The provocation of Konstantin Bogomolov “teared” Moscow

The well-known master of revealing modernity through the classics this time turned to the literature of the fiery 1920s and 1930s – Vsevolod Vishnevsky’s Optimistic Tragedy about a woman commissar who was sent to a detachment of anarchist sailors and managed to turn them into a revolutionary detachment. In the Moscow Art Theater, Vishnevsky did not even have the famous phrase “Who else wants a commissar’s body?” Unless they play in three acts, as written by the author.

They even removed some of the seats in the hall in order to install a small podium in the center with a red carpet and a wooden table, which looks like a reference to the party meetings of the Soviet period. To find their place in the hall, the audience calmly tramples the path, leans on the table – everything is allowed. And the director himself in a fashionable velveteen coat with a large rib now and then steps on part of the scenery. After the third call at the level of the first row, standing with his back to the stage, he addresses the respectable audience.

– “New Optimistic”… Although this is unlikely to help here, but in any case … The performance runs for three and a half hours, but this is not scary, since there are three acts, and each is 50 minutes long. I will ask you to turn off your phones, I understand that you are now filming a story. But when you shoot and save them, post them, you will forget to turn off the calls. Please turn it off.

He thanked the Moscow Art Theater, where he returned and where, by the way, he has not khukhra-mukhra – 10 productions. He also expressed the hope that with the new performance he made his modest contribution to the artistic work of the Moscow Art Theater. And, without waiting for applause, without transition, like some artist, he announced: “Bunin. “Dark alleys”. Get ready to bow to Lensky, Onegin, Gubin, Aleshin, Alexander Moiseevich.

Excuse me, but where are the sailors, where is anarchy – the mother of order?

But the music had already begun, and in the center of the stage, under the decorative bridge (aka the stage, artist Larisa Lomakina), just before jumping into the unknown, the same Alexander Moiseevich (Igor Vernik) froze, excitedly reading: “When a boy with a full pitcher ran up stairs to the upper rooms, I was lying on the bed completely undressed. In the bright lunar twilight, his bird-like eyes shone piercingly black, his small short-haired head turned black, his long shirt turned white, his large bare feet stuck out … ”The narrator’s degree of passion for the boy went off scale.

It has begun, I thought, convulsively remembering Bunin. He seemed to have not a boy, but a girl caused an attack of passion. And I also thought: “I recognize “brother” Kolya, that is, Kostya, he loves gender and other jokes on stage.” And from the wings, as if confirming my thought, cheerfully, in high heels already, four artists in dresses in a small flower came out. Their release was accompanied by the Soviet hit “My Hang Glider” performed by Valery Leontiev. Remember: “It’s naive and funny, but how easy it is for my shoulders. / Calling me, already calling my hang glider, my delta-a-a-plan!”

The audience applauds, and the blonde sitting next to me, also in a large ribbed velveteen, joyfully sings along to the Soviet hit, much older than her age. Still, Soviet composers knew how to write hits.

Quote from Soviet songs, with which Bogomolov loves to warm up his performances, this time he shortened, leaving instead of the whole song, at best, a couple of verses. In order not to break the rhythm of action. And he is growing. Even in those moments where, it seems, there should be a meaningful pause. For example, immediately after the Soviet “Hang-glider” stage “young ladies” discover that their director, their guru by the name of Glotov, who sat in the lotus position right on the director’s table, unexpectedly and quietly … died.

The director died in the theater – it’s a disaster. This is the scrapping of everything: the repertoire, the actors’ lives, their psyches. Everything! Life has stopped. Who will come to the theatre? In the federal one, judging by the fact that this issue is decided jointly with the Ministry of Culture by a stern representative of the FSB. Both the representative of the security forces and the cultural official are very recognizable. Both are sitting right in the auditorium – only a passage separates them – and they are very concerned about the situation in the subordinate institution, so inappropriate to the current circumstances, when everything is wrong everywhere, not that, a lot of dissatisfied. Liberals, patriots – the choice is small, there are a lot of nuances.

– What if, what if … – the security official begins with a tired face (Igor Mirkurbanov). – Someone to put there. Put a liberal, everything will be the same as under Glotov. Put a patriot, there will be mediocre dull …, which no one will go to.

– But his own, – the blonde with a neatly laid head (Olga Voronina) objects.

– No, you can’t do that. We cannot give them the right to say that we have destroyed the theatre. That in place of the wrong, but bright and talented, came the right and boring.

– Is there really no patriot who would be modern, bright, attractive?

– No no.

— But what to do?

– Bring up!!! In general, a stalemate – you can’t cook porridge with this … liberal. And you can’t look at our patriotic cultural figures without tears.

Everything from the first scene, from the first lines is recognizable. All this is happening here and now. Literally at every step, and not just in the theater. And the theater, especially ours, the Soviet-Russian one, is like a mirror, like a litmus test, as a measure and diagnosis of everything that happens in society. The devil himself will not understand what is happening, he will break his leg before he puts it on the shelves, what and how. But Bogomolov laid out what is boiling in the hellish cauldron. But how!!!

This is the former and completely unexpected Bogomolov. His statement is not abstract, not in general, but concrete and recognizable. The theater that has lost its leader is not directly named, but everything clearly reads that we are talking about the Gogol Center and Kirill Serebrennikov, who, thank God, is alive and not dead, unlike his stage prototype, and now plows European theatrical open spaces.

– You are not an artist. You are …, – the director rudely calls the representatives of a non-traditional orientation, who, by a strong-willed decision of the authorities, was appointed to replace Glotov. Graduate of GITIS and the Academy of the FSB. She fought and was wounded. A combat officer is thrown into culture. As in Vishnevsky’s “Optimistic Tragedy”: he has a commissar in the navy, to the buzzing sailors, with Bogomolov – to the theater, to artists of a certain orientation. And where does she diagnose both culture and its figures. The diagnosis is disappointing – the same rudeness.

I have not heard such a number of uses of this word for a long time, either from the screen, or even more so from the stage, which is more legible in expressions.

What’s this? Bogomolov declared war on all non-traditionally oriented people? Drowning for traditional values ​​in the spirit of the modern rhetoric of official power? Wang about the total control of culture by the security forces? This is the whole novelty and charm of his Moscow Art Theater “New Optimistic” that, on the one hand, he cuts, opens and shows rather harshly, like a practicing surgeon, and on the other hand, he witty, cynical and skillfully plays how with fire, from each of the opposing sides. He hit everyone, everyone got it from him. With whom you, masters of culture, are not a question for him. He is above the fight, and one can only guess to what extent this game is for him personally?

“No one finds a new interesting form for their content,” continued the dialogue between the security official and the official. The song “Where the Motherland Begins” sounds in the background. “…The Nazis created ideology and aesthetics. The ideology is dead, the aesthetics remain. It is the aesthetics of Nazism that retains energy through the decades. And what do our artists give out in terms of form?

Why? Liberals have created compelling content.

– They just steal (a harsher word sounds from the stage) everything that is possible from the West. And the late Glotov stole (again rudely), they take ready-made patterns and fill them with their own (same) content.

Bogomolov goes for broke, I think, realizing that he will rake both from the liberal and the patriotic side. He is seen as such a daring impudent surfer between steep waves that are about to clash and be the first to cover the impudent one who dared to make fun of both. And he laughs and makes those watching him laugh. Laughter in the Moscow Art Theater hall is constant – from recognition, from the play of thought, plot twists.

It seems that with this production Konstantin decided to move from theory to practice: his manifesto, addressed to Europe two years ago and outraged the liberal public, who accused him of corruption, he now transferred to the stage, and the New Optimistic is proof of this. And here he does not choose expressions, does not keep a fig in his pocket, coquettishly acting in the well-known role of a democrat from culture.

But his stage manifesto (calculated or sincerely?), given specifically to the Moscow Art Theater, and not to his own Bronka, is voluminous, despite the specificity of the proposed story. The story, placed by him in the framework of the theater and as if telling only about him (whose insides are well known to the professional public), is in fact about culture with literary intersections, and about people with their skeletons in the closet. And what is especially valuable is that Bogomolov subtly, almost imperceptibly refers these confessions to great literature and translates them into literary quotations.

The actions of his heroes as a reflection of the vices of the heroes of Dostoevsky, the passions of Bunin. Threads of the present stretch into the past and return to the present. At these moments, laughter ends and silence sets in. The hour of retribution for the once committed sin and cleansing is coming. Like the luminary of the old school Karl Bagrationovich performed by Alexander Semchev or Alexander Moiseevich performed by Igor Vernik.

“Cry, gentlemen, cry,” Semchev says, walking down the aisle. – All the stupid things on earth are done with this facial expression.

His hero never shot himself, like Dostoevsky’s Svidrigailov: once succumbing to passion, having seduced an innocent child. And now this girl appeared to him in the form of a military officer and asked: “And you decided to rehearse on me?”

I’m an old school actor. Moskvin the great, when he played a father whose child had died, took measurements from his child, put together a coffin, traveled around Moscow with this coffin and shed bitter tears – that’s how we were taught. You do not understand? This is the Moscow Art School! Check everything by yourself, go from yourself.

– Why me?

— Well, who? We were friends with your parents, you were like my own.

Bogomolov loves artists. Almost everyone was given a monologue: Kirill Trubetskoy, Evgeny Perevalov, Pavel Vashchilin, Danil Steklov, Artem Sokolov, Lera Gorin… The director’s separate work with the screen, which is built in a special way, where even a fold on the historical Mkhatov curtain with a seagull matters. Three cameras periodically capture the psychological state of the characters and even fit their figures into close-ups.

Vasilisa Perelygina, the new star of Konstantin Bogomolov with Bronna, debuted on the Moscow Art Theater stage for the first time. She plays a commissioner, that is, an officer-director sent to a liberally oriented theater. She is good. She is without makeup. She is accurate in her assessments of what is happening. Perhaps the director gave her the right, if not to pass a sentence, then to make a diagnosis. Only he is sometimes stronger than any sentence.

“Demons play holiness beautifully. Because the saint does not need to play, and the demons need to pretend to be saints so that they do not recognize them. It’s a matter of life and death for them, for the devils. Demons play nobility, holiness, heroism very well.

Or: “Peace in art will not open new territories. And art is, after all, an eternal journey… The world of art, unlike the earthly world, is endless, and art lives by endless search for new territories, violation of boundaries. But Glotov did not deal with this, he traded in this. He quickly realized that the avant-garde, the violation of borders, the provocation is the same commodity, and began to trade in this. He did not look for anything, but only reproduced … He was not Malevich, Kandinsky, Khlebnikov, Vvedensky. He was a cheap whore of the Russian avant-garde and turned you into whores. He corrupted you and corrupted the public along with you, giving them the feeling that they were involved in the breakthroughs. But in fact, his theater has long been dust and decay. He died to death, and his corpse decomposed and stank.

– Look how pathetic!

Probably, but honestly.