Bogomolov reconstructed a Soviet patriotic play on Malaya Bronnaya

To be fair, it should be said that this is Konstantin’s second attempt to enter the “glorious” water, only this time Moscow. His first production was based on the play by Viktor Gusev, a 25-year-old poet, who always kept up with the times in art, shared his delusions and even cruelty, and also wrote scripts for the films “The Pig Farmer and the Shepherd”, “At Six P.M.,” recognized by the people and the authorities after the war” (two Stalin Prizes), took place five years ago, in St. Petersburg, at the Bolshoi Drama Theater. Tovstonogov. Even his apologists did not expect such a choice of play from the first Ernik and a daring specialist in transplanting his own literary experiences into the “body” of classical works in order to obtain something third. But then, at the BDT, the example of the Soviet classic was in no way subjected to “surgical” intervention and outwardly appeared to the public in its pure form. Well, except that the young heroes were played by older actors, and Konstantin replaced the male doctor with a woman. Crime for me too.

Another important clarification: “Glory” is not a transfer of the St. Petersburg production to the capital’s stage, and the two “Glory” differ from each other in the same way as Russia before the pandemic and especially before the SVO from Russia after and during it. In this case, the factor of events and time matters: what yesterday was considered Soviet mothballs and a reason for banter, today becomes almost the agenda. The only question is who prepares it, what form it takes, and what means of expression they use.

At first glance, “Slava” with Malaya Bronnaya has the form of the most realistic theater. The set design by Bogomolov’s constant collaborator Larisa Lomakina demonstrates this from the first minute, its elements repeating the architecture of cultural and recreation parks visited by several generations of Soviet people. A spacious staircase running up the entire width of the stage (four rows of spectators are built into it on both sides) ends with a snow-white balustrade. Here is a couple of lovers, one of them dressed in the fashion of their time: she is wearing a white dress that reaches the waist, naturally, below the knees. And below are touching white socks in white sandals. He has a light shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows and black trousers. Against the background of current prosperity and chic (with the arrival of Bogomolov, the audience on Bronnaya is increasingly wealthy) looks somewhat poor, but the example of the moral purity of the youth of the past is obvious.

The voice from the loudspeaker, in which you immediately recognize ConBog himself, launches a simple plot: in the Azau valley, an avalanche has descended from the mountains, which threatens to destroy the First of May hydroelectric station along with the village adjacent to it. “The government is taking the necessary measures,” the announcer ends the official message without emotion. There is only one measure – to detonate an avalanche, and this should be done by a guy in a light shirt, a demolition engineer with the frivolous surname Motylkov and the name Vasily, who at the moment wants only one thing – to become not a kamikaze (he knows that detonating an avalanche is a surefire death), and kissing Lena Morozova even with the risk of being fined for what has long been considered the norm in our country is a public kiss after a hot summer. However, the play has different words.

Motylkov: I wouldn’t want to be near this mountain.

Lena: I was. In the spring. It is beautiful there. Very.

Motylkov: It’s good that we are here, that the lanterns are burning

This dense, cheerful Moscow night.

And then the lyrics sharply go into a conflict of personal and socially significant: Lena – a Komsomol member, an athlete, a beautiful pilot – insists on the feat of Motylkov, who, as if justifying his surname, will answer her not at all in the spirit of the heroic times: “And all this is called life “… “I am the most ordinary / Unmarked Muscovite in life.” By the way, in contrast to his comrade – also a demolition engineer and also with the telling surname Mayak: he is eager to go to the explosion, but with personal motivation – for the sake of glory. However, the wise leader Comrade Ocheret will send the modest Motylkov to fight the elements, and not the careerist Mayak, and he will accomplish the feat, finding himself on the brink of death – disappearing and then resurrecting.

The plot is simple and tightly put together, the values ​​are indicated, their pathos in poetic form from the perspective of today is off the charts. The author cannot even imagine the personal without pathos: “…So that all your feelings, thundering and blazing/Find a response in my blood…/You inflicted wounds on my love,” the pilot blames her demolition man. But in fairness, it should be said that there are also lyrics in the play.

How is this heard in the theater today, especially since it has become fashionable in a fairly short time? The modern viewer, for whom street swearing on stage is the norm, and for intellectuals – a special chic, at first cringes from high style, like the sight of a heavy coat with a lamb collar instead of the lightest branded down jacket. And he thinks: “Yes, this is some kind of anachronism! Where did I end up anyway?..” The text of the play in its original form (albeit docked) in form and, most importantly, in content, is as far from today’s Russians as from the earth on which a certain Vasily crawled in the last century, to the heavens where a certain Lena was floating in an airplane.

But the trick is that the viewer will need very little time from the start of the action to adapt to the content of such a play and immerse himself in the story as Bogomolov presented it – timeless with all the external signs of its era preserved. Moreover, the director managed to sharpen the meanings in it, which in recent decades, like museum exhibits, were behind cloudy glass – in order to see them, it was necessary to wipe it.

It seems that Bogomolov is doing everything on stage so that nothing interferes with the 90-year-old text: he removes as much as possible the effective sequence, removes emotional accents. On the contrary, with a minimum of movements there is a maximum of internal tension, the mise-en-scène in its statics does not look heavy, and the stage time of the two acts flies by unnoticed.

It is worth recognizing that among the achievements of the Moscow “Slava” is a frighteningly accurate reconstruction of the atmosphere and appearance of compatriots of that time, in which neither the director nor the actors lived and could only get an idea about them from Soviet films, which are hardly their priority . But it’s amazing that you believe them: their characters are from there, from the 30s and 40s. You believe in Andro Simonishvili (Motylkov), Vasilisa Perelygina (Lena), Katerina Vasilyeva (Motylkova’s mother), Yana Vilochkina (Motylkova’s sister), Alexander Shumsky (Mayak), Denis Gromakov (Ocheret, wise as the Bolshevik party, Motylkova’s leader), Vladimir Petrik and Ivan Tarasov (pioneers, nurse, reporter). But if their characters are a product of revolutionary times with all that came in, then the Honored Artist Medvedev (the pilot’s father) played by Lera Gorin carries the flair of a sweet pre-revolutionary era. With all her artistic mannerisms, jokes like: “Every meal must be eaten, / As the poet said, / The actor will not allow food to be wasted.”

By the way, it’s his remarks, delivered without a hint of humor, that get the most laughs. The old-fashioned quality of this character is charming, somehow homely, but at the same time with an understanding of his place in art – behind his performance there is a biography that is not written down by the author. And his assessment of the state of the theater business sounds relevant, especially with the emergence of extra-budgetary places in theater universities in the new Russia: “…And now Manka or Tanka comes, / A skirt, a handbag, shoes, a jacket, / Acrobatics, biomechanics, / But there is no heart, no acting heart “

The magnetism of “Slava” is added by convention as a device. You won’t even find this in the musical theater, where Bogomolov has been actively working in recent years, but rather among children who know how to make their own games out of nothing. So, the mortally wounded Motylkov will lie for the entire beginning of the second act on a snow-white podium that slightly protrudes into the hall, and still in the same white shirt, only deliberately, smeared with blood, with paint. Both this blood, far from the truth, and the image of the hero dying from its loss can be seen in a close-up of the screen. “Tell me: where are people in such a hurry? After all, death will come for everyone on its own, / Don’t remind me, it won’t forget.” After his dialogue with Professor Chernykh (Dmitry Guryanov), which is philosophical in nature, the dying man will rise and walk up the stairs as if alive, giving way to the doctor, who is ready to give the demolitionist the blood necessary for his salvation. Of course, without any transfusion machines, snow-white sheets and screens.

An important instrument of the production is music, or rather, a musical solution of a non-illustrative nature: it has its own dramaturgy – an urban romance of the nineteenth century about a “blue ball” over the pavement, through Soviet songs, Sibelius’s waltz logically comes to the finale from the work of Henry Purcell, where the triumphant beat of drums, symbolizing the triumph of will and time, in sound design (composer Valery Vasyukov) is becoming increasingly alarmed. Bad omens are heard in this victorious roar.

Oddly enough, it is Ernik Bogomolov who, with his “Glory,” returns to fundamental concepts the lost strength and clarity of their “shores.” Here the Motherland is a place of power, and not just income. And if not a feat, then at least a small accomplishment for her. Business, not window dressing. At bows there is an ovation, as if the hall is filled with an exclusively patriotic-minded audience, which by their appearance alone cannot be suspected of this.

Since in modern art Konstantinovna Bogomolov is also considered as a political figure, then, judging by the success of the performance, one should expect that patriots will raise him to the shield, and liberals, recalling the manifestos he previously wrote, will accuse him of opportunism. Well, “and all this,” as the play says, “is called life.”