At the Theatre. Moscow City Council released the first premiere of the season. Yuri Eremin, who has been working in this theater for more than 15 years, staged a performance based on F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot" - this is the director's third production based on the novel, and the third production based on Dostoevsky's works.

Yuri Eremin puts Dostoevsky in such a way that he does not try to look for “new forms” or express himself in him, he tries to look for what the author wanted to say in his work, and to show exactly those characters that the author wrote about. Yuri Eremin works with each actor, trying to convey to him, and then through him and to the audience, what he himself read, discovered in the novel, what, in his opinion, the author wanted to say. And The Idiot became just such a production. It is impossible to fit the whole novel into three hours with an intermission, therefore the genre of the performance is defined as "Yuri Eremin's play based on F. M. Dostoevsky's motives." Although there are no strong deviations from the novel in the production, it is simply impossible to reveal all the characters in such a short period of time, show all the interweaving of plots, but you can turn the pages of the novel and show life paths heroes, to try to let the viewer think about which of them is waiting for heaven, and who is hell, and why. What Yuri Eremin did in his production.

The director of the performance was also the set designer. There are three levels on the stage - three pedestals that connect the inclined podiums. The podium from the lower pedestal goes into the void, into the abyss, into hell, from the upper one - to the sliding doors that open, and behind them you can see the light, paradise, from there, at the beginning of the performance, Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin (Anton Anosov) appears. And life flows between heaven and hell, where the heroes go through trials, so that later they either fall into the fire or go to the light. Arranged around the circumference of the stage are structures going up, which look like pillars cut into four parts, topped with dome-candles, among which the action takes place. In the center hangs a bell, which the heroes ring, turning over the pages of their history.

Two casts of actors are involved in the performance: Anton Anosov / Dmitry Podadaev (Myshkin), Ekaterina Guseva / Yulia Khlynina (Nastasya Filippovna), Zakhar Komlev / Vladimir Andriyanov (Rogozhin), Anatoly Vasiliev / Alexander Bobrovsky (Epanchin), Galina Dashevskaya / Nelli Pshennaya ( Epanchina), Tatyana Khramova / Christina Isaykina (Alexandra), Anna Mikhailovskaya / Anastasia Pronina (Aglaya), Gennady Korotkov / Dmitry Zhuravlev (Totsky), Neil Kropalov / Anton Pospelov (Ivolgin), Marina Kondratyeva / Tatyana Rodionova (Ivolgin's mother), Yana Lvova / Alexandra Kuzenkina (Varya, Ivolgin's sister), Vladislav Bokovin / Evgeny Ratkov (Ferdyshchenko), Vladimir Goryushin / Andrey Smirnov (Lebedev), Alexei Shmarinov / Sergey Zotov (Radomsky).

The main roles at the premiere show were entrusted to play those who are more experienced and more confident. The role of Prince Myshkin was played by Anton Anosov. This actor, in whatever performances he appears, always attracts attention: not because he himself is trying to somehow stand out, but because it is impossible not to highlight him, as you will see. And here is the main role, and what a! But it was about Anton for the first time that I thought when I found out that the "Idiot" would be staged in the "Mossovet". In The Idiot, he had to change so much that it is impossible to recognize him. No, not outwardly - outwardly he is the same, you don’t recognize him exactly as an actor, and you are surprised that he can be like that. He plays the prince as stupid, unhealthy, naive, slightly stuttering, believing those around him, trying to look for the good in them and see the best. For him there are no sinners, for him there are unfortunates whom he tries to help as best he can. Ekaterina Guseva took the stage as Nastasya Filippovna Barashkova. Her Nastasya Filippovna is beautiful and proud. But not to say that in this production she is arrogant and plays with people, here Nastasya Filippovna is just a woman who is trying to survive in the circumstances that people around her have determined since childhood. Therefore, the prince does not see sin in her, but only sees that she is unhappy, because no matter how much she wants to break out of the framework defined by society, this is impossible. And Catherine successfully manages to convey both the depravity and suffering of her heroine. Actor Zakhar Komlev was invited to play the role of Parfyon Rogozhin. This name is unknown to the Moscow theater audience, he is an actor Academic theater drama them. V. Savina from the city of Syktyvkar, and this year he graduated from the directing department of the Shchukin Theater Institute (Yuri Eremin's course).

Costumes (Victoria Sevryukova) in the play are classic. If in the first act almost everyone is dressed in gray and black, only Myshkin’s lighter suit stands out, and there is red in Nastasya Filippovna’s clothes, then in the second act everyone dresses in light, as if Myshkin brought light to their lives, giving hope for salvation of the soul, giving directions to right ways and absorbing their sins.

Under the blow of a bell, scenes follow one another, and in each a drama is shown, in each scene people are unhappy, unhappy from a combination of circumstances, from love, from jealousy, from lack of money, from their views. The heroes live their lives, swinging like on a swing that at some point appears on the stage, between heaven and hell and looking for their way.

Natalia Kozlova

Photos provided by the theater press center

Attention! Attention! Mystical premiere at the theater. Moscow City Council!

The novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky "The Idiot" was repeatedly filmed and played on the stage and even the director Yuri Eremin this is not the first time he has been contacted.

SCENOGRAPHY

The "Idiot" of the Moscow City Council Theater has a very interesting set design, many symbols, there is something to think about, for example, a cross-hanger on which Myshkin hangs his modest outfits and belongings on the day of the first visit to the Epanchins. And a portrait of Nastasya Filippovna will be erected on it later.

The design of the stage is minimalistic, the walls on the sides are crowned with semi-domes. There is little furniture and it is very unpretentious.

The bell rings several times, mainly announcing someone's arrival and changes in the lives of the heroes.

Myshkin appears from the smoke and goes into the smoke, his appearance is fanned by an aura of mysticism and something extraterrestrial.

The colors in the clothes are interesting, the bouquets of Nastasya Filippovna, the idea with the train (the first meeting of Rogozhin, Myshkin and Lebedev) I also liked.

ACTORS AND ROLES

From the very beginning, the performance has two casts (even three for the role of General Yepanchin). I consider this decision to be very correct, because. such an alignment allows minimizing emergency inputs and a possible decrease in the quality of the performance as a result.

Director's concept- in the vision of Nastasya Filippovna as a victim, and not a demonic woman destroying other people's lives. Nastasya Filippovna is not to blame for the misfortune that happened to her in her youth, but everyone around her (except Prince Myshkin) condemns her exclusively (and not the true culprit and not even the circumstances).

Perhaps the center of the performance is shifted towards Nastasya Filippovna (I saw in this role Ekaterina Guseva, also played by Yulia Khlynina). It is no coincidence that even the first scenes of the play go in a different sequence than in the novel.

as a prince Myshkin saw Dmitry Podadaev(a completely different image than in the "Sea Voyage of 1933"), in a different composition - Anton Anosov. Podadaev is touching, defenseless and even a little pitiful. It seems to me that the image of Myshkin in this production has too many grounds to "finish off" the viewer and "put pressure on pity." Somewhat excessive even. For example, why else would he stutter? And yes, it was almost possible to squeeze a tear from Dmitry Podadaev. In any case, he was very sorry.

Rogozhin performed Zakhara Komleva, somewhat rustic and muzhikovat, there is no demonic Rogozhin-Mashkov (from the series "Idiot") in him. But why shouldn't a merchant just be struck with passion by a simple peasant? So I can’t blame the actor or director for this image. This is their vision and it is quite the place to be.

Number of daughters Epanchinykh (Alexander Bobrovsky and Galina Dashevskaya) in the performance was reduced to two - Alexandra (Kristina Isaikina) and Aglaya (Anastasia Pronina). The girls really liked me. Convey the characters' personalities. There were no unexpected interpretations of their heroines.

Liked it a lot Vladislav Bokovin in the role Ferdyshchenko, funny and disgusting at the same time.

Cast Gani Ivolgina saw Nila Kropalova, a completely normal image of a handsome guy obsessed with vanity and considering the possibility of self-affirmation through unseemly actions.

IMPRESSION

Watch the play "The Idiot" at the Moscow City Council Theater! For the sake of F.M. Dostoevsky, for the sake of an innocent victim of circumstances - Nastasya Filippovna and touching, almost saintly Myshkin, for the sake of interesting scenography with directorial finds.

Moron. Theater of Nations. Press about the play

Kommersant, December 24, 2015

Myshkin came out of the fog

"The Idiot" at the Theater of Nations

The Theater of Nations showed a premiere based on Dostoevsky's novel. The genre of the production, its author Maxim Didenko, called clowning noir. Prince Myshkin performed by Ingeborga Dapkunaite was watched with pleasure by ALLA SHENDEROVA.

Actually, humor is already in the name itself - Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin. With a huge soul and a weak nervous system, the thinnest clever girl, in the finale turning into complete idiot. Dostoevsky is generally very characteristic of this evil, grotesque humor, forcing Stavrogin to drag the landowner Gaganov by the nose, and Captain Lebyadkin to write poetry in the spirit of future Oberiuts.

In a word, it is logical that Maxim Didenko, a director who was brought up at the AKHE theater, on whose account - Cavalry, made with the course of Dmitry Brusnikin, Kharms. Myr at the Gogol Center and several other performances, primarily visually strong, turned "The Idiot" into a series of almost circus sketches, quite accurately conveying the essence of a multi-page novel. As in the novel, Myshkin (a little clown in a bowler hat, black suit and white sneakers) arrives in Russia by train from Switzerland. From such Switzerland, which could be in the mind of a prince who perceives reality sharply: sharp gray mountains approaching white rails, red lightning, or clouds. Honored Achaean Pavel Semchenko, who designed this performance, complements the video mapping stylized as the avant-garde of the 1920s with a light construction that turns either into a train car or into the wall of a house with windows and a door cut in the shape of a coffin lid. The icons and angels projected onto the windows strive to turn into skulls, and the red-haired clown Rogozhin (Alexander Yakin) - with a black beard, red eyes, in a red vest over his naked body and red mitts - resembles Pushkin's Leader from " captain's daughter"(He also has a "Pugachev" sheepskin coat turned out with fur, which, however, Nastasya wears more often). And he also reminds Monsieur Pierre, the werewolf executioner from Nabokov's "Invitation to Execution." Looking at him, you think that, in fact , this is the main occupation of the four main characters of the novel - to invite each other to execution. A series of their mutual executions and takes the director - only four appear on stage, and the travesty is brought to an end: Nastasya Filippovna is played by a tall handsome Roman Chaliapin (he gets a couple male characters flashing in separate episodes), and Aglaya Yepanchin - Artem Tulchinsky (in line with Pavel Chinarev).

Here, for example, Myshkin talks about how he observed in France death penalty: the sentenced, wrapped in a shaggy fur coat, throws it off and turns out to be a sultry half-naked brunette Nastasya. She drags heavy boards across the stage - Myshkin picks them up, and in his hands they immediately turn into a cross, in another scene Rogozhin begins to beat Ippolit, but again Nastasya Filippovna is under a fur coat.

Children's manners (heroes now and then jump on wooden horses), clown makeup and plasticity only enhance the similarity of what is happening with a comic book, or rather, with a creepy popular print. There are few words, they probably could not have been at all - the monologue "What is Russian liberalism ...", which Ganya Ivolgin utters here (in Dostoevsky - Prince Radomsky, who visits the idiot Myshkin in the final), - makes the audience laugh with its relevance, but in the performance is optional. On the other hand, the song of the monroe-like and masculine Aglaya "There was a poor knight lived in the world ...", sung on the star-striped stage, is beautiful. Myshkin himself is also beautiful - the embarrassed smile and desperate courage with which Ingeborga Dapkunaite exists is very suitable for her character. Myshkin speaks in a thin voice, sometimes switching to a clown's squeak, but there is some kind of inflexibility in this grasshopper that allows him to catch the corpulent Aglaya jumping out of the window, and even in a boyish way eagerly look under her pulled up hem. He won't bend, this Myshkin - he'll break like funny wind-up toys break: once - you can't fix it. In the last scene, the projection of the devil will push Rogozhin's arm, he will tear the boards off the wall, see the compartment window behind them, and behind it - Nastasya and Myshkin with wedding candles. And he will drag Nastasya away and kill her. And then he will cover the body with flowers, and Myshkin will look at her with the unblinking gaze of painted clown eyes. And some strange creature like a unicorn with a blue muzzle will narrow circles around them. Say, Dostoevsky did not have a unicorn? Well, it wasn't. But there was a remark in a letter to a friend Maikov: "I have completely different ideas about reality and realism than our realists and critics. My idealism is more real than theirs."

Theatre., December 25 2015

Irina Alpatova

There lived a poor clown in the world

The Theater of Nations staged the play "The Idiot" - a textbook novel by Dostoevsky staged in the genre of black clownery.

Maxim Didenko is one of the most notable people of the last season: his Cavalry in Brusnikin's workshop, Kharms. Myr" in the "Gogol Center", "Earth" on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater became events. "Earth" did get into the nominations for the "Golden Mask" in the "Experiment" nomination. On the eve of the New Year, Didenko "shot" at the Theater of Nations with the play "The Idiot" - based on the textbook novel by Dostoevsky, presented in the genre of "clownery noir".

Here is the time for the zealots of the “correct” classical readings to grab their hearts with one hand and their heads with the other. Dostoevsky? Prince Myshkin? Suffering Nastasya Filippovna, who gave "tears" to dozens of the best actresses? What a clownery, what are you talking about?! Yes, normal, I'll tell you. Missing a lot of letters in the novel, but not forgetting about its essence. By the way, unusual genres in the production of Dostoevsky's works have already happened. Suffice it to recall the independent project of Macedonia Kiselev "Lyubov Skotoprigonievsk" in St. Petersburg, "Rodion Romanovich's Dreams" by Pavel Safonov in "Theatrical Association 814" or a very good performance "NFB" by Iskander Sakaev in Novgorod drama. So Maxim Didenko is not a pioneer, but a man who has found his own path on this road - not leading into the jungle of far-fetched concepts, but running in parallel with Fyodor Mikhailovich's novel.

I think that the director and choreographer of his own performance, Maxim Didenko, not only skimmed through The Idiot, but re-read it several times, and that is why he ventured into some kind of dialogue with famous work. Here, perhaps, one can argue, but without such a technique, there can be no real modern performance. Viewers, by the way, are also strongly recommended to refresh the novel in their memory - so that the director's game becomes clear. In the program, however, there is a very witty libretto, but watching the performance, knowing the novel well, by God, is more interesting.

Maxim Didenko did not aim at the fullness of the content of the novel, its population and abundance of events. He left only four characters on stage and, accordingly, an acting quartet, while experimenting with gender. Prince Myshkin is played by Ingeborg Dapkunaite, Rogozhin is played by Alexander Yakin, Nastasya Filippovna is played by Roman Chaliapin, Aglaya is played by Pavel Chinarev. Individual characters, like Lebedev or Ganya Ivolgin, nevertheless flash with bright highlights in the performance, but immediately disappear, quickly and accurately taking their “note”.

By the way, about "notes". "The Idiot" by Maxim Didenko is not only masterfully played and danced, but at times sung, in the most different genres: from jazz to rap, from romance to pop music, and all this thanks to the composer Ivan Kushnir. There are also separate monologues, taken from the novel, read very seriously: Myshkin will suddenly start talking about the death penalty as if escaping for a minute from his “unearthly” existence, Pavel Chinarev will sarcastically talk about “Russian liberalism”, for a moment bringing to life the episodic character Radomsky. But there is not much text as such. In this synthetic performance, everything is decided by plasticity, sound, light (lighting designer and set designer Pavel Semchenko), video installations by Ilya Starilov, transmitting and rapid development events, and setting the intonations needed at that moment, and the emotional states of both actors and spectators.

Clowning, a frivolous genre, in this performance saves the artists from many really serious problems: “teeth gnashing”, howling, rolling eyes and raising hands - everything that is “accepted” when you play Dostoevsky. At the same time, no one is throwing the past off the ship of the present. AT different time really great performances were staged after Dostoevsky, which went down in history. But if we ignore the “stone GOSTs” and once again carefully reread Dostoevsky’s novels, then without difficulty one can find paradox, sarcasm, and a lot of comedy in them, which is carved out of the discrepancy between words and deeds, conversations and situations, sincerity and far-fetchedness, true love and hysterical masochism. And how many acting cliches gave rise to an ineradicable desire to play all this with inescapable seriousness and streams of tears! Didenko and his actors, without renouncing the ideas and thoughts of Dostoevsky, skillfully and funny parody these clichés, bringing them to the point of grotesque and clowning. So Nastasya Filippovna, performed by Roman Chaliapin, becomes a hefty languid diva, with a face “curtained” with black strands of hair, in a bearskin coat thrown over her half-naked body by Rogozhin (costume designer Anis Kronidova). And Rogozhin himself - Yakin next to her is so small, nimble, temperamental, ready to immediately “break” his chest and get his heart out of there to give to his beloved, or from an excess of feelings to dance lezginka. In the club-like "secular" and also quite powerful Aglaya - Chinarev is much stronger and more determined than the others: and the gun in her hand does not look strange at all. And only Prince Myshkin at Ingeborga Dapkunaite looks like a sad white clown, there is something Chaplin in him. And in many respects we look at all the events that take place through his eyes, in which bewilderment, surprise, fear are constantly frozen. Oh, how difficult it is for this sickly "foreigner", almost an alien, to understand and accept the Russian "wonderland". How I want to help those who are laughed at - as in the case of Rogozhin, stuck in the doorway: everyone kicks him cheerfully, and Myshkin quietly opens the door ...

Stage designer Pavel Semchenko builds a flat revolving "house" on the stage with openings for doors and windows, similar to coffin lids. Moving pictures are projected onto this house: either Swiss grotesque pines, or a railway, or "horror films" - portraits of Rogozhin's ancestors, winking dead eyes.

And the color scheme is quite strict: white, gray, black, red. Moreover, even the colors skillfully accompany the course of events, rushing at the speed of not the former courier train, but the modern Sapsan. Under the story of the guillotine, the white wall will be poured from top to bottom with blood. And here is the fire where Rogozhin's "hundred thousand" are thrown: the flames are slowly creeping up. In the trio of toy horses, on which the characters ride, one is red - for the most impatient, the rest are calmer, gray.

And again about the benefits of careful reading, which will not allow talking about "blasphemy." Remember the phrases from the novel about the intent and unkind looks that followed Myshkin here and there. Here these eyes are visualized, masks cover the faces of the actors-characters, from whom the little prince shied away in fright. And suddenly Nastasya Filippovna would fold a huge cross out of two planks and walk with it, bent over, through Rogozhin's house. Remember what kind of picture hung in his house next to the portraits of his ancestors? The “Dead Christ” by Hans Holbein the Younger is transformed in such a strange way in Myshkin's delusional visions.

The other, strange nature of the prince is not forgotten here for a minute. This "Idiot" is not only full of clown grotesque tricks - in it dreams, visions, delirium, fragments of memories are combined into one whole. And unicorns and other wonderful animals can easily wander around people. Here, everyone is a little "aliens" - from Dostoevsky and modern fantasies. Myshkin's epileptic seizure - Dapkunaite looks like a non-stop run in place. And he himself - in the arms of the powerful Nastasya Filippovna - does not forget to stroke her restless and ridiculous head with his weak little hand.

In Didenko's short one and a half hour performance, the main thing was not lost: laughing, demonstrating a "gypsy girl with an exit", performing cruel romances, these characters do not stop loving and hating each other, carefully preserving this explosive Dostoevsky mixture. Not denying the author, just reading it differently. The performance of Didenko, of course, is unlikely to be accepted by everyone without exception. But the fact that it is intriguing, temperamental, virtuoso and emotional is beyond doubt.

Theatergoer, December 26, 2015

Tatiana Vlasova

White clown Ingeborgi Dapkunaite

"The Idiot" at the Theater of Nations

The Idiot in the noir clowning genre, Ingeborga Dapkunaite as Prince Myshkin, Maxim Didenko as one of the main newsmakers of the last season – all three trump cards of the Theater of Nations were played, so that the premiere justified, and in some places even exceeded expectations. It took just an hour and a half and four actors to prove that everything in Dostoevsky's warped mirror was exaggerated, taken to the extreme - hence the feeling of madness. It is always there. Well, when translated into the language of the physical, or movement, theatre, into eccentric clown techniques, the effect is doubled.

The intersection of the physical theater with clownery and super-material scenery have already been in Maxim Didenko's performance “The Overcoat. Ballet". And the unrequited Bashmachkin, to whom the officials spat in turn in the face, was played by a woman. Weakness, "smallness", inability to resist the aggressive world became a physical, indispensable property. Prince Myshkin is another example of non-resistance, and the feminine, “porcelain” fragility suits him very well. Miniature Ingeborga Dapkunaite, surrounded by brutals - Rogozhin and Natalya Filippovna with Aglaya, who, like in Shakespeare's theater, are played by men - becomes even more compact, able to fit almost in a matchbox. They turn it over lightly - they lift it, turn it over, rearrange it - and it just freezes. And on the face - bewilderment, surprise, a dumb question: "why?" The "newcomer" from Europe sees the Russian reality as a dream, or delirium, where everyone is not free from fears, programmed for misfortune, and everyone should be pitied. Myshkin is an absolutely harmless creature, naive and direct, like a child. A wide-open look, Chaplin's bowler hat with short pants of the "little tramp" - and the image of a clown is ready, who is supposed to lose, get lost or die in every scene. “A clown is always a tragedy,” says Maxim Didenko, and launches Prince Myshkin into a scary tale.

Video mapping, or, more simply, a cartoon made by Pavel Semchenko in the spirit of Suprematism, is a world assembled from “chips” and sharp corners. Pointed, wintry and dark as hell. Space, fixated on itself, spinning everyone like a carousel with wooden horses (the heroes of The Idiot rush on horseback to their death). Here are the door-windows in the form of coffins, and the crows are circling in a kaleidoscope. The twilight zone, where the place is for Rogozhin - a short, stocky ghoul, in whose pedigree, it seems, there would be the Nightingale the Robber. From the portraits of his strong merchant family, the skulls of businessmen with a grin look out, and from the walls of the crypt house - bloodshot eyes that work like surveillance cameras. At the first meeting, Rogozhin digs into the neck of Prince Myshkin - and tightly: he can’t tear himself off in any way. He makes a series of throws-coups in order to get rid of his own victim, and she meekly waits for the “bloodsucker” to jump off. The red "lanterns" around the eyes give out his obsession, and the black beard and sheepskin coat with fur outside - a resemblance to Pugachev, who, as you know, had a natural animal instinct. In the grimaces of Rogozhin the clown, there is a lot of bestiality, primordially masculine. But by temperament, this is still a highlander (from “I love” to “I will kill” - one step). “The money will be! There will be money!” he thumps in recitative. - "Holyness! Sacrilege!” reads in another scene. And composer Ivan Kushnir, a constant co-author of Maskim Didenko, ironically defines all this as “intellectual hip-hop”.

Music - with an infernal background and parodic "notes" in solo numbers - is more than words here. Understand what's going on, at least without general idea about the plot, almost impossible. After rereading the novel nine times, the director took this into account - and compiled a libretto for the audience. But it's also a game. Just like a stencil, imposing a plot scheme will not work: there is a gap between the description and the visual solution of the scenes, looking through which, in fact, you notice how deftly and witty Maxim Didenko rips the clichés from Dostoevsky's heroes.

Nastasya Filippovna gets a "wild", shaggy fur coat from Rogozhin's shoulder, patent leather shoes of size 42 and a relief male body- tall Roman Chaliapin demonstrates it openly, and hides his face under long, black strands of a wig. This travesty role arose as a "spontaneous, hooligan gesture", but unexpectedly brought fatal image with the "ugliest beauty" Rossi de Palma - an actress with an informal appearance in the aesthetics of cubism is known as the talisman of the provocateur Almadovr and the shocking master Jean-Paul Gaultier. The "unfortunate" Nastasya Filippovna, like the Spanish diva, fits into the "league of strong women." He easily takes Prince Myshkin in his arms, but with difficulty, covered in sweat from head to toe, carries a couple of boards - his cross, suffering, which is usually extolled, is endowed with a higher meaning, but here it is exaggerated as a tendency to masochism, a desire to harm oneself. Rogozhin is trying to take away the “unbearable burden”, but the boards jump and are not given into unclean hands. They calm down only when they turn to the bright, “other” Myshkin. Judging by the libretto, this scene is a projection of the realistic and terrifying painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, The Dead Christ. She exaggerates the suffering of Nastasya Filippovna, but does not simplify it - on the contrary, she makes them ambiguous, offers to look at them through a “double filter”.

Maxim Didenko does not straighten, and even more so does not deny the author. Yes, it leaves almost nothing of the text (with the exception of monologues about the death penalty, about "practical people" who do not exist in Russia, and about "Russian liberalism"). Yes, as close as possible to the comics. Brings the Rogozhin-Myshkin-Nastasya Filippovna relationship to a grotex, but finds very capacious, tenacious visual paraphrases of their intricate connection. What is worth only the red thread with which Rogozhin ties up his “hundred thousand” and, as a sign of engagement, wraps it around the finger of the fatal beauty, and she throws it around the prince’s thin neck like a noose. All three are dependent on each other, this dependence is painful - but complex psychologism (and at the same time all the clichés associated with it, known to school years as "tears") have nothing to do with it. "Black Clownery" did without unnecessary reflections, but the concentrate of the textbook novel turned out to be more than rich.

Petersburg theater magazine, December 26, 2015

Vera Biron

Moron. noir

"Moron". F. Dostoevsky. Theater of Nations. Director Maxim Didenko, set designer Pavel Semchenko.

In the novel "The Idiot" great amount stage and cinematic versions. The theater attracts the drama of the plot, the idealist hero, infernal beauties, passions and suffering, the murder in the finale... The scenes composed by Dostoevsky received a variety of interpretations. As a rule, the variants differed only in the set of scenes. Therefore, the appearance in the repertoire of the Theater of Nations, directed by Yevgeny Mironov, who created one of the best classical images of Prince Myshkin of our time in the film by V. Bortko, The Idiot in the noir clownery genre, immediately aroused interest.

The team of the creators of the play - Maxim Didenko, Pavel Semchenko, Ivan Kushnir - obviously assumed courage and originality of the decision. The distribution of roles was also intriguing: Prince Myshkin - Ingeborga Dapkunaite, and Nastasya Filippovna - Roman Chaliapin. I recalled the film version of Andrzej Wajda's Nastasya, in which the famous Japanese kabuki theater actor Bando Tamasaburo played two roles - Myshkin and Nastasya Filippovna. So Vaida intensified Rogozhin's painful throwing between two beloved people. Love triangle bifurcated, the doom of one of Rogozhin's ideals was predetermined. The polyphony of the novel was divided into three characters, the style of the kabuki theater gave the rhythm of the film dimension and scale.

The release of the performance of the Theater of Nations quotes the words of its director, Maxim Didenko: “In our world, among other things, two things have been lost: the culture of clownery and the perception of Dostoevsky as a living ironic person.” These two losses are mysteriously connected: it is quite possible to be an ironic person, but it is not necessary to be a clown at the same time. The genre of black clowning had to present the story of Prince Myshkin in a completely different way, which Maxim Didenko read nine times. It certainly needed to be seen.

The trip to the theater was partly an "entry" into the poetics of the novel: Prince Myshkin often traveled from St. Petersburg to Moscow. There was time at Sapsan to reflect on what I would see. I tried to imagine Myshkin the Clown, it was obvious that it would be the White Clown. Rogozhin, of course, is Red. There will probably be masks. I recalled Dostoevsky’s opinion about the transfer of his novels to the stage: he “took it as a rule never to interfere with such attempts,” and most importantly, he advised to remake and change the novel as much as possible, keeping only one episode from it for processing into a drama, or , taking the original thought, completely change the plot. That is, Dostoevsky himself gave complete freedom to directors back in 1872.

When presenting a future performance, I involuntarily associated “noir” with b/w cinema, I thought that since such a genre was chosen, then Didenko, following its laws, together with Semchenko, would use only b/w scale, which would strengthen the detective line of the novel, etc. d.

My assumptions were justified only partially. I did not expect such impeccability in style and such a depth of reading Dostoevsky. The clownery genre has become the stage equivalent of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of carnivalization. In the book Poetics of Dostoevsky, he gives a detailed analysis of the novel The Idiot from this point of view: “At the center of the novel stands the carnival-like ambivalent image of the ‘idiot’, Prince Myshkin. This man in a special, higher sense does not occupy any position in life that could determine his behavior and limit his pure humanity. From the point of view of ordinary life logic, all behavior and all experiences of Prince Myshkin are inappropriate and extremely eccentric.<…>The heroine of the novel, Nastasya Filippovna, also falls out of the usual logic of life and life relationships. She also acts always and in everything contrary to her life situation. But she is characterized by an anguish, she does not have a naive integrity. She is "insane".<…>And around these two central figures of the novel - the "idiot" and the "insane" - all life carnivalizes, turns into a "world inside out": traditional plot situations radically change their meaning, a dynamic carnival game of sharp contrasts, unexpected changes and changes develops; minor characters novels acquire carnival overtones, form carnival couples. The carnival-fantastic atmosphere pervades the entire novel.

It is in this atmosphere that we find ourselves in the Theater of Nations.

The scenography by Pavel Semchenko at first seems ascetic: the stage is partitioned off by a white wall with irregularly shaped doors and windows. At some point, the wall will turn into a train, from the roof of which Rogozhin will hang with a garden knife. During the performance, this wall is endlessly transformed: the doorways open in different ways, sometimes resembling a coffin, sometimes - the doors of a station or a failure into the abyss. The wall is used as a screen onto which graphic frames are projected in the noir style with the addition of blood red. The video covers the whole scene, it's practically an animation mapping that completely changes the space. The change of pictures is indicated by captions. The projections are ironic, the creators of the performance play with pictures: the white crosses from the flag of Switzerland multiply, increase, fall on different objects, deform. Railway, going into the distance, the movement of the turning stage circle, the black, white and red toys leaving, on which the three main characters sit down - Myshkin, Rogozhin, Nastasya Filippovna - create the illusion of a carnival carousel. Lighting effects (the lighting designer is also Pavel Semchenko) turn the arena stage either into a sinister circus, or into a square, or into a railway station, or into the interior of a carnival hell.

In the genre of eccentric clowning, Didenko and Semchenko change the usual proportions of things: a 100,000-pack from a scene familiar to everyone turns into an unthinkable bundle, a huge garden knife appears on Rogozhin's table. comic effects, based on alogism, work both in props and in the costumes of the characters: Rogozhin's black lambskin coat in the performance becomes an aggressive fur coat, which periodically turns out to be on Nastasya Filippovna (costume designer - Anis Kronidova). A copy of Hans Holbein's painting "Dead Christ", hanging in Rogozhin's house, is replaced by a skeletal portrait in the performance. Visual figurativeness is not read immediately, in order to unravel all the associative moves and allusions of the creators, you need to watch the performance more than once.

Just like the visuals, the acting work is verified. The actors move superbly, coping with difficult choreography and complex acrobatic stunts. Four actors represent the main characters of the novel: Myshkin, Rogozhin, Nastasya Filippovna, Aglaya, Lebedev, Ganya. Grotesque make-up, elements of clown costumes, exaggerated plastique. Everyone has their own vocal output. Aglaya (Pavel Chinarev), for example, comes out with the aria "There once was a poor knight," Rogozhin (Alexander Yakin) - with the recitative "There will be money, there will be money." The actress plays a male role, men - female, everything is confused - this is natural for an eccentric clowning. The white clown Myshkin - Dapkunaite is touching, childishly unprotected. Strong, "big" characters next to him torment him with their passions, raise him like a blade of grass, try to involve him in their crazy rhythm, but Myshkin Dapkunaite does not change. He is innocent and fragile, he "does not have a gesture", but he has something that cannot be changed: the original purity and purity. Dapkunaite’s light plastique, refined movements, Myshkin’s detachment are combined with open theatricality: after all, this is a clown in the image of Myshkin. The same goes for the rest of the characters. All of them are clowns. And everything that happens to them is clowning. So, famous place in the novel, when Myshkin sees Rogozhin's eyes everywhere, in the performance it is realized literally - huge eyes appear on the heads of male actors, on the floor, on the stairs.

Nastasya Filippovna, represented by Roman Chaliapin, is a tall fatal beauty. It is she/he who carries the theme of death. Hence her gothic makeup. The anxiety and tension characteristic of noir aesthetics are supported by the music of Ivan Kushnir, Maxim Didenko's permanent collaborator. Organism of all creative components - expressive musical themes, grotesque plasticity, the animated world, in which the director and artist place the actors, make the performance voluminous and ambiguous. Dostoevsky, I think, would have looked at it with interest, because he believed that "there is no such object on earth that it would be impossible to look at from a comic point of view."

After the performance, we walked along the overly decorated Bolshaya Dmitrovka to Bolshoi Theater, on the square in front of which there is a New Year's Kitezh-grad built in a circle. It was the usual December rain, gloomy characters with sad children walked around closed elegant houses with gingerbread and sweets. Nearby stood a jester with a newspaper portrait of the leader in a red frame. Only missing musical accompaniment. Didenko's performance continued.

Labor, December 22, 2015

Elena Gubaidullina

Angel in the form of a jester

A clownery based on Dostoevsky's novel was staged at the Theater of Nations

The Small Stage of the Theater of Nations is a platform for experiments. Young directors master it boldly and boldly, sometimes discovering something new in familiar works. One of these unusual premieres took place the other day. Director Maxim Didenko, already known for several brilliant works in the theaters of Moscow and St. Petersburg, took on Dostoevsky's The Idiot and turned the textbook novel into a clowning noir. Black clown humor, multiplied by the extreme events described in the novel, led to unexpected results.

The scenery resembles a farce stage - a small elevation, a simple wall. From the doors fall out the farce jesters with painted faces. They fight, push, fall, laugh exaggeratedly, sob feignedly. That is, they behave like real clowns from a good circus. It is difficult to recognize Dostoevsky's heroes in these suspicious personalities. But when, after the stormy buffoonery of the prologue, a story develops that resembles the plot of a novel, much begins to clear up. Looking closely at the stocky robber, languishing with rage and passion, you recognize Rogozhin (the role is entrusted to Alexander Yakin). Nastasya Filippovna is dressed as a lanky black clown of a demonic appearance (actor Roman Chaliapin). Aglaya is played by Artyom Tulchinsky, who tries on the mask of a travesty with taste and pleasure, parodying female antics, playing ridiculously feigned bashfulness. Next to this muscular blonde, according to the laws of the circus genre, there should be a frail, fragile gentleman. And there is. Prince Myshkin is a gentle creature, seemingly completely incorporeal. You will not immediately recognize the luxurious star of theater and cinema Ingeborga Dapkunaite in this role, the power of reincarnation is so great. And this is the main sensation of the production. Strict trouser suit, Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat, Marcel Marceau's make-up, the plasticity of a wooden doll - stiff hands, small mincing legs. Nothing feminine, nothing personal. But the essence of self-denial is reckless gullibility. Dapkunaite, like her character, sincerely believes in the proposed circumstances. An adult actress with an open childish soul is a clown that multiplies sadness. Her naive Prince Myshkin loves the world and needs love. He is an angel, but an angel who flew to the wrong address. The unfortunate white clown always has everything wrong - so he rushes about, squeaks helplessly, like a lost chick. Spiritual purity is doomed to perish in the same way as ideal beauty. But Myshkin is childishly convinced of the opposite. That is why he can endure monstrous injustice, survive all the atrocities and horrors only in the form of a clown.

The action rushes from place to place, as in restless dreams. The scenery revolves around its axis – now a train station, now a room, now a park, now a cemetery… The work of the artist Pavel Semchenko (who became famous in the AKHE engineering theater) is full of subtle allusions, saturated with images – video projections and animated installations are superimposed on real objects. Ghost clowns whip up fear and awe of gothic novels, disturb with the unsteady eroticism of Russian decadence, dumbfound by the electric expression of German avant-garde artists… Rogozhin (Alexander Yakin) incinerates everything he looks at with his gaze, and his eyes pop out of their sockets. Huge green eyes walk in the darkness of the stage by themselves (such a bizarre conglomeration of Dali's surrealism and Gogol's phantasmagoria).

Such a radical interpretation of the classics is a risky and dangerous act. But the performance has every chance to avoid the attacks of strict zealots of school textbooks. It is worth carefully reading the novel in order to understand: the reasons for the merciless clowning have already been laid by Fyodor Mikhailovich himself. Everything in his novel is excessive and extraordinarily - events, collisions, characters, contrasts ... And the terrible, tragicomic duet of the red-haired and white clowns begins with Dostoevsky at the very first meeting of the insolent Rogozhin and the meek Myshkin.

“I am always afraid of compromising thought and main idea”, - as if on purpose, the program quotes the words of Prince Myshkin. The director himself is certainly sure that laughter does not humiliate, but, on the contrary, enhances thoughts and ideas. The meanings of the novel melted into reprises and interludes naturally and effortlessly. Actors are removed from the characters - clowns do not play people, but abstract entities. Everything is like in ancient games - one depicts hell, the other - paradise, the third is responsible for all of humanity, and the fourth toils between heaven and earth, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Novaya Gazeta, January 13, 2016

Elena Dyakova

Black fur coat - the emblem of sadness

Ingeborga Dapkunaite played Prince Myshkin

Three colors on stage: black, white, red. Behind the fragile Chaplin figurine of a prince in a black bowler hat stand the scarlet chimneys of factories from the graphics of “Windows of GROWTH”. Rogozhin's bloodshot gigantic eyes fill the white apertures of the Venetian windows to capacity. In the cardboard facade, depicting either the Rogozhins' house, or the Yepanchins' living room, or the pavilion in Pavlovsk, high windows and white doors in the form of a coffin-domovina are cut through.

Rogozhin in a fierce make-up looks like the characters of the kabuki theater. Nastasya Filippovna is a cabaret diva of grenadier height in a silent film make-up - a whitened face and scarlet lips, in a black fur coat with fur outside. Which was unacceptable in the 19th century, but works perfectly for the image of a “black sheep in a herd”. In such sheepskin coats, evil spirits were scared away, and in such she was. (Who dares to attribute Nastasya Filippovna: is she a demoness or a fallen angel?)

Yes: the new The Idiot by the Theater of Nations is strikingly different from Vladimir Bortko's best-quality film adaptation, from Sergey Zhenovach's noble and very detailed theatrical trilogy based on the novel. Yes: this is black clowning. And a physical theatre, an hour and a half of exhausting and virtuoso plastic work for four actors (Aglaya Yepanchina and Ganya Ivolgina are played in turn by Pavel Chinarev and Artem Tulchinsky). And the basement cabaret of the 1910s, and in 10 years the basement could become a firing squad. Here Pushkin's leitmotif of "The Idiot" - the ballad "There once was a poor knight in the world..." - becomes a hoarse zong. Here, in general, the text of the novel is broken into small fragments! But they obviously hurt the room.

The most absurd and touching of Dostoevsky's travestyed characters is, of course, Prince Myshkin. The fragile, narrow-shouldered angel, played by Ingeborga Dapkunaite, opens her eyes like a child, holds the bowler hat, nods her head diligently, like a porcelain dummy from Andersen's fairy tales, enthusiastically rides home on a rocking horse, blossoms with a smile, believes everything, hopes everything - completely according to definition of the Apostle Paul ... Broad-shouldered, fleshy, full of earthly passions, frantic (and not seeing any need to keep themselves in check, is it our way?) - Rogozhin, Nastasya, Aglaya rock the prince in their arms, cradle like a kid doll with porcelain face, torn to pieces ...

Prince Lev Nikolayevich obviously cannot survive in this frantic world... But the windows-doors in the shape of dominoes, catchy black-and-white-scarlet backdrops in the spirit of the Russian avant-garde, the thunder of rock and dazzling flashes of a strobe light, a frighteningly meditative video aimed at cardboard St. Petersburg facades, everything time overturns the plot 150 years ahead. And they remind without words: none of these frantic, none of the righteous and sinners, none of those who knew how to ascend to heaven and fall into hell in a road conversation, none of those who fall under the old formula “broad Russian man” is not given to survive in the future.

We will be left without them. Among all the same facades that have been puttyed with euros in order to increase the tourist attractiveness of St. Petersburg.

We will hopefully wait for the surviving Ganya Ivolgin to multiply into the middle class.

And so furiously applauding the ballad "There once was a poor knight in the world ..." as if meeting this text for the first time. And we love the text!

Here, it seems, is the main message of the burning "clownery noir" based on "The Idiot".

Colta.ru, January 15, 2016

Anton Khitrov

Without Dostoevshchina

"The Idiot" by Maxim Didenko at the Theater of Nations

The great Russian novel is not the most obvious material for the St. Petersburg director Maxim Didenko, who made his debut at the Theater of Nations. Started with Anton Adasinsky in DEREVO, he is more than other young heroes of modern Russian scene inherits the traditions of the pre- and post-perestroika Petersburg underground, while quite consistently swearing allegiance to the ideals of the Russian avant-garde of the 20th century. Last season, Didenko staged performances based on the poems of Daniil Kharms (“Kharms. Myr” at the Gogol Center) and the silent film by Alexander Dovzhenko (“Earth” on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater) - in this series, Dostoevsky looks like a stranger, which, however, it does not prevent the director from staging The Idiot in the genre of clowning that is organic for him. Or “clown noir”, as Didenko himself clarifies the genre specification of the performance. The performers wear circus make-up, sometimes put on masks - by the way, witty and completely self-sufficient - and ride toy horses: the director preferred the poetic Gogol troika to the prosaic third-class carriage. Habitually attentive to the possibilities of the body, Didenko refuses words, retaining only a few monologues, and replaces "psychology" with plastic sketches.

The playful nature of the performance can be judged by the one who performs it. There are only four artists on the stage, among them - the most experienced actress-star and three young actors: go and play "The Idiot" in such a composition. It is necessary, however, to clarify that the prima gets the main male role, and her young colleagues - both female and, in fact, male. In the entourage of pantomime, Myshkin Ingeborgi Dapkunaite looks like a more complex modification of the vulnerable and shy Pierrot. For Didenko's Harlequin, as you might guess, Rogozhin, in the image of which Yevgeny Tkachuk and Alexander Yakin alternately act, the mask of Columbine is shared by tragic farcical female characters - Nastasya Filippovna (Roman Chaliapin) and Aglaya (Pavel Chinarev / Artem Tulchinsky), they also transform into episodic characters- Ippolit, Ganya, Yevgeny Pavlovich.

Didenko’s playful, formal theater is enriched with digital technologies and digital art: the electronic soundtrack for The Idiot was written by Ivan Kushnir, the director’s constant co-author, and Ilya Starilov, who collaborated with the Russian Engineering Theater AKHE, created computer animation. The artist immerses Dostoevsky's heroes in a cartoon world - as naive as it is frightening. The scenography of the "Achaean" Pavel Semchenko works like a screen: here schematically drawn backdrops replace each other - a house, a road, a forest, mountains, here a flock of crows is circling over Nastasya Filippovna, here an insect-like monster breaks out of Hippolyte's dream into reality.

The video sequence is especially effective in the episode where the prince visits Rogozhin in the house on Gorokhovaya. In the program, the director writes about "an important, but for some reason insufficiently studied leitmotif of the novel" - about Parfyon's gaze pursuing Myshkin. Didenko emphasizes this detail with a deliberately illustrative device: the floor and walls of the gloomy merchant's house are dotted with eyes, like the body of the giant Argus. The next picture continues the plot with surveillance: we see the heroes in the portrait gallery, under the supervision of the dead - Rogozhin's relatives. Suddenly, the space is transformed: now it is a desert under the scorching sun, which is crossed by a man bent under the weight of the cross - and here the viewer must remember that in the house of Parfyon there is a copy famous work Hans Holbein's Dead Christ in the Tomb.

The most controversial moment of the performance is a monologue about Russian liberalism, not connected with the main action, which boils down to the well-known thesis that the liberals do not hate the regime, but Russia. “To appreciate all his irony,” the director notes in the same program, “one must understand that in the novel it is spoken by Yevgeny Pavlovich Radomsky.” It can be objected that for Dostoevsky, Yevgeny Pavlovich, for all his frivolity, is still more sympathetic than liberals - but, at least, Didenko made it clear that the character's words have nothing to do with his own position. Meanwhile, gullible spectators are still there: at my show, the actor was seen off with applause. There was also an ambiguous allusion to the political agenda in a recent performance based on Dovzhenko’s film, but if in The Idiot the director misleads the “soils”, then in The Earth he managed to deceive the expectations of the liberals: one of the characters makes a speech against “Great Russian chauvinism” - everything would be fine if the author of this text was not a certain Ulyanov-Lenin. Sometimes it seems that Didenko is only interested in aesthetics, but he has the potential and ambitions for the political theater: he knows how to divide and provoke the audience, in any case.

The play was staged by the director Maxim Didenko, already known to the public for high-profile productions in Moscow and St. Petersburg - "Chapaev and Emptiness" in the Praktika Theater, "Kharms. Myr" in the Gogol Center, "Earth" on new stage Alexandrinsky Theatre, "Konarmiya" in the Central Institute of Cinematography.

Sustained in the aesthetics of "black" clowning, the performance from the first moments takes the viewer both to the classic novel and to the cabaret of the 20s. For those who have not read the novel, at first glance, there is nothing to do here - the director, with the speed of the cartoon, changes scene pictures from the work: the first scene from the novel is the famous meeting scene: Rogozhin, Prince and Lebedev go to St. Petersburg (not by train, but by toy red horses), then the scenes at the Epanchins' dacha, Rogozhin's house quickly succeed each other. It will be very difficult for viewers who have not refreshed the memory of the novel to follow the action.

Nevertheless, amazing acting (behind which is a colossal preparation - some plastic numbers required months of training), great music (composer Ivan Kushnir- constant collaborator Didenko), the brightest set design and dance numbers - all this literally brings the performance together, and even an unprepared spectator will enjoy it, provided that he is open and ready for experiments.

There are four main characters in the play. Ingeborga Dapkunaite plays Prince Myshkin, Roman Chaliapin- Nastasya Filippovna and Lebedeva, Artem Tulchinsky- Aglaya and Ganya, Alexander Yakin- Parthen Rogozhin. Erasing the gender of the original heroes of the novel, the director brings to the fore hyperbolic feelings and experiences. actors and focuses on a kind of love quadrangle.

Almost all the roles in the play in the play are reversal roles. Throwing off her black fur coat, Nastasya Filipovna turns into Lebedev with one movement, while Aglaya reincarnates into Ganya Ivolgin, both characters in the book are clearly not positive.

Reinforcing the effect of hyperbole with space makeup in the style of clowning, the director focuses on certain emotions. The eternally surprised Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, the ominously languid Nastasya Filippovna, the caricature-peasant Rogozhin.

The scenography of the performance deserves special mention - one of the founders of the AKHE Engineering Theater acted as the lighting designer and set designer Pavel Semchenko. Light, scenery, video mapping, a looped scene that spins around its axis - all this perfectly complements the performance, collecting disparate details into one picture.

The influence of the AKHE theater, which is also famous for its physical theater, is also felt in the production itself. Heroes are practically devoid of replicas (I remember the "Tibetan book of the dead» theater AKHE) - they express everything that happens with the help of physics: plasticity, movements, dances are used. Feeling the space, each of them expresses what was put into them by the director - the fragility and childishness of Myshkin, the grace of Nastasya Filippovna, the strength of Rogozhin.

In 2018, Fyodor Mikhailovich's novel is expected to celebrate its anniversary - 150 years since its first publication. Many times the action of the novel was transferred to theater stage, and with the help of classical dramatic language, and with the help of music - in opera, the language of dance - in ballet. The work also survived many completely diverse film productions, among which are films by Akira Kurosawa (the plot is left, the names are changed), Andrzej Wajda (filmed in the style of the kabuki theater), Roman Kachanov (the action takes place in the 90s), Vladimir Bortko ( leading role performed artistic director Theater of Nations - Yevgeny Mironov).

Each production - no matter whether it is cinema, theater, or other "new forms" - is distinguished by a unique approach to the text and the search for hidden meanings in the words and characters of the novel. For which you should shout "bravo" to the director Maxim Didenko and the entire team that worked on the performance.

So many emotions and thoughts that I don't even know where to start.
Probably from the beginning.
Lena lenulja79 everyone wondered why I didn’t join a community where you can go to performances as a blogger. Here. I made up my mind.
The first community I joined was . Has entered. And I forgot.
And then in the tape I suddenly saw the words the emblem of the Moscow City Council theater. And then the play "The Idiot". And then I decided to participate. It turned out that you need to not just sign up to get in. And participate in the lottery. I've never been lucky! I only once won a trip to a performance at the Teatrium on Serpukhovka.
I struggled for a day to make all the reposts. Thanks Tina tina_luchina , which was in touch all the time, and helped to make available the repost, which for some reason no one except me saw on Facebook. That we just haven't tried. Tina, thanks for your patience. Our labors were not in vain.
I got numbers 15,16,17,18. For each repost by number. The draw was on the 19th. I happily forgot about it. And then suddenly a letter arrives in the mail that Tina mentioned me in her LiveJournal. It's interesting. Decided to look. I forgot about the 19th on the calendar. But it turned out that my number 15 was lucky! My favourite number.
And then I found out that Katya Guseva will play in the play "The Idiot" that day! Dream come true idiot my dream. As Tina said: "It's fate!"

This is how the community fulfilled three of my dreams at once! "Idiot", in which Katya Guseva plays and ... after the performance, Katya invited us to "Anna Karenina", which she really, really wanted to see!

And why am I..
On Saturday, Vasilisa and I were invited to the play "The Idiot".
We got tickets to the third row of the amphitheater. And surprisingly, it was obvious. But I didn't see much with my eyesight. I don't see faces at all. But the picture is excellent.
A minimum of scenery that matches the mood that the performance creates. Very interesting director "told" us the story of Nastasya Filippovna, with which the performance begins. It is the biography of Barashkova, told by herself, that immerses the audience in the atmosphere of F.M. Dostoevsky. And already a certain attitude towards the heroine. And no matter what she does later, the viewer sympathizes, because ... In this role in Katya there is something from Catherine the Second and Lucy Haris. During the intermission, my "neighbors" and I actively discussed artists and roles. Some believe that Katya is too soft and gentle and does not play her role, while others say that the role is perfect. How many people, so many opinions. I really liked Katya. The heroine herself is very ambiguous. It's hard to understand, hard to play, hard to accept. Very strange feelings. I want to be sorry and say whatever you think. Such a heroine. This is how I imagined her. Katya played this one: contradictory - either goosebumps, or tears in her eyes, or breathtaking.
From the entire "crowd of admirers" I immediately singled out Mr. Lebedev - (Andrey Smirnov). The most colorful character. Causes a storm of emotions. Andrew plays great.
Elizaveta Prokofievna (Galina Dashevskaya). Bravo! I have no words. I was very glad to see Galina after the performance and personally thank you for such a wonderful character. Thank you.
Ferdyshchenko (Vladislav Bokovin). His appearance on stage almost always meant that now it would be funny. And in this performance, a drop of humor is simply necessary. Wonderful artist. Thank you.
Rogozhin (Zakhar Komlev). Vasilisa didn't like the first act. She seemed to be overplaying. And I liked it from the very beginning. A real man. But at the end of the performance, Vasilisa was more likely on the side of Rozhin than Myshkin. It seems to me that this is a merit not only of the director, but also of the artist.
Yepanchin sisters. I'm not happy with both. It seems to me that they overdid it a little sometimes. But this is more of a director's vision. Mom almost always appeared with her sisters, who played for everyone, so it's hard to say how each of them played.
And finally, Prince Myshkin (Dmitry Padadaev). He played for the first time. Actor premiere. Emotionally weak for me. But overall, he played well. But in many ways, it’s not the actor’s fault that many people didn’t like him. Rather, it is the director's vision.

About the show in general.
I really liked the minimum of decorations. Bright light, a dark figure on a white background, the noise of an approaching train - the appearance of Prince Myshkin. Symbolic and effective. And also tunes in to Dostoevsky. The prince leaves at the end of the performance in the same way. As if there was nothing. Bell or bell at the end of each action. I really liked this idea.
But I don't really like the director's vision. And I'll start from the end.
Lubricated end. An epileptic attack at Myshkin backstage (only one sound), when the count saw the body of the princess - this is the apogee. Even I did not immediately realize that it was a seizure, not to mention my daughter. The absence of emotions in the same prince when he saw Nastasya Filippovna dead. And let him initially say that Rogozhin would stab her. He should at least be sorry. But indifference and talk about extraneous things. And against this background, too stormy emotions of Rogozhin, who "rushes" somewhere ... And Myshkin ... But Myshkin did not go crazy. It looks like he's just going somewhere. I understand that this is the director's vision. But such an ending is confusing, because you experience very strong emotions, a climax ... and you wait for the denouement ... As a result, you try to understand the director's idea, because something is not right on the stage.
And I didn’t really like the image of Prince Myshkin. It has few feelings. Or maybe the artist played it that way. Until I understood. It is necessary after some time to look again with another Myshkin.
In general, despite all the minuses, I really liked the performance. Highly powerful emotions, a lot of thoughts.