“Solo for a striking clock” became a triumph for the masters of the Moscow City Council Theater

Yesterday, on the day of her 75th birthday, People’s Artist of Russia Olga Ostroumova took the stage in the premiere of the play “Solo for Chilling Clocks”.

Olga Ostroumova is a gem staged by director Pavel Parkhomenko, framed by the works of great Russian masters – People’s Artists of Russia Evgeny Steblov, Anatoly Vasiliev, Alexander Goloborodko, and Honored Artist of Russia Leonid Fomin.

For the first time in our country, the play by Oswald Zahradnik was staged in 1973 by Oleg Yefremov and Anatoly Vasiliev at the Moscow Art Theater. This story is about extraordinary people of the older generation, who have intelligence and talent, charisma and an indomitable aspiration for the new, who have retained their childhood faith in miracles, multiplied by professional skills, life experience and natural warmth.

The paths of each of them were not strewn with roses, but, on the contrary, filled with hard work. But such people can do everything, even if in the end fate throws them into such a sad place as the Nursing Home. The desire to warm everyone, to give a piece of their huge heart, to leave behind their descendants something good and eternal is their hallmark.

Pani Conti, performed by Olga Ostroumova, is a seductive, feminine lady, there is some secret in her. Perhaps this is the most mysterious image in all of history. She tells a little about herself: at one time with her husband she could afford everything, traveling the world and staying at any of the Continental hotels. (Attentive ear immediately notices the roll call of the names of Conti and “Continetnal”). Pani Konti is very fond of real Ceylon tea, which always “could only be obtained in their hotels.” She could visit the Continental anywhere in the world – in Africa, at the South Pole, in winter and summer, day and night. “And now? There are only hotels for foreign tourists around. And where is the one where the old Ceylon tea is? He is nowhere else. Everywhere is a complete deception, ”she reflects sadly. Pani Conti also tells that her son lives in Switzerland and works as a successful surgeon, performing eye operations. But in all these memories, some kind of understatement gradually begins to be read, a slight uncertainty comes through. And in the end, there is a feeling that most of her stories are made up. In what proportion do dreams and reality combine in Pani Conti? A complete mystery. But one thing is clear – in the depths of the heart of this strong, bright and seductive lady lies a great human drama.

Like a faithful squire, the benevolent Pan Khmelik (Leonid Fomin) follows her everywhere, carrying Mrs. Conti’s huge suitcase. Moreover, Khmelik never once looked into this suitcase. All his life he was engaged in transferring things – from place to place: sometimes he got postcards with kissing doves, sometimes parcels fell much heavier than the heroine’s suitcase. Pan Khmelik cannot sit still for a minute – it’s a habit! When he has absolutely nothing to do, he goes to the boiler room to help the stoker. Or to the kitchen. Always busy, always busy.

It’s a miracle how good the People’s Artist of Russia Anatoly Vasiliev is in this story! His character Reiner is a crazy enthusiast, watchmaker and jeweler, who dreams of returning to people the working old clock on the tall city tower. At first, he makes the impression of a rebel and a bully, who for some reason climbed onto the wall of this very tower, for which he was arrested by the hero of Alexander Goloborodko, Inspector Mitch.

Most of all, Reiner is outraged that Mitch, with his protocol, did not even ask why he, in fact, began to climb up. Impetuous, passionate, bright, Reiner sometimes looks like a romantic, and sometimes – an absolutely crazy watchmaker. What is his fix idea alone to fully coordinate the course of a dozen clocks, which was planted in his brain by the statements of the long-dead Emperor Maximilian.

Friends slowly hide watches from Reiner, because in a fit of oratory (he loves this business), the hero can throw them on the floor. But gradually getting to know Rainer, we learn that his crazy ideas have a serious basis: his grandfather, a famous watchmaker, once repaired the royal chimes at the request of the King himself. They are still going!

The already mentioned Alexander Goloborodko makes his inspector Mitch a classic martinet, a bureaucrat for whom order and rules are above all else. But he also falls under the spell of Pani Conti, who does not fit into any charter.

All these people end up in a nursing home at the end of their lives. Even at the Christmas holidays that are arranged for them there, they, among others, sit shoulder to shoulder, absolutely alien and of little interest to the rest.

But it so happened that a certain retired lifter Frantisek Abel (Eugene Steblov) began to invite these people to his apartment on Fridays for gatherings. Tokay wine, and sometimes a bottle of Champagne, beautiful raspberry glasses, a tablecloth, a light snack – and here they are, so different, they became friends and became really close. The characters sincerely admire each other. They try to give each other very important, small and pleasant gifts – an expensive cigar, a bag of Ceylon tea, the calculation that Pan Abel, in his 46 years of honest work, covered the distance from the Earth to the Moon, like an astronaut. They inwardly aspire upward, to the stars.

Against this background, a young couple – Abel’s grandson Pavel (Aleksey Trofimov) and his girlfriend Dasha (Anna Mikhailovskaya), look gray and dull. The youth is making Manilovian plans for life and intrigues, how to cover up these “Fridays” and get the apartment of their grandfather – Frantisek Abel, sending him after his friends to the almshouse. After all, grandfather has no money for another living space – all these years he honestly sent everything he earned in the form of toys and sweets to his grubby granddaughter to the orphanage. “Supplied,” Abel-Steblov chuckles bitterly and sarcastically. “Everything changes – both people and times.”

Undoubtedly, the play “Solo for Chilling Clock” is based on the skill of the leading artists of the Mossovet Theatre. They work so leisurely, so detailed, so tasty! From seemingly unpretentious conversations, a complex web of their relationship is woven. The characters are so filled internally that sometimes it seems that seven-ninths of their personalities are hidden from our eyes, like the underwater part of snow-white icebergs. In short, a complete delight! I want to come back to this show again and again. And the sparkling gypsy dance in the final, performed by Olga Ostroumova and her colleagues to a live orchestra, is just a bomb!

Bravo Masters, bravo!

Elena Bulova.

Author’s video.

Photos provided by the press service of the Mossovet Theater