Premiere at the theater of satire

On the small stage of the Moscow Academic Theater of Satire, the performance “This Child” based on the play by the French playwright Joel Pomer, directed by Nikita Kobelev, was presented.

The production was made in the technique of “verbatim” (from the Latin “literally”), which the director prefers in his latest works. The documentary theater format is increasingly gaining popularity on Moscow stages. Here the audience becomes witnesses and even accomplices of the events presented.

So in the play “This Child” we see several family stories involving children – from a five-year-old girl and a ten-year-old boy (convincingly played by young actors) to adult daughters and sons who have already started their own families. The emphasis of the production is on the relationship between parents and children, difficult, dramatic, where sometimes there is a blank wall of misunderstanding and psychological isolation of each other. The playwright considers the most peak, intense emotional moments of interaction between generations.

Sympathy and empathy of the audience cause all the characters. And often we put ourselves in the place of one or another hero, because the plots played out are familiar to many parents. Here is a Sunday dad trying to involve his little daughter in the game, but she is indifferent to him and she is bored. Or an elderly father rigidly dictates his life postulates to an adult, already married, son, reproaching that he does not live according to his rules. A hysterical mother, suffering from loneliness, brings down an excess of tenderness on her son, frightening him and almost bringing him to tears … The authors of the play seem to put a mirror in front of the hall, offering to recognize themselves in this or that scene. And the production becomes like a seminar, a quest where we are taught to recognize our mistakes in education.

I recall Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Sons”, and the famous Tatyana Chernigovskaya, who claims that the main task of parents is to understand what kind of child they have, what are its features. Don’t remake it for yourself.

The French spirit hovers over the stage. French speech is heard from the TV screen. Actors are slim to thinness. The costumes are modern and recognizable in a European way. But the theme is common, burning and important. understand and hear each other. No matter what. This is the premiere at the Theater of Satire.

Galina SNOPOVA.