Vakhtangovskiy opened the season in three acts

Opening of the next season and the first without Rimas Tuminas Theatre. Yevgeny Vakhtangov performed in three acts. The first act on the Old Arbat, where a monument to Lanovoy, Etush and Yakovlev was erected. The second took place on the historical stage, where the Investigative Committee awarded the artists and plans were announced. Well, in the third act, all those present (the artists and the journalists and theater employees who joined them) were convinced of the correctness of the words of the playwright Ostrovsky, whose hero assured that the buffet is the place for the artist. The theater presented its new buffet, which turned out to be historical in many senses of the word.

After the monument, which we write about in this issue of MK, was opened, everyone moved to the Vakhtangov Historical Stage. They walked along the road and said: “Vo gives Krok, he erects monuments to everyone,” meaning that two years ago a monument to the founder of the theater was erected right at the front entrance of Vakhtangovsky. More precisely, Vakhtangov sat down – young and romantic, and behind him a curtain with the names of great performances for a hundred years.

And here is the historical scene. Minister of Culture Olga Lyubimova speaks from the screen – she is now in Vladivostok. And then the head of the Sledkom, Alexander Bastrykin, who was friends with Etush and Lanov, will read poems of his own composition dedicated to fellow artists: “Officer shoulder straps are a symbol of hostility and honor …” And he also awarded the artists with the medal of Peter the Great. Director Kirill Krok, left without an artistic director, is on stage. What he says is a message not only to his own, but also to those outside the theater.

“Today it’s not easy for me to go on this stage alone. The only thing that inspires faith is that you are all in the hall, which means that we are together. At a difficult moment, you didn’t leave, you don’t engage in cheap politicking, but we do what we can do well – play performances, go on tour. When the country is bad, you have to be with your country.

But his next words generally sounded like a statement: “Today, for some reason, some people decided that they can dictate to theaters what can be played and what should be removed from the repertoire, what to leave and what to close. Standing here, on this stage, I officially declare: we ourselves will decide which performances to play and which not to play.

These words of the director broke the storm of applause, which happens only at successful premieres. Krok also said that he contacted the director of the Mariupol Drama Theater. “There are only 14 of them left in the theater, and I invited them to visit us on the Arbat in November.” And he ended his speech with an unambiguous quatrain on the topic of the day, once written by the poet Sergei Taratuta: “When a cherished dream comes true / Be on the lookout, they are already in ambush / Who in life does not know how a damn thing / As soon as shitting, attacking from behind.

With this, the poetry readings ended, and the director moved on to plans. Judging by what he said, in the 102nd season, Vakhtangovskiy puts on 13. A damn dozen new productions are announced in the new season. Three on the historical stage, the first of which will be “The Idiot” by Dostoevsky – in January it is handed over by Yuri Butusov. It will be followed by Amadeus staged by Anatoly Shulyev and Filumena Marturano, which is being prepared for Nonna Grishaeva by director Irina Pakhomova. Interestingly, two of the announced names are symbolic for one of the main theaters in the country: here, in the middle of the last century, Yulia Borisova and Nikolai Gritsenko shone in The Idiot, and the first students of Vakhtangov, Ruben Simonov and Cecilia Mansurova, appeared in the Filumen.

Four premieres will be presented on the new stage: “The General and His Family” based on the prose of Timur Kibirov (dir. Zemlyakov), “Volokolamsk Highway” by Heiner Müller (dir. Resing), “Paul the First” by Merezhkovsky. Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev and Erdman will be registered on the Simonovskaya stage, and directors Pavel Safonov, Aidar Zabbarov, Anna Gorushkina and Oleg Dolin will work on their works.

The most intriguing title of the new season is “Eight and a half” by Federico Fellini, a performance that will be staged by the talented young director Leyla Abul-El Kishok as part of the director’s laboratory, which successfully staged two performances on the Simonovskaya stage.

After a report on achievements (tours, awards, awards) and an announcement of plans, everyone was taken to the mezzanine level, to a new buffet. But in fact it is old, for twenty years it changed its purpose. This is a space of two hundred meters, where since 1947 after reconstruction (at the beginning of the war a bomb hit the theater) there was a buffet. This important public catering point was served by the Prague restaurant, and, by the way, Czech beer was sold in it – a big deficit at that time. The spectator buffet lasted until 1993, until the director Pyotr Fomenko went there, who staged his outstanding play Guilty Without Guilt, which then traveled all over the world – it was so good!

The success of that performance was witnessed by an inanimate object – a huge buffet, which still stands against the wall at the front entrance. It is so powerful and solid that you just want to exclaim: “Dear Buffet!” And here, four out of five bronze chandeliers and four cast-iron gratings have survived intact: they were restored, and now the chandeliers have already clung to the high Vakhtangov ceiling, and the gratings, like sentries, froze along the walls in niches.

For many years there were performances here, and then the hall became just a rehearsal room.

“When we had rehearsal rooms, we decided to return the buffet to the audience,” says Kirill Krok, and shows how stucco molding was restored after summer work, architectural lighting appeared, and the space was equipped with modern sound and lighting equipment.

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Three hours later, the Satire Theater opened its 99th season. Here, all the surprises are in store for the evening for the play “Where are we?..” with the participation of Alexander Shirvindt, who had a birthday in the summer. And on the first day of the 99th season, they decided to congratulate Shirvindt.

In the fall, Satire will present two premieres – “This Child” (on the stage “Attic of Satire”) directed by Nikita Kobelev and “The Slave” after Ostrovsky directed by Mikhail Mokeev. The main thing that distinguishes the production from the classical reading is the zongs, that is, musical numbers with the text of the monologues of the main characters, written in the genre of indie rock.

The Theater plans to stage performances on all four stages of Satire – “The Marriage” by Nikolai Gogol (dir. Philip Gurevich), “Krupa and Fantik” (dir. Roman Gabria), composed by the director in the genre of “documentary disinformation” about Krupskaya and Kaplan.

Sergei Gazarov himself will present the play “Vestalka” about the Second World War through the eyes of women. This is a powerful story written by Nikolai Kolyada based on the novel by the Ural writer Nikolai Nikonov. In addition to a number of premieres, one of the important artistic events in the 2022–2023 season will be the GOOD! Festival-laboratory dedicated to Mayakovsky’s work. Children will not be forgotten either: an interpretation of Carlson will appear on the Main Stage, and on the Progress Stage – The Life and Life of Ivan Semenov, a Second Year and a Second Grader staged by Mikhail Plutakhin. All the best goes to the children, Gazarov decided, and the stage on Sportivnaya, where the Dzhigarkhanyan Theater was once born, was given to the children’s theater – it will begin with The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.