Ksenia Rappoport played a performance with a broken leg

The popular St. Petersburg actress Ksenia Rappoport broke her leg, but three performances of Einstein and Margarita (the premiere took place a year ago) on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater, which had been planned for a long time, were not canceled. And not only because the tickets were sold out. With details observer “MK”.

The performance “Einstein and Margarita” begins, but for some reason the light does not go out. Alexei Serebryakov, who appeared in a worn dressing gown, for some reason comes to the fore and instead of lying down on the floor, as the director intended, he suddenly turns to the audience. The audience was surprised and to some extent tensed: the artist is not going to make a political or any other statement. But he says:

– Dear viewers, it so happened that my partner Ksenia Rappoport broke her leg. Doctors are against her acting, but we found it impossible under the current conditions to cancel this performance. So I ask you to be indulgent.

So, he said briefly and clearly, after which he lay down on the floor – no longer he, but Albert Einstein, the father of the theory of relativity and the developer of the atomic bomb.

Of course, the audience sincerely sympathized with the actress in their hearts, but they were somewhat intrigued – how will the beautiful Rappoport play with a fracture? In addition, the performance goes on without intermission for two hours, which means that she will not be able to rest, give rest to her leg. And then she appeared from the depths – in a trouser suit in the post-war fashion (wide light trousers, a light coat in a barely noticeable cage). Black-haired Margarita Konenkova, the wife of the great Soviet sculptor, the mistress of the great American scientist, but, as it turns out along the way, she collaborated with the Soviet state security agencies. Spy, in short. She came to Einstein from New York to Princeton to say goodbye, but he still does not know.

She entered easily and, if it were not for her partner’s message about a broken limb, you would not immediately notice that, firstly, the artist tried to carefully place her foot, and secondly, she has a special orthopedic boot on her right foot. And in the following scenes, when Margarita changed into a light black dress with polka dots, then on her left leg she would have a red shoe with a low heel, and on her right leg the same rough orthopedic shoe.

Of course, to pretend that there is no difference in the game with a broken leg or a healthy leg is to engage in self-deception. Moreover, no one hides a rough shoe. But this is what super professionals mean: with their play they are able to switch the viewer’s attention, to concentrate it on the main thing. Everyone will replay, well, except that only a cat is out of competition here. And Einstein and Margarita, that is, Serebryakov and Rappoport, did everything to make the audience plunge into this atomic love of their historical characters, about whom the playwright Alexander Gelman wrote a wonderful and more than relevant play.

The audience appreciated the courage of the actress Rappoport, standing and applauding for a long time. The actress left the stage, limping noticeably. Still, to withstand three performances is … but at what cost only Alexei Serebryakov knows. After the performance, I learned from the producers the details of what happened and the work of artists in an extreme situation. Ksenia broke her leg at home two days before the announced performance. Any fracture is bad, and in the area of ​​​​the foot it is nowhere worse. Doctors urged her to rest.

“We really thought about canceling three shows,” producer Elena Geraseva tells me. – But we all considered that today the topic, which is discussed in the play, is more important than ever, it should be discussed and we did not cancel it. We thought to see how the first one goes, and if it gets really bad, well, then we’ll limit ourselves to one performance.

Having made such a decision, something was changed inside the performance so that Ksenia would not overload her leg. To be honest, I thought that they would cancel the most beautiful and winning scene of the performance – the tango that Einstein dances with his beloved in the first part of the performance. But no, the tango was not abandoned, the choreographer Maria Serebryakova, the wife of Alexei, somewhat changed the pattern of the dance, facilitated the difficult movements for the actress and entrusted the main load to Serebryakov. And he, it must be said, carefully led her in a dance that ended in thunderous applause. It was impossible not to think what she, both of them cost this dance of love.