The former is the enemy of the good – Newspaper Kommersant No. 189 (7390) of 10/12/2022

In the capital’s Gogol Theater, which until recently was known to everyone as the “Gogol Center”, a gathering of the troupe was held. The new artistic director of the theater Anton Yakovlev spoke about his vision of its strategy. Intentions creative and ideological comments Esther Steinbock.

The Gogol Theater announced its plans, perhaps the last of the Moscow theaters. For obvious reasons – at the end of June, the dismissal of the previous management of the Gogol Center was announced and the actual end of the ten-year history of one of the most high-profile and successful theater projects in recent theater history. At the same time, Anton Yakovlev was unexpectedly appointed as the new artistic director – the director, although experienced, was, to put it mildly, not the most successful and not very famous. Given that, together with the leadership of the Gogol Center from the theater, which was officially returned the old name “N.V. Gogol Theatre”, the majority of the team of Kirill Serebrennikov left – the backbone of the troupe, which consisted of young actors, students of Serebrennikov, as well as most of the administrative and technical services – the theater actually “zeroed out”, having lost the sought-after brand, and repertoire. It was necessary to start the case again, and this took several months.

Finally, Anton Yakovlev gathered the troupe and the press to announce his plans. Strictly speaking, the list of plays accepted for staging and planned creative programs cannot arouse either objection or surprise. The artistic director himself will stage four performances based on remarkable works in two years – Lermontov’s Hero of Our Time and Munchausen based on the play by Grigory Gorin, Cathedrals based on Leskov, Versilov and Others based on Dostoevsky’s Teenager. On the small stage – Shakespeare and Wilde. The plans include Shukshin and the fashionable modern Frenchman Florian Zeller, performances by the students of Sergei Zhenovach. As in many other theaters, the Gogol Theater will have a directing laboratory called Perspektiva, and the material for the sketches has already been chosen – Bulgakov, McDonagh, Bradbury, Ostrovsky. There will also be a special musical and poetic program. The plans include the creation of a film club and a children’s studio.

In general, if you don’t look closely, everything looks “like in the best houses”, and many names and projects could well have appeared in the plans of the destroyed Gogol Center.

Unless the absence of modern Russian dramaturgy is striking, but understanding people do not need to be explained why. (It is interesting, by the way, whether permissions were received from McDonagh and Zeller: it is no secret that many foreign playwrights have refused to cooperate with Russian theaters in recent months – and again, it is clear why.)

In general, it is not the list of upcoming events that makes the opening of the new season an event. And certainly not the theater’s new logo (can you guess the level of creativity from three times? That’s right, this is Nikolai Vasilyevich’s big-nosed profile). What makes it an event is Anton Yakovlev’s speech, a kind of manifesto calling for holding on to all that is good against all that is bad. Of course, beauty, inspiration, sublime human feelings, sincerity, childlike immediacy and other irrefutable splendors act as good things in Yakovlev. As bad, rejected, not appropriate to the moment – irony, sarcasm, deconstruction, misanthropy, melancholy, vulgar sociality (here it is, modern drama is somewhere). Apparently, the second group of qualities, although this is not said directly, for Anton Yakovlev characterizes the work of Kirill Serebrennikov and the repertoire of the closed Gogol Center. And he hopes to offer the viewer an alternative – as he says, “reasonable idealism.”

It is hardly worth arguing and proving now that in Serebrennikov’s work and in the best performances of the Gogol Center, irony was perfectly combined with inspiration, misanthropy with beauty, and sociality was not at all vulgar, but sincere and honest. And that real art cannot soar in the clouds, it is born in the collision of different sides of the human, without dividing into good and bad. But, in the end, the viewer feeds not on manifestos, but on artistic impressions. If Yakovlev copes with Gorin without accepting irony and sarcasm, with Lermontov without immersing himself in misanthropy, and the directors called by him overcome Macdon and Zeller with their kindness and faith in beauty alone, then they will be both honored and praised.

And if the Gogol Theater achieves sharpness, persuasiveness and, as a result, the demand for the Gogol Center, then it does not matter what the artistic director says to the troupe.

Well, if the theater becomes again what the Moscow Gogol Theater was for many years, a forgotten, half-empty cultural institution near the station … Well, then there is a way out: following the Yermolova Theater, sign cooperation with some law enforcement agency, which, if anything, he will protect and fill empty chairs with his disciplined employees who miss the sublime.