Winnie the Pooh was studied in the art theater

“How many fans of Winnie the Pooh, however,” a grown man says to himself, climbing past me up the stairs to the last rows of the Small Stage of the Moscow Art Theater. And in fact, the hall is already packed to capacity, but there are no children among the public. And what should they do here if the genre of the performance is defined as a “conference”. And already on the stage, where the artists have not yet entered, as the main element of the scenery (artist Vladimir Simonov), a massive round table made of white plastic is visible, the only support of which is a forest stump. On the table – tea in French presses, jars of honey and jam (judging by the color of raspberry), cups, a glass with pencils. At some distance – a chest of drawers with a starched lace napkin – like a grandmother’s. Five chairs around the table indicate the exact number of participants.

And here they are: five artists take their places at the table, and two – a little ahead, near the low tables at the edges of the stage. One of them, as it turns out later, is Christopher Robin, but not a boy, but an adult uncle Igor Zolotovitsky. To his left is either a teenage girl or a very young girl in an oversized jacket and high black leggings, she is presented as an expert linguist from London.

The declared genre of the performance – the conference – begins accordingly. Boring.

“Our research is dedicated to one of the most mysterious books in world literature,” Zolotovitsky announces, apparently a moderator. – Everyone knows the name of this book. The characters too. If you have read this book, please raise your hand. – and seeing the forest of hands: “So, get out of the hall!”

Actors without animal costumes and makeup, and only by the details you can guess who is who. The pedant Rabbit (Valery Troshin) has a bow tie, the boring donkey (Oleg Topolyansky) has a short-brimmed hat like a German burgher, the Owl (Vera Harbina) wears a knitted waistcoat to match the skirt and, of course, round glasses. Winnie himself (Artyom Volobuev) in a voluminous soft sweater, but Piglet (Alexandra Usova) the artist deprived of a hint of disgust and character in a suit.

The conference participants are smart with books in their hands, reasoning, and assure that Winnie the Pooh and his friends are actually doing boring things, talking a lot in the forest, which is not a forest at all. And that they have a suspicion – part of the public did not read Alan A. Milne’s book at all, and formed an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bit based on the legendary cartoon voiced by the legendary artists – Leonov, Savina, Osenev, Garin. Why is there a sample of domestic animation – the American serial cartoon gave an even greater idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe heroes of the cult book. And everything is in this vein.

From time to time, an expert with slicked back hair in pure English, with a chic London pronunciation, reports how the inscription on Piglet’s grandfather’s house sounds in the original: “Standard English announcement, indicating that the violator will be punished. The Russian equivalent is that outsiders are not allowed to enter. So, Piglet’s grandfather was called “Intruder V”.

Step by step, for some reason, with books in their hands, they go through several chapters, play them out or improvise each other to a standstill. It is difficult to understand what proportion of improvisation is here, but it is clearly envisaged by Grishkovets, which reveals the dispute that broke out over the role of the main and secondary characters in this story by analogy with the heroes of Dostoevsky and even Tvardovsky’s poem “Lenin and the stove-maker”. Colleagues at the conference, it was noticeable, they were already stunned and not in the text: “Stove”? “Lenin”? “Wow”.

Asking the question: why is the Donkey the only one of the heroes so old, they will find signs of age-related dementia with its characteristic suspiciousness and confidence that “everyone around just does what they rob, cheat and do not report food to you”.

Funny “animals” even question the need for descriptions of nature, which distract children at school from the essence. As proof, Owl will put forward a hypothesis: “Milne can be understood: he did not have Prishvin and Bianka in the school curriculum. He was not forced to memorize the description of Tolstoy’s oak in War and Peace. He did not have childhood trauma from essays and dictations about endless birches, aspens, wild flowers, lacy shadows.

Digging into the characters of Milnov’s heroes, and in fact, getting to the bottom of them, Grishkovets imperceptibly takes the viewer first into association with his own childhood or even turns to real personalities who, it would seem, have nothing to do with the story of Winnie the Pooh. For example, a certain baker from the Titanic who drank like a shoemaker. Even when the ship ran into an iceberg and slowly began to sink into the depths of the sea, the baker did not part with a bottle of whiskey, which did not stop him from offering to throw all the wooden deck chairs overboard, which actually saved the lives of many who were in the water. And he himself was saved, of course, by the whiskey that he used while already in the icy water. By the way, he died much later and, which is typical, on land at the age of 76 – not at all from drunkenness, but from pneumonia.

And so, one asks, what does “Winnie the Pooh” have to do with it? Frankly, it has nothing to do with it, just Evgeny Grishkovets, like no one else, knows how to find the threads that invisibly connect the real and invented world. And this will manifest its own philosophy that the adult world connects with the children’s. And this is a completely different matter. Here, the first words of the song from the famous Soviet film “Children of Captain Grant” will sound out of place.

“Come on, sing a song to us, cheerful wind, cheerful wind, cheerful wind,” the “animals” begin quietly. They are suddenly joined by the high and clear, transparent voice of an expert from London. Wow tessitura! I thought. And I’m not alone. What kind of young lady is so childlike? Artist or really prodigy expert?

And such a swing will continue to fly in the play: from Piglet and Winnie the Pooh to childhood fears, and from them to the exit of two American astronauts to the moon, about whom they will tell oh what a dramatic story and for which one of the astronauts will blush all his life. And quite imperceptibly, all those sitting at the table will find themselves on a low wooden bench, which stood in the school gyms and quietly sing that they are “going, going, going to distant lands.”

The audience, which has been smiling and laughing for almost two hours, will immediately quiet down, and someone will even begin to sing along: “… to distant lands.” On bows, Zolotovitsky, who, despite all his corpulence, will be believed to be Christopher Robin, will finally introduce a linguist from London:

This is Emily Nina Gumbrill. She came from London. And now she is a first-year student of our Studio School. And today is her birthday!

On these words, the audience finally went into a dressing – it had every reason. And it was clear from Emily’s face that she could not believe what was happening to her at the moment and in general. Then backstage, standing next to Yevgeny Grishkovets, she told me that she was really born and raised in London.

– Where does such a good Russian come from? Just literary.

– My mother is Russian. I came to Moscow in the summer to enter the conservatory and the Moscow Art Theater School. But I did not believe that they would take me to the Moscow Art Theater. And I was accepted, now I’m studying. My teachers are Igor Yakovlevich Zolotovitsky and Sergey Zemtsov.

In Moscow, another miracle happened to her: when he saw the student Emily, Yevgeny Grishkovets came up with a character for her – this very expert linguist, who was not in his new play. And so Emily Nina Gumbrill celebrated her 19th birthday on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, and even playing in a new wonderful performance. It’s all Winnie the Pooh’s fault. Well, everything-everything-everything.