Where are you going?
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This question is asked today by the audience of the new performance “Moscow. Full circle” V Theatre. Moscow City Council director Pavel Parkhomenko.
The protagonist of the play, Nikolai (Dmitry Podadaev), travels for a whole month in the same subway car in the hope of meeting a girl whom he has seen only once. The girl made an impression, but the hero was afraid to approach her, for which he now reproaches himself.
The basis of the performance was the play by the editor-in-chief of the film company “STV” Alexander Arkhipov “Full Circle” and documentary stories of the inhabitants of the capital, collected by directors and artists. The play was chosen for staging during the Moscow Stories competition, organized by the Department of Culture and the Moscow City Council Theater in December last year.
By the way, there were two winners. Our newspaper has already written about the play “Farewell, Beloved”. And now – the second premiere.
Performance “Moscow. Full Circle” is an attempt to capture the life of today’s metropolitan subway. Before us is a whole gallery of faces, representing, from the point of view of the playwright, the archetypes of people who usually use this mode of transport.
Tired of rotating around the ring, the main character Nikolai peers into the faces of his fellow travelers and comes up with biographies for them. One station, one story.
By the will of his imagination, the everyday life of Muscovites unfolds before us. Here is an expressive guy in a formal suit carrying some kind of incoherent “blizzard” about his incredible talents and adventures, which, of course, ended with an invitation to work in Hollywood, which, of course, did not suit him.
Here is an aged red-haired lady who is not too happy in her personal life, marries people all over the country. The matchmaker condescendingly gives advice that “love is, first of all, suitable personal data in the questionnaire,” and insists that one must marry according to this principle. Only in her own life does the principle obviously not work.
Here is a prostitute with a characteristic local “screaming” accent no less cynically asserts that since all people sleep with someone, it is better to do it for money.
A married food delivery man from Bishkek with a huge yellow container bag is sincerely surprised that on the threshold of his next apartment, every time he is waiting for complete uncertainty. For example, a completely naked woman can easily meet. And the delivery man from Bishkek has a large family, and besides, his heart hurts for his eldest son, who unfairly ended up behind bars.
The everyday life of the capital’s doctors, who found themselves “at the forefront” during the recent epidemic of covid-19, floats before us. Doctors, quarantined along with the patients of the clinic, take selfies, imagining themselves as astronauts in a vacuum: there is nowhere to wait for help. This part of the performance is perhaps the most poignant.
Weekdays are rushing by and a completely different front line – a participant in the Chechen war: dead comrades are riding in an empty car with him in the blackout.
Four old women enter the car – “hoarders”. Each of them is a representative of a certain social stratum of the times of the USSR: from Leninka’s librarian to a factory worker. Grandmothers complain about life, talk about the deceased spouses, groan, sing ditties. And the result is the same: pensioners are taking to the flea market everything that was acquired by overwork during the period of general socialist “leveling”.
At some point, the dead mother of the protagonist appears in the empty car, hinting at how to get out of the vicious circle.
Each of the characters, according to Nikolai, is a self-sufficient Universe that does not need to be systematized or defined. It is difficult to disagree with this truth. But the question is already ripening in the minds of the audience: why is Nikolai with such maniacal perseverance hunting for a stranger whom he has seen for several minutes? Why is he staring at his fellow travelers so intently? Why is he afraid to enter his apartment, turn on the light and see the reflection of his own face in the mirror?
Apparently, because he is afraid to look inside himself. “The usual human emptiness” happened to him. After all, trying to understand the life of the country is much easier than trying to understand your own.
The scenography for the performance was invented by the same Pavel Parkhomenko. An ordinary car, behind the windows of which the well-known outlines of the platforms of the Circle Line of the capital’s metro are passing by. Sometimes they are replaced by newsreels – old or very recent.
There are a lot of directorial finds in the play. There are funny ones, there are very successful ones – such as the scene of the crush of passengers in the car. The director managed, without leaving the subway, to step far beyond its limits, presenting us with a certain section of society.
True, only the cut that the eyes of the playwright who wrote the play want to see.
Therefore, the impression from the performance is twofold: in a series of characters, a person who was born and lived all his life in Moscow recognizes few people. Well, except for doctors and a food peddler. There are no happy people in this car at all. Those who are satisfied with their daily work, because they are doing what they love. Those who hurry in the evening under their native shelter with joy. Those who take their beloved children to kindergarten in the morning, and on weekends go to visit their wonderful friends.
One gets the impression that only visitors are moving in the Moscow metro (each hero really names a distant city from where he arrived in the capital), for whom the Garden Ring did not become an “engagement” at all. And there is also a strong feeling that the author was intensely racking his brains about what other social archetype to highlight in this story, written specifically for a theater competition.
The performance involves talented artists of the Theater. Moscow Council Daria Taran, Anastasia Belova, Vanya Pishchulin, Evgenia Lyakh, Daria Emelyanova, Mikhail Filippov, Vladimir Prokoshin, Daria Balabanova, Anton Anosov, Andrey Smirnov.
“Train departs. Hold on to the railings, and if that doesn’t work, hold on to what you can.” From answering the question of what exactly we should hold on to, the playwright of this underground road movie deftly evades.
Elena Bulova.
Photo by the author and the Theater. Moscow City Council
Message Where are you going? first appeared on Moscow truth.
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