“Warsaw Melody” at the Vakhtangov Theater returned to its starting point

There is an explanation for the fact that a second title appeared in the title of one of the best Soviet plays about love and the state system. In a difficult year for the country in 1996, the playwright composed a continuation of the legendary story, calling it “Crossroads”. Director Vladimir Ivanov combined two works, making a modern drama out of the later one, into which he inserted the 1967 play. The most interesting thing is that he did not throw out a single word or phrase from the text, he did not allow himself any gag for the sake of time and the political situation. Although, listening to the hero’s monologue, both I and many viewers were sure that this today’s burning word was entered by the director to enhance the relevance of the moment. But more on that later.

So, the old / new “Warsaw Melody” begins at the airport of a resort town at the end of the 20th century, where two unfamiliar elderly people accidentally met while waiting for a flight – he, gray-haired in a summer linen suit, and she, in glasses, a white hat and layered clothes which reveals her creative nature. Since he doesn’t speak English, she switches to broken but tolerable Russian. In her intonation one can hear condescension, intellectual superiority and even a challenge – not feminine, but rather ideological. It’s good that there is no aggression. European polka and Russian people on the ruins of the collapsed Warsaw Pact – their dialogue is quite understandable.

After such an overture in the next scene, the couple, having lost their age make-up, will find themselves in Moscow in post-war 1947, at the Moscow Conservatory, already as a student from “fraternal Poland” Gelena and a future winemaker Viktor who won back his own. Pretty, in curls, impetuous, with an inept female challenge covering her self-doubt. He is a victorious soldier, a liberator soldier, he will fall in love with this proud Pole. The Soviet and Russian playwright Zorin will let their love pass through the years, through three ages, through two countries – the USSR and Poland, as well as two systems – the Soviet socialist and the new, Russian.

Everything is fine with them – they meet the new, 1948th. He will give her shoes, for which he will earn money by unloading cars at night, kiss, make an offer. Despite their surroundings and their own poverty, everything is easy, funny, like her accent and mistakes in Russian. So good and so sweet, charmingly coquettish on her part and charmingly courageous on his side (a blizzard sweeps over several silently floating up and down panels-screens, as in a black and white movie, with the flight of one misguided star diagonally), to until the Soviet government passed a law prohibiting its citizens from marrying foreigners. Their world collapsed. She will immediately understand everything, and he will go through the authorities, trying to achieve the exclusive right for his love.

Their next meeting will take place in Warsaw, ten years later, where he will arrive as part of a delegation, naturally, under the supervision of a representative of the vigilant authorities. They will meet at the trendy restaurant Pod Gvyazdami (Under the Stars), where she, a star herself, will sing for him.

This is perhaps the most powerful scene in the play. The solution seems to be simple: first, both are at the forefront at the table, then the parting panels-screens will open the perspective, where she sings in Polish and Russian in monochrome light and a light dress with black indefinite shapes. For him alone. There is no age makeup, but the eyes … These are the eyes of adults who have experienced a forced separation, but it seems to her that there is still a chance, because the strength of their feelings and the memory of the heart from the 47th is alive. But if it is possible for a soldier to defeat fascism, then the system cannot be overcome. “Circumstances are stronger,” he says. Polina Rafeeva and Ivan Zakhava (by the way, the great-grandson of the founder of the Vakhtangov Theater School, its first rector) play the scene to break. Restrained, quiet, sizzling, which makes it creepy. And this, of course, is the merit of the director, who sorted out the roles, the feelings that the performers did not experience simply because of their age, but were able to survive on stage.

Their third and last meeting, which took place in Moscow, at the conservatory, where the Polish star performed with a concert, was transferred from the Warsaw Melody to the play Crossroads. It was not played, but told at the airport by the aged Viktor to the aged Gelena – how absurd their meeting in Moscow was. And it seems that, being at a venerable age, having lived, he finally confesses to her his long-standing mistake, the betrayal of their love, that he lived in both all his life, but the playwright, and after him the director, keep the intrigue to the end. As Vladimir Ivanov told me after the performance, on the manuscript of “Crossroads” the author wrote in small handwriting: “He does not recognize Her or does not want to recognize her.”

But in “Crossroads”, which began and ends the story of two lovers, the hero will deliver a monologue that today makes you shudder – how visionary he turned out to be.

“From century to century, we climbed into Europe, cut down windows and cut our beards, and our breed is unshakable, Old Believer, Avvakum,” says old Victor. “We probably don’t need Europe, and we certainly don’t need it.

To which she replies: “Oh yes, I read from your classics that Russia has a special path.”

“I would like to understand whether this is the path or the cross. I’m here looking at these people. Everyone is carefree, everyone is having fun, they don’t care about me … And what do they know about the twenty-first? The 20th century will still seem like an easy adventurous ride to them. Yes Yes Yes! Everything will be that way. One day Africa, furious from hunger, poverty, from hopelessness, Asia under its crescent moon will rush to your cozy, well-groomed gardens. And you will scream: “Save, Russia!”. And we will save you, as we saved you from Genghis Khan, Napoleon, from Hitler, from any plague. As soon as she flares up somewhere and – put on your tunic, climb into your tarpaulin … “it means that we have a road there”, we will again lay down our heads for you …

Leonid Zorin, being a talented and wise man, never got into politics and was not noticed in the conjuncture. But it turns out that he knew something, almost 30 years ago he wrote such a text and called his play “Crossroads”. The world now stands at a crazy and dangerous crossroads, and no one knows where it will go.

The lead actress Polina Rafeeva after the premiere is already being called Yulia Borisova’s successor. The advance, of course, is chic, but there is no doubt that a new star is rising in the Vakhtangov sky, which was what the audience observed at the premiere. The fourth-year student is unusually organic, subtle, precise, attractive, naturally professional and brilliantly played three female ages in the crossover “Warsaw Melody”, two of which she has no idea about.