Waiting for Metoo

Another Russian premiere came out in Berlin – director Amalia Starikova staged Alexander Gelman’s play “The Bench”, written in 1983. About the attempt of a new, post-apocalyptic reading of the classic play from the time of developed socialism tells Alla Shenderova.

A talented playwright whose texts, written during the stagnation, were harbingers of perestroika, Alexander Gelman captured recognizable types and realities of the 1980s in The Bench. Not yet old, hopelessly lonely women, who have not lost the ability to stop a galloping horse, are unsuccessfully looking for a mate. Men have degenerated – they are unhappy, do not make long-range plans, and, in the old slang, jump from bed to bed. If there is anything that unites representatives of different sexes, it is the dreams of material wealth that have supplanted any ideology. This, of course, is about degeneration, but Gelman draws his image so subtly that the inexperienced may not even notice. Because ideology in the theater at any time is not in the first place. On the first – work for artists. The well-knit “The Bench” gives the theater what it always lacks – two bright roles for middle-aged artists. Therefore, the play is still staged on Russian-language stages and translated in Europe.

Perhaps, Amalia Starikova was guided by the same internal considerations when she chose the “Bench” for the small stage (the “Studio” stage) of “Schaubühne”. The director, who was born in Berlin, defended her diploma in history and literature, after which she had an internship at the Maly Drama Theater with Lev Dodin, and since 2019 she has become an assistant director at the theater, which in Berlin is commonly called “Shau”.

Adapting an old translation by Regina Kühn for her performance, director Starikova, together with playwright Marilena Pütt, tried to replace the old ideology with a new one. That is, thoughts about the death of nature and global warming. But today’s problems are bizarrely combined with the old-fashioned relationship of Gelman’s heroes, one of which endlessly and cruelly deceives the other, or rather, the other. And she infinitely generously forgives.

It is worth adding that the European theater played enough duets / duels before entering the bunker damaged by a nuclear explosion almost half a century ago. While in the late Soviet theater He and She swallowed saliva, dreaming of building not a developed socialism, but their own nest, Heiner Müller had already rewritten the Quartet, in which lovers mocked each other against the backdrop of a total apocalypse. Behind them, as said in another play by Muller, were already “the ruins of Europe.”

The artist of the play “Two on a bench” Simon Lesemann, these ruins came out very exquisite. On the back there is something like a rusty wall, through which an openwork light breaks through. Underfoot is sand laid in neat dunes, as if borrowed from Tarkovsky’s Stalker. The sand flows beautifully from above, falling on the slightly bald skull of the hero Damir Avdić. Gelman’s chauffeur Kolya / Lyosha, whose real name is Fyodor Kuzmich, turns into a rather correct Valentine (aka Alexander and Yuri). Vera, who worked for Gelman in a hosiery factory, retains her name, but not her social affiliation. Played by Julia Schubert, she looks more like an ancient Eriny in a fashionable sports dress. Having exposed another portion of her partner’s lies, she is ready to drop a huge stone on his head, which lies not far from the old bath, into which the bench from the name has turned. “I wish she had already killed him! Where is Metoo? grumbled at that moment a German colleague sitting next to me, furious at the way the hero was torturing the heroine. But murder doesn’t happen.

Apparently, Lev Dodin’s theater lessons were not in vain: the dialogues of the characters were analyzed according to the rules of psychological theater. But these dialogues themselves, or rather, their essence – Her infinite generosity towards Him, rude and selfish – have lost their meaning today. The heroes also do not expect the arrival of some higher powers or some Godot. And they cannot go home, because, judging by the scenography, there are no more houses. So two good actors wallow in the sand, scream, symbolically copulate, and, with almost visible relief, get up and dust themselves off when the action is cut off by a thud or an explosion.

In Gelman’s play it, of course, was not. There, the dialogue ended with a generous gesture of the heroine – She offered the vile, but miserable Him the key to her apartment, leaving the hero hope to change his life. In the performance, this text sounds after the explosion. It probably would have made sense if the characters behaved like Chekhov’s characters, who preferred to talk about the high, standing on the edge of the abyss. But the artists of “Shau” play not dreamers, but quite mundane people, brought into this desert by the wind straight from the Soviet 1980s and managed not to notice it. They continue to sort things out and make household plans when not only the love boat, but even the bath in the ocean of sand is about to fall apart.