Review of the play “9th row, 10th, 11th place” at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

The Chekhov Moscow Art Theater celebrated its 125th anniversary with the premiere of Denis Azarov’s play “9th row, 10th, 11th place” based on a play by Yulia Pospelova specially written for the anniversary – not only artists and workers, but also theater spectators became its heroes. Tells Marina Shimadina.

Anniversary celebrations are a thankless thing; they are rarely truly successful. As a rule, the result is either pretentious officialdom or a skit that can only be understood by one’s own people. Of the few successful examples, one can recall Kirill Serebrennikov’s documentary play “Outside the System”, staged at the Moscow Art Theater for the 150th anniversary of Stanislavsky ten years ago, in 2013, or the lively, ironic production of Nikita Kobelev’s “Nine-fifty” – for the 90th anniversary of the Mayakovsky Theater, which was then headed by Mindaugas Karbauskis. Unfortunately, the recent centennial anniversary of Mayakovka with the ponderous “Stories” of the new artistic director Yegor Peregudov, where the stars of the troupe performed excerpts from their played and unplayed roles, left the feeling that the theater had aged not ten, but a hundred years.

Therefore, the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater decided to take a different path – not to dive into the archives and not indulge in memories, but to write a new, modern play about the people of the theater, and on both sides of the stage, because not a single theater can exist without spectators.

Artist Nikolai Simonov expressed the main idea of ​​the performance absolutely clearly – he mirrored Shekhtel’s auditorium on stage with its restrained, intelligent beauty and curlicues of Art Nouveau numbers on wooden chairs. The numbers are important here: it is to certain, “their” places – the 9th row, 10th and 11th place – that an elderly couple played by Stanislav Lyubshin and Natalya Tenyakova comes. They were once in love with each other and carried this feeling throughout their lives, but an unfortunate accident did not allow them to connect. The heroine read the cherished “marry me” written by the gentleman on the Three Sisters program only many years later.

After this incident, it becomes clear that the two conductors (Polina Romanova and Maria Sokova), devoted fans and strict connoisseurs of the theater, had a particularly reverent attitude towards the programs of the two conductors, who even named a cat in honor of Knipper-Chekhova.

The theater here is generally treated with aspiration. The cashier (Evgeniya Dobrovolskaya) refuses to sell the last two tickets to a respectable gentleman (Igor Zolotovitsky), because “he doesn’t really need them,” but almost gives them away for free to the guy who runs into the ticket office at the last moment with a liquid bouquet of carnations – This is where a ticket can really change your life.

The rest of the audience’s stories look undeveloped, like a random mosaic: someone confesses their love at the most inopportune moment – during the announcement of Stalin’s death, a young couple is planning renovations, although the war has already begun and, of course, there will be no home or comfort. Another character writes letters to his wife from the camp, remembering their tradition of going to the theater on December 31st.

The theater backstage looks much more interesting in the performance. Moreover, times and styles are also mixed here. Mikhail Porechenkov, in a documentary style, rehearses Nemirovich-Danchenko’s speech with gratitude to the party and government: “the speech was never read,” says the caption on the backdrop. And Stanislavsky and Maria Knebel (Pavel Chinarev and Svetlana Kolpakova, who recently played Azarov in “Uncle Vanya”), in the genre of theatrical skits, are looking for the “seed of a role” under the table and sailing through the storm on an imaginary boat in search of a “super task.” So ordinary viewers who are not familiar with Stanislavsky’s system may doubt the adequacy of the founder of the jubilee theater and its inhabitants.

A young fashionable director (Igor Khripunov) and a seasoned editor performed by Konstantin Khabensky are responsible for our time in the play. The director, as usual, experiences a creative crisis three days before the premiere, gets angry and lashes out at everyone around him. And at the same time, he looks closely at Khabensky’s hero – calmly calm, looking, if not a guardian angel, then a kind, cozy brownie of this scene – with a screwdriver in one hand and a shawarma in the other. To understand him better, the director even goes to visit the assembler, lifting him out of bed in his shorts. But what kind of “secret ingredient” he finds out, what secret knowledge he receives and how this ultimately helps him release the premiere remains not very clear. Apparently, the insight is that any business – whether you are staging a play or preparing shawarma – must be done well and with love. And you can’t argue.