A performance about Dostoevsky for the school. The best performances based on Dostoevsky

Katerina Liseycheva reviews: 1 ratings: 1 rating: 3

... The auditorium is waiting. The voice of Konstantin Raikin convincingly asks you to turn off Cell phones. Everything is as usual. Except for one thing - suddenly this person is rapidly taking off onto the stage - there is not a hint of the 19th century: modern suit, modern speech, modern man with a charming smile and a volume of Dostoevsky. And he begins his usual dialogue with the audience. He just starts to stir your consciousness, touch your pulse and carefully adjust the bandage from the stereotypes about the theater, actors, performance, life, on your head.
The solo performance "An Evening with Dostoevsky" is an arrangement by Valery Fokin of the pamphlet "Notes from the Underground" by Fyodor Mikhailovich. The performance is divided into two parts, each of which is perceived in a completely different way and each as a separate mini-performance. The first is the opening of the veins of civilization, this is a conversation about the main thing: about religion, about a person, about life. This view of the classic frightens with its correctness, it immediately becomes somehow uncomfortable both for one’s thoughts and for one’s understanding of life, which suddenly reveals obvious gaps in some places. This "sick, angry and unattractive person" to the sounds of African drum and inconceivable musical improvisations begins to speak, explain, shout, dance, rush around the stage. Raikin either quietly, insinuatingly talks to you, and you launch him into your soul, then he starts speaking loudly into the microphone - psychological reception intensifying attention on the main thing, when in fact, the main thing is everything.
A huge role is played by the scenery, which "is not there." The empty, elongated stage, utterly reduced (although a true theatergoer will confirm that the stage in the Satyricon is one of the largest in Moscow) creates the impression of the isolation of life and the moment when there is nowhere to retreat and you need to speak, explain, make believe. Almost the entire performance in the auditorium does not go out - we are under the gaze of Dostoevsky, whose thoughts enter our head with a recitative, cry into our souls. Terrible Lord...
The second part is striking in its temporary calmness. It is certainly easier to perceive, even psychologically. The underground man tells his story of the refined torment of a lost soul, the story of his relationship with the prostitute Liza. Here he is already much closer to the viewer, he seems to be looking at everything that happened from the outside, from the future. An incredible impression is made by the shadows growing behind the Underground: the shadow of a prostitute, the shadow of a man, the shadow of conscience, the shadow of life. And it is at this moment that it seems that this evil, cynical underground man suffers. He suffers mentally and cannot find a way out. But the question is: is there a soul? As if with a scalpel, the hero removes the canvas of life from himself with words, and what we see is that there is no soul. She died. Or not born at all.
“So, this is no longer literature, but a corrective punishment ...” - Dostoevsky writes. The performance allows you to experience a kind of modern catharsis: Raikin stitches fresh wounds with his talent, not allowing the viewer to leave devastated.
The evening with Dostoevsky is over. But here is the paradox: there is no curtain not only in the scenery, there is no curtain in life either, because the questions raised by the author, director and actor are eternal. To lower the curtain means to part with the soul. An unaffordable luxury for an already soulless world.

Alla reviews: 185 ratings: 185 rating: 393

Staging - reading "Notes from the Underground" by Dostoevsky. I read and read Dostoevsky and critical articles about his works, perhaps (I don’t remember) at school I also read Notes from the Underground. Honestly, I got confused in the logic of the presentation of the thoughts of the Protagonist of the work by Konstantin Arkadyevich, I listened to the rhythm, individual words, the timbre of speech, what elements and ways the text was presented. If you like the game of Konstantin Arkadyevich, go. Both the work and the performance are a rethinking of being, A New Look on the life of a "little" person.

Alex Vah reviews: 5 ratings: 6 rating: 18

I want to immediately warn those who want to attend the performance and expect to have a pleasant evening in the theater in the company talented actor, this performance is not for that. You have a hard job of psychoanalyzing shit in human soul. Or rather, to what abomination and insignificance a person who hates everyone, including himself, can bring himself. You are amazed at the modernity of Dostoevsky, a complete feeling that the portraits were painted from today's life. For example, an official who is afraid of taking bribes and who hates his visitors, who finds the greatest pleasure in his life if he has the opportunity to kick them off. Who can say "I love Dostoevsky" (such), if it's not a simple human vanity, an attempt to pass for a smart one, or a patient's love for a psychiatrist doctor.
Retelling the content of the play does not make sense. If you are ready for hard work, then go ahead, I think the performance will not leave you indifferent and will definitely be good for the soul.

Anna A reviews: 23 ratings: 28 rating: 18

When everything turns upside down inside you, and you forget where you are, the conclusion suggests itself: "the strings of the soul are touched, so much so that a ringing is heard." I don't want to talk after the performance. Yes, and not necessarily this, everything is clear.

The finish is long and tart

Nikolay Drogaytsev reviews: 7 ratings: 7 rating: 7

What Raikin does on stage can hardly be called just a "one-man show". I would compare it with a session of powerful, sometimes unbearable spectator introspection, based on the work of the greatest psychoanalyst of mankind - Dostoevsky.
For an hour and a half, you are transported to the very underground of human, Russian thinking: first, to the level of the natural, animal subconscious (dances, drum rhythms and antics), then getting higher - to love feelings for poor Lisa, but not at all to the surface, to the light - love and understanding, but to the depths of the tragic self-flagellation of a soul in love. The path of the spectator through the two parts of the performance is the path of a man who emerged from the deep water with his last breath and swallowed fresh air, but found himself only in a dark cave. And I really want to see a bright spot of light where there is air - understanding and love, but the way out of these depths of Dostoevsky's creativity to the surface must, probably, be sought at the very depths. The magnitude of the acting talent of Konstantin Raikin plunges you headlong into it.
Yes, this is not a performance for rest and "relaxation" after a working day or a hard week. You will pass through yourself 90 minutes of the gigantic recitative "Notes from the Underground" framed by stunningly lively lighting effects in the form of soft snow and gloomy St. Petersburg shadows. This spectacle fascinates and addictive, reinforcing the already powerful text load.
I think that the very nature of this performance, its foundations in the form of "Notes from the Underground" cannot evoke in the viewer a single opinion and reaction to this most powerful performance. His understanding comes through the uniqueness of the thinking of each viewer, it also determines the attitude towards him in the form of delight or complete antipathy.
Dostoevsky for Russian culture is inexhaustible, deep and still not solved. All our deeply immoral, criminal modernity and disorder of souls and society tells us that it is necessary to study Dostoevsky.
And it is unlikely that you will find something stronger visually for this than this performance.

When they now say that the fashion for Dostoevsky began in the cinema with light hand Vladimir Bortko, who made an excellent film adaptation of The Idiot, they somehow forget that back in the early twentieth century on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater There were performances of "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Demons", which caused a storm of conflicting reviews.

Maxim Gorky was a categorical opponent of Dostoevsky's theatrical interpretations. In 1913, he declared: “It is undeniable and undeniable: Dostoevsky is a genius, but this is our evil genius. ugly story, a hard and offensive life: the sadistic cruelty of a disillusioned nihilist in everything and - its opposite - the masochism of a downtrodden, intimidated being, capable of enjoying his suffering, not without malice, however, drawing himself before everyone and before himself. He was mercilessly beaten, which he boasts of... Dostoevsky - himself a great tormentor and a man of sick conscience - loved to write precisely this dark, confused, nasty soul... It's time to think about how this lake of poison will affect the health of future generations. After The Brothers Karamazov, the Art Theater is staging Possessed, a work even more sadistic and painful... I suggest to all spiritually healthy people, to all who understand the need to improve Russian life, to protest against the staging of Dostoevsky's works on the stage of theaters..."

The actors of the Art Theater responded to the writer with a collective letter, in which they rejected his claims to the production of Dostoevsky's novel. The play "Demons" after 107 rehearsals was staged by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and ran 45 times.

Despite the fact that Dostoevsky was skeptical about the attempt to remake his works for the stage, Dostoevsky's theater exists both here and abroad. Since 1992, Russia has been holding International Festival chamber performances based on the works of F. M. Dostoevsky in order to exchange experiences stage performance and understanding of the literary heritage of the great Russian writer.

The organizers of the festival are federal agency in culture and cinematography Russian Federation, Committee of Culture and Tourism of the Novgorod Region, Novgorod Academic Drama Theatre. F. M. Dostoevsky. Among the participants of the festival in different years were well-known groups from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Omsk, Arkhangelsk, Tver, Smolensk, Ryazan, Veliky Novgorod, Japan, Finland, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus. The festival featured premiere and legendary performances, compositions that fully represent the academic literary heritage F. M. Dostoevsky, as well as performances based on the facts of the writer's biography. In 1996, the festival received the status of International, and since 2001 Staraya Russa it is held annually. [See: 24].

Marina Brusnikina, director of the Moscow Art Theatre. Chekhov, explains his interest in the works of Dostoevsky: “Everything connected with Dostoevsky is infinitely interesting to me. I discovered this writer quite late. And I must say, when this happened, I realized that you just need to force all people to read this author, and complete collection essays. Because there is a striking effect of accumulation. You begin to feel compassion for people, for problems, for human misfortunes. Especially in our time, when we live in a completely different way: we don’t want to think, hear about problems, about bad things. We all aspire to be happy people. And Dostoevsky does something incredible with his soul. It seems to me that if young people read Dostoevsky in in large numbers then it will be difficult for them to grow bad people» .

They stage a lot according to Dostoevsky, it is impossible to name all the productions, to remember all the directors within the framework of one work. Therefore, it is worth paying attention not only and not so much to the classical productions of Dostoevsky's works, which strictly follow the plot. We are interested in an unusual look at Dostoevsky, the director's vision of his works.

As Nemirovich-Danchenko noted, Dostoevsky always "wrote like a novelist, but felt like a playwright." The writer has not written a single play, but modern theater impossible to imagine without Dostoevsky. It was staged by the best directors - Boris Livanov, Yuri Lyubimov, Georgy Tovstonogov, Anatoly Efros. Dostoevsky is being staged to this day.

Now only in Moscow theaters is coming a dozen plays based on Dostoevsky. And more and more among them are unusual interpretations, sometimes reaching outrageous. One of the most high-profile premieres was "A Ridiculous Poem", in which the Grand Inquisitor from the Brothers Karamazov enters the stage. The director of the performance Kama Ginkas transferred the action from medieval Spain to our days, to the bottom modern world- with his homeless people and telemania. Reading the reviews about this performance, we can draw the following conclusion: in the performance, the theater turns into a spectacle - but, according to the theater reviewer Marina Gaikovich, “this is just a wrapper where the director tried to hide Dostoevsky's eternal questions. Ivan Karamazov is in the center of Kama Ginkas' performance. He invented, as he himself calls it, an absurd poem about the Grand Inquisitor, he asks the most tragic and most cursed questions, and brother Alyosha is silent. And it seems that there is no way out, that man is doomed, that there is no God, and everything is allowed. The performance ends unexpectedly, when the main word of Dostoevsky's novel has not yet been said. It sounds in another performance - "Boys", the first production of the new theater "Studio theatrical art". This is a completely different view of Dostoevsky. Directed by Sergei Zhenovach took another storyline The Brothers Karamazov. the main idea performance - the transformation of the human soul. The gymnasium students, who poisoned Ilyusha Snegirev in the first scene, turn out to be capable of compassion and love.

The performance of Valery Fokin “The Double” based on the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky. Petersburg captured the attention of director Valery Fokin. “Although I have been living in the city on the Neva for a year and a half, I have already felt its peculiarity. I realized that this city has its own internal code,” the director notes. And although Dostoevsky's story "The Double" has long worried the director, however, he decided to stage such a complex work only in northern capital. One of the main characters in the story, according to Valery Fokin, is the space of St. Petersburg. This theme is clearly visible in the production of "Double". He emphasized that he tried to show the metaphysical climate of the city of Petra in his two recent performances - "The Overcoat" and "The Government Inspector". The premiere of Valery Fokin's performance took place at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. The opinion of theater critic Ekaterina Efremova: “After Valery Fokin’s The Double, I don’t want anything anymore: neither to live, nor to love, nor to work. You can only fall into despair. From the stage in auditorium such a monstrous avalanche of human pain, mental anguish and depressive spleen descends that one involuntarily forgets about everything in the world: about St. Petersburg, and about Dostoevsky, and about the titular adviser Golyadkin. The authors of this first adaptation of Dostoevsky's Petersburg poem into stage language would like to quote Fyodor Mikhailovich straight to his face: "Golyadkin only benefited from my spleen."

Petersburg of the artist Alexander Borovsky is menacingly disturbing: mirrored walls-doors through which you can enter and exit, reflections of chandeliers, shabby walls of houses, open cellar windows and geometrically regular railings of embankments, similar to a railroad track. As for Dostoevsky, as you know, he called himself "the real Golyadkin." During the first reading of the Petersburg poem, Turgenev was barely able to listen to half, praised and left, apparently in a hurry somewhere, Belinsky did not hide his admiration, repeating that "only Dostoevsky could get to the bottom of such amazing psychological details."

As for the amazing psychological details, Viktor Gvozditsky hardly knows his equal in them: in his interpretation, Golyadkin's life reality is very slowly and in detail transformed into a painful semblance of reality, in which a double appears (Aleksey Devotchenko). Golyadkin lives with him, as they say, soul to soul: “I look at everything exactly the same as you” - and he is not such a “rag man” as he wants to seem, and he undoubtedly has the right in this world ( for a proper funeral). To be honest, in the performance it remains not very clear how to interpret the double: either a friend of the heart, or a mirror image, or a guardian angel. Interpretation, as you know, is the problem of the interpreter.

On the other hand, the hero of Viktor Gvozditsky is initially slightly out of his mind: what is happening seems more like the fruit of his sick imagination. Fokine came up with a very witty mise-en-scene: on the stage, like "hemispheres", there are two groups of the choir, each of which sings in turn some musical themes. “Yes, these are the two hemispheres of the brain talking,” the inhabitant of the next chair joked, it’s good that her sense of humor did not fail at this performance. Maybe she was right; there is no split personality, you know, according to the canons of a textbook on psychiatry, in this performance. On the other hand, there is a playful, snarky beginning: a complex, complex theatrical sentence worthy of deciphering at various intellectual levels.

For pessimists, the director builds a ballet-like luxurious final scene: women in black mourning dresses - "flowerbeds" and with red roses in their hands (left) and men in white tailcoats with green wreaths trimmed with white ribbons around their necks (right); and even the head of the department in a ceremonial uniform with gold embroidery (for some reason without orders, it is clear that the theatrical reality is still somewhat different from life) and with a white bird in his hands (undoubtedly, he prefers animals to the society of distraught people who do not know what they are doing). Golyadkin appears in a white straitjacket and asks: "Is there nothing reprehensible in that?" - and jumps into the stage pit, women throw roses after him, men - wreaths, either mourning or festive: either the story of suicide is being played, or entering the theater stage, or something else inaccessible to my understanding.

The Double is a surprisingly postmodern work. The performance clearly "falls apart" in its own way. artistic speech on the different languages, it seems that the collective basis of creativity, declared in it, in the end is not fused by a single director's will, and its components are still too eclectic. Perhaps the performance over time will still gather into a single whole.

A rather unusual, in its own way, even unique production was brought to Moscow in 2005 by the Perm Academic Drama Theater - a musical, literary basis for which was Dostoevsky's work "The Humiliated and Insulted". Theatrical reviewer, journalist Alexander Zhurbin tells the following about his impressions of the performance: “ Artistic director Perm academic theater drama, Boris Milgram, willingly talks about the musical: "Vladimirskaya Square" is a unique performance. This is a true example of a Russian musical. When serious literature is translated into the language of poetry and music, a fantastic musical and dramatic performance is obtained. But Dostoevsky cannot simply be sung. The story he wrote must be told in such a way that it resonates in the soul of our audience." For the first time, "Vladimirskaya Square" saw the light of day in early February of this year in Perm. The audience really responded to the creators true love: in the spring of 2005, a performance that was positioned as an "opera for drama theater", went to the X Festival of the Russian Theater in Marseille. Later, the touched director of the festival, the famous French actor and director Richard Martin, said that "the play "Vladimirskaya Square" managed to grab the sophisticated French audience by the heart." Musical, staged by St. Petersburg director Vladislav Pazi , was built on contrasts: lyrical scenes were replaced by scenes of wild fun.Some scenes amazed, and even outraged with their focus on success with the Western audience - sort of stereotypical Russian lotions: gypsies, daring booze .... All the time it was expected when Brown bear, calmly walking along the city street ... But, at the same time, one thing is clear that with proper work, "Vladimirskaya Square" can become a hit performance. According to Alexander Zhurbin, if Fedor Mikhailovich had seen the performance, he would have liked it. But the journalist asks the question - why, in the production of a musical that claims to be a massive success, its creators "tortured" the great work of Russian classics?

Andrzej Wajda in 2004 staged the play "Nikolai Stavrogin". Pyotr Kuzmenok, a theater reviewer for Vechernyaya Moskvy, having attended the premiere of the performance, shared his impressions on the pages of the newspaper: “... Nikolai Stavrogin (Vladislav Vetrov) appears from the steel-gray haze and begins the confession of his perverted soul right into the hall. At first, the death of the girl Matryosha was on his conscience, and then, in his passion for immersion in evil, he knew neither restraint nor mental anguish. Possessed by this demon, he subjugates the weak souls of people seized with pride, greed and petty passions. He is the chief sower and curator of devilry...

In vain, in all her television interviews before the premiere, Galina Borisovna Volchek warned that in the performance of Vaida, the audience would plunge into the depths of human psychology, recklessly setting the audience to meet impenetrable tediousness. Vaida's performance, in my opinion, is good precisely because he leaves all the digging into the back streets of the psychology of the characters behind the scenes. We already see the result - the established types of characters. Therefore, you follow their actions, actions, as a result, you even begin to be interested in the plot.

Psychological types are given in the performance in a concentrated state, essence human essence. Vaida leaves the actors a narrow corridor - to play truthfully and exaggeratedly catchy at the same time. Therefore, the nervous excitement of Elena Yakovleva, who plays Lebyadkina, burns so unpleasantly. She was given too little stage time to play both madness and wisdom, resignation to fate and the uprising of the spirit. At times, her performance is so grotesque that it is about to become caricatured. But she convinces of the authenticity, the reality of her heroine. Sergei Garmash in the role of Captain Lebyadkin is magnificent - generous in colors, contagious with his sweeping, cunning and sharp mind. Someone already said: well, this is a win-win hit on the actor! That's fine. Gorgeous Igor Kvasha - Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky and Tamara Degtyareva - Praskovya Ivanovna. At the performance, it becomes simply interesting to watch how masterfully Kvasha makes his hero either funny, or ridiculous, childishly helpless; how the heroine Degtyareva tries to be reasonable and strict, or suddenly falls into coquettish resentment and senile capriciousness.

I'm talking about the actors, because they more clearly reflect the peculiar eclecticism of the production. Waida every episode of the big literary canvas, transformed for the scene, opens with its stylistic key. The gathering of revolutionary liberals was staged by him as a mocking caricature, the scenes with Liza (Olga Drozdova) are like a melodrama Indian cinema, there are everyday sketches, there are almost epic elements. This directorial anti-style is successfully integrated into the design (scenography and costumes by Kristina Zahvatowicz, Andrzej Wajda's wife): a steel-gray sky with thunderclouds, flashes of dawn and sunset; a gray, plowed field, without a blade of grass and a blade of grass with glimpses of puddles; the screens that the "stage servants" take out and place - their faces are hidden by hoods, and the uniform resembles a fantasy movie about aliens.

It makes no sense to compare Vaida's performance with Dostoevsky's or with what, in our opinion, Fyodor Mikhailovich wanted to say - they still lie in different temporal and material and artistic planes. We must reckon with what I saw "Demons" great director. He saw Dostoevsky without the anguish and suffering dear to the Russian heart. And his characters are obsessed with people: some with their own super-ideas, some with their misfortunes and their kindness, and some with the cultivation of evil in themselves and others. He saw them as bad. Not the way most of us want. But it turned out convincingly ”(Vechernyaya Moscow, March 22, 2004).

Another, in my opinion, the most unexpected production - Dostoevsky in puppet theater: in the Novokuznetsk Puppet Theater in 2001, the premiere of the play "Bobok" by story of the same name Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This production secured the fame of the “adult puppet theater” for the theater. Pyotr Kuznetsov, a theater reviewer and critic from Novokuznetsk, speaking about the production, says this: “The choice of this work, exotic for the puppet theater, is not accidental. The basis is the thematic framework of the festival "Kuzbass theatrical", dedicated just to the 180th anniversary of Fyodor Mikhailovich. The story "Bobok" is known to few. Even the most devoted admirers of Dostoevsky can find this work only in the first editions of the classic's works. But no one has yet dared to make even a traditional (with live actors) dramatization out of the story. But for the chief director of the puppet theater Yuri Samoilov, such a production was an old dream. “The idea to stage “Bobka” on the stage of the puppet theater matured in my years of study at theater school, about 20 years ago, - recalls Yuri. - Unlike others, I do not consider this story plotless. Here, in my opinion, there is no philosophy characteristic of Dostoevsky. Everything is quite simple and clear. The highlight of the play is the exquisite humor of the writer. No one can joke like that except Dostoevsky. True, not all viewers understand this humor. But this does not mean that the performance was not understood. It’s just that we have the task of expressing some episodes of the performance most vividly.” Apparently, the artists succeeded. The minute fuss, traditionally "fastened" to the beginning of the performance, was replaced by a persistent, even frightening silence. The plot is not exciting. His canvas is based on the fact that an unrecognized writer, filling the spiritual emptiness with drunkenness, ends up in purgatory, a valley between heaven and hell. There, his soul observes the communication of other inhabitants, and he himself remains behind the scenes. Several characters pass one after another in front of the viewer: a major general, a governess, a court adviser, a count and others. They all tell their stories from their lives already lived and at the same time confess their sins. Then one by one they go to heaven, some to hell. The appearance of each character is accompanied by the sounds of "B-Ba-Bo-B" - this is the last thing a person says before death. Hence the name - "Bobok". In other words, this is the one whose soul leaves the body and ends up in purgatory. Yes, for eternal question- is there life after death - followed by one of two options answer: yes. According to one of the heroes, only there you can find peace and know what the truth is. For "it is impossible to live on earth and not lie, because life and lies are synonyms." “They will drive you crazy there,” another complains, “but they won’t make anyone smarter.” If we talk about death, then it has nothing to do with Dostoevsky, or rather with his work. Otherwise, the relevance of the theses that came to us from the 19th century would not have been preserved: “the educated are starving, the merchants are fattening. Therefore, no one needs learning” or “the smartest of all is the one who calls himself a fool once a week.” All this is quite consistent with our era ... ".

Many directors try to stage Dostoevsky. Whether Feature Film, whether it's a performance - actors and directors present their Dostoevsky to us as they understand him, as they see his characters, explain the psychology of their actions. What this vision turns into - tragedy, comedy or farce - depends on the task that the director sets himself, on what idea he wants to bring to the fore. But, as Lev Anninsky said, “it’s always like this with Dostoevsky: you go to have some fun, but you end up at the Last Judgment.”

The creator of The Karamazovs and The Idiot is today the most important theatrical author. His works appear on stage in the most different genres— from a concert to a political farce. We have selected the loudest performances.

"Moron"

The main intrigue of December connected with Dostoevsky is the premiere at the Theater of Nations. Director Maxim Didenko, author of the hit performances Cavalry (Vs. Meyerhold Center) and Kharms. Myr (Gogol Center) staged The Idiot. The chosen aesthetic is black clowning, grotesque. In the foreground - love triangle Myshkin - Nastasya Filippovna - Rogozhin. Didenko himself says that "in our world, the perception of Dostoevsky as a living ironic person has been lost." Although the stage version of the novel includes 20 characters, only four performers are involved in the performance - along with Ingeborga Dapkunaite, who will play Prince Myshkin (!), Evgeny Tkachuk, Pavel Chinarev, Roman Chaliapin and Alexander Yakin will take the stage. All events will unfold in a space created by artist Pavel Semchenko from the radical theater AXE, which means complex video mapping and fantastic costumes are waiting for us.