At the Moscow Art Theatre. Chekhov staged an experimental “Cosmos”

On the New Stage of the Moscow Art Theatre. A.P. Chekhov staged “Cosmos” – “a funny play about an unfunny life” and unfulfilled dreams, about a web of lies and an attempt to escape from the poor space inside us, as the director of the play Nina Grigorieva says. The English teacher, played by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, is Mickey Rourke, her late husband and classmate flying to the stars.

“Cosmos” was born from the experimental project “ARTHAB”, launched to search for new names in dramaturgy and directing at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov. In ten days, the director, who had not previously worked on his stage, had to stage a sketch of a modern play. “Cosmos” by Alexei Zhitkovsky from Nizhnevartovsk, having changed something, was staged by Nina Grigorieva from St. Petersburg, who previously worked in Omsk, Tula, the Moscow Region, the capital’s theater “ApARTe”. This is another attempt to tell that we cannot live without space.

The role of an English teacher from Bugulma was played by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya. Before the start of the performance, she told how the performance was born: “We added six scenes and new characters to the initial sketch. I love working on a small stage when the audience is around. We were chosen by the audience who voted for the play and production. Everything that happens is very funny, although it is actually scary. We have a lot of single women who are raising their own children. My Tatyana lives in a different world, which is better, cleaner, more beautiful. Women feel loneliness more than men. They are needed in order to cook, clean, stroke, listen, but often they do not get what they dream about – affection, care, a prince on a white horse.

Tatyana Viktorovna Gizatullina teaches at the same school where she herself studied. Her husband died in a hot spot twenty years ago. She alone raised her son, who grew up, plays in an unknown musical group in the garage, does not consider his mother. When he leaves for the army, it makes a strong impression on her. Tatyana lives in a fictional world, chats online with a foreigner who is eager to see her body and dreams of borscht. He’s almost like Mickey Rourke. A portrait of an actor in his younger years hangs on the wall in the apartment. But what is there Rourke, when Tatiana’s classmate is about to arrive in the city, the only one from the class who has not drunk himself is not lying in the cemetery. He became an astronaut (by the way, in the real Nizhnevartovsk, where the playwright Alexei Zhitkovsky lives, they are also proud of their countryman, cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov, and in his interviews he talks about Bugulma). Tatyana keeps a piece of a pencil brought by the parents of a classmate from Czechoslovakia, half of which he gave her when they sat at the same desk. Now this is a real treasure, and to meet the hero of the day, it can be put on public display. All this is very funny and touchingly played by Evgenia Dobrovolskaya. And the impassive voice of Sergei Chonishvili, sounding behind the scenes, adds irony to what is happening.

There is a commotion at school – an order was received from above to prepare for a meeting with a famous graduate. Avant-garde Leontiev got used to the image of the head of the school so much that before the show he delivered an emotional speech about the difficulties of the educational institution, as if he himself worked there. “We need to cheer up the entire teaching staff so as not to lose face, so that the authorities are satisfied. Any leader, especially in Russia, always has big worries. Everyone knows how to lead the right way. The kids are complaining. Parents take everything at face value. All children are different, and the director needs to stop all their whims and neuroses. We all hope that tomorrow something will happen and it will become easier for us. Everyone dreams of meeting a person who will understand him. And life sometimes takes us away from our dreams. A person is saved from difficulties by hope. My role is not detailed. I once said to Viktor Rozov, while working on a performance in Sovremennik, that I would like to say a lot about it, but it has not been written. He replied: “And you say so, as I was told.” Here, too, I wanted to say some things more precisely. Director Nina Grigoryeva conveyed my wishes to the playwright, and he wrote everything I wanted.

Classmate Sergei Lysov appears to Tatyana in a silver suit resembling a spacesuit. The young actor Oleg Gaas becomes the embodiment of the dream of a handsome prince. The whole play is about the astronaut, and the actor himself sees his hero as a savior who can turn Tatyana Viktorovna from a terrible and evil into a smiling girl whom he remembers from school, although Dobrovolskaya’s is not like that at all. “Sergey was a botanist, he was bullied, and he became an astronaut. There was a sucker, but there was a god (this is a phrase from the play). People who are humiliated at school often engage in self-destruction, but you can turn all the negativity into internal fuel and prove to yourself, your parents, that you are better. Every person should have space in their souls,” Oleg Gaas shares his thoughts.

The artist Mikhail Gerber is concise. There is only a blackboard and desks on the stage. You open their lid and they turn into tombstones. Tatyana comes to the cemetery to her husband with her son and her hurricane friend Gulya, who works in the public service. She was played by Yanina Kolesnichenko with a Tatar flavor. The action takes place in Tatarstan. The late husband of Tatyana (he, like the role of his son, is played by actor Denis Paramonov) rises from the world of the dead and begins to sort things out with his wife. To complete the picture, only the appearance of the phantom Mickey Rourke is missing. This is already the second premiere at the Moscow Art Theater, where the heroes go into space, as it was in “Polar Disease”, where the higher powers of the North take the shuttles from the hopeless 90s into an imaginary world. Tatyana had an earthly chance to change her life. The real, and not the imaginary physical instructor Gurgen (Armen Arushanyan) was ready to take her to her mother in the Krasnodar Territory, where it is warm and the sea is nearby, but she remained in her beautiful dreams.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28953 dated January 19, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Mickey Rourke came to the Moscow art theatre.