Khabensky was demoted from artistic director to assembler: the Moscow Art Theater began the season with a “special” play

Stanislavsky and the cashier. Nemirovich-Danchenko and usherettes. A seagull on a curtain, which is being wiped with a rag by an assembler, who is also dressed inappropriately for the occasion. What can we say about some shawarma seller who teaches the director how to stage a play. What is this? This Moscow Art Theater in Kamergersky entered its 126th year of birth, starting it with the play “9th row, 10th, 11th place” based on a specially composed play. Author – Yulia Pospelova, director – Denis Azarov. From the premiere show, MK columnist.

In general, it’s always an ambush to do a performance for an anniversary. First of all, how? The case (and everything that exceeds 100 is more than serious) requires a special approach: there is history, and archives, and names, and greatness, and bitter pages that are better not to remember. And secondly, no matter what you do, everyone will be unhappy: give some status with pathos, others something more modern and without mothballs. On the day of his 125th anniversary, Khudozhestvenny went his own way, once again emphasizing the main feature of the Russian mentality – no matter what our formation, we are not like everyone else. And we will never be like everyone else! Which, in my opinion, is only good, especially taking into account modern realities and trends. There is only one question – what is the result?

At the Moscow Art Theater’s premiere anniversary performance, the first thing we see is how… the Moscow Art Theater hall looks at the audience from the stage. Only empty, and so one in one – the stalls, the amphitheater, the balcony, even the side chairs there in the aisle for their own (a magnificent solution by the artist Nikolai Simonov). What I initially mistook for a high-quality photographic print turned out to be a video projection with color correction, and in Ivan Vinogradov’s theatrical score the hall looks three-dimensional and breathes as if alive, awaiting the viewer. To the video sequences, the artist also added a couple of rows of natural Moscow Art Theater chairs under oak, which impudently fit not only into the video decoration, but also into the title of the performance – here it is, the 9th row with seats No. 10 and 11. On them, between them and nearby, it unfolds a multi-layered but not undeniable story.

The structure of the play is based on the principle of a mosaic, all fragments of which must ultimately form in such a way as to amaze with a new reading of history and, through modernity, make the legend of the Moscow Art Theater alive and interesting. The task is not an easy one, with many known and unknown ones, of which in the play there are precisely many, and not the main ones. Here are three pairs of lovers, through whose fate the Art Theater passed, but not as a teacher of taste (which would be expected), but above all as a witness to their life and love. The first to sit in 10th and 11th places will be an elderly couple – Natalya Tenyakova and Stanislav Lyubshin. She seems to be a little angry, but despite the years, he has retained the spirit of freedom – he has an ironic intonation. The elderly couple is alternately replaced by two others – younger and very young. The young ladies will be in light white dresses, the kind they wore in Moscow before and after the war. A little explanation, tenderness and modest choreography.

In parallel with the private life, the backstage life of the Moscow Art Theater unfolds: it seems like they are rehearsing “Three Sisters”, the director (Igor Khripunov) is naturally hysterical, who is balanced by the voice of ordinary theater people – the assembler Volodya (Konstantin Khabensky). And for some reason, what finally brings him to his senses is a person from a migrant environment – a shawarma delivery man (Armen Arushanyan). Here, every now and then, the actress runs through a reverent remark, whom the director waves away like an annoying fly – and she gets to play Olga in “Sisters.” It’s good that the older actress, who “is not named now” (Evgenia Dobrovolskaya), shows the young actress how to present a monologue.

Two curtains, historical and working, go from backstage to backstage, framing backstage episodes and focusing the audience’s attention on the characters participating in them – two usherettes, whose monologues are drawn out, in the first act they bury a cat, and in the second they evaluate the performance, which, as a result, behind-the-scenes passions will not be shown to the audience. And, of course, from time to time, like phantoms from the past, historical figures appear between the rows – Stanislavsky (Pavel Chinarev), Nemirovich-Danchenko (Mikhail Porechenkov), Maria Knebel (Svetlana Kolpakova), outwardly not similar to their prototypes. And also the cashier, the ticket buyer and the heroes of Chekhov’s story performed by Igor Zolotovitsky, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya and several other young actors, very nice, but on the site mentioned along with everyone else, as if in a mass grave, that is, without their characters. And here, for some reason, the Moscow Art Theater supports the bad fashion for a new type of program that treats both the actors and the audience without respect. But this is by the way.

The further the mosaic theatrical performance unfolded, the more obvious the idea and the ultimate goal of the performance became. Stanislavsky and his student Knebel are literally looking for the latter, first under the table, which is more ugly than funny, and then in the stormy sea, which is wonderful. A statuesque actress in white, on the instructions of the author of the famous System, funnyly portrays a bird, a mouse, a gopher at speed in order to turn into an eagle, and then, forgetting about it, go on a dangerous journey by boat. And now this desperate and risky journey through the waves of new art with Stanislavsky will hit the hall with a spectacular video storm. On stage, a bright, terrifying metaphor for the process of searching for a super task will end in calm and a happy outcome for both – “Here it is!”

It should be admitted that the directors also found a super task – the life of a person, which the theater should honestly show if it is a pulpit from which one speaks and does not shout, as at a rally, it is true. The truth is not about power, and certainly not about the ambitions of artists with their complexes and opportunistic aspirations, but simply about the life of a simple person, which today, more than ever, is worthless. And from this point of view, “9th row, 10th, 11th place” can be considered luck. In the finale, when near seats 10 and 11 there stands, huddled together, a couple of old people, whose shoulders are shaking from quiet sobs (“life has disappeared,” like in Chekhov) and whose time is running out, but life together has not happened, then the heart breaks . Emotions are added by music (Kirill Trushkin), which flows through the entire performance drop by drop, largely setting the rhythm of what is happening.

It’s just that in this anniversary stage story I was confused by two figures, without whom nothing would have happened – Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. If you are not immersed in the history of the Russian theater and the deeds of the founding fathers, whose names for some are simply like a reliable Russian brand, and for others – an empty phrase, then, looking at their Moscow Art Theater incarnation, it is difficult to believe that it was they who were able to build a theater, theatrical business and develop a System by which the world theater still sets its “clocks.” “I do not believe!” – Konstantin Sergeevich would exclaim, looking at himself, lying under the table, such a funny old naughty man. And not the one who once left the family business for the sake of the theater, who cried, locked in the dressing room, because the actors laughed at his System and did not want to work according to it. Cried! No, we cannot escape our native mentality – we either erect pathetic monuments or throw them off their pedestals, even with the best and most progressive intentions.