Fashion battles were held at Lenkom
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The 97th season of Lenkom opened with the musical Mayakovsky, directed by Alexei Frandetti, who last year was appointed chief director of this legendary theater. Such a debut killed several birds with one stone: firstly, Frandetti openly asserted his right to stage musicals in the drama theater; secondly, he worked with classics, and even anniversary ones (Mayakovsky is 130 years old this year); thirdly, he recruited one of the most popular musicians, Vasily Vakulenko, known as Basta. And, it seems, with such a well-aimed shot, Frandetti succeeded in the most important thing: he released a performance that promises to become fashionable.
Frandetti operates according to the canons of the show. However, he always organically integrates these canons into the material. And now the Lenkom balcony overlooking Malaya Dmitrovka has become an outdoor stage area in front of which a crowd has gathered. And five young artist barkers energetically invited the audience to the play “Ma-ya-kov-sky!” (the chant is pronounced by analogy with “Bu-ra-ti-no”), which was staged by Frandetti (well, here, of course, the “spaghetti” rhyme could not be avoided). It’s cool and in the spirit of the unbridled era of the Silver Age, which smoothly turned into revolutionary terror, and then the marshy swamp of the NEP.
And although there was no red carpet on this day, along which stars usually enter Broadway musicals, the stars themselves were present in full. There were management in the person of Mr. Kibovsky (Moscow Department of Culture) and Mr. Novikov (AP), there were senior colleagues – Messrs. Urin and Khazanov, as well as representatives of the theatrical community of different statuses and calibers.
The director called the genre of his performance “music drama” – also very carefully and witty, in the style of the era of the 20s, when all sorts of abbreviations became very popular. The play was written by Nika Simonova. The poems in the musical numbers – and it is they, and not the dialogues, that concentrate the meanings and move the plot – also belong to Vasily Vakulenko and his group Gazgolder. We have read, watched, and perceived Mayakovsky’s life story from the moment of his fateful acquaintance with the Brik couple many times and in different forms. But there are generations that haven’t read, haven’t watched, and generally don’t know about this Vladimir Vladimirovich. But you need to know. And for them, the Frandetti-Vakulenko music drama is simply invaluable.
The title character is presented in two guises: the real big guy, material and loud Stanislav Tikunov and his alter ego “talent” (as stated in the program) – the almost silent, but incredibly plastic Kirill Rusin. Irina Koshuba’s choreography in this performance is the strongest means of expressiveness: the role of plasticity, dance, movement here is as important as the word built into the musical series.
It’s clear that the dialogues here have been turned into hip-hop battles, otherwise why would Vakulenko be called? And it was done so witty and natural that after the performance you long move away from the reception that has settled inside you – you begin to hear rap even on the radio news. The battle between Chukovsky and Gorky on the one hand and the hero of the play on the other is perfectly constructed. And the scene of the poetic duel between Mayakovsky and Yesenin is one of the best in the play.
The space, invented by Vyacheslav Okunev, is breathing, multi-level, giving the necessary associations with constructivism, “Windows of GROWTH”, with the subject context in which the poet existed. But, alas, all this is obscured by the flickering of costumes: without style, without image, without emotion – just a set of random cabaret outfits. An attempt to combine the concept of costumes with denim looks at least naive, not to mention the fact that this has happened in the theater more than once. And it’s strange – isn’t it tempting to play in Art Nouveau, in Art Deco? Apparently, for costume designers Anastasia Pugashkina and Ekaterina Gutkovskaya – not even once. But Ivan Vinogradov played with the light exactly as it should. And the show largely ensured the powerful effect.
The artists in general are great guys. Yes, this is music-DRAMA, but it is still music-drama. And everyone had to work hard, especially the main antagonists of the hero – Anna Zaikova (Lilya Brik) and Alexander Gorelov (Osip Brik). They have enough individuality and dramatic skill to vividly play out the hellish conflict into which their vicious family plunged the brilliant outcast. Cool images are created by Viktor Rakov (Gorky) and Ivan Agapov (Chukovsky). Dmitry Nikonov (Yesenin) is emotionally captivating. The remaining characters, especially the female ones, are rather sketchy. And the problem here is also the lack of dramaturgy, which from time to time, especially in the second act, completely disappears and turns into a set of variety numbers put together by inarticulate entertainers. The whole story of Mayakovsky’s trip to America and Paris is an example of such confusion. And this is strange: the classic Broadway musical is replete with examples of dramatic solutions to such episodes. Almost everywhere in good musicals by Webber, Sondheim, Waldhorn, and even in more modest opuses, you can find scenes where, within the framework of one musical number, events unfold that cover different spaces and long periods of time. Who else but Frandetti can master this technique? Instead, there are confusing comments on insert numbers in which the artists simply have nothing to play.
The scene of Yesenin’s death returns the action to the theatrical channel. The scene of his aria “The Raven,” interspersed with Mayakovsky’s aria to the well-known text “In this life, it is not difficult to die, but to make life much more difficult,” is the dramatic climax of the performance. In the finale, one of Basta’s most famous hits “Sanara” sounds as the conclusion of the story about a futurist poet, a grandiose lyricist, a genius who became a card in a political game; about a madman who created not only great poetry, but also samples of Soviet advertising products; about a man whose death is still a mystery. Everyone knows that a musical needs a hit. Here it turned out the other way around – the hit turned out to need a musical. The audience stands and sings along with the heroes with their phone flashlights on in their hands. At the premiere, to the delight of the audience, Basta himself sang “Sanaru” when he came on stage.
Newspaper headline:
Fashion battles at Lenkom
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