Review by Marina Shimadina of the premiere of “Meyerhold. Alien Theater” at the Alexandrinsky Theater

For the 150th anniversary of Vsevolod Meyerhold, the Alexandrinsky Theater prepared a whole program of exhibitions, lectures and conferences, the pinnacle of which was Valery Fokin’s premiere “Meyerhold. Alien Theater” is a documentary production about the beginning of the end of the great director and his theater, which was brought closer by his friends and colleagues. Attended the general meeting of GosTIM Marina Shimadina.

For Valery Fokin, the figure of the innovative director Meyerhold is one of the most important. He was one of the founders and first director of the Meyerhold Center in Moscow, and after its actual closure and joining the School of Dramatic Art, he named the New Stage of the Alexandrinka after Meyerhold, opening a monument to the director in the courtyard of the theater based on the famous portrait of Boris Grigoriev. Meyerhold is also no stranger to the Alexandrinsky Theater: he staged almost two dozen performances here, and the most famous – Lermontov’s Masquerade – was released exactly on the eve of the February Revolution of 1917, becoming a farewell fireworks display of the magnificent life of the imperial theater. In 2014, Valery Fokin restored scenes from that legendary production in the play “Masquerade. Memories of the Future”, where luxurious costumes and intricate mise-en-scène were carefully recreated.

Fokine’s new production is also a kind of reconstruction, but much more laconic. And it is also about the end – the end of the last period in Meyerhold’s life, about the closure of the GosTIM theater he created and about its imminent death. The documentary production is based on a transcript of the general meeting of the theater staff after Platon Kerzhentsev’s devastating article entitled “Alien Theater” was published in the Pravda newspaper. In it, Meyerhold was reproached for bourgeoisism and formalism, for “trickery” unnecessary to the proletariat, and recalled the “burden of the past” – that is, his service in the imperial theaters. The director was accused of never releasing a play for the 20th anniversary of the revolution: “When Soviet theaters showed dozens of new works that reflected the greatest problems of building socialism, the fight against the enemies of the people – the Theater named after. Meyerhold turned out to be a complete political bankrupt.”

But Valery Fokin is interested not so much in the repressive machine itself with the trigger of newspaper editorials, but in the psychology and behavior of people – Meyerhold’s comrades and colleagues, who instantly became his enemies.

The performance begins as an ordinary meeting of the collective with its unchanged minutes, elections of the chairman, and voting. There is only a table with a decanter on the stage, the actors are seated in the first row of the stalls, so that the audience also becomes participants in the general meeting.

The first to perform is Vsevolod Meyerhold himself, performed by Vladimir Koshevoy, who, ironically, had previously played young Stalin for Fokine in the play “The Birth of Stalin.” Handsome, proud, with an aquiline profile, royal bearing and a crown of gray hair, he recites a penitential speech about his mistaken passion for a complex form, incomprehensible to the “young proletariat.” He reads as if he were playing a forced role, without pleading, humiliating intonations. And they don’t forgive him for this. The artists are indignant that in his speech he uses the word “we”, making them seem to be accomplices in the crime, while they are only pawns in the hands of the director, and he makes all decisions individually, like a king and god. And at the same time, they are seriously offended precisely by their subordinate position, “the lack of Soviet collectivism and respect for each of its units.” Their remarks reveal personal grievances and wounded pride, but they gladly support them with ideological accusations, although, it would seem, they should understand what this threatens the director with – it’s 1937 outside.

And even long-time comrades do not feel the slightest remorse, as if all these years they were just waiting for the “fas” command to attack the one who made them famous.

And only the modest carpenter Kanyshkin (Dmitry Belov), not spoiled by vanity, says that it is worth giving Meyerhold another chance so that he can realize his ideas in the new GosTIM building under construction – now the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, whose semicircular amphitheater was invented by Meyerhold.

Women, of course, are most offended by the exceptional position of the “first lady” of the theater Zinaida Reich (Olesya Sokolova), who plays all the main roles, so GosTIM is jokingly called “the theater named after the lady with the camellias.” Zinaida Nikolaevna is the second wife and muse of the director, who will be brutally murdered in her house after his arrest, and really looks here like an out-of-this-world exotic flower among the simple daisy debutantes in chintz dresses and dry honored artists in gray Soviet suits.

Meyerhold himself observes this unbridled massacre with icy calm, but mentally transforms reality into a theatrical performance and recalls his performances, whose scenery was recreated on stage by the artist Alexei Tregubov.

And now the pugs barking at the elephant quickly scatter and begin to play an episode from the famous “Inspector General”, unquestioningly obeying the director – the demiurge of this world. And you understand how grandiose and avant-garde this production was for its time.

Or they march in a parade of athletes, which Meyerhold was also fond of in the 1920s, being the head of the theater department of the People’s Commissariat for Education. Or they are rehearsing the same “Lady with Camellias”, which became the last performance shown by GosTIM, when the director was not even allowed to bow. Zinaida Nikolaevna takes him, already barefoot and confused, by the arm and leads him into the depths of the stage, where the door opens onto the street, into modern St. Petersburg. Takes you into history. And on the closed curtain they project a series of portraits of Meyerhold – from the young actor of the Art Theater playing Treplev in Stanislavsky’s “The Seagull”, and the revolutionary commissar in a leather jacket to the infamous last full-face and profile photographs from the personal file of the director, who was arrested a year and a half after the meeting, and another seven months later, shot after brutal torture.