MOSCOW, December 8, Yulia Zachetova. The Gorky Moscow Art Theater is again faithful to the classics — both in the choice of material and in its stage embodiment. The premiere of “Three Sisters”, which opens the season and the theater after restoration, is yet another confirmation of this. About what awaits the audience — in the material .
Old new “Three Sisters”
The director of the play, Sergei Desnitsky, has himself played in three productions of this play since 1968. His current work refers to the legendary version of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1940.
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“Resuming a memorial performance is extremely difficult, because an exact copy of what was staged more than 80 years ago is impossible,” admits Desnitsky . — Times, people, artists have changed. Modern man is concerned with other problems.”
The general drawing of Nemirovich-Danchenko was preserved, the mise-en-scène was repeated, but with adjustments so that they were more convenient and closer to today’s actor. The musical, noise and external design of the performance is the same. Artist Vyacheslav Okunev managed to recreate in the scenery the atmosphere created by his predecessor Vladimir Dmitriev. The artists, as under Nemirovich-Danchenko, play without microphones.
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“This is a brilliant performance that fully corresponds to the spirit of the Moscow Art Theater and the expectations of the public,” noted the general director of the theater Vladimir Kekhman.
“Three Sisters” opened the season of the Gorky Moscow Art Theater after the second waves of theater renovation, when the sound equipment was updated.
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“You can hear everything: a quiet voice and a whisper,” says the director. “Microphones get in the way, because we don’t have a radio theater, but a dramatic theater — a theater of living feelings, passions.”
Sudden discoveries
The proposed circumstances now, of course, are different than in 1940.
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“By analyzing them, we made several discoveries,” says Desnitsky, “And those that significantly change both the super-task and the end-to-end action all the heroes.»
For example, the image of Lieutenant Colonel Vershinin was revealed in a new way. He has two daughters and a wife. Her colleague Tuzenbach describes her as crazy, with a long girlish braid, who philosophizes and often attempts suicide.
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“I and the performers had a question: who is the mother of these girls?” And this was another woman, Vershinin’s first wife. Tuzenbach mentions that he is married for the second time. And suddenly it is revealed that these two girls are twins, and their mother died during childbirth. And Vershinin’s friend, this lady with a long girlish braid, volunteered to become their mother. He agreed because he found himself in a hopeless situation,” explains the director.
The mental tossing of Vershinin’s wife is also understandable: having received a name and wealth, she was never able to win the love of her husband.
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"He is not a hero-lover at all, but tortured by circumstances and through turmoil, a man finds in Masha the very love he dreamed of, which he and his girls apparently deserve,” Desnitsky concludes.
Eternally relevant Chekhov
The director had no temptation to bring Chekhov’s heroes into our time.
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“Modern directors mock classical works in every possible way because of their own helplessness, because of the inability to read and understand what the authors wrote, I’m sure He. “I’d rather try to get to the heart of what’s in Chekhov’s text and make sure that there are real people on stage, and the problems that concern the current viewer also worry the actors.”
Chekhov is relevant in any era, they believe in the theater. Desnitsky has his own explanation for this:
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“He wrote about the eternal: about duty, honor, the meaning of life, love, decency, the struggle of nobility with vulgarity. We very often encounter vulgarity and injustice. And we ask ourselves questions: why do we live and suffer? What Olga asks at the end of the play.»
The theater’s repertoire also includes other classics: “Fathers and Sons” by Turgenev, “The Forest” by Ostrovsky, “Pygmalion” by Bernard Shaw , “Vassa Zheleznova” by Maxim Gorky, in which the legendary theater director and now its president Tatyana Doronina shone.