Ninety years of solitude – Newspaper Kommersant No. 62 (7507) dated 04/11/2023

The premiere of Yegor Peregudov’s performance “Love according to Marquez” at the Mayakovsky Theater opened the XXIII Open Arts Festival “Cherry Forest”. Together with the rest of the Mayakovka audience Gleb Sitkovsky I watched in amazement as the People’s Artist of Russia Igor Kostolevsky in the first act grew fifteen years old, and in the second – twenty years younger.

As soon as he took office – and this happened in May after last year’s resignation of Mindaugas Karbauskis – Yegor Peregudov behaved like a very responsible artistic director. The theater, as you know, is not only creativity, but also production, and production dictates a lot of all sorts of “shoulds”. Should we celebrate the centenary of the theater? Necessary. And by October Peregudov was releasing “History” – a collection of short stories, where each luminary of the theater got a role, albeit a small one. It does not matter whether the performance turned out or not (rather not), but “it is necessary”. In 2023, life has thrown new challenges. Should we celebrate the 75th anniversary of Igor Kostolevsky? Necessary. And now, in the Mayakovka poster, there is a classic benefit performance based on the story “Remembering my sad whores” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, where Kostolevsky literally does not leave the stage, and in addition he also receives a tempting creative task – to transform into an ancient 90-year-old old man, burning with love to a 14 year old girl.

Kostolevsky in the role of Gabito (the authors of the dramatization decided to hint at the childish diminutive name of Gabriel Garcia Marquez) and is really unrecognizable. The bewildered audience does not immediately realize that this shaggy-haired grandfather in a wrinkled white suit and with two pairs of glasses, somewhat subtly resembling Marquez himself in his old age, is the very favorite of the public. Complicated plastic make-up, thickness under the jacket, thin gray hair: make-up artists, costume designers, stylers had something to work on. The equally dead brothel owner Rosa Cabarcas (Olga Prokofieva) is a match for him – a hoarse, sinister old woman in furs that seem to reek of mothballs. With Gabito, an inveterate bachelor and longtime frequenter of brothels, they understand each other perfectly. As soon as he picks up the phone on the day of his 90th birthday and says solemnly “Today – yes!”, Rosa immediately begins to look for a suitable whore, although the request from the old libertine this time is not easy: on such a significant day he wants to get a virgin without fail.

Marquez’s late story at times resembles either Amarcord or Fellini’s City of Women. Wandering through his own memories, the lyrical hero extracts from there the images of all the women with whom he has ever been. Fenced off by high shutters that occupy the entire space of the stage (artist Vladimir Arefiev), from his own past, the hero still sees the past years as if into the light. Rays of light break through the shutters from the depths of the stage, and from there, in turn, all those 514 women with whom he managed to sleep, and even his own mother, whose mandate “to marry a white woman and give birth to at least two children”, Gabito so and did not comply. However, at the age of 90, everything in his life suddenly changed magically: he fell madly in love with the same 14-year-old Delgadina (Daria Khoroshilova), whom the old procuress Rosa Cabarcas planted on him, but he never slept. He just came and watched her sleep for a long time, but did not dare to wake her up. This love, according to Marquez, made him 20 years younger in the eyes of those around him, and, following this logic, Igor Kostolevsky makes a second transformation. At the beginning of the second act, to the general delight of the audience, he appears already without senile make-up – in his romantic and youthful appearance, to which everyone is accustomed.

Among the production tasks that Yegor Peregudov coped with, we must add such a difficult and delicate moment as providing roles for the female half of the troupe – the artistic director of any large theater will understand and shake hands. On the stage – an unheard of thing – fifteen actresses and only two actors: of course, Kostolevsky himself and Evgeny Paramonov, who playfully, without pressure, designates all the episodes with the participation of men – a taxi driver, an editor and a doctor. Moreover, the entirely female orchestra “Cartagena de Indias”, which does not leave the stage. Not only do they passionately play all types of Latin American dance music, they also replace theatrical calls. At the same time, such a strict announcement sounds in the foyer: “Now the third bell will sound, performed by cello, accordion, violin and trombone. After the trombone, entry into the auditorium is prohibited.”

There is more than enough passion in the performance of the Mayakovites (or is it better to say “mayakovok” here, given such a serious gender bias?). The long monologues of the hero about loneliness, death and love are interspersed with his erotomanic visions, and here the actresses give themselves free rein. What is the only defile of Jimena Ortiz (Alina Vakaeva), who (strictly according to Marquez!) should come to the hero from the past absolutely naked, but with an orange flower behind her ear. Unfortunately, these hot interludes and passionate Latin American dances are not enough to somehow smooth out the general atmosphere of stage platitudes. Fans suspended from the grates drive the hot Colombian air in a circle, and Igor Kostolevsky has to endlessly read to us something like fragments of the book “In the World of Wise Thoughts”.

Just five years ago, Yegor Peregudov staged with GITIS students One Day in Macondo based on Marquez’s book One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was a light, funny and somewhat magical performance that did not seem long at all, despite its six-hour duration. The hope that the three-hour “Love according to Marquez” would be just as magical, alas, did not come true. Maybe the whole point is that Peregudov the marketer defeated Peregudov the marketer. Too much responsibility, too many production tasks to the detriment of creative ones. And in the theater, sometimes it is very important to be irresponsible.