chronicles of the era from Andrei Konchalovsky

At the Theatre. The Moscow City Council hosted the premiere of Andrei Konchalovsky’s play “Married Life. Perestroika.

Theatergoers could already see this work staged by Konchalovsky at the Moscow Art Theater, where the main male role was played first by Alexander Domogarov, and then by Gosha Kutsenko. Now the director has transferred the performance to his native Theater. Moscow City Council. The partner of the female lead Yulia Vysotskaya (Marina) was Alexei Rozin, who played the role of Ivan most organically.

Vysotskaya has already crossed paths with Rozin on the Moscow Soviet stage in the production of The Taming of the Shrew: the partners feel good about each other and look very interesting together.

Ivan Aleksey Rozina is a charming forty-two-year-old imposing family man. He works at a medical school, loves Spielberg’s films and dislikes his wife’s relatives. Ironic, sometimes sarcastic, at some moments it is subtle and deep, at some intolerant and extremely rude. Ivan’s midlife crisis results in a personal rebellion, as a result of which the hero goes “to the left”. That is – in the arms of the first comer.

Marina, performed by Yulia Vysotskaya, is an interesting, sexy young woman of thirty-five years old. By education, he is a lawyer. The couple does not have children, Marina compensates for this circumstance by organizing endless meetings with numerous relatives, painting in detail for the family the coming weekend, which irritates Ivan extremely. However, Marina is convinced that everything is fine with them, only there have been problems with sex lately. A woman lacks tenderness, attention and romanticism, a man lacks this very sex.

In short, we have before us an average Soviet family, although the performance is based on the motives of the play by the Swedish playwright, in which its author Ingmar Bergman traditionally pays special attention to human psychology. But the uniqueness of a great work lies in the fact that it is universal and can be transferred to any soil.

Andrei Konchalovsky boldly transfers Bergman’s story to a more familiar environment and time for us – the nineties of the last century. “Of course, there is a certain shift in the interpretation of the characters, but this does not deprive the performance of Bergman’s brilliant insight into the essence of the relationship between a man and a woman,” the director believes.

In the evenings, a married couple goes to the cinema, argues about the films they have watched, listens to American music on records “underground” recorded on x-rays, and meets with relatives. Differences in the perception of the world by spouses are revealed gradually. Marina is somewhat idealist, she is one of those Komsomol members who firmly believed in the bright future of communism. Ivan is a pragmatist who, at the age of 26, gladly put his Komsomol ticket on the table, unfastening himself “by age”. Oh freedom! No more going to meetings! By the way, Ivan gloomily calls the time in which the spouses live “disgusting”, because of the “fear present in people”.

The relationship of a couple who has lived together for twenty years goes through different stages – passion, mutual understanding, compassion, betrayal, separation, a new meeting. But the decisions and conclusions that they make along the way often confuse the audience (although they may seem acceptable and even close to someone).

A special place in the performance is occupied by the atmosphere, carefully created by the director. Meticulously selected music and footage of the chronicle, like visions of the past, give the production a special volume, charm and nostalgic sound.

Through the efforts of production designer Andrei Konchalovsky (the stage design of the play also belongs to him), a three-room apartment in the center of Moscow becomes quite recognizable. A kitchen, a dining table, a ZIL refrigerator, a cozy sofa, armchairs, a floor lamp, a bookcase – we see only one of the three rooms of this excellent apartment, which the heroes inherited from their parents.

The sounds of the street float in from the open balcony door. The rustling of tires of cars passing by below and snippets of melodies of Soviet hits from their windows – everything is quite recognizable for a person whose youth fell on the years of the existence of the USSR.

In this serene, it would seem, homely world, frames of the television chronicle float, flashing on the walls of the apartment and reflecting the time. Under the bewitching melody of the “weather forecast” from the program “Vremya”, sun-drenched cities of the USSR appear, along the streets of which Soviet citizens are hurrying somewhere. But now the mood is changing: before us are shots of the storming of the White House. Tanks drive across Moscow, familiar faces flash by, descended from the news screens – Sakharov, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Khasbulatov, Rutskoi. Footage of riots on the Garden Ring, rallies in front of the White House are flying by. Representatives of culture and science stand around him in a thin chain, guarding the gains of democracy. The country is waiting and demanding change!

The romance of winning freedom echoes the romanticism of Ivan, who is waiting for changes within a single family. Ivan also rebels, he is ready to break everything and go into his personal “beautiful far away”, starting a relationship with a new woman.

Konchalovsky is trying by all means to convey his feeling of how the scrapping of epochs affects the people of the USSR and how American philosophy is gradually creeping into their lives. It is now obvious to us that the new is not always a creative thing. But then … As a good director Sergei Solovyov once said: “I also stood on the set of my“ Assa ”and, shaking my fist, shouted that I was waiting for changes. Many years later, I began to think about why, in fact, I didn’t ask myself what kind of changes I expect?

The holes in the relationship that the heroes are trying to patch are expanding before our eyes. Even a natural question arises: yes, that’s enough, but did they ever love each other? And will another building, so diligently erected by them, be strong, if the conclusions, by and large, are not made?

Andrei Konchalovsky leaves the answers to these questions at the mercy of us, the audience. As, however, and always. Andrey Sergeevich’s favorite phrase, addressed to the audience: “And you are also right.”

Indeed, after all, each of us goes through his own restructuring and comes out of them with his own gains and losses. Who suits…

Elena Bulova.

Photo provided by the theater press service