Director of Lenkom Varshaver told how Abdulov, Yankovsky and Dzhigarkhanyan quit smoking together

Four decades and a half is not a random figure: Varshaver gave exactly that many years to the theater on Malaya Dmitrovka, where he came in August 1979. But they talked not only about the past and future of Lenkom, relations with the main director Alexei Frandetti, but also about why the media pays so much attention to the health of Mark Warshaver: if you not only get sick, but sneeze – this is immediately reported on the front pages of newspapers and home pages of websites.

— Mark Borisovich, let’s first pay tribute to the holiday interview genre. Tell me, what is the most important thing for you in the theater?

– For me, the main thing is the actors, and it is especially important that in Lenkom they all play roles – and not just as extras or show themselves in dance. During the five years that I have been “Extended Director,” each of our nearly ninety artists has had a role. And there was a time when, out of the same total number, only fifteen played, the rest sat on the “substitute bench”.

The great Stanislavsky said that theater begins with a coat rack, but I would argue with this: theater begins with the director, because if he is not there, then there will be no audience and the wardrobe will remain empty. And we, don’t forget, have sixteen performances in our repertoire, and all of them are sold out, no one else has this, I say this as the head of the Director’s Box of Moscow Theaters.

— We’ve roughly figured out the director’s main mission, but what do you see as your task as the head of Lenkom?

— Arrive at the theater at eight in the morning and be there as long as you are needed. Every day – seven days a week! So that the word “day off” is absent from your vocabulary.

— The load is colossal. Sorry. But I just want to add: “especially at your age.”

— You know, I recently vacationed in Sochi, where I had a detailed study done that determined my biological age.

The result is this: thirty-eight years (laughs). And I probably feel like that – well, or at most forty-five.

Would you like me to show you something? (Takes out a smartphone and opens a gallery with a video.) This is me in the gym. Thirty kilograms in each hand. Every day I do eight lifts of sixty kilograms.

– I can only envy you…

— I’ve been going to fitness three times a week for nineteen years. My morning starts like this: I get up at half past five, quickly change into shorts and sneakers, get on the treadmill: 45 minutes without fail. And I’m telling this not because I think it’s something incredible: I just can’t live without it.

— At the same time, your journalistic colleagues make a sensation out of every sneeze, as was the case quite recently…

— By the way, I didn’t have any pneumonia at that time, but they wrote “bilateral pneumonia.” What a wonderful idea! But I still continue to love journalists!

— In his recent Address to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin just called for “quit smoking and get back on skis”: do you support the “reset” of the Soviet slogan?

– I quit smoking 27 years ago – and in one second. Then Abdulov came to me and said: “Mark Borisovich, let’s quit smoking.” I reply, “What a wonderful thing you are offering, my friend, let’s do it.” Yankovsky comes in, we say to him: “Oleg Ivanovich, let’s quit smoking.” – “With pleasure, we’ll quit.” Armen Dzhigarkhanyan appears, who once played in our “City of Millionaires”. And again the same dialogue: “Let’s quit.” – “Let’s”.

— And all four gave up their addiction?

“An hour later, one of the artists came running to me and said in a half-whisper: “Yankovsky and Abdulov are smoking in the toilet.” And I told him: “Ask very gently that they come to me.” Just then Abdulov brought German anti-nicotine patches from abroad. But I’ll tell you: no tricks will help if there is no desire and self-control.

— Let’s go back from the gym to the theater: how many premieres a year do you consider the norm?

– The bigger, the better. The only question is where to get how many directors. After the departure of Mark Anatolyevich Zakharov, we made nine premieres, the tenth being “Cabaret Pushkin” for the 225th anniversary of the poet.

— Is Lenkom open in terms of “productions from outside”?

– We don’t refuse anyone. This is how we got a wonderful director, Alexander Alexandrovich Lazarev, who today is the chief director of the Russian Army Theater. I remember he came with the idea of ​​staging Bulgakov’s “Running”. “What a statement,” I thought, and Lazarev gathered his group of artists – and look what a wonderful performance it turned out to be, very timely and necessary in our difficult times.

— Is it true that not everything is going smoothly in your relationship with the new chief director Alexei Frandetti?

“We have a wonderful working and creative relationship with Frandetti. Yes, we don’t go to each other’s houses to drink tea, but I support him in every possible way, since the management brought him to us. And if the relationship had been different, we would not have had such a spectacle as the play “Mayakovsky”.

The main thing is the result.

Frandetti is a very talented organizer, he has a wonderful team – it’s not for nothing that the audience accepts them so much. Now he and I are staging “Pushkin Cabaret” based on Pushkin’s “Little Tragedies” – for the 225th anniversary of Alexander Sergeevich.

— Young people from the LDPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions enjoy benefits when entering our universities, including creative ones. This means that in a few years, graduates of Shchuka or Shchepka from new territories will knock on the doors of Lenkom. Are you ready to take Donetsk and Kherson guys into your team?

– Of course, this is not even discussed! All you need here is talent. But let’s take it from there first of all, understanding the tragedy of these people. Imagine that there is some guy at war: he went to the front at the behest of his heart, and at the same time he is an actor or wants to become one. This was the case after the Great Patriotic War, when Yuri Nikulin, Anatoly Papanov, Vladimir Etush, Georgy Zhzhenov and our other great artists came to theaters and cinema. I am convinced that there should be privileges for SVO participants!

— Mark Borisovich, what will happen to Lenkom tomorrow? How far into the future are you looking?

“I’ll answer briefly, because brevity is the sister of talent: “Everything will be fine!” And at any time we must help people with our art, so that they leave the hall happy!