“Vinyl” turned out to be tin: a musical about the victory of the West was shown at the wrong time

A performance from St. Petersburg was brought to the festival “See Music”

The musical “Vinyl” of the St. Petersburg Music Hall Theater was shown at the “See the Music” festival. The performance was made by recognized masters of the genre: composer Yevgeny Zagot, director Susanna Tsiryuk, librettist Karina Shebelyan are well known in the field of musical theater. But this time, the authors surprised us with a fatal failure to meet the demands of the time: the story of how, during the Cold War, Western democracy defeated Russian totalitarianism for the sake of a group of dudes, today sounds very exotic.

There are such musicals – “post-Soviet”. Nord-Ost laid the standards, where everything was the first time and to be honest. But even the best idea, replicated to infinity, is easy to turn into vulgarity. Today, in the gentleman’s set of this genre – an indispensable parody of a patriotic mass song, an obligatory communal apartment, marching pioneers, dancing janitors, a man in an earflap, a vulgar bourgeois woman in a dressing gown and hackneyed clichés of provincial musical comedy acting. Thanks to the movie “Dandies” and the fashion for the “thaw”, bright colors of the 50s and 60s with rock and roll, jazz, multi-colored skirts, home-grown “dissidence” and intrigues of the KGB were added to this cocktail.

It was in this hellish genre that the musical Vinyl was performed, which the Music Hall Theater brought from St. Petersburg to the See Music festival: by the way, the theater received the St. Petersburg Government Prize in the field of culture and art for 2021 for Vinyl …

The plot is borrowed from the aforementioned film “Dandies”, in which a group of outcasts of the late 50s wear colorful jackets, plaid pants, play jazz and dance boogie-woogie while condemning the Komsomol organization. But this seemed not enough – I wanted harder. And a political story burst into the plot about how, during the festival of youth and students in 1957, a certain KGB colonel destroys the unreliable jazz group Vinyl, whose leader is his own son. He throws his son into the dungeons of Lubyanka (we remember Peter the Great and Tsarevich Alexei), and the rest of the amateur jazz participants are sent there, where they are beaten, shine a lamp in their eyes and forced to sweep the streets with a broom. The villainous colonel is helped by a beautiful KGB agent – in fact, she is trying to save her repressed dad in this way, not knowing that dad was shot before the war. Of course, the colonel is trying to persuade the beauty to cohabitation (here we recall Scarpia and Tosca). There is also Kapitolina, a Komsomol organizer cloned from Stilyagi, who is unrequitedly in love with the hero.

Naturally, on the stage there is an assortment of pioneers, janitors, a man in earflaps, a vulgar woman in a dressing gown, a communal apartment, a monument to Lenin, a giant Kremlin star, strained acting with antics and clowning – the whole set of stamps of the “post-Soviet musical” is evident. The texts are also impressive: “What do I need to sing Soviet songs?”, the hero asks indignantly. And he answers himself – “This is a shame in the square.” Well, when a young jazz fan tries to explain to his father-KGBist, who sees only enemies around, that it is, they say, “just music”, dad answers him villainously like this: “In our country, nothing is JUST can not be”.

At some point, it seemed that the plot had reached a dead end – dudes were in jail and there was no escape. There is no need to hope that Stalin will die: he died a long time ago, the 20th Congress will not help either – it has already taken place. Where will help come from? Of course, from there! As Ostap Bender said, “foreigners will help us”: the girls in love – a Komsomol organizer and an agent – hold a press conference with the participation of foreign journalists. The scandal hits the world press. And the colonel has no choice but to release the recalcitrant youth into the wild to sing songs about the “freedom extravaganza.”

Such is the victory of liberal values ​​over Russian totalitarianism in the Cold War era. A very relevant topic in the context of today’s realities. And what a strange thing it is: for the first time, the remarkable composer Yevgeny Zagot, the author of a number of successful musical and theatrical projects, failed to create a single real hit. Even the lyrical duet, for which he is a master, here came out secondary and banal.

Well, the biggest annoyance is caused by artists – talented, young, vociferous, plastic, beautiful. Forced to play a cascade of meaningless ideological and aesthetic clichés, they lose their individuality, turning into a costumed corus line. Against this background, the work of Maria Elizarova (Komsomol organizer) looks truly heroic, who at some point shook off the stupid role scheme imposed on her and famously sang her aria, demonstrating both a luxurious timbre, and a magnificent manner of singing, and acting talent.

The authors of the show, of course, can tell me: why are you so run over? Right here seriously. After all, it’s just a musical! And I will answer: just a musical? So you yourself said that nothing JUST happens in our country.