Roman baths open at Zhenovach Theater

In the theater on Stanislavsky Street, the audience is really greeted with hot soup, which is most welcome on a cold November day. This is the tradition of the theater House of Zhenovach – a gastronomic way to immerse the viewer in the atmosphere of the performance. Let’s remember the hot potato before the start of the “Potudan River” or draft wine from a barrel in the “Reserve”. It’s better not to remember about herring on black bread with cucumber and vodka at Moscow-Petushki – saliva will flow. However, at the “Labardance” the audience, treating themselves to a rich minestrone, does not suspect what awaits them in the hall. And there…

And there, behind a light white curtain with two profiles of Pushkin and Gogol facing each other and a quote: “Well, brother Pushkin?” – “Yes, somehow …” – the longed-for groans are heard. Is it not otherwise than they eat collectively? Or what a shame in a cultural institution? The truth will be revealed as soon as the curtain falls and presents us with a picture worthy of a Rubens brush – pink and white bodies, male and female, reclining, sitting or standing in pairs and groups. Not all fat, but all barely covered by sheets. And their facial expressions are blissful, not without vice. Did Zhenovach, an adherent of a lofty spirit, depict such a carnal, almost sinful scene for us? He, he, no doubt. What follows will only confirm this fact.

Yes, the director, who previously followed the letter of a literary text or play as a law and did not allow changes in time and place in his productions, this time acted more radically than any of his radical colleagues. He a) stripped Gogol’s characters to … and b) sent … to a bathhouse. As if, having read Gogol, he exclaimed in his hearts: “May you all go to the bathhouse!”. And so they went—officials of the county town N, all sorts of Lyapkins and Tyapkins with Strawberries, Bobchinskys and Dobchinskys.

And, I note, they didn’t go to the Russian bath, but to the Roman ones, where everything is as it should be – marble on the walls, floor, in the pool. Such a square pool with sides in the center and, which is characteristic, is not conditional, but capacious, full of water. And in it, respected people, the fathers of the city, resting from official worries, sit up to their chests. And here the mayor appears – the spitting image of a patrician with a white sheet over his shoulder – and speaks. No, at first he growls like a beast, glaring at the bathers, and only then he says: “The auditor is coming to us!” – “How is the auditor?” “Which inspector?” … Well, then you know from school what and how it was and how it ended.

Immersing his heroes in the aquatic environment, Zhenovach did not change anything in Gogol – neither the text of the characters, nor their characteristics. As a theatrical sharpie, he did not shuffle the scenes, except that he missed the second – in a tavern, where Khlestakov, who lost to the nines and ashes, dies of hunger and where he is found by the mayor Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky. And all the other scenes … that’s how they were written by Nikolai Vasilyevich, that’s how Sergei Vasilyevich saved them. And he added Gogol’s drafts.

The director does not try to stagger the audience with the discovery of new, unknown meanings by staging the next “Inspector” on the domestic stage. What is there to discover after Gogol, who almost 200 years ago explained that in his “Inspector General” he wanted to ridicule “everything bad in Russia that I knew then, all the injustices that are done in those places and in those cases where it is most required from a man of justice, and at once laugh at everything. And Zhenovach, who by nature is alien to provocation and shocking, with water and exposure painfully convexly showed this worst and, alas, indelible, like birthmarks. And no surgical intervention such as the fight against corruption, the opening of endless criminal cases and the imprisonment of officials and businessmen in Russia does not help. Will it help? How to know.

In Russia, and in the world, little has changed – people both died for metal and die. The form is changing, which, in fact, is shown in “Labardance”. From a place of bodily leisure, a bathhouse becomes a place for making government or business decisions. And what, your people took a steam bath in the bathhouse, you look, and things worked out, and the benefits were received. It’s not a secret for anyone that artists were driven to the bathhouse, where Soviet bosses gathered, so that it would not be boring to take a steam bath and wash. However, with the change of the political system, habits, I think, have not changed.

But Zhenovach’s critical assessments are primarily subordinated to artistic tasks. The place of action chosen by him does not change during the two acts. In the Roman baths he has offices and the mayor’s house. The scenographic static character transforms the dramatic performance into an opera, although no one sings in the pool. And therefore, it is not by chance that four out of five acts of the comedy are accompanied by operatic music – Handel, Beze, Offenbach. The choir of captive Jews from Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi resounds majestically in the third act in the scene when Khlestakov, tipsy from the reception in charitable institutions and from his own lies, is carried out in his arms, as if on a crucifix, and immersed in the pool. Full labardans! With such an exit and a solemn ablution, the anecdote with Khlestakov is no longer an anecdote, but a generalization, an image that sends at any time – even turmoil, even perestroika. In which any dexterous and mediocre rogue could become everything.

Water, steam above it, immersion from feelings or fear of punishment, emerging and immersing again – these are the conditions under which the Zhenovatsy master Gogol. Lily turns out. Here water splashes, sprinkles over naked bodies or impudent trickles from the mouth add something special to the action and to the game: the wet work of the mayor, the tarnished reputation of officials, passions born at depth, and so on – a rich metaphorical series from the idea of ​​​​Zhenovach and his permanent artist Alexander Borovsky.

It must be said that playing in water is nothing new for the theater in general: history remembers performances where actors got wet in the rain, walked in ankle-deep or knee-deep water. In Lev Dodin’s “Platonov” according to Chekhov, I remember, the artists, to the sounds of jazz, now and then dived into the tub. But the water in the theater is insidious and, used only for the sake of originality, can take revenge. And what to say about exposure, which causes boredom. But in Zhenovach’s “Labardance” both water and artists, now and then sparkling ass, are all in place.

Moreover, the nudity, which the scene treacherously enlarges, here (surprisingly) looks more organic than uniforms with false bellies, glued noses and wigs in tows. And even more so the office suits that are boring in the theater – Gogol is for all time. And then the official in what the mother gave birth, what is. And the artist has nothing to hide behind – what is.

And here stage nudity and semi-nudity are like the naked truth about professionalism. Or the viewer sees only the imperfect body of the artist / artist, or his character. In “Labardance” for me, the characters were Khlestakov performed by Nikita Isachenkov (his Ivan Aleksandrovich is definitely in a daze, from which he cannot wake up even in the water), Dmitry Lipinsky’s mayor, a concrete one, according to concepts, but not an urka. A wonderful female couple of the mayor’s family – especially Varvara Nasonova and Victoria Vorobyeva. And among the floating officials, I would single out Vyacheslav Evlantiev (Strawberry), Alexander Antipenko (Lyapkin-Tyapkin) and Nodar Siradze (Christian Ivanovich). Surprisingly touching Derzhimorda, who does not justify the name with his childish texture (Gleb Puskepalis).

But the first thought at the sight of the artists floundering in the water is still of a compassionate nature: “Is it not cold for them to sit in the water for three hours? There are always drafts on the stage.” But during the intermission, they explained to me: everything is thought out here – from constant heating of water to terry bathrobes, with which the artists are immediately met backstage. And from a practical point of view, this “Labardance” is very beneficial – the artist will always be clean.