Well-intentioned infliction of harm – Newspaper Kommersant No. 44 (7489) dated 03/16/2023

At the end of March, Budapest is preparing to host the next International Theater Olympiad, the program of which this year brought together performances by almost all the giants of the world theater – from Christoph Marthaler and Simon McBurney to Romeo Castellucci and Heiner Goebbels. A kind of epigraph of this “festival of festivals” was the new production of one of the members of the organizing committee of the 2023 Olympiad, Valery Fokin, “REX”, released at the National Theater of Budapest. With details – Dmitry Renansky.

Beginning of the XXII century. The world’s population has exceeded 10 billion people, the average life expectancy is 90 years, 80% of the population receives an unconditional basic income, all bacterial, viral and genetic diseases are treatable, the climate is stable. Humanity is united in a single state, the role of the global government is performed by the UN. REX is the final part of a futuristic triptych staged by Valery Fokin based on texts by his son, writer and publicist Kirill Fokin. Segodnya, 2016 and An Honest Woman, which are in the repertoire of the St. Petersburg Alexandrinsky Theater, the premiere of the National Theater of Budapest has in common the genre of literary primary source – a cunning mix of drama of ideas with sci-fi about an alternative future – and the form of its implementation on stage: in all three performances, the monodrama of the main the hero is scaled by the director to the level of existential conflict.

“REX”, “king of kings”, is the legendary UN Secretary General Livy Kaplan, who abolished borders, disbanded armies and lived to 129 years old under the supervision of a robot butler. The role of Lajos Otto Horváth, the luminary of the Hungarian stage, somewhat reminiscent of Vladas Bagdonas in psychophysics, the theater protagonist Eymuntas Nyakroshyus, is built on the counterpoint of two planes of reflection – intimate and social, private and public. Kaplan understands that his project has failed – the desire to make reality understandable and manageable, as Gogol would say, “for the common good”, only provoked even greater conflicts around the world.

“You wanted to save us from wars, but as a result you gave us the main war,” Kaplan will at some point be thrown by his eternal antagonist, the former adviser to the US president, who led the terrorist organization “Shards”, which is fighting against the “world Reich”. As in “Today, 2016”, the global catastrophe is reflected in the hero’s personal drama: realizing his utopian plan, he is the first to become a victim of an escalation of violence, losing his wife and daughter – appearing on stage in surrealistic visions on the shaky verge of sleep and reality, they look like Erinyes chasing Kaplan.

Valery Fokin’s new performance is especially interesting to watch, if we keep in mind its previous premiere — after the excessive multi-figure blockbuster 1881, which opened the Alexandrinsky season in September, the director turns to asceticism, narrowing the already chamber space of the small stage of the National Theatre. A transparent cube is built between the spectator stands located opposite each other, where you can lie crouched, sit or straighten up to your full height. A similar cage, viewed from all sides, was inhabited by the hero of The Living Corpse, one of Fokine’s most important productions of the 2000s. Where, it would seem, is the textbook play by Tolstoy, and where is the science fiction “REX”, but the plot of both performances turns out to be the same – the director is attracted by the theme of leaving, the protagonists recoiling from an imperfect world and dooming themselves to exile.

Only over the years, Fokin’s gaze became even more bitter and ruthless: if he gave Fedya Protasov, who left the family, hope to start a new life, hiding from a deceitful, unfree society, then “REX” from the very beginning is infinitely ruthless – both in relation to the main character, and in relation to the failed humanistic project as such.

The scenery by Alexei Tregubov, animated by video artist Asya Mukhina, is no coincidence reminiscent of an aesthetic installation: Liviy Kaplan is placed in a museum showcase, equipped with a hologram label cheerfully reporting on his achievements in the construction of the “World Federation”. In this sterile and airtight space, built of projection screens, like a hospital box, you can create any illusion – a victorious utopia, eternal summer, a world where there is no war and hunger.

Corroded by contradictions, the hero wants to die, to fall asleep, but he is put on public display in a lifetime mausoleum, to which flowers are laid and around which a crowd of enthusiastic zombies marches. In the final of Fokine’s “Living Corpse” Protasov shot himself, leaving his cell and rising somewhere high in the elevator car. In REX, the hostage of the reality of the victorious control is deprived even of the opportunity to commit suicide. He is sentenced to remain alone with himself in public loneliness: hell, reminds Valery Fokin, these are not others, hell is you yourself.