Richard Nelson staged his play Our Life in Art at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris. Review

American playwright Richard Nelson staged his play Our Life in Art at the Théâtre du Soleil in Paris. The performance brings to the stage the artists of the Moscow Art Theater a century ago: the plot of the play is built around the historical tour of the Moscow Art Theater in America, which took place in 1923–1924. Tells Esther Steinbock.

The name of the great Ariane Mnouchkine and the Theater du Soleil, which she once created in the Parisian Cartoucherie, are so inextricably linked that it is difficult to imagine that not all the performances of the “theater of the sun” were made directly by her still powerful and tough hand. Meanwhile, sometimes she – after all, Mnouchchine, why hide it, is already over eighty – lets in other directors. Of course, not indiscriminately: for example, several years ago Robert Lepage worked as a “guest” for her. This time, while she herself was preparing for the next productions, Ariane Mnouchkine invited the American playwright Richard Nelson to stage his play “Our Life in Art.”

As the title suggests, Nelson’s play is dedicated to Stanislavski. And also to the Moscow Art Theater. Namely, the events of a hundred years ago, when part of the Moscow Art Theater troupe, led by one of its founders, toured America. As a matter of fact, the premiere of the play was supposed to take place at the Moscow Art Theater in Moscow. They say that at first the playwright transferred it to Lev Dodin’s St. Petersburg Moscow Art Theater, the most eminent of the Russian theaters in the world, but it didn’t work out in St. Petersburg – and then, when he was the artistic director of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater, Sergei Zhenovach became interested in the play. But then Zhenovach left the Moscow Art Theater, and then there was no time for Americans in the repertoire – especially since the theme of the play, in essence, is the problem of emigration of artists. You never know who will find any parallels with the modern situation.

The Moscow Art Theater recently turned 125, and the play takes place in the days when the theater was a quarter of a century old. The playwright finds the actors, led by Stanislavsky, on tour in Chicago. The action takes place over several evenings in a house filmed for a Russian troupe – they live here in a kind of commune, meeting in the evenings in the kitchen, discussing news and pressing problems. Here Olga Knipper-Chekhova and Vasily Kachalov, Ivan Moskvin and Olga Litovtseva – the playwright, of course, studied all the documents and letters related to the tour, so his play can partly be considered historical research. But, of course, this is also a fantasy. Nelson deliberately writes a little “like Chekhov”: the characters talk a lot (even too much, in places the play obviously stalls) talk, sometimes about trifles, sing, eat and even gossip, but at this time their lives collapse – or rather, they have to look for an answer to the question , which is never directly asked in the play, but which is the main thing for them: stay in America or return to the USSR.

There is home, the work of life, there is Nemirovich-Danchenko with part of the troupe, who in letters urges them to go to Moscow as soon as possible. But from there also come newspaper clippings where the Moscow Art Theater is branded (including by Mayakovsky himself) as an old-regime bourgeois theater, presenting its connections with white emigrants. And Soviet spies hover around artists even in Chicago. On the other hand, touring has ceased to be profitable, and the specter of lack of money is already walking around somewhere. Kachalov whines that he paid a deposit for a dacha near Moscow… The main argument against returning is not heard in the main text of the play. But he seems to frame it: in the prologue and finale, the actor playing Richard Boleslavsky (the real Boleslavsky had already become an emigrant in 1923 and was not going to join the Bolsheviks), reads out a terrible document – a letter of gratitude from Stanislavsky, dated 1938, to “dear comrade Stalin.” They say that the director himself did not write it, they simply explained to him that it was necessary and gave him the finished text to sign.

As for Richard Nelson’s production itself, it would hardly be merciful to judge it according to the laws of professional directing, so to speak, according to the laws of Mnouchkine or Lepage. Like many other playwrights, Nelson is concerned primarily with making his play “visible”, so that it is clear what and why this text is about. In this sense, his task is completed. In the small hall of the Theater du Soleil, the audience sits on two amphitheater stands, and the action takes place between them. Nothing extra, just the everyday atmosphere of a common dining room. Mnouchkine’s actors are playing “Our Life in Art” – this is a rather specific acting community, their abilities are very much “formatted” by their master, so it is difficult to expect from them any independent revelations, some strong acting accents, some surprises. But they certainly have a natural, quiet stage presence – and for Nelson’s “everyday” performance, they can probably be considered the best performers one could wish for.

The stands rise quite steeply, and already from the second row the audience looks at the characters partly from top to bottom – not to mention those sitting above. Perhaps this was not Nelson’s intention, but today we look at those events also from the height of time, with the knowledge of everything that happened to the characters in the play after the events shown on stage. And this makes today’s fork in the road no longer seem unique, and the trials no longer seem unprecedented. In any case, the performance of the Theater du Soleil can help get rid of today’s main disease – cutting off nuances and dividing the world only into black and white.