MTYUZ showed “Heart of a Dog” by young director Anton Fedorov

MTYUZ showed the premiere of “Heart of a Dog” by Anton Fedorov, one of the leaders of modern young director. The play offers a new look at Bulgakov’s famous characters, asks difficult questions and claims to be the best production of the season, he believes Marina Shimadina.

“Heart of a Dog” is a symbolic name for MTuZ. It was in 1987, even before the official publication of the story and the release of the famous film by Vladimir Bortko, that Henrietta Yanovskaya directed it, heading the theater. The performance became famous and traveled halfway around the world. Then, at the dawn of perestroika, the discovery of Bulgakov’s prose seemed like a breakthrough – it was perceived as a satire on the Soviet system with its fraudulent ideas of a radical remake of man, and hope for another, new life loomed ahead. The current performance of the Moscow Youth Theater is devoid of any hope, it looks at people without illusions, but at the same time with great pity for everyone – both for the unfortunate Sharik-Sharikov and for the unfinished intelligentsia.

Anton Fedorov stages Bulgakov as if from a blank slate – for a new viewer who has not seen Yanovskaya’s legendary performance, and has hardly seen Bortko’s film. And, contrary to the stereotypes of our previous perception, he places completely different accents in the story. It is interesting that a similar changeover with Bulgakov was recently performed by Roman Gabria in the Novosibirsk “Red Torch”: there Sharikov was played by one of the best artists of the troupe, Vladimir Lemeshonok, whose age and noble appearance would have been much more suitable for the role of Professor Preobrazhensky.

In the new performance of the Moscow Youth Theater, Preobrazhensky is not the last stronghold of the civilized world, which is ready to destroy the “coming boor” Sharikov along with Shvonder. Igor Gordin’s hero, a brilliant surgeon and scientist, looks like a spoiled Moscow gentleman and “bourgeois”: he lives in seven rooms, goes to “Aida” for the second act, drinks in the morning, makes friends with whomever he needs and with one call “upstairs” instantly decides issue with the seal. Representatives of the new government – the chairman of the house committee Shvonder (Anton Korshunov) and his assistant (Sofia Slivina) – are afraid of him until they faint.

In the first scenes, the actors act in a comedic manner, well known to Fedorov’s fans: masked existence, incoherent speech, consisting mostly of interjections, theatrical jokes. The actors appear on stage as if in a pre-premiere bustle, getting ready and not yet merging with the characters, and when the dog appears, they remember both “The Lady with the Dog,” where Gordin played one of his main roles, and “Dog in the Manger.” The scene with the operation, when a living dog is “unnoticed” by the viewer, is replaced with a furry stuffed animal using an open theatrical technique.

But, fortunately, gradually this farcical device, which in Fedorov’s “Madame Bovary” managed to get pretty boring after three hours, is coming to a minimum. With the appearance of Sharikov, a tense, pre-storm atmosphere fills the air. MTYUZ actor Andrei Maksimov, famous for his roles in the TV series “Fisher” and “The Boy’s Word,” incredibly boldly plays this almost Kafkaesque transformation: an ugly homunculus in bloody bandages gets out of the box, which gradually, before our eyes, turns into something humanoid, learns to speak and walk on crutches, leaning on the tips of the shoes. The spectacle is terrible and bewitching.

And here the reaction of others is interesting and important. Two maids (Ekaterina Aleksandrushkina and Alla Onofer) continue to treat Sharikov with feminine hospitality, like a pet or a small child, no matter what he does – well, what can you say about the unreasonable. Assistant Professor Bormental (Ilya Shlyaga) is delighted with the unheard-of discovery, which promises scientific glory, and enthusiastically records observations of the “experimental” on a tape recorder, not forgetting to loudly and legibly repeat his name every time, so as to be sure to remain in history.

And Professor Preobrazhensky himself is rather depressed by the results of the experiment – he, with the help of a pituitary gland transplant, sought to discover the secret of eternal youth. He would have been well paid for this! And the new man – ugh, women give birth to such people themselves. Therefore, from the very beginning he treats Sharikov with disgust as a by-product of a bad experience, a duplicate of the unlucky drunkard and thief Klim Chugunkin, an organ donor. In this lumpen proletarian – dark, limited, but generally not evil – he refuses to see a person. And, perhaps, we are talking here not so much about the scientist’s responsibility for his creation (as in the recent film by Yorgos Lanthimos “The Poor Miserables,” where Dr. Frankenstein still managed to recognize his brainchild as an independent personality, accept and let go), but about the snobbery of the intelligentsia , who doesn’t take “these rednecks” seriously until they burst into his house with a revolver.

Nevertheless, Fedorov does not give unambiguous assessments: his Sharikov can be disgusting, arrogant and scary. When he raped Zina, she, previously ringing like a bell and light like a balloon, instantly drooped, as if the air had been pumped out of her—Alla Onofer plays this theme wonderfully. But when the same Sharikov, already quite handsome, before the reverse operation, lostly calls for “daddy,” it is impossible not to sympathize with him. He, an unfortunate creature, turns to his creator, who seemingly created him in his own image and likeness, but turned away from his creation with contempt. And the motif of God-forsakenness is also clearly heard here – it’s not for nothing that Scriabin’s music accompanies the entire performance.

Preobrazhensky’s failed experiment seems to be the collapse of the entire project called “humanity.” The performance is over, the shop can be closed. Stage workers are dismantling billboards with torn wallpaper (the play’s designer is Vanya Bowden) – theater and culture didn’t help anyone either. A dog’s heart turned out to be much better than a human’s, and human nature cannot be improved by any medical manipulation.