Review of Evgeny Pisarev’s play Zoya’s Apartment based on Bulgakov’s play

The artistic director of the Pushkin Theater Yevgeny Pisarev released Mikhail Bulgakov’s “Zoyka’s Apartment” on its stage with Alexandra Ursulyak in the title role. The premiere is in many ways similar to their previous work – Cabaret at the Theater of Nations, which recently received five Golden Masks, but is unlikely to repeat its success, believes Marina Shimadina.

The “housing problem” always worried Bulgakov, but manifested itself in his works in different ways. The Turbin House is a hearth of comfort and warmth behind cream curtains, a piece of the former, peaceful life in revolutionary Kyiv. The apartment on Bolshaya Sadovaya is an exemplary Soviet communal apartment, where Woland arranges his satanic ball in The Master and Margarita. Another “bad”, Zoya’s apartment is even included in the title of the play. Here it is a hangout under the guise of an atelier for tailoring overalls, organized by an enterprising citizen Zoya Peltz.

The action takes place in the 1920s, but Yevgeny Pisarev decided not to turn Bulgakov into Zoshchenko and deliberately avoided the vulgar signs of the New Economic Policy. His production is stylish, cinematic and sustained in the genre of mystical noir – black and white costumes, statuary mise-en-scene and a minimum of set design.

The artist Zinovy ​​Margolin, Pisarev’s constant collaborator, created on the stage a metaphorical space of a rickety world – the floor and ceiling tilted at different angles are devoid of support, walls. There is no comfort here for a long time, the wind is walking. Ghostly shadows fall on the ceiling with ancient stucco. Remains of former luxury. And the whole wretched, already Soviet life – a hallway with chests, a cast-iron bath, where Zoya washes her ragged cousin Ametistov, and a potbelly stove, out of place in this aesthetic surroundings – will be pushed forward along the edges of the proscenium, beyond the main playground.

Characters “from the former” are trying in vain to keep their balance in this exploded world that has lost its usual coordinates and are rolling down an inclined plane. A languid beauty from high society Alla Vadimovna (Anna Karmakova) comes to work as a “modeller” in Zoykino’s atelier. Former Count Obolyaninov plays the piano and takes tips. Alexander Dmitriev – Kostya from Dmitry Krymov’s play – plays him as a weak-willed rag doll, absurdly waving his arms. He is carried around the stage from corner to corner, as if by gusts of wind. And at the word “Bolsheviks,” the long-legged morphine addict shrinks into a ball and hides in horror behind the back of his mistress and protector Zoya.

Zoya herself also survives as best she can and is forced to give bribes to the chairman of the house committee, Alliluya (the precise and grotesque Sergey Miller), so that he looks at her not entirely legal business through her fingers. Alexandra Ursulyak plays Zoya as a strong, iron lady, ready to fight for her life with her claws. She can be rude, unceremonious when necessary, and sometimes motherly and affectionate towards her Pavlik, a big and ridiculous child. You don’t really believe in the love of this prudent Zoya – rather, it’s pity, an irrational attachment to the fragments of the former world that hang like an anchor on her neck and pull to the bottom.

All of them dream of relocation to Paris and of coveted visas, which can only be obtained through Gus-Remontny, the director of a trust of refractory metals, who is just as slow to think and speak. Alexander Matrosov in this role does not look like himself (Vladimir Maisinger, who is more accustomed to characteristic roles, plays with him) – just a stone monument to the Secretary General, who has come down from the pedestal and is hardly moving his brains and tongue. Of all the girls defiling in front of him, he most of all likes the maid Manyushka (Elizaveta Kononova) with her three laps and stomps, in an outfit “a la russe”. But the luxurious Alla Vadimovna broke his heart and “stabbed him alive” – she may be affordable for the almighty Goose, but still too tough. Another field berry.

Another character of the play – Bulgakov does not have him, but he appeared in the production of the same name by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater – this is the Apartment itself. Yevgeny Pisarev presents her as an intelligent old woman in a hat with a veil (Nina Marushina), who looks with surprise and horror at all these orgies and convulsions of the new time.

I must say that the famous “studio” of the second act is very impressive – with musical numbers and a live orchestra on stage (music was composed by Pavel Akimkin). But the director so diligently avoided the genre of buffoonery declared by the author that he almost completely removed everything comic from the performance. The only driver of the production was Ametistov – such a beginner Ostap Bender – in the excellent performance of Alexander Kubanin.

The performance is clearly striving from satire to drama, and this is understandable: looking at the lost, “superfluous” heroes of Bulgakov from today, we are somehow not laughing. A little more, and they will turn into the characters of “Running” – wanderers in a foreign land, longing for “snow on Karavannaya”. But they don’t turn. Firstly, men in black come after them and stop “hazing”, and secondly, the very nature of the play about the “grimaces of NEP” resists such dramatization.

It is interesting that Pisarev and Ursulyak’s previous work, Cabaret at the Theater of Nations, spoke about the same time, 1920-1930s. A revolution had taken place in Russia and an era of terror was brewing, in Germany the Nazi ideology was gaining strength. Both productions are about ordinary people at the break of history, who are trying to live and survive, love and have fun, no matter what. In general, about all of us. But there, the intonation of Sally Bowles, who literally screamed “Life is a cabaret!” in the finale, was truly hysterical, tragic. Here, Zoya’s last words are “Farewell, my apartment!”. You don’t know whether to cry or laugh. No, after all, the housing problem has spoiled the Muscovites.