“Mask” has not lost its face – Kommersant

The 29th Golden Mask Award ceremony for the events of the 2021/22 season took place in the atrium of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater. The results of the main national theater competition are being summed up Esther Steinbock, Sergei Khodnev And Tatyana Kuznetsova.

The ceremony, led by Lika Rulla (debutante in this role), along with the invariable Sergey Epishev, was staged and designed by Nina Chusova and Zinovy ​​​​Margolin without frills. The string quartet played mainly the classics, the presenters went to the platform along the side stairs, the laureates from the hall – along the central one. The atrium accommodated about three hundred direct participants of the “Mask” – nominees and theater directors; theatergoers could attend online — the ceremony was broadcast live on the Okko portal and social networks. We kept within two and a half hours – without officials and greetings from state institutions.

The atmosphere, however, was filled with friendliness, professional unity and quiet joy – the last seasons of The Mask, starting from quarantine captivity, turned out to be difficult; the playbill has dwindled, the 2020 and 2022 ceremonies have gone dimly online. So the opportunity to see each other live clearly delighted theater people, and the speeches of the winners, often confused, but invariably emotional, proved that The Mask is still revered in the theater community.

However, in comparison with the serene past, the theater workers were noticeably knocked down by censorship encroachments – both from the state side and from vigilant citizens.

In their speeches, the awardees tried “not to tease the geese”, so as not to bring down the last stronghold of professional solidarity, avoided politics and risky jokes, because even quoting the Soviet hit “I wish you happiness, happiness in this big world …” looked like a front in the current circumstances.

However, we still managed to remember the great ones who left, because of whose non-return this year the very nomination “Best Director in Drama” was canceled. Yevgeny Tsyganov, who received the “Mask” as an actor in the puppet theater, ventured to pronounce the name of Dmitry Krymov, met with a unanimous ovation. Kirill Krok, director of the Vakhtangov Theatre, who received a special jury prize for War and Peace, also won applause: although he did not say the name of Rimas Tuminas, he nevertheless mentioned the director, who “will have a difficult operation on Monday.” The general mood was outlined by Boris Milgram, director of the winning musical Three Comrades: “Mask is very important for all of us. And how long we will keep it depends on all of us.” He was mistaken in one thing – the preservation of an independent professional award from those present at the ceremony, unfortunately, certainly does not depend.

Drama

Of course, the Golden Mask drama theater competition was invalid from the very beginning, if only because last season’s performances from the Gogol Center and the Meyerhold Center were not even considered by experts due to the closure of these theaters. But even the list of nominees, which was presented to the jury almost six months ago, was not given to the jury in its entirety to see. The performances of Dmitry Krymov’s “Kostik” at the Pushkin Theater and Timofey Kulyabin’s “Wild Duck” at the Novosibirsk “Red Torch” were actually removed from the repertoires, officially – “for technical reasons.” Pyotr Shereshevsky’s performance Attila on Sakhalin and Boris Pavlovich’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman seem to have lived to see the festival, but their festival screenings were cancelled. Officially – also for almighty “technical reasons”. And if, as the banners hoped, many could have forgotten about the first two who left by the festival, then with the last two everything happened the way it often happens recently with such bans – indecent, stupid and askew.

Nevertheless, the drama jury of the award, one might say, survived.

Most of the major awards were given to performances staged either by those who left, or those who spoke out against what is known, or those who were fired.

The main award “Performance of a large form” was given performance “R” based on a play by playwright Mikhail Durnenkov and staged by Yuri Butusov – a macabre fantasy on Gogol’s themes, in which, as it is now clear, the artists predicted an imminent catastrophe. One of the two special jury prizes went to the performance of the dismissed artistic director Rimas Tuminas “War and Peace” at the Vakhtangov Theatre. In terms of the level of support from the theatrical community with the almost official status of the “main event”, War and Peace could be considered the main favorite of the competition; and in other conditions, the awarding of “only” a special prize to him should be assessed as also a kind of demarche of the jury, but of a completely different nature, but now it all no longer matters.

The second special prize was given to the BDT, that is, to the recently retired artistic director Andrei Moguchy, his performance “Mother’s Heart”on which vigilant citizens have already written slander, and the outstanding actress Nina Usatova, a faithful companion of the Mighty in his transformations of the last ten years.

Recognized as the best performance of a small form “Child” Voronezh Chamber Theater staged Anton Fedorov. The director Fedorov himself turned out to be the best costume designer – which just does not happen in the theater – for “Morphine” of the Pskov drama. Outside the capitals, the best, according to the jury, male role was found: it was played by Anatoly Grigoriev in the play “Anna Karenina” of the Novosibirsk theater “Old House”. And the best female role was still played in Moscow – she received the Golden Mask Victoria Werberg for Queen Elizabeth in the “Mary Stuart” of the Moscow Youth Theater.

Opera and musical

The experts offered the musical jury seven opera performances, of which five were performances on the conventional stage, and two more were emphatically experimental works: a documentary opera about repression through the eyes of a child (“Your father is alive, but you don’t need to talk about it”, the Gulag Museum and the project “ Geometry of Sound”) and a complex man-made spectacle about the exploits of the rover (“Curiosity”, Electrotheater “Stanislavsky”).

The judges preferred not to mark both experiments at all, but out of the remaining five performances, everyone got at least something. Curious Pagliacci, staged at the Petrozavodsk Musical Theater of the Republic of Karelia by Anna Osipenko, was awarded for the best male role (Pavel Nazarov — Tonio). The conductor’s “Mask” left for the work of the maestro Valeria Kiryanova kitsch “Aida” in the Moscow “Helikon-Opera”. The choice in the corresponding nomination this time was small – three contenders, but among them there was still an unparalleled conductor’s feat. Teodor Currentzis, who performed at the Diaghilev Festival the gigantic and most difficult mystery score of Carl Orff “De temporum fine comoedia”. But the Permian Orff was not awarded in the main sections, but he was awarded one of two special awards by the music jury.

However, “Mask” went to Perm in one of the most honorable opera nominations: the judges named “Eugene Onegin” staged as the best director’s work. Vladislavs Nastavshevs. Although the main heavyweight in the final scenario is still not Nastavshevs, but rather Vasily Barkhatov. “Dead city” Erich Korngold, staged by him at the Moscow Novaya Opera, gathered the most generous “mask” harvest: the artist’s best work in the musical theater (Zinovy ​​Margolin), Best Actress (Marina Nerabeeva – Marie / Marietta) and, finally, the best performance in the opera.

In this nomination, the New Opera, as its current director Anton Getman recalled from the stage, has not received the Golden Masks for a good quarter of a century, since 1998, when the prize was awarded to Yevgeny Onegin in Yevgeny Kolobov’s version.

Here in the “Operetta / Musical” section, the jury did not play any compromises and divided all the “Masks” between two performances-nominees (out of six). Again asymmetrically, only in a different way: here is the award for the best performance (“Three Comrades” Perm Theater-Theater) is supported only by the conductor’s award (Tatiana Vinogradova). And all other awards, including “Best Costume Design in a Musical Theater” (Victoria Sevryukova), received “Cabaret” Theater of Nations directed by Evgeny Pisarev. As you can easily see, both performances – the winner – a new musical adaptation of Remarque’s novel and a classic musical based on the novel by Christopher Isherwood – eloquently refer to Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Ballet and modern dance

The decisions of the jury almost coincided with the assessment of the Kommersant columnist, indicated in the published reviews. The ballet competition was laconic: four performances with a clear outsider – “Romeo and Juliet” directed by Konstantin Bogomolov (whom the ballet did not love as much as the opera) and choreographed by the artistic director of the Stanislavsky Museum Theater Maxim Sevagin. But this performance did not remain without the “Mask”; deserved it Georgi Smilevsky Jr. for his Mercutio – he managed to make a strong role despite the weakness of the choreography. Project “LAD”the brainchild of Ural-Opera-Ballet and the production company JokerLab, was awarded a special jury prize: the idea of ​​homage to Leonid Desyatnikov deserved the Mask, but the result was modest due to the incomparable level of productions by four different authors.

The best contemporary dance performance was named “A Place That Wasn’t Yet”. The project of Ksenia Mikheeva from St. Petersburg and the STD of Russia is clear, well-built, with a charismatic leader Alexander Chelidze. Actually, out of five nominees, there was only one competitor for “Mesta” – Kazan’s “DӨR” by Maria and Marcel Nureyev, the work is subtle, piece, rare organic and emotional. The Kommersant columnist would have given the palm to her, but the STD project, the founder of the Mask, won.

“Dancemania” of the Bolshoi Theater is one of the best productions Vyacheslav Samodurov – brought him the well-deserved “Mask” as a choreographer. Anton Grishaninwho performed the music of Yuri Krasavin with maniacal precision and ease, received the conductor’s “Mask”.

Six magnificent ballerinas and premieres of the Bolshoi were left behind, but this was to be expected: the soloists of this abstract ballet are fundamentally equal in rights, to single out one person meant to violate the calculated harmony of the whole.

And the Krasnoyarsk Katarina, or the Robber’s Daughter”, a three-act stylization based on the lost romantic ballet by Jules Perrot, sensibly and cleverly invented by choreographers Yuliana Malkhasyants and Sergey Bobrov with the active participation of a well-coordinated team of co-authors. Composer Petra Pospelova was awarded the “Mask” for the titanic work of turning the scattered violin fragments of Pugni’s music into a full-fledged and juicy 650-page score. The main character of this gigantic performance Elena Svinko, whose exceptional technical prowess by no means overshadowed acting talents, received her rightful “Mask” for best actress. One can only regret that this capital performance in all respects is in danger of getting lost in the expanses of Siberia. However, today it is absolutely impossible to vouch for the future well-being of the Golden Mask itself.