“Comedian’s Shelter” brought its top performance to the “Golden Mask”

While the audience is seated in the small hall of the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, one can look at the scenery, which claims to be the best among all social scenography, and marvel at its industrial appearance. A structure with a mechanism is mounted above the stage, which can be observed on an automated conveyor. Under the conveyor is something voluminous, packed in cellophane. When the light goes out and the film is removed in the dark, under it will be an electric piano and a man with the appearance of a creative intellectual in a civilian suit, but in a clown frill around his neck, from under which, however, a yellowish tie stretches.

– I am 46 years old. My name is Laurent-Claude Labrous and I hate my name. I owe them to my relatives (rolls his eyes – mommy, daddy). This is all the more regrettable because I have nothing more to reproach my parents with. They did their best to equip me with everything to fight for existence. So if in the end I failed and my life ends in sorrow and suffering, then it is not their fault.

A turn to the hall in a three-quarter perspective, the head is beautifully thrown back. In front of him is a table with a computer on which he crawls with a mouse, and what he is looking for is immediately projected onto the wall behind him. The wall works as an elongated and slightly concave screen. There is his name – Laurent-Claude Labrous, and photo-video details of his former and present life. Moreover, there are several small ones on the big screen at once, and each has its own life, its own landscape, frozen or in motion.

So, in one of them, a pharmacological topic is a description of the first known antidepressant, Captorix, invented in 2017 and working as a serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Well, then – more: something about the receptors of neurons, an increase in the level of serotonin in the blood. But the important side effect is nausea, complete loss of libido and … impotence.

“Well, I don’t complain about nausea yet,” Laurent-Claude states. But this does not mean that they will not tell us about sex.

In 2019, when Houellebecq’s novel first came out, it, like all his previous works, made a lot of noise. First of all, by its relevance, its irreconcilable position in relation to the policy of the European Union, which is largely prophetic. Yellow vest strikes, the ruin of French farmers, the bankruptcy of all-European ideas that seem quite attractive. There was no covid then, otherwise the author would have aggravated “Serotonin” to them. It is worth explaining that serotonin, despite all the dissonance of the name, is called the hormone of happiness. This is what the world lacks so much – if not happiness, then its more modest versions – joy, inner harmony, which artificially provides captorix. And which is accepted by the wealthy official of the Ministry of Agriculture Laurent-Claude, honestly defending the position of French farming. But the side effect of the antidepressant deprived him of any interest in sex, but sharpened his abilities both for introspection and for analyzing what was happening around him. Well, it’s either sex or a sober view of life – there’s no middle ground.

The attention of the audience is held by the text of Houellebecq, in which the play of the mind, cynicism, ruthlessness, but elegant. Social problems become the background of the hero’s personal drama, coolly mixed with sex, despite the hero’s indifference to him. Sexual: “…and then Yuzu (the official’s girl) was raped by a Doberman, with all the power inherent in his breed. After this doggy gangbang, I turned off the video, I was sick. I was more worried about the dog.” Or a philosophical one about the phallus in general and the specific phallus made of milky-white plaster, standing on an electric piano, covered in downy wings, like an angel. Well, let’s say, not an angel, but still “the focus of a male being and an end in itself for a woman … Male love is the finale, while female love is the beginning.”

But it must be admitted that such an inventive text is kept by the actor Ivan Volkov, the successor of the famous acting dynasty. By the way, his mother – the unique Olga Volkova – is in the hall and, probably, worries about her son. Completely in vain: the role, essentially consisting of a monologue of more than two hours with one intermission, the actor lives in one breath. Quietly, to some extent measuredly, without internal fuss. For all the mise-en-scene immobility of the performance (and Serotonin is one mise-en-scene), there is no feeling of a standing action. On the contrary, Ivan provides both movement and the internal development of the image on an emotional level, outwardly, which is important, not manifested in any way. His hero, on a swivel chair between the pianola and the table, is Monsieur indifferent, and only virtual teleportation to the past, to his youth, where he was happy, but did not appreciate simple happiness with another woman, gives him a chance to break out of depression, jump off antidepressants. Even the music at this moment will gain strength.

Alas, the reality in which he exists, observes and even participates, will not be saved. Favorite ego, and then agricultural quotas will force farmers to block the road, as a result of which nine people will be killed. Among them is a childhood friend who just wanted to live happily but got too caught up in his farming dream. “And his wife turned out to be just a fat bitch, obsessed with the London party. And the European Union also turned out to be a fat bitch, having come up with milk quotas.”

Only at the moment of the highest tension, or when the action comes to an important plot point, Volkov, who is also a musician and a composer, strikes chords or emotionally plays, it seems, something from Liszt.

The industrial-looking set of Olga Shaishmelashvili, which at the very beginning surprised with a claim, perfectly conveys in the performance the image of a society brought to mass automatism and depersonalization in all spheres. And as a result – Laurent-Claude Labrus, sitting on antidepressants, which are innumerable. And the machine delivers to him either former lovers of an exotic look (exotic due to makeup and costumes), or a psychiatrist or an old friend. They are wonderfully played by Oleg Kudrenko and Sofya Nikiforova, given to help Volkov.

– Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust – they personified the cumulative knowledge of mankind, were representatives of the peaks of French and German civilization – the brightest and most refined. But nevertheless, they could grovel before the first wet one that came across … (pronounces the name of the female genital organ with one lips). Therefore, the finale of the “Magic Mountain” is even sadder than it seems. It means not only the bankruptcy of the ideas of European culture, it means in the end the final victory of animal instinct. The end of civilization, the end of history and the end of culture in general.

The collapsed pianola will become the apotheosis of the end – its fragments will somehow hang in the air due to the mechanism. Not a decoration, but an installation, the meaning of which can be interpreted both as a sexual fiasco of mankind, and as an ideological one, and as a stop antidepressant. But getting “Serotonin” in the “ZM” in four nominations is quite justified.