Medieval superhero: Mark Rozovsky staged Don Quixote for the sake of justice

At the Nikitsky Gate Theater in mid-December, they presented the play “Don Quixote,” based on Bulgakov’s play of the same name, created in 1938 based on the novel by Cervantes. Since both texts – those of the great Spaniard and those of Mikhail Afanasyevich – are recognized as classics, Mark Rozovsky, who acted as stage director and set designer, was, as they say, for sure. But Rozovsky would not be himself if he had not reshaped this caftan in his own way. Note that Mark Grigorievich was especially productive in 2023, releasing nine (!) new titles, so MK could not ignore the last premiere of the year.

In the collection of anecdotes and folklore of the Russian intelligentsia, compiled by Yuri Borev, there is a joke about the competition for a monument on the 100th anniversary of Pushkin’s death, in 1937: third place was taken by the sculpture project “Stalin reads the works of Pushkin”, second place – “Pushkin reads the works of Stalin” , and the first one is “Stalin reads Stalin’s works.” Rozovsky used approximately the same comic technique, forcing his Don Quixote of La Mancha (Stanislav Fedorchuk) to study to madness not the collection “Mirror of Chivalry” (like Bulgakov), but a book about himself – on the cover of the volume that the actor is holding in his hands, and written: “Cervantes. Don Quixote”.

The original source itself contains many comical and even homerically funny scenes and remarks, but the humor, captured by the noble “patina” of the time, made sense to modernize and renew (even from the time of Bulgakov, and not from the 16th century). Which is what Mark Grigorievich did.

For example, in the scene of the meeting of Alonso Quijano (that is, Don Quixote) and his future squire Sancho Panza, Yuri Golubtsov (Honored Artist of the Russian Federation) sadly and pathetically says, feeling the sword on his forehead (the knight takes him for a sorcerer and rushes into battle): “I I give up – and this is my strength.”

The reference to hackneyed political slogans is easy to read, while in Bulgakov’s text the phrase sounds clearly more trivial: “I surrender completely, irrevocably, once and for all.”

It’s worth mentioning separately about Golubtsov’s acting work. In the recent premiere of “The Ball Spins, Spins…,” he played the role of a Jew persecuted in the Russian Empire: an unhappy person, but who has not lost the ability to rejoice. There was 80% tragedy in his character, 20% comedy.

And in “Don Quixote” the artist showed himself in full force as a comedian, and was such in everything: in “uncertain” movements, facial expressions, voice (I thought that Yuri Golubtsov could voice, if a replacement for Vitsin’s voice is needed, films about Mr. Pitkin ).

Fedorchuk’s Don Quixote also turned out great – madness and courage are good for him, no worse than fencing and crazy waving of a spear – it is Stanislav who plays Athos in the reboot of “The Three Musketeers” from Rozovsky.

But in the pair of characters “Don Quixote – Sancha Panza”, the second is the leader, and the first is the follower, but this is a purely spectator’s impression of the play of the young and “gray-haired” artist.

Another clear success of Rozovsky’s version of “Don Quixote” is the “aged” peasant woman Aldonza Lorenzo (whom the main character chose as his lady love). Cervantes and Bulgakov seem to have no hint that Aldonza, to put it mildly, is a maiden in years. “The sweetest girl, senor, and she is so healthy that it is pleasant to look at her,” is a quote that describes her.

But Mark Rozovsky needed a crooked old woman with an old woman’s voice to double the comedy. 27-year-old graduate of the Shchukin Institute Nikolina

Kaliberda was able to change her voice herself; the make-up artists “added” another sixty years to her young years – the result was an exemplary “either a grandmother, or a witch.”

I deliberately dwell on the details so as not to retell the performance – but many of those who made it deserve praise – the sound engineer (perhaps this was the best sound of the year, they especially effectively enhanced Sancho’s live playing on the hanga – metallophone), the stage editor, the romantic lowering the moon and stars on the heads of the heroes.

And if we return to the topic of the combination of modernity and the canonical text “frozen in amber,” it is worth explaining how this happens in Rozovsky. Here we see the authentic attributes of chivalry, costumes, the realities of an inn or a rich noble house, even pork a la the end of the Middle Ages looks authentic – and into this reconstructed reality is thrown a line from the heroine, who was unnecessarily hit upon: “This is harassment!” And the robbers who attacked Don Quixote (the sad knight is constantly beaten) turn into rockers in leather jackets with huge tires rolling from side to side.

“The youth will come,” you think at such moments. And the killer line “your innocence is very important to you”? And the meme phrase “if fate closes one door to someone, then another one immediately opens”

Do I need to explain that the audience greets them with laughter?

Or a scene where the hero (I think it’s Sancia, but this is not certain) imposingly waves his hand – exactly like Boris Yeltsin. (In general, Panza’s governorship, promised to him for his loyalty, was bashed to the fullest – with hints of dishonest modern officials).

At the same time, illustrations for “The Cunning Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Manca” and an engraving portrait of Cervantes (at the end) are broadcast on a special screen to make it clear: the digressions are of a playful nature, we are following the classics, which corresponds to Rozovsky’s creative creed.

And the most significant of the alterations he made was the movement of Don Quixote’s main battle with “a formation of giants with long, bony arms” from the picture of the second or the beginning of the book to the finale. But this battle is presented as epically as possible, plus the windmills appear as anthropomorphic creatures without faces, but with hands and wooden handles in them (an obvious reference to the handles from the continuation of “Burnt by the Sun” by Nikita Mikhalkov).

Absurdity and hyperbolization, taken to the extreme, both in Cervantes and Rozovsky serve one purpose: to revive a hero who will begin to “revenge the insults inflicted by the fierce and strong – on the helpless and weak, in order to fight for the outraged honor, in order to return to the world what what he has irretrievably lost is justice.”

Is Don Quixote a superhero? Definitely. Is he crazy? Certainly. But aren’t all the “normal” people big madmen who allow him to fool around and destroy everything in his path?

Is Sancia Panza a fool? No, he is a sage, but he knows how to “pretend” to be a simpleton in order to survive.

Let us also answer the question: is Cervantes’s novel outdated? No, and it will never become outdated, since changes in human society are always “cosmetic” in nature, and the person himself does not change because a laptop or iPhone was invented.