Garik Sukachev directed “The Story of a Murder”

Garik Sukachev produced the play “Sashashishin” at Sovremennik based on the novel “Kill Bobrykin, or the Story of a Murder” by Alexandra Nikolaenko, which received the Russian Booker Prize. The authors of the production managed to achieve the almost impossible – to create an audience-generating, box-office performance based on arthouse material, he believes Marina Shimadina.

This season, Sovremennik turns to modern Russian prose for the second time. In October, on the Other Stage, the young director Sergei Tonyshev staged Yevgeny Vodolazkin’s new novel “Chagin”. But if the author of “Lavr” and “Aviator” is not a rare guest on the theater stage (his other novel, “Soloviev and Larionov”, directed by Aidar Zabbarov, was shown in the same “Sovremennik”), then the name of Alexandra Nikolaenko is relatively new for the theater, and not by chance.

In 2012, Garik Sukachev published “Anarchy” in Sovremennik, a story about a broken-up punk band that is offered to get back together for an expensive tour. But if at that time the famous rock musician was staging a finished play by Mike Packer, and on the topic he was, as they say, in his element, now he took on a much more difficult task. The idea for the future production, according to him, was born more than five years ago, when the head of Sovremennik, Galina Volchek, invited him to release another performance and his choice settled on Nikolaenko’s novel. In response to Volchek’s remark that it was “almost impossible” to stage this book, he replied that this was precisely why he wanted to do it.

Indeed, Nikolaenko’s novel seems absolutely non-scene: it is written from the perspective of Sasha Shishin – most likely an autist – and presents the world as it is seen by special people. This is the world of eternal childhood, where there is no time, where the past and present are inseparable from each other and difficult to make out, whether the action takes place in reality or in memories, dreams and fantasies.

The main character lives with his mother (Elena Kozina), a devout but very grumpy woman, reminiscent of the grandmother from Pavel Sanaev’s novel “Bury Me Behind the Baseboard.” He selflessly loves his neighbor Tanya (Daria Belousova), with whom they were friends in childhood, hates his rival and homewrecker Bobrykin (Nikolai Klyamchuk) and dreams of killing him. At the same time, he remains a child at heart and can still turn a mitten into a shaggy puppy, and see the magical Emerald City through a bottle glass.

It must be said that this is not the first time Sovremennik has addressed the topic of special people: back in 2015, Yegor Peregudov staged on the Other Stage Mark Haddon’s cult novel “The Mysterious Night-Time Murder of a Dog,” about a teenager with Asperger’s syndrome who perceives the world unusually acutely. Then the hero’s diagnosis was more of a game convention, but this time the creators approached the preparation of the play thoroughly – they went to the rehabilitation center for children and youth with ASD “Our Sunny World”, and talked there with children and their parents.

Dmitry Smolev’s image of the main character came out very convincing – his manner of speech, characteristic hand movements, facial expressions and sudden mood swings. Sometimes it seemed that there was an actor with autism on stage who was participating in inclusive theater projects. At the same time, Smolev does not rely on feelings of pity and creates a multifaceted, contradictory, sometimes funny, sometimes dangerous character. But Sasha Shishin is not alone in the play: the hero in old age is played by Vasily Mishchenko, and little Sasha, like Tanya and Bobrykin in childhood, is portrayed by dolls. This production is a co-production of Sovremennik and the Obraztsov Puppet Theater, and puppeteers take part in it.

By the way, dolls are now becoming a trend: the Bolshoi Theater recently hosted the premiere of Alexei Frandetti’s “The Nightingale. Son of a Mandarin” – also in co-production with the Exemplary Theater. But if in the Bolshoi the dolls were needed to create oriental fairy-tale exoticism, then in Sovremennik they simply mark scenes from the childhood of the heroes. A tangled ball of different times, Garik Sukachev and playwright Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina seem to be unwinding and laying out the yarn separately: here is childhood, here is youth, here is old age. This, of course, helps the perception of a non-linear plot, but still simplifies the author’s text, written primarily in rhythmic prose, which sounds almost like poetry, because this is exactly how, poetically, the main character perceives the world.

In the play, this special, naive look is also shown: in a number of scenes, screen projections on the backdrop – a snow-covered courtyard and houses with cozy window lights – seem to have been drawn by a child, which sharply contrasts with the detailed computer projections in other scenes – they apparently illustrate the prosaic world of ordinary of people.

The production, designed by Andrei Sharov, who used all the technological capabilities of the Sovremennik stage, generally turned out to be bright and spectacular: there is a courtyard skating rink with skaters, a real motorcycle, and dances from Yegor Druzhinin. And soap bubbles flying into the hall would greatly delight the target audience of the Obraztsov Theater, although “Sashashishin”, with an age rating of 12+, is still not a performance for children.

Peter Nalich worked on the soundtrack of the production – both new music and time-tested hits are heard here. Unexpectedly, the lines from the song “Wings” were an accurate fit for the theme and mood of the performance: “The girls and boys were spinning / In a whirlwind of unbridled passion, / And they left me crying, / Sitting on the washing machine in the bathroom.” For the hero, the betrayal of his beloved girl turns out to be a tragedy worse than the ancient one: along with Tanya, joy, play, and other worlds disappear from his life, and only his boring mother remains with her missal, superstitions and hooves for jelly. And this yawning gap between the magical world of imagination and unsightly reality becomes the main semantic nerve of the performance.