“The Tales of Uncle Remus” was staged at the Hermitage Theater: a Christmas tree grew next to a cactus

The Hermitage Theater presented a new children’s play by the young director Aleftina Puzyrkina – the famous “Tales of Uncle Remus” based on the stories of Joel Harris. Despite the children’s format (6+), the production also appealed to adults, because many grew up on the tales of Brer Rabbit and Fox, which Harris wrote almost 150 years ago in order to “preserve in an unchanged form those funny moments in time that, undoubtedly, will be sadly distorted by future historians.” How fables with cunning resonate today, as well as in the mentioned future, was assessed by the correspondent. “MK”.

The Hermitage Theater is not much younger than Harrison’s tales. And now it is experiencing reincarnation, since it has lost its historical stage (due to the dilapidation of the building) in the garden, which to this day bears the name of the theater. Since 2015, he has been huddled on Novy Arbat, where Helikon once sat out waiting for the construction of a new stage, where the Alexander Kalyagin Theater began. It is not yet clear when the Hermitage will get a new building – design work is underway. But Mikhail Levitin’s troupe does not lose enthusiasm and continues to stage new, vibrant productions. On New Year’s Eve, it premiered “The Tales of Uncle Remus,” which takes place against the backdrop of the South American prairies, causing children to run wild with their imagination in the foyer. It’s New Year, after all – and here it’s not a Christmas tree, but a cactus. And not prickly, but soft – you just want to touch it. One of the elements of the stage decorations was specially placed in the foyer, so that the work of artist Sofia Egorova could be touched even before entering the hall.

What do a cactus and a Christmas tree have in common? A fabulous atmosphere that is created if you include a theatrical approach. Before the heroes of Harrison’s fables appear on stage, the Snow Maiden and Father Frost appear in the hall. The New Year’s overture here is classic (call Santa Claus, dance a little and shout louder: “Christmas tree, light up!”), necessary and obligatory on holidays, creates an unexpected contrast and at the same time rhyme. A thorny tree, decorated with New Year’s balls and garlands, is adjacent to huge cacti – the scenery of a children’s play. A Christmas tree is on the side of the stage and other evergreens are in the center. Only these ones are devoid of thorns; on the contrary, even from a distance it is clear that both the cacti and the thorn bush, which has a separate role in the plot, are plush.

“The concept was to show the process: how Uncle Remus comes up with fairy tales,” says artist Sofia Egorova. “It’s a kind of theater made of pillows: all the decorations are soft, as if Uncle Remus had just sewn them together with the heroes of the stories from what was at hand.” That’s why the characters’ costumes are all patched. We used plush fabric for them and also painted them on top.

There is also a contrast in the beginning. Judge for yourself, just now a rosy-cheeked Santa Claus with a thick beard was telling riddles to the children, and then a dark-skinned narrator in a straw hat appears after him, and the scene creates the feeling of the hot American south. Uncle Remus is played by Victoria Zakaria, whose mother is from the Urals, and whose father is from Tanzania. As a child, she experienced first-hand the real attitude of society at the everyday level towards skin color; this is exactly what Harris touches on in his fairy tale: the writer wove the folklore of South American slaves into his fables; in the 19th century they were popular among blacks. However, today’s children do not read this subtext. They are more fascinated by the narrator’s funny tube, from which soap bubbles appear, which he then bursts with a smile.

Each character here has his own character, which is conveyed not only by text, but also in habits, facial expressions, and plasticity. Brother Rabbit (Anna Bogdan) is nimble, savvy, sometimes cowardly, brave and cunning. Brother Fox (Kim Daria Kosheva) licks his lips predatorily every now and then, tries to be cunning, but, as readers know, he often gets into trouble. He has a big red tail, small but sensitive ears on his cowboy hat, and bell-bottom pants. Brother Wolf (Andrei Volkov) wants to be the terror of the wild prairies and not be inferior in cunning to other animals, but he also fails. He is the most fashionable and stately here. Brother Bear (Vladimir Dmitriev), as expected, is a slightly clumsy and club-footed good fellow. He has a towel with bees on it and is wearing a floppy hat and farm overalls. Brother Turtle (Sergei Beskhlebov) is the slowest and the wisest. He has round glasses and an intelligent look.

Of Harris’s 185 tales, only a few are told – the most famous and popular. In the process, you get used to the characters who are so eager to outwit each other, you get used to them as if they were family. “It’s much more difficult to play in a children’s play than in an adult play, because in front of you is the most sincere spectator,” Andrei Pavlov (Brother Wolf) told MK after the performance, who, unlike Kim, Daria Kosheva (and she brilliantly played her fox role ), only during the production process I became acquainted with the fairy tales of Uncle Remus.

The best assessment was the reaction of the children: someone immediately began to come up with their own stories about a turtle that is able to outrun a rabbit, and about a rabbit stuck to a wax effigy and a fox, busy in an eternal race for its big-eared neighbor. The brothers turned out to be humane, and, as intended, fabulous – plush and kind.