Ostrovsky’s play was staged in an unusual way in Yaroslavl

It must be said that Ostrovsky’s play, written 151 years ago, despite all its magic, has been a success for few people, starting with the very first production, which took place in 1873 at the Bolshoi Theater and was carried out by the Maly drama troupe, as well as the opera and ballet troupes of the Bolshoi Theater. Nor was it successful in the 1900 production by Konstantin Stanislavsky, who was accused by critics of excessive naturalism.

However, it seems that Valery Kirillov, who headed the Volkovsky Theater after the death of Sergei Puskepalis, was not stopped by the history of the “Snow Maiden” failures. Moreover, the artistic director began his performance from the moment of enlightening the viewer in the style of blank verse, which coincides with Ostrovsky’s verse, but not with his vocabulary.

– Tell me, speaker, who is Ostrovsky? What did he write about in his work? What is the play even about?

— I haven’t read it personally… There’s something about nature there. About the change from winter to the long-awaited spring. And about love. You understand that today you can’t live without love.

A couple of jesters in fashionable white and black suits are addressed primarily to the young viewer, for whom, let’s be honest, the Snow Maiden, like Father Frost, are nothing more than eternal companions of the New Year. Therefore, in three minutes it is necessary to outline the essence of Ostrovsky’s fairy tale. They will not leave the theatrical narrative in two acts unattended. They advance the plot, appearing either with a musical number, or on skates, or riding a fancy set (production designer Eduard Gizatullin), reminiscent of a wreath on a girl’s head. Only huge, as if whitened by severe frost.

It seems that at first the director relied on the visuals, which, by the way, is in the tradition of staging Ostrovsky’s play. So, for Stanislavsky, Spring emerged from a block of snow, and his and Moroz’s daughter, Snegurka, who had reached the age of 15 (by the way, in Ostrovsky’s time this was no longer puberty), generally emerged from the bear’s den after the clubfoot. That is, an artist dressed in a bearskin and accurately conveying bear habits.

The snow girl does not appear on the stage of the Volkovsky Theater – she is rolled out in a transparent ball, inside of which she stands like a firstborn child in an androgynous costume. Emerging from the ball with an uncertain step, she begins to comprehend the world. Her father and mother, Frost and Spring, send her out into the world without much worry. “Go, daughter, to the people,” they say with a light heart.

Having made the birth of love the main theme of the play, the directors offered the audience a carnival of passions. It mixed, on the one hand, elements of the circus (canvases on which the Snow Maiden rotates), and on the other, folk ritual, and at the same time passions that refer to Shakespeare, and even to ancient tragedy and comedy. Thus, in the spirit of ancient theater (visually and in the style of the play), the beginning of the second act, unfolding in the chambers of Tsar Berendey, is built. Here the tall wooden horse, its snow-whiteness rhyming with the round structures, is associated with the Trojan horse. And then another rhyme – a smaller copy of the horse on which the jesters and Berendey take turns riding – ironically hints: “Yes, this is a game! Buffoonish theater! But the passions are genuine – in love there is no other way.

Ostrovsky’s text, thanks to the director, sounds unchanged, however, the second act does not begin with it: the jesters, acting as daring guides, will introduce the viewer to Berendey’s kingdom. The author is the modern poet Mikhail Kitayner.

Since God sat on a cloud,

I missed being without the team.

Bored, I created night and day,

Then slowly

He created the sky, air, light,

The earth’s surface and rivers…

Then I decided:

Why not?

Let there be people!

And then the key phrase:

…God did not know, to his misfortune:

It was a crude idea.

Yes, God wanted to create people

And he created… the Berendeys.

Rough, with “chilled” hearts (according to Ostrovsky: cold heart) is the misfortune of today. Is salvation in love? Therefore, the artistic director turned the troupe towards poetic theater, which is not easy both for the artists and for the perception of the modern audience. And that’s why Vysotsky, who sounds in the finale with “The Ballad of Love”: “I will lay the fields for lovers, let them sing in their dreams and in reality! I breathe – and that means I love! I love…” – oddly enough, it turns out to be that important and final off-screen monologue that connects the old fairy tale, archaic in language, and its characters with what is happening outside the window and with us today.

Volkovsky’s artists feel good in the elements of Ostrovsky’s poetic theater: experienced ones, such as Berendey (Evgeniy Mundum), Elena the Beautiful (Olga Stark), Bobyl (Yuri Kruglov), Vesna-Krasna (Tatyana Korovina), Bobylikha (Natalia Asankina), and other. But director Kirillov risked giving the main roles to young actors who, in fact, had just joined the troupe. And, we must admit, he won because he was able to show the individuality of each of the four newcomers – Margarita Provotorova (Kupava), Nikita Erokhin (Lel), Erik Tarkhanidis (Mizgir) and, of course, Anastasia Savkina, who made a brilliant debut on the Volkovsky stage in the role of the Snow Maiden . She managed to show through her acting (either subtle or deliberate) the transformation of an awkward, uncharming teenager with an icy heart into a feminine, lovely girl, open to love. Let it be sacrificial.

After the performance we talk with Valery Kirillov.

— At the very beginning you have two jesters who explain to the audience what the talk will be about. Is it worth underestimating the public so much?

– For me, this is fundamentally important – to go on a journey through the world of Ostrovsky, into the world of blank verse and poetic drama, a carnival of passions, from the point of view of a modern viewer. And he needs to be prepared. Together with Mikhail Kitayner, we came up with an understanding of the Berendey world – what is it like if we find ourselves at point zero, that is, at the beginning of this world? What values ​​will we bring into it, what fantasy will we have about love, about fidelity? Ostrovsky has a whole palette to understand these issues.

It is extremely important for me to raise artists to the world of poetic communication. And in poetic dramaturgy, artists have a different breath, a different interaction with the world, with partners – they need to keep the rhythm, keep the verse, the figurative series. After all, this is the greatest happiness that can be – to speak to an actor and director in the language of poetic imagery.