Alexey Frandetti staged the musical performance “Peter and the Folk”

Director Alexei Frandetti continues to amaze the audience with non-standard productions in various theaters in Moscow and beyond. The resonance from the “Ordinary Miracle” in the St. Petersburg Youth Theater has not yet had time to disperse in circles, as in the Taganka Theater – a new premiere: “Petya and Folk”, a multi-genre super-modern show in terms of theatrical and musical language, addressed to a young audience.

The title “Peter and the Folk” rhymes with Prokofiev’s famous symphonic tale, and the subtitle “mysteries of the worlds” justifies the inclusion of associations with well-known references in the plot, the main of which is the myth of Orpheus. However, there is not a hint of postmodernist banter in the performance: librettist Nika Simonova, composer Andrey Zubets and director Alexei Frandetti made a quite serious performance that contemporary art can be fashionable and traditional at the same time.

The new stage of the Taganka Theater with a brick backdrop is at first a completely empty space, on which the main character appears – Petya, a young musician, dissatisfied with his work: “Everything is fine, I got up and went to a new show. And I still have not found myself … How can I understand who I can become? Meaning, no idea. Maybe I missed the moment? – Petya shares his doubts in the form of rap. The role of Petya is played by Alexander Kazmin, an artist well known to musical lovers, endowed with an excellent voice and unconditional charisma. His girlfriend Veronica (also a well-known musical star Yulia Dyakina), who calls Petya Orpheus without false modesty, offers him a solution to the problem that has always saved Russian artists – to turn to the roots, to tradition, to the origins of culture, that is, to folklore.

And here begins the show, dizzying in terms of dynamics, drive, density of events, in which the Academic Choir of Russian Song of Orpheus Radio becomes the main protagonist. And this is also very characteristic of the Russian musical theater in the version of the composers of the Mighty Handful, in whose operas the people were the main character.

Petya and Veronica join the mass youth holiday of Ivan Kupala, a pagan ritual, the main meaning of which is the fulfillment of the marriage ceremony. This is also where the competition of singers takes place – why not Sadko by Rimsky-Korsakov, who at one time retold the plot of Tannhäuser in Russian? The first participant sings a beautiful pop-pop song of self-praise – and is a success. The second performs a lapidary chanson in the spirit of “Lube” and also catches its share of recognition. It’s Petya’s turn… His sincere aria in the style of a classic pop-rock musical captivates the audience. He won.

The young composer Andrei Zubets wrote a masterful, very complex score, in which he combined the techniques of academic music (the influence of Stravinsky, who clearly inspired the authors with his The Rite of Spring), as well as folklore and rock style, is well traced. The live orchestra of folk instruments, located in the windows of the brick backdrop, as in an iconostasis, organically integrates with the soundtrack. The music is very moving, rhythmically intricate: five quarters is the simplest of the non-square meters that the Jag uses.

It is difficult to say which of the elements of this multi-genre show, which returns the theater to its original syncretic form, is in priority – everyone is equal here. And music that sounds non-stop, like in an opera or oratorio. And plastic (choreographer Andrey Glushchenko-Molchanov) – combining classical ballet and modern dance. And huge life-size puppets – ancient Slavic deities and monsters, which are led around the stage by puppeteers: the bird Simurg, the god Veles, wolves, the goddess Yaginya, a giant serpent (artist Anastasia Pugashkina). In Veles and Yagin, Petya sees his parents, from whom the teenager once ran away, because he did not find understanding and love in them. However, now he has forgiven them: the knowledge of the world’s secrets makes him wise and generous.

The laconic scenography is compensated by the variegation and variety of costumes (Ekaterina Gudkovskaya), stylizing conventional Slavic fabulousness combined with fashionable outfits of modern hipsters.

The light from Ivan Vinogradov can do honor to the coolest variety show, and the “special effects” are achieved by simple traditional theatrical techniques: for example, the fabulous ocean-blue-sea” is a translucent fabric from under which insidious mermaids appear and behind which hide.

In general, the play is about tradition. Not only folklore, but also the simplest, human. For example, about love between a boy and a girl. True, the love story ends dramatically: the Russian Orpheus-Pete, like his mythological prototype, failed to bring Eurydice-Veronica out of the underworld. However, unlike the Greek Zeus, who, fearing that Orpheus would reveal the secrets of the world to people, struck him with lightning just in case, our Russian Perun, on the contrary, gives Petya, who has comprehended secret knowledge, a chance to “burn the hearts of people with a verb”. Again, in the best traditions of Russian culture.