Submissions by form – Newspaper Kommersant No. 37 (7482) dated 03/03/2023

At the festival “Golden Mask” the main events of the competition of dramatic performances begin. With the usual grid of nominations and nominees this time there were shake-ups, the program was reduced, other directors, contrary to usual, ended up with two or even three works in the competition. About the main events of the modified festival program tells Marina Shimadina.

In the drama section, 18 productions of large and small forms first claimed for the main theater award of the country – against 25 last year. Then only 16 remained: it is worth recalling (see Kommersant of February 2) that two performances – Kostik by Dmitry Krymov and The Wild Duck by Timofey Kulyabin – dropped out of the competition, as they were removed from the repertoire of the Pushkin Theater and the Novosibirsk “Red Torch” respectively. In addition, this year, by decision of the founder of the award, the Union of Theater Workers of the Russian Federation, playwrights and directors of dramatic performances were not nominated for the nomination at all – among them there were many “disgraced” names. As a result, the rest of the directors – Pyotr Shereshevsky, the author of as many as three competition performances, Andrey Prikotenko and Anton Fedorov (they each have two works nominated), Andrey Moguchiy, Boris Pavlovich and others – lost their chance to receive an award. And the jury has fewer opportunities to mark all the deserving ones, since the director’s “Mask” in its weight and significance is usually equivalent to the award for the best performance.

In the grand form, the jury will have a difficult choice between two Moscow hits – “War and Peace” by Rimas Tuminas at the Vakhtangov Theater and “R.” Yuri Butusov in “Satyricon” – and “A Mother’s Heart” by Andrei Moguchy from the BDT, a powerful work on Shukshin with Nina Usatova in the title role. Unfortunately, the audience will not be able to see this performance in Moscow – like many other productions of the Mighty in the BDT, it is too large-scale for tours. Peter Shereshevsky’s Attila from distant Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a modern version of Zamyatin’s play about the warlike leader of the Huns, will not arrive in the capital either. But among the Moscow shows – his “Macbeth” from Novokuznetsk. Shereshevsky, as usual, transfers the action of Shakespeare’s play from medieval Scotland to the Russian province of the 90s and actively uses live video filming, broadcasting the smallest shades of the characters’ emotions on large screens.

Of the imported works of large form, the festival will show the performance of the Lensoviet Theater “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”. Boris Pavlovich took on a completely unstaged, it would seem, novel by Lawrence Stern, in nine books describing the life of the hero from conception to five years with numerous digressions and ramifications of the plot. And he turned it into pure theatrical joy, an elegant “bead game”, accompanied by baroque music and poems by the Leningrad avant-garde poet Leonid Aronzon.

In Moscow, you can also see “Morphine” by the Pskov Drama Theater – a production by Anton Fedorov, who recently became the chief director of the Novosibirsk “Old House”. Bulgakov’s “Notes of a Young Doctor” and the story “Morphine” here become a real horror from the life of the Russian hinterland, with snowstorms, wolves, vodka and surgical operations that turn into stage attractions.

In general, Anton Fedorov is one of the most interesting directors of his generation, who is worth following. In the small form category (halls up to 500 spectators), he will present another performance – “The Child” based on the play by the Norwegian Jun Fosse, created at the Voronezh Chamber Theater under the direction of Mikhail Bychkov. The story of a young couple expecting their first child is played here deliberately dispassionately and even coldly, but, as in the films of Tarkovsky, according to whose “Ivan’s Childhood” Fedorov has already staged in Kazan, an invisible evil fate hovers over it.

The festival will also show two works by Andrei Prikotenko, the former chief director of the Stary Dom Theater, who recently moved to the Red Torch to replace Timofey Kulyabin. His “Anna Karenina” in “The Old House” is the author’s version of Tolstoy’s novel, rewritten in today’s language, and its characters in their psychophysics, reactions, behavior, dependence on gadgets are as close as possible to us. Prikotenko’s Karenin becomes an imperious oligarch, and his wife, who dared to sincerely fall in love with politics and a chistogan in this world, is subjected to harassment and hate in social networks.

In his Serotonin from St. Petersburg’s The Comedian’s Shelter, on the other hand, Michel Houellebecq’s modern novel is estranged with the help of buffoonery, make-up and costumes with ancient ruffled collars. And the text, full of depression, despondency and suicidal thoughts, begins to sound lively and even cheerful – primarily thanks to the brilliant performance of Ivan Volkov.

But the most exciting and unpredictable program, as usual, is in the “experiment” contest. This year it is largely dedicated to the preservation of memory – both personal and general, national. Here you can hear folk songs, lamentations and lullabies in the auditory performance “Childhood. Koromysli-3″ from Novosibirsk or immerse yourself in the disappearing Komi-Permyak culture in the play “The Birds Are Flying Away” by the Perm company Nemkhat. Finally, get in touch with the personal life and memories of another person in the Tyumen project “Aelita. Inventory” and solo performance “Forest. Angelina”, which became part of Boris Pavlovich’s big “mushroom picker” performance, inspired by the philosophy of Vladimir Bibikhin. In the end, the specific stories of ordinary people sometimes turn out to be no less interesting and important in the modern theater than the next interpretations and arrangements of the classics.