The king of jokes, witty: People’s Artist of Russia Alexander Shirvindt has died

This is the worst thing that could happen – Shirvindt died. Alexander Anatolyevich. Papa Shura. All! It seems that life itself has stopped, which in theory, by nature, cannot stop. But she stopped! Like a train that has stopped at full speed. Hit. Straight into the heart. This happened so unexpectedly for everyone that the artists of the Satire Theater and administration workers found out about it from journalists who called the theater.

Yes, I just entered the house. We separated two hours ago, everything was calm. – the dearest Anna, the assistant to the artistic director of Satire Sergei Gazarov, tells me, taken aback. And he falls silent, not believing what happened.

But it happened. Trouble. Real. Not only for the Satire Theater, for everyone – Alexander Anatolyevich’s colleagues, for directors. What can we say about the public who adored him. This is a rare case when even hardened anti-Semites looked at him and listened, and then quoted – his characters from films where Shirvindt, in general, did not have big, fateful roles – well, a bathhouse friend, a womanizer, who else? Yes, a handsome tenor in a 50s comedy, I forgot the name.

But he loved the theater. And pedagogy chose him early on, when he was still in his fourth year and already teaching fencing classes. And then I started doing excerpts with the students. And the students fell in love with him, lost their senses under his wicked gaze. He twirled the wedding ring on his finger in front of them demonstratively – girls, they say, don’t count on reciprocity.

One wife is Tata, aka Natalya Nikolaevna, an architect, a beauty who dedicated her life to him. I knew his worth. I was interested in photography, when there was no trace of any figure – I took pictures of him, until the last time I took pictures at the dacha near Moscow, where they lived recently. He needed fresh air – the stand on his heart was changed, “his body was repaired,” he laughed.

“Natalya Nikolaevna, how is our A.A.? – I asked her on WhatsApp. “It’s okay, he’s still weak, but he’s going to play,” she answered and sent one of his latest photos or jokes.

Well, yes, Papa Shura (that’s his students’ name) is the king of jokes, a witty first of the All-Union, up to Perestroika scale, and then for all time. A wit from the word mind – only he could scan reality, the birthmarks of our mentality, people, power. He would say it not to the eyebrow, but to the eye, and it came out deeply, but not offensively and, most importantly, not evil.

“I don’t like evil and greedy people,” he told me at our first meeting many years ago, and I remembered this for the rest of my life. And every time I looked at him in the office of either the artistic director, and then the Honorary President, or at the common table with drinks/snacks, which he led like a virtuoso conductor, I was convinced of this – he was angry with people… He didn’t even hate her, he just disdained her. How they disdain bad and ugly food, dirty clothes… An aristocrat of word and spirit, an imposing gentleman, he was in fact a real man of the theater. To the core. And I never fussed about roles, I waited for them to find me. And they found it – his Count Almaviva in Figaro, his Bobchinsky or Dobchinsky in The Inspector General, and how many of them there were in the bright ensemble of Satire.

That very Satire, where it was impossible to get into – you couldn’t get tickets for any money. Where great artists served, and he was among them. And then he was left alone. Like a finger, it became synonymous with this theater on Sadovaya Triumphalnaya. Shirvindt is Satire. Satire is Shirvindt. His friends were no longer there – Andrei Mironov, who lost consciousness at a performance in Riga and was picked up by the hands of Shirvindt. There is no Mikhail Derzhavin – the faithful partner and companion of their magnificent duet. There is no Olga Aroseva, Spartak Mishulin, Menglet, Tkachuk… God, they left before his eyes, and he buried them, spoke speeches, sincere, from the heart, because he knew how to appreciate talent and honest relationships. Which is very rare in the theater.

In August, Vera Vasilyeva, whom he always called Verochka and took care of, although he was younger than her, suddenly passed away. When Vera Kuzminichna was buried, something happened to him on stage. For the first time I saw the confused dad Shura on stage, at the microphone. It was as if he had lost something and was looking for it. Internal panic, not typical of this man, took possession of him for a moment. But he managed it. Did he have a premonition of something? Did he look into this abyss where his partner Verochka was going? Did you feel like you were on the edge? Who knows… And does it matter at all now if he stepped there tonight to follow his own people.

“We are all at Vagankovsky” is his favorite joke. Now he will probably rest there, next to them – with Andryushka (Mironov), Grishka (Gorin), Mishka (Derzhavin). But his Marik (Zakharov) lies on Novodevichy. “He broke away from our people,” he said without a hint of a smile. While Shirvindt was alive, he was a talisman of the Satire Theater. Who will now take care of this theater? His theater.