl Theater was dropped as a partner, and the Gogol Center eventually made the play on its own, releasing the premiere at the peak of the most disturbing talk about its future. But it turned out that Serebrennikov and his wonderful actors did not need any other text. Nekrasov's poem was more than enough for three hours of stage fantasies and adventures of the most outlandish nature, and from the expedition to Karabikha the actors also took out the material from Afanasiev's Forbidden Tales, at first planning to combine them with the poem. But these tales became the basis for another performance, which will become part of the dilogy about the "Russian world".
To adapt anew to the text, which since school days seemed like a boring part of the obligatory "program", to return to the theater the opportunity again - through all the Soviet and post-Soviet censorship, whatever it may be - to speak out, to play out a fairy tale, "soil", Nekrasov's rayek - is already a no small matter . It turned out that it was Serebrennikov, who always and only thought about Russia, who had already heard it through Prilepin's "thugs" and infernal mechanics " dead souls", through the "forest" characters of Ostrovsky and Gorky's "philistines", through the diabolical bureaucracy of erasing a person in Tynyanovsky's "Kizh", - only he managed to take up this outlandish "tug" and open new poetic worlds to the stage. Plowed by the theater, this amazing text sounded furious, frightening, hopeless and life-giving voices of the real, not composed life. Following not the letter, but the spirit of Nekrasov's poem, very different in its poetic and substantive structure, he divided the play into three completely different - including genre - parts.
In the first - "Dispute" - seven young actors of the Gogol Center meet Nekrasov peasants, try on them from the 21st century. The narrator - a kind of Moscow clever man, a resident of the Garden Ring - with amazement, repeating what accompanied the guys on their Yaroslavl expedition, discovers their unknown ... and familiar world. Here is a bespectacled dissident from all Russian swamp areas, here is a street robber, here is a martyr of slavery, here is a warrior. We recognize them in their quilted jackets and T-shirts, in their jeans and rags, in their camouflage of convicts and guards, always ready to go to the "bloody battle". They talk about the tsar in a whisper, about the priest and at all - with their lips, about the minister of the sovereign - with fear ... There is nothing to update here - the Nekrasov world endlessly reproduces itself in Holy Russia, repeating all the same words about the tsar and about the priest, and endlessly harnessing into a new yoke, a new strap of barge haulers.
Several stories keep this narrative on a tight nerve, and among them the strongest - "about the exemplary serf, Jacob the faithful", who loved his slavery more than anything else, until he was inflamed with hatred and hanged himself in revenge; and - the main - the last ones, about those who, for the sake of the sick master, continued to play serfdom, as if it did not end in 1864. This is the very state of the "Russian world" on the border between slavery and freedom, life and death, humiliation and rebellion, sin and holiness - following Nekrasov - and explores the Gogol Center.
Calling on the help of Anton Adasinsky with his expressive, passionate choreography, two composers - Ilya Demutsky (author of the ballet "Hero of Our Time") and Denis Khorov, dressing the actresses in incredible "Russian" sundresses "haute couture", arming them with saxophones and electric guitars, folk - jazz compositions and folk choirs, the energy of pagan Russian melos and rock and roll, Serebrennikov turned Nekrasov's poem into a real bomb. When in the second - choreographic - act "Drunk Night" the bodies of men will be "sown" with the huge stage of the Gogol Center, open to the brick wall, and the magical girlish voices will howl their almost erotic mortal songs over this dead (drunk) field, it will seem that in the modern theater there is that same tragic spirit that has not happened for a long time.
In the third part, one soul stood out from the choral beginning - a female one - in order to turn a folk tragedy into a song of fate. Pouring vodka to the "peasants" Evgenia Dobrovolskaya - Matrena Timofeevna - returns the intonation of the great tragic actresses of the past to the Russian theater. At first, it even seems that this cannot be, that her soul-rending confession only plays tragedy - completely postmodernist. But after a few minutes there is no strength to resist the pain to which she gives herself entirely, and the strength of the spirit towering over her. Of course, this long confession will be replaced by a choral, rock and roll finale, will build its difficult relationship with Nekrasov's "Rus", sing - without embarrassment, backhand and seriously - his words about the "powerful and powerless", and it will seem that the army , which rises, is similar to Jacob the faithful, killing himself in his unknown strength and weakness.
The New Times, September 28, 2015
Xenia Larina
The legend of the Russian land
The long-awaited premiere of the "Gogol Center" "Who Lives Well in Russia" turned out to be cheerful and creepy, as it should be in a Russian fairy tale
Nekrasov in the Soviet school was "given" as a guardian for the people's happiness. “Here is the front entrance”, “Only one strip is not compressed”, “You share! - Russian, female dolyushka ”- all of this we dejectedly gundeli at the blackboard, rolling our eyes to the ceiling from boredom. “Who should live well in Russia” were held in fragments, focusing on civil pathos and a hysterical finale: “You are poor, You are plentiful, You are downtrodden, You are omnipotent, Mother Russia!” The meaning was not particularly read. Everything was explained to us in simple Party language. It was worth living to see the premiere of the Gogol Center to discover the true meaning and terrible abyss of this apocalyptic tale about the Russian people.
What will happen to the Motherland
Kirill Serebrennikov prepared his stage version for a long time: the upcoming expedition to Nekrasov's places was announced more than a year ago. The project was prepared jointly with the Yaroslavl Theater. F. Volkova - the premiere was to take place last May at the Cherry Forest, and Nekrasov was united with Afanasyev's fairy tales.
As a result, “To whom in Russia ...” was released to the public this fall without the participation of Yaroslavl residents, Afanasiev’s tales spun off into a separate parallel premiere “Russian Tales”, and Nekrasov fraternized with Yegor Letov (several texts of “Civil Defense” became part of the dramaturgical canvas).
And of course, one cannot fail to mention the proposed circumstances in which the Gogol Center team has been for several months now: leapfrog with the change of directors (the resignation of Alexei Malobrodsky and Anastasia Golub), endless financial checks and public suspicions of budget embezzlement, accusations of bullying over the classics, over the motherland and over the people - all this contributes little to a creative upsurge. The release of such a large-scale multi-story stage canvas in such conditions is an almost professional feat and Kirill Serebrennikov's answer to all accusations and suspicions.
“To whom in Russia…” is a highly patriotic performance. There is no arrogance, no chivalry, no hypocritical servility, no false sincerity in him. Answering the question “what will happen to the motherland and to us”, the author does not squeamishly step aside, he himself is part of this world, one of the seven men who dance their desperate dance in the dust of the road. And words are no longer needed, there would be strength for laughter and tears.
life on the pipe
“To whom in Russia…” is a genre melting pot into which everything that comes to hand is thrown: drama, ballet, opera, circus, popular print, defile, club party, rock concert. The performance is like a nesting doll, where all the sisters are from different parents. The rhythm is frantic and ragged, the orchestra wheezes with wind instruments and stumbles over drums, the pictures change, as in a fair performance: you don’t have time to look at one, as it is already replaced by the next, and it seems that there are hundreds more in stock (artist - Kirill Serebrennikov, composers - Ilya Demutsky, Denis Khorov).
"Rus, where are you rushing, give me an answer?" - not to notice the connection with " Dead souls”, staged by Serebrennikov in the same theater, is impossible. This is the same crazy road to nowhere, only instead of the tires that were used in the Gogol performance, here a huge gas pipe is stretched across the entire stage. On it, like on a Whale Fish, there are cities and villages, houses and apartments, where men in alcoholic T-shirts and women in flannelette dressing gowns sit by a flickering television box, kissing, then fighting. And no one notices that behind the pipe there is a wall up to the sky, and barbed wire winds along the wall.
The coveted tablecloth-self-collection will first feed and drink, and then distribute camouflage and machine guns - and well-fed drunk men, shining with pleasure and slightly swaying, line up in a picturesque group under a flag familiar from TV news. “The days of this society are numbered” - we read on the T-shirt of Prov from Neurozhayka - a frail hipster in glasses, who is beaten either by his own or by strangers.
Serebrennikov is often compared to Yury Lyubimov of the 1970s: they have in common the style of a direct statement, frontal metaphors, the energy charge of today, the street. Yes, of course, they are very close in tone: in Serebrennikov's apartments there is the same mockery that always bubbled in Lyubimov's performances when he addressed directly "them" - the rotten piles of the regime. But there is a major significant difference: the addressee has changed. And today it is much more important to talk with a person about a person than with the authorities about power. And Kirill Serebrennikov caught this most important change in the atmosphere of the time from the very beginning of his professional life in the capital - starting with Claudel Models by Vasily Sigarev and Terrorism by the Presnyakov brothers.
Everything goes according to plan
“To whom in Russia ...” is not a diagnosis, this is a path - painful, sweet, bitter, hangover. The path is destined, to which we are sentenced, in which we are harnessed, inscribed, rubbed. A path where doom borders on delight. If it is true that every talented director puts on one performance all his life, then Serebrennikov's "Rus" is a continuation of "Golovlyov" and "Kizhe" with their mystical horror, as well as the already mentioned "Dead Souls" and "The Golden Cockerel" with their popular prints. haze. In a word, this is a hard-won dialogue with the public, whom the director fully trusts. The three acts of the performance are absolutely self-sufficient and autonomous - both in terms of plot outline and genre solution. The grotesque plot from the chapter "The Last Child" - about how the peasants, released long ago, portray serfs in front of the mad master, Prince Utyatin, - returns to our century, revealing familiar Soviet motifs. The nostalgia of the collective Utyatin for the old days rattles with Soviet songs, pioneer ties, mohair scarves, fawn hats and fleece sweaters. Against the backdrop of drunken unshaven poverty, a bright symbol of a great power rises above the stage as a busty beauty with a blond braid and Zykin's piercing "I look into the blue lakes" (one of the performance's discoveries is actress, singer and musician Rita Kron).
The dramatic ballet of the second act (choreographer Anton Adasinsky) - "Drunken Night" - refers us to the images of Alexander Dovzhenko's silent poetic cinema in his "Earth": to naked bodies sweaty and black with dirt, to veins stretched from a silent scream, to bloody in crazy dancing feet, to the rain that poured too late, no longer capable of resurrecting anyone or anything on this scorched field. The second act is a woman's cry, a tongue torn from the bell, the clatter of bare feet on the dead, hungry earth.
The third act is greeted with the carelessness of a circus reprise: red clown noses, a man-horse, a bucket of vodka (“who lives happily”, they bring a glass to him). Devastated after the second act, the audience is relieved and ready to join the game.
But the center of the last action will be a performance within a performance: Matrena's monologue about her "happy" woman's lot, which Evgenia Dobrovolskaya masterfully performs - knocking down horror with humor, pathos - with details, grief - with humility, humiliation - with pride. Thus, another Russia appears before us - without fair-haired braids, kokoshniks and kichkas, without drawn-out soulful songs, without rosy cheeks, white-toothed smiles, without red boots and snow-white pads on the sleeves. Actually, that glamorous, ceremonial Russia does not exist and never has. There is only the abyss, slowly and menacingly rising from its knees. “To whom it is good to live in Russia” - these are the same eighty-six percent through the eyes of the fourteen remaining.
Vedomosti, September 6, 2015
Maya Kucherskaya
afterlife
“Who in Russia should live well” staged by Kirill Serebrennikov - the story of the collapse of the “Russian world”
The heroes of the play bear little resemblance to Russian peasants, but still do not oppose slavery and love vodka.
Once upon a time, Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov wrote the poem "To whom in Russia ..." - well, he almost wrote it, did not finish it - in which the Russian people came up with. Desperate, stubborn (“a man is a bull”), cocky, a lover of vodka and creepy stories about repentant sinners - but most importantly, many-sided. The poem absorbed dozens different destinies. Rhythms, vocabulary, images, the poet drew from folklore, but thought out a lot, finished singing himself.
Kirill Serebrennikov tried to do without inventions and stylization - and showed the people not Nekrasov, today. The one whose spirit, together with the troupe, he, preparing for the performance, was looking for last summer in the Yaroslavl region, traveling through towns, dilapidated villages, entering current houses, talking with people, local historians, priests - you can watch the footage of this trip during the intermission in the lobby "Gogol Center". And he showed who the Nekrasov Roman-Demyan-Luka-brothers Gubin-the old man Pakhom-i-Prov turned into in the 21st century.
In a guest worker in sweatpants, in a riot policeman in camouflage, in a fool-revolutionary with an eternally broken nose, in a hard worker with string bags, in a slob who barely spit out words. And everything seems to be on the same face. Universal lubrication instead of Nekrasov's variegation. Lumpens, semi-criminals, aggressive and lost, not needed by anyone. Not a fat-bellied merchant, not a landowner, not a tsar. Although sometimes they even try to drag them all out on TV - the scene of the argument that opens the performance is wittily presented as a talk show with the host (Ilya Romashko), who is trying to find out from the participants who is having fun, freely in Russia. But real boys are laconic.
The “boyish” style is also supported by the design of the performance, taking place against the uncomfortable background of the outskirts: a metal pipe sadly stretches through the wasteland, some plant thorns on the brick wall, the wasteland breaks into blackness. An eternal cold night stretches here, in the center of which is a bucket of vodka. The second part, "Drunk Night", a pantomime, picks up and makes the vodka motif the main one: it is a dead booze, a staged "squirrel" with convulsions of half-naked male bodies in the twilight, merging now into a terrible many-legged caterpillar, now into torn barge haulers. In the finale, lifeless corpses dot the same dark black wasteland (Anton Adasinsky was invited to choreograph the performance).
The appearance of the “peasant woman” Matryona Timofeevna (played by Yevgenia Dobrovolskaya) in the third part, dressed, of course, like a collective farmer - a quilted jacket, a scarf, boots - pushes this thick male darkness. Dobrovolskaya lives her completely unbearable "women's lot", the death of a child, the beatings of her husband, the shouts of her mother-in-law with a smile, incredibly humane and charming, drowning her grief not in wine - in work and love "for children". Her appearance adds an unexpectedly lively, warm tone to the pamphlet unfolding on stage. But soon everything is again drowning in rap, in the hopeless "Motherland" of Yegor Letov, again approaching dusk and empty slogans on T-shirts, which, as usual, change and change the characters in the last scene. Everything flashes on T-shirts, from Winnie the Pooh to a portrait of Vysotsky, from “Stalin is our helmsman” to “USSR” and “I am Russian” - all that remains of us today.
This vinaigrette supplanted what inspired Nekrasov 150 years ago, what inspired him with hope - a holistic folk culture, deep, multicolored, powerful. Now, instead of a life calculated according to the calendar, with baptism, weddings, funerals, prohibitions, joys, fairy tales, salty jokes, now we have this: T-shirts with vulgar pictures, a checkered shuttle bag, a computer monitor with a screensaver "It's glorious to live the people in Holy Russia." Instead of the songs that were sung by the whole village, there was a beauty with a scythe, giving out a verbal incoherence about blue and Russia, an incarnation of falsehood (her appearance caused bitter laughter in the hall for good reason). Instead of Grisha Dobrosklonov, the "people's defender", whom Nekrasov was the only one who made happy in the poem, there is a miserable bespectacled man, a white ribbon man, helpless, powerless.
One thing has not changed since Nekrasov's times: voluntary slavery and vodka. The heroes of the play "Last Child" played in the first part played along with the insane old landowner, who did not want to recognize the abolition of serfdom, and pretended that slavery continued. A seemingly innocent undertaking turned into the death of the peasant Agap - he tried to rebel, but, intoxicated, nevertheless agreed to lie under the whip for the sake of lordly fun. And although they didn’t even touch him with a finger, he died immediately after a joke flogging. I wonder why? This is not the only question we are asked to answer. Every scene bristles with topicality and ruthless questions about today.
The poem “Who Lives Well in Russia” staged by Kirill Serebrennikov is an artistic, but journalistic statement about our general downfall.
Theatergoer, September 21, 2015
Marina Shimadina
Who lives well in the Gogol Center?
Premiere of Kirill Serebrennikov's performance based on Nekrasov's poem
Despite financial difficulties and hassle with the absent director, the Gogol Center produced one of its largest performances, which was prepared for more than a year and even went on an expedition in the footsteps of Nekrasov's heroes. The Cherry Forest festival extended a helping hand to the theater; the premiere was held under its auspices and caused a long standing ovation from the audience.
“In what year - calculate, in what land - guess,” Ilya Romashko begins for the narrator. And you don’t need to be especially smart to guess that the action takes place not in distant tsarist Russia, but here and now. Although over the past century and a half, little has changed in our country: the peasants are still poor, greedy for vodka and quick to scuffle, and officials and priests are still with trump cards.
The meeting of the characters on the high road in the play turns into a talk show, where the frightened proletarians from Gorelov, Neyelov, Nurerozhayka also offer the presenter their answers to the title question of the poem. Some are huddled and shy, some are ostentatious and stubbornly stand their ground, and the hero of Philip Avdeev - a real hipster in sneakers and glasses - jumps on a chair with a homemade poster, as if at a solitary picket.
The answers of the men are still the same, Nekrasov's. And they are not at all in dissonance with the emphatically modern and concise design of Kirill Serebrennikov. The current symbols of Russia: a fence with barbed wire and a huge gas (or oil) pipe across the entire stage, near which the heroes of the poem huddle, equipping their simple dwelling. Everything here is painfully familiar: colorful dusty carpets, sewing machines, old TVs, flannelette robes of women trying to keep their husbands-truth-seekers at home ... But where is it. If a Russian peasant gets turned on, he can't be stopped. And now a motley company, having obtained a self-assembled tablecloth, turns into an armed detachment of militias.
However, Serebrennikov does not insist on just such a development of events. For each scene, the director selects a different key. The episode about the “exemplary lackey - Jacob the faithful”, who, unable to withstand the bullying, hanged himself in front of the master, is resolved as a duel of two close-ups. The camera shoots and shows on the screen the faces of the servant and the master, and in the expressive silence of Yevgeny Kharitonov, all the people's grief and the centuries-old chronicle of humiliation are read.
One of the main themes of the production is voluntary slavery. In the chapter "Last Child", the peasants again pretend to be serfs in order to amuse the old master, who does not accept the new order - the heirs promised the peasants a good sum for this deceit. In the performance for a masquerade, the heroes have to put on soviet mohair sweaters, sweatpants with outstretched knees, and a young hipster gets a school uniform with a pioneer tie. One must see his complex relationship with this heritage of the past: disgusting, disgusting, but the hand still stretches and freezes in a pioneer salute.
Here the audience, of course, will recognize their contemporaries, those who, with joy, voluntarily or forcedly, biting their lip, return to Soviet ideology and rhetoric.
But for all the obvious publicism, Serebrennikov's new performance is an aesthetic show, a free montage of scenes of different genres, where there is a place for farce reprises, and for a defile of enchanting costumes a la russe, and for inserted musical numbers by Rita Kron, who elegantly performs Soviet hits about mother Russia. And there is also a whole dance act to the music of Ilya Demutsky (the same one that he composed for the Bolshoi ballet “A Hero of Our Time”) directed by Anton Adasinsky. It is called "Drunk Night", like one of the chapters of the poem. But in the convulsions of bodies falling, trying to get up and again knocked down by invisible blows, one feels not so much the consequences of hops as desperate attempts to get back on their feet, which rhyme with the lines of Yegor Letov: “I see my Motherland rising from its knees.” No one can get up...
In the third act, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya reigns on the stage, invited from the Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov, quite justifiably. Perhaps no one except this interior actress could read a long and hysterical monologue about a difficult female lobe with such power and virtuosity. Before her game, the cameras with monitors, and the accompanying vocals of Maria Poezzhaeva faded into the background, and the hall was numb, as if spellbound. And this ruthless monologue eventually brought history to the level of a real folk tragedy.
The final solemn anthem of the poem "You are poor, / You are plentiful, / You are powerful, / You are powerless, / Mother Russia!" the director displays the titles on the screen. Apparently, today he could not justify on stage high words about a free heart, a calm conscience and an innumerable army too. Left on the conscience of Nekrasov. Instead, he forced the actors to put on a bunch of T-shirts with patriotic symbols and stupid jokes about polite people. Today, “the truth of the people” has turned into stereotyped slogans, a set of ready-made labels, stereotyped ideas about the world.
Serebrennikov and his actors produced a sober and bitter production about Russia, full of healthy anger, conscious stoicism and acting drive. And to the question “who is it good to live here?” can be answered with confidence - to the audience of the Gogol Center. While such bright and meaningful premieres are being released in Moscow, there is something to breathe here.
The new season at the Gogol Center was opened with a premiere played under the auspices of the Chereshnevy Les festival. Following Nekrasov, director Kirill Serebrennikov asked himself the question: “Who is living well in Russia?”. I was looking for the answer to it together with the actors. To begin with, they went on an expedition together to the places of life of the author and the heroes of the poem. The first stop was Karabikha - Nekrasov's estate.
Nekrasov wrote that he collected the poem "To whom it is good to live in Russia" "by word". Kirill Serebrennikov began to put together a production based on this poem from a trip with the troupe of the Gogol Center around Russia.
The director took the young artists to see how the country works and to fall in love - which is important! - its just like that. He says that in a comfortable capital one cannot understand this! They play here not about the peasants. Nekrasov's text was put into the mouths of today's heroes - a people who left a contradictory impression on travelers. Actually, like the author of the original source.
“This “quality”, this range - “you are poor, you are rich, you are poor, you are rich, you are terrible, you are beautiful” - the range of feelings, passions, human qualities - this is a very important property of Russia, and this is important for understanding Nekrasov,” director Kirill Serebrennikov is convinced.
Like Nekrasov, the performance was assembled from different parts, separate chapters. The principle of collage was reflected in the genre. Here and performance, and drama, and rock opera. The second part of the performance is called "Drunk Night". She is speechless. Built solely on choreography.
“We have left the history of “drunks”, we have left the history of vodka, we have left the history of a sinful man in a padded jacket - we have come to some other reality of this man flying over the world who wants happiness!”, explains the director-choreographer Anton Adasinsky.
The collective image of the “Russian woman” lay on the shoulders of Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, who was invited especially for this production. It is not the first time that Serebrennikov plunges headlong into experiments with the classics. The actress did not go on the expedition.
“I don’t have to travel around Russia. I know all this well enough. Nekrasov is a kind of poet, he wrote about the Russia that the guys just went and watched, and it turned out to be a wonderful documentary. But this is all unconscious and still in the blood, ”says Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, People's Artist of Russia.
Both the poem, written after the abolition of serfdom, and this performance are about freedom and slavery. About the choice that a Russian person makes. And about the “Russian world”, the boundaries and essence of which the creators of the play are trying to find. And to the sacramental question - "Who lives happily, freely in Russia" - they, like Nikolai Nekrasov, do not answer.
The production was staged as part of the Chereshnevy Les festival, on which occasion, for the first time in the history of the Gogol Center, I came to the performance as a white man, and in his own name (! - I still can’t believe it) got a place in the 7th row, however, he immediately moved to the 1st, since there were free chairs, although in small numbers. The extreme for me happened in a different way - the whole previous week I fell ill, somehow still moving my legs and trying not to miss the most significant events planned in advance, as a result, by the cherished date of visiting the Gogol Center, I left myself to the point that without I could hardly breathe exaggerations, and completely out of any connection with what was happening on the stage, I started bleeding in the third act - pleasant, of course, not enough, but, whatever one may say, it affects the general mood - the whole next after "Who lives well in Russia" I lay half-dead for a day and did not get anywhere at all. Nevertheless, I wanted to see Serebrennikov's performance, and it was worth watching, and I am pleased that I came, and moreover, I am glad that there were no excesses, I must admit, that I expected, because in the current state, the solution of problems of the organizational nature of the forces I certainly wouldn't have had enough.
The staging of Nekrasov's poem was prepared by Serebrennikov for a long time. The actors managed to travel "through Russia", make a documentary film based on the results of "immersion in the atmosphere of Russian life" (it was shown in some places, I did not see it, but I would like to think that this idea had little in common with "immersion" in the spirit of Lev Dodin and if not to the public in the end, then to its direct participants in the process really gave something). Nevertheless, "Rus" in the performance is presented more than predictably and differs little from the "Rus" that could be seen on the stage of the "Gogol Center" in scenarios adapted to local realities by Fassbinder, Trier, Visconti, plays by Wedekind and Mayenburg, as well as the dramatizations of Goncharov and - first of all, unequivocally - Gogol. Apparently, "Dead Souls" became at a certain stage for Serebrennikov the work that determined for a long time ahead not only the style with a set of very specific standard techniques, but also the worldview, ideological "format" of the director's relationship with textbook literary material. From the "classics" Serebrennikov subtracts - and this does not require serious intellectual labor, that's what the classics are for - timeless, archetypal, fundamental plots, images, motives - and then collects them into the author's composition of a conditionally mystical sense, where the characters and events of texts from school textbooks turn out to be not just phenomena eternal for Russian life, but reflections of entities and processes of non-everyday, non-historical, cut off from earthly human existence, taken out into space at the same time playful and mystical. This is what happened in The Ordinary Story:
The same is true in "To whom it is good to live in Russia" - in the three-part, three-act composition of the performance, one can see a reference to " Divine Comedy(which, by the way, Gogol was guided by in his original concept of "Dead Souls"), and to "Walking through the torments"; in the wanderings of Nekrasov's "muzhiks" they are accompanied, in addition to talking birds, by angels of mercy materialized from poetry, demons of rage, etc. etc., and in a context far from the fairy-tale-folklore coloring that they gave in the original source. True, where the "game" ends here and to what extent Serebrennikov is serious in his "mysticism" is an open question, yes, however, and not the most entertaining.
The structure of Nekrasov's poem "Who Lives Well in Russia" remains a topical textual problem, at least twenty years ago, when I was studying. During the life of the author, separate chapters were published, in what order they should be read now - since the 1920s there have been fierce philological discussions, the canonical version, as far as I know, does not exist to this day, and the fact that the poem in most publications ends with a chant dedicated to "downtrodden and all-powerful mother" (at school, students are also taught this way) - to put it mildly, it is debatable, since the internal chronology involves the distribution of material in accordance with the peasant labor calendar, from spring to autumn, respectively, from the chapters that Nekrasov managed to complete, the last one should follow "Peasant Woman". But as soon as Serebrennikov places the Nekrasov plot in a conventionally mystical context that exists outside of historical, calendar time, then he composes the episodes of the poem arbitrarily, sometimes pulling out individual microplots from one part and transferring them to another, but at the same time without violating the established, established by inertia perception of the structure of the text and observing the movement from the prologue to the song "Rus".
The prologue is played out in the spirit of student sketches - perhaps deliberately primitive, using the techniques of a television report, an interview, a clip: I would say that the beginning is not inspiring, too ordinary, predictable, secondary, and acting inexpressive, as if they had long passed from students as professionals, the performers decided to casually fool around. Next, the characters try on the same standard, already seen-re-seen in previous performances of the Gogol Center (and if only the Gogol Center) wardrobe - sweatpants, jackets, khaki overalls, flowered dressing gowns, taking out second-hand clothes. hand from also second-hand metal cabinets placed on the left side of the stage. And on the right, the musicians settled down, and I must say, the musical component of "Who Lives Well in Russia" is much more curious than the others. The music of Denis Khorov sounds in the first and third parts, in addition, Andrey Polyakov's musical composition uses arrangements of Soviet retro hits enchantingly sung by Rita Kron, for whom a suitable visual image of the official Soviet pop star was also invented.
In general, from the surroundings it is easy to conclude that the period of "serfdom" at the present historical stage in the performance refers to the Soviet years (everyday signs: carpet, crystal, pioneer ties ...), and the post-reform 1860-70s, when Nekrasov's poem was written, are interpreted as post-perestroika 1990-2000s (at that time, many, and not only men, but also university assistant professors and kindergarten teachers, were forced to acquire checkered bags and went not in search of happiness, but only for rags for resale). But the pipe with bridges thrown over it (either sewer, or oil and gas - it clutters up the stage throughout the first act) and the wall (either factory, or prison, or border) with barbed wire on top remain unshakable - the wall sometimes disappears, but arises again, and just on top of the barbed wire, the LED reads "Who in Russia should live well." And rugs-glasses, and a pipe with a wall - of course, signs, not even metaphors, not symbols, and it is impossible to read these signs "literally". It is unlikely that Serebrennikov and his former students do not know, well, or are unable to find out that Nekrasov uses the word "bucket" not in an objective sense, but as a unit of measurement of liquid - in the performance, an enameled bucket serves as one of the attributes of a theatrical game, paradoxically emphasizing the non-domestic the meaning of what is happening. Or in the words "there is no death, there is no bread" one cannot read that it is said here that there is no possibility to live, and death does not come, and not about the fact that outside the category of time and the category of death is irrelevant. Know, read. But they put their own meaning, even if it is opposite to the original source.
Such a highly theatrical, but in terms of the elements used everyday, mundane environment is invaded after the prologue solved by the "etude" method, the fabulous Chiffchaff and Little Bird. In the role of the Little Bird with a guitar - Georgy Kudrenko, a relatively new creation for the "Gogol Center", I saw him before "To whom ..." only in "Kharms. Myr" (and even earlier, but I can confuse - in "100% FURIOSO "on the Platform, where he walked around with a fake greasy smile and pasted stickers" do you want to play?, but maybe it wasn't him). In the role of Penochka, who gives the truth-loving peasants a self-assembled tablecloth, which was also not beaten in the performance, is Evgenia Dobrovolskaya. The appearance of Dobrovolskaya in the Gogol Center is natural - once, for a long time (time flies!) She participated in the recruitment of students for the Serebrennikov course at the Moscow Art Theater School, but did not have time to teach, she left to give birth. Now her “return” to the former supposed “pets”, as a nurse bird, is both gratifying and logical. But Serebrennikov perceives Penochka not through fabulous folklore symbolism - this is a poor old wanderer, a beggar, akin to that played by her, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, Timofeevna in the 3rd part, or maybe she is the very one. But in the 3rd part there will be a "defile" of symbolic girls "birds" in magnificent pseudo-Russian outfits as if from the collections of Slava Zaitsev, which by the final appearance of Dobrovolskaya will lead her real, unhappy, drinking Timofevna out of the social and domestic plan to the given performance as a whole mystery. Despite the fact that, like the 1st, the 3rd act starts with a frank student skit, with "two-piece" horses and with interactive: the audience in the hall is offered to pour vodka in exchange for a sincere, convincing statement that a person thinks, feels happy - to to my surprise, this "feast for the whole world" reveals "happy" in sufficient quantities, there would be enough stocks of alcohol.
The second part of the performance - "Drunken Night" - was invented and performed in its purest form as an expanded plug-in number, a musical and plastic performance. The music for the female vocal group was written by Ilya Demutsky (the composer of the ballet "A Hero of Our Time" staged by Serebrennikov in Bolshoi Theater), Anton Adasinsky is responsible for plastic surgery. The musical plan is much more advantageous and expressive than the choreographic one. Actually, choreography, dance this flawed "physical theater" (the term itself is flawed, but here I will not choose otherwise) does not dare to call the language. It seems that Adasinsky did not set any other tasks for himself except to play for time. Jerking of young "muzhiks" in underpants to the singing of a female choir with the participation of one male voice (the part of Andrei Rebenkov, who in the 1st movement convincingly spoke for the "last-born" landowner), living pyramids, swinging on the ropes, the final "solo" by Philip Avdeev - among the "seven temporarily liable" he has the most intelligent video in the first part, with a beard, with glasses, and there he is immediately punched in the face, the rest of the first act he walks bloodied, with plugs in his nose (well, almost like I was sitting in the hall for 3- m, well, I had to finish myself up ...), and now, when, after bucking and lying on the stage, while the choir sang "the light is sickening, there is no truth, life is sickening, the pain is strong ...", his partners in the plastic ensemble leave into the darkness and into the depths of the 1st part, free from scenography and unexpectedly spacious area, Avdeev remains under the drops of artificial rain pouring from above - well, by God, this is not serious, I would even say, undignified. Probably, in the rhythmic structure of the three-part composition of the performance, such a musical-plastic interlude has a certain weight, but it does not add anything to the production in terms of content. Unless it allows you to rest before the 3rd act.
To whom in Russia it is good to live - this was already not a question for Nekrasov, not even a rhetorical one: it is clear that no one, everyone is bad. Questions in the middle of the 19th were formulated differently - first "who is to blame?", then "what to do?". The first one was answered - serfdom guilty. Then serfdom was abolished, no one began to live more cheerfully and freely in Russia, then the question "what to do?" they suggested an answer - it is necessary that those who work should own the means of production, well, like "land - to the peasants", etc. They tried, later, in the 20th century, according to the recipes of the 19th century, to build a just, socialist society - again it did not help, it turned out the same as it was before, only even worse, uglier and bloodthirsty. Already in our memory with Kirill Semenovich (the target audience of the "Gogol Center" in the vast majority had not yet reached the age of consciousness), the same questions from the 19th century sounded again, with new answers: they say, the Soviet government is to blame and communist ideology, and property must be privatized and distributed into private hands. They tried private property instead of socialism - again nothing comes of it. In short, the plot is more for Saltykov-Shchedrin, and not for Nekrasov. Here is Serebrennikov (who, by the way, dealt with the prose of Saltykov-Shchedrin and, not only in my opinion, "Lord Golovlev" is one of the pinnacles of his directorial career) through the questions and answers posed by Nekrasov and reposed by history, he comes to generalizations that are not socially political, but anthropological order: bar = slave.
Bar-rab is an unoriginal palindrome and the joke is not the most witty, but these three letters written on pieces of paper in the hands of the artists, read from right to left and left to right in different ways, but expressing essentially the same concept, certainly not existing one without the other - the problematics of the play "Who Lives Well in Russia" is characterized exhaustively and determines not only the ideological message, but also the structural and compositional feature of the play, in particular, the choice of fragments for staging. For example, such a memorable chapter from school as "Pop" was not included in the composition. And I didn’t think that this was due to the fear of “offending the feelings of believers” - of course, it’s more expensive to get in touch with the Orthodox once again. By the way, when in the final part of the third part a guy jumped out of the hall and began to wave a black flag with a skull in front of the artists' noses, putting on T-shirts with some syllables over other T-shirts with others, but also predominantly "patriotic" content (like "Russians do not give up "), then, although the guys on the stage did not react to him, at first I decided that it was Orthodox, but I quickly realized that the Orthodox would not have remained in the hall waving, the Orthodox would have climbed onto the stage, started yelling and fighting, as usual at the Orthodox, and this one waved and left - an anarchist, as it turned out, turned out to be, on his flag "freedom or death" was written. But still, the head office "Pop" really would not have come to court, in addition to the fact that the realities described in it are still a little outdated - the main thing is that no matter what the performance talks about, even if it is about the last landowner, it's all the same for Serebrennikov comrades in the spotlight - not "bars", but "slaves", that is, the notorious "Russian people", so beloved by Nekrasov.
In the first part of the production there is an unusually touching episode - taken from the end of the poem (if you look at the usual order of publication of chapters) and taken closer to the beginning of the performance, a fragment "About the exemplary serf - Jacob the faithful", which tells a terrible even in comparison with many other Nekrasov micro- plots the story of the landowner Polivanov and his serf servant Yakov: an incapacitated, legless landowner, jealous of the girl Arisha for her fiancé, the nephew of his faithful beloved slave Grisha, sold the "rival" to the recruits. The serf Yakov was offended, then he came to ask for forgiveness, but after a while he took the master, drove into a ravine and hanged himself there, leaving the legless master lying in the ravine. The hunter found the master, the landowner survived and returned home, lamenting "I am a sinner, a sinner! Execute me!" It is noteworthy here that Serebrennikov, in addition to Polivanov and his Yakov, focuses on the love of Grisha and Arisha - in the poem, indicated by a couple of lines and mentioned once, the young guy with the girl become full-fledged characters. Free from the yoke of slavery, from the fear inherent in elders, and at the same time completely from any clothes (I watched the line-up where Georgy Kudrenko plays Grisha, but Alexander Gorchilin is in line with him - it turns out that in a different line-up Gorchilin runs without panties? right at least go again), the young rush into their arms, but only so that the groom immediately finds himself in a wooden box. Nekrasov, if I am not mistaken, says nothing about future fate Grisha’s recruit, he may have survived in the soldiery, but the service in Nekrasov’s times was long, and Serebrennikov, thinking ahistorically, without a doubt hammers the last nail into the love story: a young man who allowed himself freedom of feelings without regard to social barriers dies. But what is even more important - the scene "about the exemplary serf" is compositionally placed in the "Happy" section, and Yakov, who "revenges" the master by laying his hands on himself, finds himself on a par with the serfs who licked up expensive foreign dishes from the dishes behind the bars.
In the episode "Last Child" a similar re-emphasis is especially noticeable, the "bars", of course, are not justified, but the responsibility for what happened, in particular, for the death of Agap, falls to a greater extent on the "slaves" with their readiness to hypocrisy, to humiliate themselves now for the sake of an illusory benefit in future (by the way, if I haven’t missed anything, Serebrennikov doesn’t say that the peasants, for their comedianism, did not receive the flood meadows promised by the heirs of the landowner, that is, again, it’s not about cheating bars), with an effort to please anyone, with blind acceptance any share, with the ability to obey in the absence of guilt, with infinite patience, with forgiveness. Slavery, which cannot be marked by a decree from above, overcome by reforms, broken by education, enlightenment - I was very glad that about the time when the peasant of Belinsky and Gogol will suffer from the market, wind up Serebrennikov’s hurdy-gurdy and does not try, realizing that he has been carrying it for a hundred years, but little sense. "He sang the embodiment of the happiness of the people" - not about Serebrennikov and not about his performance. Such a surprisingly sober look in "Who Lives Well in Russia" bribed me. Eat prison, Yasha!
Slavery as happiness - not just as a habitual, normal, the only possible, but as a desirable, dear condition for a slave: this is how I saw the main subject of Serebrennikov's thoughts in connection with his stage mastering of Nekrasov's poem. It is no coincidence that he makes The Peasant Woman the culmination of the third part and the whole performance - the story of a woman who has lost everything dear, and, one has only to listen to her sad story, by no means because of the cruelty of the landowners, after the abolition of serfdom. In the role of Timofeevna - Evgenia Dobrovolskaya. And one cannot fail to say that her acting work in the third act is at least an order of magnitude higher than the rest. It should also be noted that for Dobrovolskaya herself this role is not the most perfect and does not reveal something unprecedented in her own acting nature, but simply once again confirms her highest skill - in some ways the opposite, but in some ways very similar woman's destiny she recently played on the occasion of her anniversary in the performance of the Moscow Art Theater "The Village of Fools" on a different quality and modern literary substrate (one can relate to Nekrasov's poetry in different ways, but Klyuchareva's prose is just put out the light):
However, I would pay attention to the image of Timofeevna, created by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, not just as a separate, personal acting success, towering against the general background, but also how casually, routinely, in the production of Serebrennikov, a tragedy is presented, in general, unthinkable, by any civilized standards, the monstrous life of a heroine. Timofeevna leads her story, imposing porridge from the pan on the "muzhiks", accompanied by the vocals of Maria Poezzhaeva, in which the suppressed pain is reflected indirectly - after all, Timofeevna's appearance in Serebrennikov's composition takes place within the framework of "A Feast for the Whole World", and it is "Peasant Woman" that becomes the apotheosis of this a feast of the doomed - not foreshadowing the imminent triumph of good, but quite the contrary, reminiscent of a commemoration of those few and downtrodden sprouts of truth, rays of light in dark kingdom, which until recently could deceive someone, give rise to illusory hopes. Just as there is no heading "Pop" in Serebrennikov's composition based on Nekrasov's poem, so there is no place in it for Grisha Dobrosklonov. "The cause of the people, their happiness, light and freedom above all" - this text is muttered in recitative. "Russia does not move, Russia is like a dead one, but a spark hidden in it ignited, the unwelcome got up, they came out uninvited, the grain of the mountain was worn down" and is not voiced at all, it is launched on the screen by the final credits, and the refrain "the bullet will find the guilty one" sounds aloud - not from a poem by Nekrasov, but from a song by the Civil Defense group. How to understand the latter - I, frankly, do not catch up, but it is obvious that after circling a century and a half, both history, and historiosophy, and socio-political thought, and, after it, art oriented to social topics returned to a question that was not even Nekrasov's (to whom it is good to live in Russia), not even to the Chernyshevskys (what to do), but to the Herzenovs (who is to blame). The statement of regression is unambiguous, the question "who is to blame", like everyone else, is also rhetorical, and I will definitely not live to see the new "what to do". (They say they tried to pick it up at Mighty in the BDT on the material of Chernyshevsky - naturally, he didn’t see it, according to reviews - it didn’t work). And there was no need for the peasants to go so far, to argue so desperately - an impartial look at themselves would be enough.
There are a lot of redundant, secondary details in the performance, overloading the figurative and symbolic series and introducing confusion into the development of the main idea. These are, say, Ironic inclusions of dictionary comments on archaic vocabulary (a device used by the late Yuri Lyubimov as a director). And optional, ornamental "vignettes" (like the embroidered "to" on the tricolor). And a worn-out "trick" with inscriptions on T-shirts (in the finale with dressing up there is nothing, but in the 1st part, Avdeev's character has something like "this society has no future" written on the T-shirt - I don’t remember exactly, but I remember well , like the choir in Serebrennikov's "Golden Cockerel" on T-shirts was exactly the same inscribed "we are yours, soul and body, if they beat us, then let's do it"). And senseless, well, in extreme cases, incomprehensible plastic figures, especially in Adasinsky's choreography for the 2nd part - the exercises of some participants in the action with a plastic pipe remained a mystery to me - and whether this object can be perceived as a "cut" from a pipe that crossed the stage in 1 th part, or is it some kind of isolated symbol, or just an object for pantomime exercises?
At the same time, unequivocally, "Who is it good to live in Russia" is a shameless, non-vulgar, standard product, absolutely formatted for the Gogol Center, and, despite the fact that it is uneven, quite solid work; there are separate moments that can emotionally hook on (I singled out at least two of these for myself - in the 1st part with Grisha-Kudrenko and in 3-1 with Timofeevna-Dobrovolskaya), there are also some formal finds, not on the scale of the opening , but more or less original, not entirely secondary. But in my opinion, there is no creative search in the performance, there is no experiment, risk, challenge in it - which concerns not only the fear of the chimeras of Orthodox-fascist censorship (also, probably, largely justified and especially excusable in the current unstable for this " urban institution of culture" of the situation), but also fears, unwillingness to sacrifice an established personal status, image, reputation, if we talk personally about Serebrennikov. And although, one way or another, despite my poor physical condition, I watched “Who Lives Well in Russia” with interest and, as the crazy professor says in such cases (also, of course, among the numerous other little art lovers who was present at the premiere in " Gogol Center"), and in no case would I allow myself to miss this event - certainly an event - to miss.
And yet for me there is no art, no creativity where provocation is replaced by manipulation. And Serebrennikov's "Who Lives Well in Russia" is an exceptionally manipulative, monologue story, somewhere and, which is especially unpleasant for me, didactic. Serebrennikov in each of his decisions knows exactly what kind of reaction he wants to receive in response - sometimes he manipulates the public quite subtly and deftly, sometimes rudely, clumsily, in some cases the calculation is justified by two hundred percent, in some less, but such an approach to dialogue initially, in principle, does not assume, the director simply chews (and not for the first time, which is insulting and unpleasant) chewing gum that has long lost its taste, and then presents it on a silver platter under the guise of a delicacy - for example, chewing gum can be of high quality, but eat it for a delicacy I'm sorry, I'm not ready. I would like to see from the stage of the Gogol Center (and where else - the choice is small, the ring is shrinking) thoughts were broadcast not from someone else's shoulder and not in factory packaging, but alive, momentary, albeit expressed a little clumsily. Unfortunately, even in Serebrennikov's new production I didn't discover anything new for myself, nothing sharp, nothing important, nothing that I wouldn't have known without Serebrennikov even before I got to the Gogol Center.
I speak with regret and partly with annoyance, because, for all the drama (and to some extent comicality) of my own relationship with the Gogol Center, I would not want the project, with such pomposity, pathos and capricious enthusiasm of the founders, to start just - then less than three years ago, it died in the bud - or, to put it more simply, was artificially, maliciously destroyed - ahead of schedule. Moreover, quite recently I unexpectedly had to enter into a discussion from the positions of an apologist for the Gogol Center and Serebrennikov, not without benefit - a lot in my attitude to the project, its productions, to Serebrennikov the director at the current stage of his career - I finally for myself clarified and articulated:
Maybe it will turn out differently with the next opus of the Gogol Center - prepared together with Serebrennikov by his students, "Russian Fairy Tales" are released immediately after "Who Lives Well in Russia" and informally continues the dilogy. Moreover, I was given a ticket to Russian Fairy Tales much in advance (I asked for it myself), now no matter how the circumstances regarding health and condition develop, I have to go to Fairy Tales. In this situation, I, like no one else, wish the Gogol Center stable work, at least for the near future, because I already have the ticket in my hands and the money has been paid for it.
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