Lyudmila Maksakova staged “Dowry” with students

I will receive the Vakhtangov Theater Lyudmila Maksakova, sitting in the center of the hall, the audience thanks, almost bows from the waist. “Thank you,” he repeats every now and then, “they brought up such guys.” Maksakova politely thanks in return. I observe such a picture after the final of the graduation performance “Dowry”, which has just played the fourth year of the Shchukin Theater Institute (teacher Anna Dubrovskaya). And the director of the production was she – Lyudmila Maksakova.

There are no luxurious decorations on the student stage. Yes, there are practically none – this is not a professional stage with its crazy budgets, and the tasks of the graduation performance are still somewhat different. Therefore, on the back of the stage on the projection – a fragment of the urban landscape: the outline of the church in the distance, in the foreground – a bench, tree branches without signs of a particular season. The landscape, not overloaded with details, nevertheless creates the atmosphere of the city of Bryakhimov on the Volga, where in the century before last (!!!) the story of the dowry Larisa Ogudalova took place, which became a classic of the Russian stage. True, not immediately: Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky wrote the play for four years, but after the premiere, which was compiled in 1878 at the Maly Theater, it failed.

The excitement around the new play was unprecedented; in the hall, as reviewers later reported, “the whole of Moscow gathered, loving the Russian stage.” Expectations, however, did not come true: according to the observer of the newspaper Russkiye Vedomosti, “the playwright tired the entire audience, even the most naive spectators.” It was the most deafening failure in Ostrovsky’s creative biography. Success for “Dowry” came only ten years after the death of the author and continues to this day. And on the eve of the 200th anniversary of the playwright, The Dowry, like his other masterpieces, acquires a special meaning and sound in the halo of the anniversary. Here Lyudmila Maksakova staged “Dowry”. The score is brilliant!

Not a word has been changed in Ostrovsky’s text, he is practically untouched by the search for some new meanings. As written by the author, so they play – scene after scene, revealing the essence of both Russian life and the Russian character, so diverse in its mentality. An important clarification – they play strictly according to the school. And the school, that is, the tradition, in Pike, judging by the production of Maksakova, is alive. The action begins in a cafe on the city square, where two merchants meet: the old Knurov Mokiy Parmenovich and the young Vozhevatov Vasily Danilych. Quite in the spirit of the times, the cynical dialogue of very rich people about the poor, who clearly understand that “every product has a price” … Including living things. Is it different today?

The hopeless cynicism of Ostrovsky’s characters is played out by students. Exactly following the author, with a detailed analysis of the characters, a calligraphic drawing of the roles. Ostrovsky – clear, transparent and, despite the well-known text, long disassembled into quotes – looks fresh, with interest, as if for the first time the audience learns the story about the fate of a beauty, but a dowry, whom both her mother sells, and a childhood friend sells, and a beloved man chooses the latter between her and money. In any case, such silence on almost all stages, and especially in the most dramatic second act, I do not remember in the theater for a long time. The performance literally flies, despite the fact that there are more dialogues than actions, for which, by the way, contemporaries reproached the playwright.

“Don’t you see that this woman is made for luxury? An expensive diamond is expensive and requires a setting.

And a good jeweler.

“You told the absolute truth. A jeweler is not a simple artisan: he must be an artist. In a beggarly situation, and even for a foolish husband, she will either die or become vulgar.

Maksakova, the director, has a theater on the student stage that you don’t often see on the professional stage now – voluminous, quivering. Every role without exception is done. The course is visible, the potential of future artists is visible. The main character is the undisputed star of the graduation course Polina Rafeeva, both technical and deep. The mobility of the psyche is visible, in her game there are many different colors, which she easily uses and, like a skilled singer, moves from the lower octave to the upper one. No wonder she has already been invited to the troupe of the Vakhtangov Theater: she was introduced to the roles of the current repertoire and even entrusted with new ones. Her stage mother, Harita Ignatievna, who openly sells her daughters, performed by Natalya Andronova, is also good: thin, brittle, ready to fool the whole world.

And male roles! Whoever you take – everyone leaves with applause: Ivan Zakhava (Knurov), Mikhail Konovalenkov (Vozhevatov), ​​Artem Geenko (Paratov) – confident in the power of their wallet, cynical gentlemen. In the climactic scene, when Larisa sings the romance “Don’t go away, stay with me” to the accompaniment of the ridiculous Robinson, these masters of life cry with natural tears, which, however, will not prevent them from destroying Larisa. Karandyshev (Andrey Batov) is amazing, who very accurately led his hero through the humiliation of a small, but overly ambitious, and therefore ridiculous little official to conscious revenge (“Do people get executed because they are funny?”). Nikita Khudyakov, despite the small role of Robinson, managed to convey all the cynicism of the acting profession, which, to tell the truth, cannot be compared with the cynicism of its owners.

The last to congratulate Lyudmila Maksakova is Sergei Shakurov, who came to the performance. “I seem to have grown wings,” Sergey Kayumovich admitted to her.