Volchek’s anniversary was celebrated with a strange fairy tale

In this season, rich in significant dates, it is customary to celebrate these very dates in an unusual way. Thus, for the 125th anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater, which took place at the end of October, the play “9th row, 10th, 11th place” was specially written and staged on a scale corresponding to the scale of the event: a touching plot that connected three generations of Muscovites, a luxurious set. Nevertheless, I remember that many were then dissatisfied with the decline in the images of the founding fathers of the Arts, whom no one living today knew. It’s either the case with Sovremennik and its main character Galina Volchek… At least three generations knew her personally – from her peers to the current forty-year-olds. And so the latter, who cannot be called youngsters, composed the fairy tale “Galya. Magic story.” For some reason in the program they called it a dramatization, but they modestly kept silent about which work, so for now we will consider it an independent work.

Everything about it is fabulous – the beginning (“Once upon a time there was a girl Galya”), the narrator in a hat and with a kind voice (Alexander Khovansky), who lacked the words to complete the image: “Hello, my friend.” And so he conscientiously performed the function of a guide through the life of the girl Gali from her childhood in the house on Polyanka until the moment when she got tired and ended. In the fairy-tale narrative, her life, composed by actors Polina Rashkina and Semyon Shomin, took place in the Land of Cold Winds, which was constantly expanding its borders, but because of the winds, it was completely unbearable for the girl Gala to live there. And then, on the advice of a certain uncle Mikhail Ilyich (the advanced googled it – Romm, a classic of Russian cinema, who worked with Galina’s dad), throwing away the red ball and green watermelon, she flew to seek adventure in another country. But not abroad, as gullible citizens might think, but to a magical land. There was only one such thing in the Land of Cold Winds – a theater.

And it was there that the girl Galya met the Chef (small, with eyes shining like an adventurer), with him the blonde Mistress Lilya (all the time in an apron and with a copper pan in her hands), a Smart Guy in glasses, a Punk with hair in the form of icicles sticking out in different directions, Kvashenko and the Cat, who spoke in the voice of the cartoon Matroskin. It wasn’t immediately clear who was in the know, but they figured it out: Efremov, Tolmacheva, Evstigneev, Kvasha, Tabakov. But no one understood who was listed as Smart Guy. However, in the fairy tale this is not important, what is important is that this strange company of freaks built their own train – “Timely”, and it traveled around the Land of Cold Winds and saved people. People were just called idiots in costumes of frostbitten hedgehogs.

As in any fairy tale, the good forces were opposed by the forces of evil, and they were personified by the witch Furtz: she plotted intrigues on those who were going to save people, and then changed her shoes on the go and transplanted the Chief from a small one to another – a great one, built by two great old men, who were once shown in makeup Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko. And after Chef jumped off the Svoevremennik train, the completely grown-up girl Galya went into outer space in a spacesuit, where she met her dad (who had already passed away), and from there she found herself in a land of completely different winds. At the end, Galya harnessed herself with the Cat and the Mistress and dragged the “Timely”, like the children in the famous painting “Troika” by the artist Perov. And then I got tired and just lay down on the stage. That’s how the fairy tale about the girl Galya ended. Until this moment, however, she sang a little, danced a little and walked around in her dad’s jacket for two whole hours. “This is the end of the fairy tale” is the only thing the good storyteller did not say. Director Ivan Komarov, who had already staged in Sovremennik, tried to give the work a cheerful picture from Murzilka: the artist threw a slanting rain of popsicles on a stick mixed with vinyl discs across the backdrop; at first, among the actors there were dolls, and with the help of choreographic elements they depicted flights from a bad place. Countries with winds to the Land of Magic. The strange composition was accompanied by live music.

The theater guest invited to Volchek’s birthday remained silent after what he saw and hid his eyes, as if he were a witness to something indecent. The applause was short-lived at all. “What was it?” – theater people asked each other. “And this will be sold to the audience?” – others were surprised. Yes, the theater really hopes to make the play a repertoire, and there is even a name – “Next on your own,” but the calculation here is clearly unprofessional. Firstly, the target audience of the spectacle is completely undefined – for children, the fairy tale about Sovremennik will be incomprehensible and uninteresting, neither in the historical figures, nor in the logic of the presentation of events, nor in the details. For adults, it is primitive in its schematism and is far from the truth that everyone knows (personally, from books, from documents), since everyone is still alive, and some of the participants in this story are even young. In general, it turned out to be a half-story, a non-fiction, a non-musical – neither this nor that, but God knows what.

The interpretation of history made by forty-year-old people is flat and, by and large, false, both in general and in detail. It’s a shame for the Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva, who is presented as a caricature and tasteless idiot with the manners of a market boor. The authors and the director could not have known that thanks to Furtseva’s support, Sovremennik survived in the 60s and 70s and produced its famous performances.

“Furtseva adored Efremov, it was all before my eyes,” said former chief administrator Galina Lishtvanova, almost crying. – It’s all a lie. And Galya is not like that, she wasn’t like that. And they are not all like that. How embarrassing.

The generation raised by Efremov, and later Volchek, who brought honor to Russian art, did not go down in history – Neyolova, Yakovleva, Leontyev, Garmash, Ivanova, Pokrovskaya, Kazakov, Doroshina, Gaft, Krylova, Drozdova, Petrova, Anikanova and others. And according to the directors, the following came out: seven people built the theater, then someone went to the Moscow Art Theater after Efremov, and someone died (“dissolved in the fog”), and only a young troupe remained at Sovremennik, which in recent years For years, Galina Borisovna stubbornly made a bet and to whom the words were addressed, for the first time in two hours of action, sounded in the finale. True, no one knows the names of this generation, except that now they find out how they impudently wrote themselves into the modern history of Sovremennik as the first issue. And most importantly, as untalented myth creators.

By the way, the most recent acting call of Sovremennik was mostly played on stage, but there is no one to remember. Perhaps the artist who played the role of Gali, but she also turned out to be invited – from the Theater. Mayakovsky. Anastasia Mishina touched me with her sincerity. The fact that “Sovremennik” did not find an actress for the role of Volchek says a lot about the skill of that part of the troupe that the legendary contemporary was so hoping for. And, I must admit, I was wrong.

But my last question is not for them, but for the management and legal service of the theater: gentlemen, are you not afraid of copyright claims? The dramatization uses the text (sometimes down to phrases) of my book “Galina Volchek. As a rule, outside the rules” is her complete fictional biography, which she loved very much. But there are no links to it even in the program. Apparently, both Sovremennik and their homeland, which they do not like so much, began with them.