Ilona Princess of Burgundy. How can you stand when we're on our knees? The festival "Territory" opened with a loud premiere: the Pole Grzegorz Jazhina staged "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Theater of Nations

One day, at the court of a certain king, a strange, silent to the point of dumbness girl named Yvonne appears. She is not a princess at all - the Prince () will make her so when, for the sake of a joke, he wants to marry her. The joke itself will drag on, at first they will be horrified by the decision, and then the King () and the Queen () will cope with it - not without the help of the Chamberlain (). They will cope in such a way that it will not seem small to anyone, and before that they will subject the unfortunate woman to various kinds of research, examinations and bullying.

Maria Zaivy/Theater of Nations

That is, a year before his own evacuation from the homeland occupied by the Germans, he apparently vaguely caught some important harbingers hovering in the alarming Polish air.

However, and it is precisely this property that makes it a real classic, during its long life the play managed to be staged by a variety of directors throughout Europe and resonate with a variety of contexts. The Polish director, who arrived to stage his illustrious compatriot with Russian artists, placed it in a very special context, and succeeded a lot in this.

His "Yvonne" is not just a story about how an evil and boring court (read - the world) first torments and then kills any eccentric who finds himself in his living area. The King, the Queen and their Chamberlain do not just dream of killing Yvonne - they let her get closer with some kind of voluptuous pleasure in order to subject her to various kinds of research and manipulation, which they perform with some kind of fascist, Jesuit conscientiousness. The spatial and sound environment responds to various kinds of research: video mapping on the back of the wall reacts to certain measurements and changes, and at certain moments the theremin starts working - an instrument that reacts in pitch to changes in the electromagnetic environment.

Scene from the play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy"

Maria Zaivy/Theater of Nations

For those who do not understand the director's message, Yazhina literally chews it up with the help of appeals directly from the screens for titles installed in the hall:

Big Brother is watching us, knowing what sites we have visited and from what sites, what we are interested in and what we are looking for. And we also take care of ourselves, thinking and calculating each of our actions, censoring and grabbing our hands at every step.

And not so much out of fear of political persecution as their practical unwillingness to say and do anything conflicting and uncomfortable and the desire to get better and more comfortable in life.

Polish and Russian critics call Grzegorz Jazhyna the leader of the modern Polish directorial generation - along with Krzysztof Warlikowski and their older contemporary Christian Lupa. Yazhina has already come to Russia - seven years ago he showed at the festival "Polish Theater in Moscow" the play "Teorema" according to the script of Pierre. Before the current performance, the Theater of Nations carried out the necessary and important work together with the Polish Cultural Center - in its "New Space" at Strastnoy 12, it showed on video several performances by Yazhyna staged by him at the TR Warszawa theater, which the director directs; The screenings were accompanied by lectures and meetings.

Scene from the play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy"

Maria Zaivy/Theater of Nations

Among others, "Martyrs" based on the play by Marius von Mayenburg were shown, the plot of which is familiar to the Russian audience "(M) student" Kirill, which became a hit at the Gogol Center, and then the basis for his last film; the Moscow viewer had the opportunity to compare two approaches to one story of the approaching obscurantism.

Yazhina’s new production has an affinity with Serebrennikov’s other performance, Kafka based on the play, and not only due to the fact that both title characters are literally deprived of the right to vote almost all the time of the action, the very story of a sophisticated reprisal against disturbing otherness in “ Yvonne...” looks completely Kafkaesque.

How does the once common meaning of the field of two historically drawn to each other powers - the homeland of Stanislavsky and the homeland of Gombrowicz, in which theatrical systems have always been more developed than the political systems. Now in both cynicism and Jesuitism are actively acting hand in hand with bigotry and obscurantism and are already descending from the upper floors into the area of relations between people and nations. By transmitting their message in plain text, in all other ways, the Pole Yazhina and Russian actors leave the viewer an open field for other interpretations. And the viewer in this somewhat archetypal version of "Yvonne ..." can see a deeply personal or even family history. Or, conversely, purely social: how

two countries and two cultures become such Yvonnes for each other - Russia for Poland and Poland for Russia - against an increasingly gloomy political background, joint projects are canceled, cultural cooperation is curtailed.

Scene from the play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy"

Maria Zaivy/Theater of Nations

The Theater of Nations was once created as a platform for joint exchange projects, including international ones, and in this sense, its new premiere is perhaps the most perfect fulfillment of this mission.

Alena Karas

Alien vs Predators

"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" by Grzegorz Jazhina at the Theater of Nations

The poster shows an African face, by which gender is as difficult to identify as age. One of those "savage" faces that were destroyed throughout European history. Witold Gombrowicz, who grew up in a wealthy Polish estate of the 19th century, was sensitive to social inequality, to those who did not enter the canon of beautiful gentry Poland. Therefore, his play Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, written in 1938, a year before the World War, turned out to be prophetic - it explores the mechanism for the destruction of the Other. First - in itself, then - outside of itself. First - as an endless self-censorship, then - as a total censorship in relation to any Other.

"Yvonne" is a philosophical parable, despite the high level of allegory, quite clearly, however, correlating with the cruel political context of its time. Grzegorz Jazhina not only ignores this context, but sharply draws it into the present. He needs the tension of those meanings that Gombrowicz's play at the beginning of the 21st century attracts to itself - although Yvonne, who wears sensors on her head that scan her brain, resembles a victim of Dr. Mengele's experiments.

The stunning space, pulsing with the most complex video and acoustic vibrations, enters the consciousness as a living organism, like Yvonne herself, fearlessly and accurately played by Daria Ursulyak. Actually, Yazhina, together with Piotr Lakomy (scenography), Jacek Grudzen (music), Felice Ross (lighting), Marta Navrot (video), Andrey Borisov (sound) and Anna Nykovskaya (costumes) literally pumped up the entire stage “body” with the attraction of Yvonne, materialized her defiant silence, which is the main secret of the play. It includes the public according to the principle of the same mechanism as described by Prince Philip: “If she loves me, then I ... then I am therefore loved by her ... I exist in her. She enclosed me in herself ... Ah, after all, I, in fact, always believed that I exist only here, on my own, on my own - and then immediately - bang! She caught me - and I was in her as if in a trap!

The performance is designed in such a way that we all find ourselves in it as if in a trap. Yazhina invented a technology that coincides mainly with the motive of Gombrowicz's play: invisible sensors along the wings vibrate the entire stage field, which becomes literally electromagnetic - every movement of the actors produces a sound, extracts sounds from space. It's hard to guess, but the magic of the rising and falling sound, the video pulsation of color flooding the screen, implicitly dependent on the movement of bodies around the stage, affects the subconscious of the audience, who find themselves in the same dismay in relation to Yvonne's radical silence, as well as similar to the insensible Cyborg Prince Philip (Mikhail Troinik). Yvonne, by the way, appears on the stage, dressed in something like overalls or a stage fitter's costume - one of those who, always invisible, makes the performance's celebration come true.

Only in the second act, when the silent Yvonne begins to talk about herself with the help of a theremin - an electric instrument created in 1920 by Lev Theremin that reacts to the slightest vibrations and extracts music literally from the air - do we begin to guess that the entire stage box was such a theremin. A zone in which silence resounds, or the subconscious itself, repressed, right according to Lacan, by the repressive machine of language. Until then, the mechanism hidden in the wings is localized on the stage as an instrument from which Yvonne extracts music, as total as her androgynous creature with huge eyes and a cap of cropped white hair.

The totality of her presence in the midst of the cyber desert is the theme of the performance, whose society is made up of simulacrum shells. Here the ladies of the court wear hats fused with their heads, the Chamberlain's (Sergey Epishev) face is completely overgrown with a transparent mask, a silicone layer between man and the world, and Queen Margarita (Agrippina Steklova) in a nightly hysterical burst of revelation exposes herself to silicone nudity, revealing under her clothes a sanctimonious body-mask, a shell of the same silicone soul. The king (Alekander Feklistov) does not need a mask at all - there, along with the crown, shorts and a T-shirt have grown to the body: not a ruler, but a hunted layman, most of all afraid of himself.

The reading of Yvonne by Yazhina clearly resonates with Lacan's concept of a language structured as the unconscious, where contact with oneself becomes more and more difficult as the subject becomes culturally advanced. Directing exacerbates this theme, bringing it almost to the point of parody. The text space of the performance is expanded with interludes recited by the announcer's voice in the purest English (co-author of Yazhina's stage version - Szczepan Orlowski) and devoted to how the system - language, politics, cybernetics, censorship - turns the individual into the mass. This voice, in a language that is as much a part of the global world as cyberspace, describes the experiment: the subjects, obeying the majority, call white black. The incapacity for independent judgment seems to be a harmless property until people like Yvonne become its mass victims.

“Control is not carried out from the outside, it is built into the infrastructure,” the Englishwoman tells us, while we glance over the cylindrical, cubic and human figures, on which Yvonne’s silence has an implicit but powerful effect, forcing, like ultrasound, to commit the most eccentric and cruel actions. “Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, a non-profit journalism organization, describes self-censorship built on fear like a pyramid scheme… Remember the last time you wanted to say something and changed your mind because of the possible repercussions? Self-censorship guides our every action, and we do not notice. The truth is, we're living a lie."

This manifesto of Jazhina, sounding on its own, would cause nothing but boredom if it were not embedded in the text of Gombrowicz, whose political parody borders on psychoanalysis, drawing our entire psychic and rational nature into the process of self-reflection.

Twenty years ago, Yazhina had already staged Yvonne, and then in Gombrowicz's play he was interested in the intimate, deep side of human relationships. Today, the director's interest has shifted to where there are no longer relationships, but there are communications. Where the inexpressibility of inner experience has long been trapped in the System.

Having received an invitation from the Theater of Nations, the director and artistic director of TR Warszawa, it seems, was pleased to include in the context of the performance the very bourgeois respectability of the most brilliant theater venue in the Russian capital, the premieres of which are always marked by a special atmosphere of chic. In a pre-premiere interview with COLTA.RU, the director directly noted that he hopes for a recognition effect: “What they [the audience] will think during and after the performance is very important to me. Gombrowicz's play is also about court life, so here we build something like a mirror.”

The mirror is the most important motif of "Yvonne", directly borrowed from "Hamlet", with an eye on which Gombrowicz's philosophical parable was written. Bitter attacks against a bourgeois democracy with silicone masks of equality, tolerance and social responsibility, where Prince Philip's intention to marry a commoner marked by clear signs of autism is perceived first as a strange joke, then as a populist game, and finally as a disaster for the regime - all this is addressed to us no less than in those days of 1938 when the play was being written.

But only before the public, which has financial influence and power, does Yazhin install this mirror? "Yvonne" plays with much more complex reflections, drawing our whole being into her "political body". The baroque chords of the wedding ceremony, the huge table, the screen flooded with pink flowers and the very space of the stage, the bride's white feathers and crinoline silks, making her completely look like a sacrificial lamb ... Fear of the Other, nesting in the depths of any violence, kills Yvonne quietly - a small crucian bone. She collapses onto the table, transformed from the living person she never was to them into a pile of white skirts bathed in the pinkish color of her anemic blood...

P.S. Since the large-scale touring projects of the Polish theater in Moscow stopped a few years ago, and some major directors led by Christian Lupa refused to come to Russia with their performances for political reasons, the mutual isolation of the two theater worlds seemed inevitable. The change of government in Poland also did not seem to contribute to active contacts in the field of the theater. But here long-term mechanisms of mutual attraction came into play: a series of lectures, exhibitions and video screenings began, and then - productions by Polish authors, little known to us or not staged at all before. Instead of high-profile tours, Russian and Polish theaters are beginning to cooperate on the level of deeper creative exchanges. And the fact that after Yvonne, created in co-production with TR Warszawa, several performances based on the plays of Witold Gombrowicz will appear in Russia one after another - in the St. Petersburg Theater. At the Lensoviet, the young director Beniamin Kots is staging "The Wedding", the same play is rehearsed at the Moscow School of Dramatic Art by Elena Nevezhina - perhaps it will allow a deeper understanding of the author, so consonant with our time.

Kommersant, October 19, 2016

Rejection game

"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Theater of Nations

The 11th TERRITORIA festival opened with the premiere of the Theater of Nations "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy". This is the first production of the Polish director Grzegorz Jazhina in Russia, created with the support of the Polish Cultural Center and the Mickiewicz Institute. ALLA SHENDEROVA tells.

"The weather was beautiful, the princess was terrible" - in a brief retelling, the beginning of the play by Witold Gombrowicz can literally sound like this. The royal family walks in the park, talking about how looking at a beautiful sunset makes you feel better. Prince Philip sees the ugly Yvonne, who is so "infinitely proud, tender and fearful" and infuriates him so much that he decides to marry her. The king and queen are shocked, but ready to accept his choice: compassion for the sick and pitiful also makes us better.

Anyone who is a little familiar with the history of literature, having heard the text of "Yvonne" (in the performance, the translation of Yuri Chainikov is used), will immediately remember not only Dostoevsky and Stavrogin, who married Khromonozhka, but also "Princess Malene" by Maurice Maeterlinck. And he will be right. In 1889, the symbolist Maeterlinck invented a princess with a "green face and white eyelashes", doomed to become a victim - Witold Gombrowicz obviously borrowed this decadent image, deciding to figure out why society not only makes outcasts, but kills such princesses.

"Yvonne" was written in 1938, when Freud had already said everything (it was with Freud that the writer Bruno Schulz compared Gombrowicz), and the Germans were preparing to swallow Poland. What is fascism, Gombrowicz understood before others and left Poland a few days before the occupation, during the war he lived in Argentina, and then returned not to socialist Poland, but to France. In Poland, his books were banned until the late 1950s.

A student of Christian Lupa, head of the theater "TR Warsaw", one of the most talented radicals of the Polish stage Grzegorz Jazhyna already staged "Yvonne" at the beginning of his career - almost 20 years ago. Today he returned to her, trying to figure out what instinct makes us afraid of those who are different from us. As a result, he succeeded in what is often said, but which in reality comes out extremely rarely: "Yvonne" by the Theater of Nations - a performance in which reflections on eternal topics are clothed in the form of modern art.

The director called in a strong team of artists to help him. Petr Lakomy, for example, has never worked in a theater before and insists that he did not create scenography, but space. But when you watch a play, you don't get the feeling that good, accurate actors fit in with an effort into the milieu of radical art that is alien to them. The space continues and reflects what they are playing. Cubes, cylinders, blocks, among which the heroes of Gombrowicz roam, attract attention not because they resemble Suprematist compositions. They are just as simple in appearance, but in fact inexplicable, like the nooks and crannies of our consciousness.

"She devours me with her eyes ... She is simply shameless ... Take a poker and make it white hot ..." - suggests the handsome prince (Mikhail Troinik), unable to restrain his painful voluptuousness. "But Philip!" - besieged by his friends. An encephalogram of the brain, which they do to Yvonne by tying her hands and feet, is projected onto the walls. When King Ignatius (Alexander Feklistov), wanting to joke with his daughter-in-law, brings her to a fit, an alarming purple ripple runs along the walls - a cardiogram of an exhausted soul hidden from everyone. The black-and-white luminous ball is blown away as the queen (Agrippina Steklova) loses her desire, if not to talk, then at least to feed the savage.

Gombrowicz does not fully reveal who Yvonne is, and neither does the director. He does not, like the prince, experiment on a strange, obviously intelligent girl, who, in the almost wordless, but bright performance of Daria Ursulyak, has moments of liveliness and even passion. He tries to understand what she is doing to others. Why is it not enough for them to simply remove her from sight, but must be killed; why the queen, looking at her, remembers her mediocre poems hidden under the mattress. And to the king and the chamberlain (Sergei Epishev), she reminds of the seamstress, whom they lured to "this very sofa" in the days of dashing youth. “But she was a thin brunette, and this plump blonde,” clarifies the chamberlain, holding Yvonne, while the king gives some kind of injection to the frightened victim. Sadism, seasoned with palace etiquette, thickens in the air, coloring the walls with aesthetic video mapping (video by Marta Navrot).

The visual climax happens in the wedding scene: huge roses appear on the walls (here are the flowers that the heroes of Alice in Wonderland painted, and the glamor brought to the grotesque - a technique of modern artists) and spread in disturbing bruises. Dressed in an exquisite white dress (the costumes of Anna Nykovskaya), Yvonne suddenly turns out to be pretty. But he does not want to sit down at a long table - everything is rushing about, escaping from the hands of the tall chamberlain. It is logical that it is he who, following the observance of etiquette, offers the king a way to get rid of the poor thing - to serve bony fish to the table. He realizes the plan, pushing everyone who wants to help away from the wheezing victim.

Accurately built by the director and beautifully played by Sergei Epishev, the role leads to a mystery: we hate and want to get rid of everyone who breaks even the most senseless, but familiar rituals that replace our lives. But now Yvonne stiffens on the table, order has been restored. In the play, there is a farcical conversation about mourning, a tailor and a funeral parlour. In the play, too. But Prince Philip suddenly jumps up on the table, yelling for the lights to go out. Another second - and he seems to wrinkle in Yvonne's pathetic smile.

RG , October 12, 2016

Zoya Apostolskaya

Alien among their own

"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" presented at the Theater of Nations

The Theater of Nations showed the second premiere of the season - the play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" based on the play by the Polish playwright and writer Witold Gombrowicz. This is a grotesque story about how Prince Philip (Mikhail Troinik) falls in love with an extremely silent girl, Yvonne (Daria Ursulyak). Her silence is so annoying to everyone - including the king (Alexander Feklistov) and the queen (Agrippina Steklova) - that the princess simply needs to be disposed of.

The performance was staged by director Grzegorz Jazhyna, who was invited from Poland. He already addressed the play of his compatriot many years ago, but since then he has revised his views on it. He discarded love relationships and left two simple and merciless thoughts: a person is afraid to be different - this is the time. Two - "others" are not accepted by either other people or the system.

Yvonne is a stranger, she is not at home. She is incomprehensible and annoying. It wants to be squeezed out and destroyed - this is the instinctive desire of society. And lately, it has only worsened all over the world, says Grzegorz Jazhyna. And the theme of silence too - people have become less likely to express their opinion. The director verbalized this idea by inserting texts that are not in the play. They recalled the fear of being in the minority, the types of self-censorship and total control over the means of communication.

Yvonne is almost incapable of communication and, therefore, it is almost impossible to control her. So, it needs to be eliminated, deleted from the system. At the same time, Yvonne herself tries to follow the situation - she invisibly finds herself where she is not supposed to be according to the text of the play. For example, she hears all the conspiracies against herself, knows how they plan to kill her. Hears the speeches and poems of the queen. She takes off her clothes and finds herself in a latex suit that imitates a naked body. She also feels that she is being spied on, which is why she feels naked.

Here, all the characters are naked. Unmasked. Become obvious - under the gun of total silence. Yvonne in the interpretation of Grzegorz Jazhyna is not a miserable mess. Sometimes she seems to be an androgynous creature - in overalls, with a very short, spiky haircut. And she is not only silent, but also tries to resist - at the table she spits out cream and throws pears. Knocks out the recorder from the hands of researchers. She is a creature worthy of study. And Prince Philip and his friends are studying it. They set up experiments, recording everything on camera and on a voice recorder. They ask questions, test with Rorschach spots (a test by a Swiss psychiatrist, known since 1921: by what an individual sees in a blot, his personality traits are determined).

Yvonne is silent, her associations, interpretations are prompted to her - and they are waiting for a nod of the head. Over time, the symmetrical Rorschach spot will break in two and spread along the light meridian grid in different directions. It will become like the continents on the map, like two worlds that are getting further and further apart. The director Yazhin tightens the bullying of Yvonne, they are no longer only moral, as with Witold Gombrovich, but also physical. The very specific violence of the king over the princess - and the phrases that you can do whatever you want with her - go to another level and acquire some sophisticated meaning.

The stage designer of the performance was the artist Petr Lakomy - this is his debut on the theater stage. But the director also wanted to avoid excessive theatricality, he wanted to push the old text and new art together. Lakoma solves space extremely concisely. From the scenery - a hollow cylinder and a parallelepiped, which is disassembled into component fragments from scene to scene. Everything else is created by video projections and light.

The light here is a special story: either it sharpens the shadows, forcing them to live a separate life, or it “suppresses” everything around and makes reality wadded. The space is interactive - it is not just a tribute to fashion, it is a visual evidence of how the system reacts to the actions of individuals. A special camera captures the movements of the actors and changes the background - and now the light grid pulsates and twitches nervously. Sensors respond to movement around the stage - and now the actors themselves create the sound space, write the score of the performance with the trajectory of movement.

A separate role is assigned to the theremin - an electronic instrument that creates sound with the help of an electric field (I remind you that it was once invented by Lev Theremin in Petrograd). It is controlled by the wave of the hands - the theremin is sensitive to external stimuli, it requires long exercises and absolute pitch. Needs a special approach - just like Yvonne herself. She plays on it - first she broadcasts her pain with her hands and body, then she connects her voice and tries to sing in unison. In a vacuum. The duet with the instrument turns out to be more sensitive than the people around.

To get rid of Yvonne, the family serves carp on the festive table. They are bony, she is shy, in the presence of guests she must certainly choke and die. The king and queen invite everyone to the table, say "one-one", as if they are checking microphones. Harassment is like a celebration, murder is like a performance, getting rid of something else is like a celebration. Yvonne tries to escape three times - she knows exactly what will happen next. But escape from the System is impossible, it is returned every time. And they force you to choke.

They put pressure on her - and she chokes. Because every personality in itself is like a bone in the throat.

The New Times, 17 October 2016

Xenia Larina

Power of Silence

The festival "Territory" opened with a loud premiere: the Pole Grzegorz Jazhina staged "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Theater of Nations

On the playbill there is a photograph of a dark-skinned girl with a wild, animal fear frozen in her eyes.

Secret signs

The Polish director Grzegorz Jazhina works with Russian artists on the Russian stage for the first time, although his name has long been known to Russian theater people: Jazhina is one of the leaders of modern European theater, a rebel and an intellectual who does not recognize any taboos in culture, professing a theater of bold ideas and open emotions. He turns to the famous text of the Polish philosopher and avant-garde artist Witold Gombrowicz for the third time: he staged his first "Yvonne" in his homeland in 1997, then composed the libretto for the opera of the same name, and now he has chosen this play to be staged in Moscow.

"Yvonne" has long become a classic - it is staged all over the world along with the absurdist dramas of Ionesco and Beckett, although it came to the Russian stage relatively recently and immediately became one of the most popular. Yvonne was staged by Vladimir Mirzoev at the Vakhtangov Theatre, Alexei Levinsky at the Hermitage, Oleg Rybkin at the Novosibirsk Red Torch. And each time, the surprisingly tenacious and modern text, written in the late thirties of the last century, struck with new meanings and paradoxical accents, immersing us not even in today, but in tomorrow.

In the Theater of Nations, "Yvonne" is almost a dystopia, gloomy, terrible, not even a warning, but an omen, before the inevitability of which one can only reconcile. Yazhina emphasizes the relevance of the play with information blocks abruptly bursting into the fabric of the performance, when the impassive metallic voice of the announcer overturns sensational news from various fields - either new technologies, or historical discoveries, or social phenomena.

However, at some point stage reality wins over the truth of life and outstrips it in terms of social and political urgency.

The genius of Gombrowicz seems to have encoded in "Yvonne" secret signs that appear as sympathetic ink in a certain atmosphere. Guessing and recreating this atmosphere is the main task of the director. Yazhina - like a real theatrical thinker - certainly knew how to achieve this. But he could hardly have imagined what a significant role Russian reality would play in this search, the notorious "Russian soil" that does not want to fit into the global context, but hysterically demands its own "special path." Well, did they demand? Get it.

Naked kings

But it turned out - about the power of silence, about the desperation of dumbness. Yvonne has almost no words, just a few mysterious remarks and a piercing, deafening scream, from which windows explode and pawn ears. Yvonne - a strange girl with a short haircut, in a shapeless baggy jumpsuit - will fall into the very core of supreme power, where a reflective heir falls in love with her and, in order to annoy her parents, declares her his bride. The silent Yvonne, like a ghost, roams the palace chambers, irritating its inhabitants with her blissful appearance - either a madwoman or a saint. Yvonne does not bow or bend, laughs at what causes sacred awe in these walls, peers intently at what is not customary to peer into, and never looks away, even if her hands are tied and threatened with a knife. This heartbreaking look of Yvonne burns out of the rulers all their secret vices and hidden sins, turning well-bred successful aristocrats into disgusting cowardly monsters. The masks fall down together with the clothes - and by the end the kings literally turn out to be naked, and even a sparkling crown hastily placed on the head is not able to hide this disgusting nakedness.

Yvonne's silence destroyed the fact that neither the revolution nor the uprising could defeat. It was the silence that awakened the reciprocal hatred, the passionate desire to kill the silent one, to deal with this damn silent creature that pulled out everything that was so carefully and seemed to be hidden forever.

Yvonne is a loner, organically incapable of falseness, she herself is a tuning fork that sets a clean note. That is why the rattling, croaking voices of the inhabitants of the royal palace, who have long lost their hearing, and with it the ability to distinguish truth from lies, virtue from vice, crime from duty, are so self-revealing. Yes, indeed, everything begins with the purity of the note taken, with the impossibility of lying. How can one not recall here the famous formula of one of the most persistent dissidents, Andrei Sinyavsky, about "stylistic differences" with the authorities.

Throat of the Silent

Grzegorz Jarzyna brought his production team with him, which, among others, included costume designer Anna Nykowska (Anna is not only a constant co-author of Jazyna's performances, but also his girlfriend) and a brilliant contemporary artist Piotr Lakomy (this is his debut as a stage designer) .

The visual image of the performance is a self-sufficient artistic space, where the color scheme, light reflections, neon flashes, bizarre video installations are not a background for the actors, but their full partners, sometimes very aggressive, crushing the actors. And also a sound track, almost continuously sounding - now with a rustle, now with a siren, now with a pencil scratching on paper, now with sudden music, now with a buzzing street crowd. And also the costumes of extraordinary complexity that transform the characters from scene to scene - costumes that you get rid of gradually, like rudiments and atavisms, in the form of torn sleeves, bursting jackets on the backs, falling skirts and torn dresses.

The light on the stage is cloudy, diffused, viscous like fog, the faces of the actors, usually ennobled by spotlights, here look ominous, almost losing their human features.

With all the richness and variety of staging techniques, "Yvonne" is an eminently acting performance in which there is not a single random appointment - even for supporting roles.

Yvonne Darya Ursulyak is an almost infernal creature, a girl from a star, radiating both goodness and danger. The plasticity of a wild animal is combined in it with languid female eroticism, the trusting smile of a child is imperceptibly transformed into a devilish mockery. As if neither body, nor eyes, nor lips belong to her, as if someone breaks her from the inside and breaks out.

The royal couple performed by Alexander Feklistov and Agrippina Steklova is a triumph of permissiveness and absolute moral corruption, disguised as respectability and puritanism. They have to go through the most difficult path - from tyrants sated and corrupted by power to mad with fear of losing it all, hunted old people.

The romantic hero of the play - Prince Philip - the actor Mikhail Troinik decomposed into parts how rats are laid out in laboratories, and was horrified to find that "blue blood" is no different from rat blood. What he took for adherence to principles turned out to be pride, what for rebelliousness turned out to be cowardice, and what was for courage turned out to be cowardice.

The split, which has grown into a ruthless war with oneself, with one's true being, with one's reflection, overtakes each participant in the drama. And the king rapes and kills again and again, pulling a latex glove over his hand like a condom, and the secret vice of lust tears the queen's celluloid-clad body, and the knife trembles treacherously in the hands of the prince, bent over Yvonne's throat.

This manic desire to cut the throat of the silent one is one of the main metaphors of the play, as if answering the announcer's question: "Remember the last time you were going to say something and changed your mind because of the possible consequences? What if the minority is the silent majority?"

The population of the parterre after the intermission is renewed by more than half - the "dear" audience begins to run away long before the break, but during the intermission "from the mountains" students descend and as a result the hall remains completely filled, and there is someone to clap on the bows, despite the fact that as before In the case of Nyakroshus, Ostermeier, Lepage, not to mention Wilson, Yazhina's premiere at the Theater of Nations is simply impossible to compare with those of his things that were brought to Moscow from Poland. Yazhina showed an excellent performance, and then all the more surprising because the original source is outdated and raises many questions, the modern theatrical version of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, like Jan Kljata's Macbeth at the Moscow Art Theatre, like another Macbeth by Krzysztof Garbachevsky from Alexandrinka, is a third-rate European theater for export. In the case of Yazhina, unlike Klyata, it is also, we must admit with regret, unbearably dreary, sometimes deadly boring. At the same time, and this is more important for me than the boringness of the spectacle, the heaviness of the action, it is Yvonne by Yazhina, perhaps - if not the most successful, then at least the most meaningful of the six (!!!) productions of Gombrowicz's first play, which I happened to see on Moscow venues over the past ten years: Safonov (in the TsIM), Urnov (by the way, in the Theater of Nations too, but before the arrival of Mironov), Levinsky (in the Hermitage), Lavrenchuk (in the Polish Theater in Moscow) and Mirzoev (in theater named after E. Vakhtangov). I take only those that I watched myself, because there are even more of them (for example, the Cherry Orchard shopping center has its own Yvonne, called Carp in Sour Cream - I haven’t seen it and I’m unlikely to ever get there ).

Yazhina perceives Gombrowicz's early, almost "puppet" play not as a flat anti-totalitarian pamphlet, but does not turn it into a primitive parable about holiness and sacrifice. In general, his performance of all the alternative, so far performed Moscow versions of Yvonne ... reveals similarities only with a semi-amateur, but in its own way amusing (and not boring, unlike others) in the so-called. "Polish Theater in Moscow" - where performers of varying degrees of professionalism played Gombrowicz in Polish, which is not native for most Muscovite studios, in a format close to performance, in the spirit of futuristic dystopia and ... without Yvonne, or rather, with a rubber doll replacing her, an inflatable woman , but .. with Igor Nevedrov in the role of King Ignacy, where I saw Nevedrov for the first time.

At Yazhina, the scenes of the play are interrupted by English-language remarks recorded on a phonogram and translated through monitors (co-author of the stage version - Szczepan Orlowski, voice of the narrator - Emma Dallow), where Salvador Allende and Julian Assange are mentioned, the title of the film "Minority Report" arises in connection with the idea “crime prevention,” some fantastical story about an attempt to control the economy with a computer in Chile in the early 1970s and the penetration of self-censorship into the Internet caused by the voluntary desire of social network users to share the opinion of the majority is voiced - frankly, this speculative nonsense is not that optional, but also on duty, banal (especially in its ritual anti-American message - I wonder where Yazhina would be today without the United States? Would he put pioneer matinees on Lenin's anniversary in the house of culture? Or would he drink himself under a bridge in Paris? In any case, the use of such techniques in Russian, Moscow production today is not only vulgarity, but also foul language), it does not add anything to the performance in terms of content, but, by the way, it performs its rhythmic function as a structural element of the composition, and distracts attention while the installers rearrange the “decorations” consisting of abstract hollow cubes and trapeziums, a giant cut of a "metal" pipe, placed in a gray enclosure, the inner surface of which also serves as a screen for computer installations. On the other hand, the first picture, where Philippe and his friends meet Yvonne for the first time and further, when the prince introduces the shabby little girl to the crowned parents, is solved, despite the grotesqueness of the external image of the characters (costumes, the queen's hairstyle, the plastic mask on the Chamberlain's face) quite traditionally, stylishly but predictable. And from the second picture, in addition to the mentioned English remarks (with quotes provoking a variety of associations, like the Chinese proverb “kill the chicken to scare the monkey”), a real, albeit quite moderate in terms of the degree of radicalism, “cyberpunk” begins.

Well, yes, technical details are, of course, an important aspect of the project, but still, unlike most of the previous Moscow Yvonne ..., the current one gives some reason to talk about the play and the performance in essence. The heroine of Daria Ursulyak, and this is perhaps the most important point, is not ugly or messy, which is easy to imagine from the description and the inertia of the perception of the play through the previous director's interpretations. Yvonne here is an autistic androgyne in what looks like overalls, in boots, with a short “typhoid” haircut; she, of course, is not a beauty in relation to the "glamorous" secular maidens of the "court", but it is difficult to take her for a fearful person, for a homeless person, but for a sick person, which he insisted on in his version, and in two casts offering clearly different diagnoses to choose from , even more so. For the royal family, for the prince, for his entourage, for the father-king and mother-queen, Yvonne, who has strayed to the court by Philip's whim, is the object of manipulation, and in this case not only moral abuse, but also quite specific physical violence. However, very soon the manipulators themselves become dependent on her, thanks to the presence of Yvonne they cease to control themselves, their old sins emerge into the light of day ... - all this, in general, according to the play, according to the plot, but so far this "changeling ' was not so clear. Having placed a kind of socio-psychological experience over Yvonne, the unfortunate experimenters themselves become its victim, turn into guinea pigs, lose control over what is happening and over themselves, do not stand the test.

Maybe not too original, but the characters of the play are curiously presented in the performance, and the actors work at the limit of selflessness. First of all, the performers of the main roles: Daria Ursulyak's Yvonne is at the same time simple in her defenselessness, and mysterious, incomprehensible; Mikhail Troinik, who usually plays the role of brutally boorish, Prince Philip turned out to be unexpectedly refined, in a sense vulnerable (sometimes the actor simply cannot be recognized). The tall and skinny Chamberlain in a long-sleeved robe and with a plastic mask is the sinister character of Sergei Epishev. Whereas Philip's friends are figures of a rather comical nature, especially Kiprian-His Kovalev, and to a lesser extent Kirill-Kirill Byrkin (their kiss with Philip-Troynik in the end of the first act finally finishes off the parterre spectator, so after the break in their places it turns out to be completely different audience, but that's for the best). Coping with the task, portraying the likeness of a "cyborg", Igor Sharoiko-Valentin, mechanistically wandering from corner to corner of the site. It is more difficult than the rest for older actors, no matter how hard Agrippina Steklova and Alexander Feklistov try, but talent, skill and well-known looseness still do not allow them to fully comply with the rules of the game proposed by the director, where internal impassivity and calmness are necessary with the external grotesque of the picture - Steklov then and the case breaks through an open emotion, which, in my opinion, is inappropriate here.

Gombrowicz Witold

Gombrowicz Witold

Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy

Vitold Gombrowicz

Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy

Leonard Bukhov, translated from Polish

W. Gombrowicz (1904 - 1969) - a classic of the Polish avant-garde, who had a great influence on Polish and European literature and drama of the 20th century. The play was written in 1938, but its first production in Poland took place only in the early 1950s. Since then, "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" has not left the stage for more than half a century. Translated into sixteen languages, the play occupies a firm place in the repertoires of theaters around the world. One recent production was by Ingmar Bergman at the Stockholm Drama Theatre.

Publication of the translation: "Modern Dramaturgy", 1996/1. (C)(C)(C)

Characters:

KING OF IGNATIA

QUEEN MARGARITA

PRINCE PHILIP - heir to the throne

CHAMBERLAIN

IZA - court lady

KIRILL - friend of the prince

Yvonne's Aunts

INNOKENTIY - courtier

VALENTIN - footman

Dignitaries, courtiers, beggars, etc.

Place of festivities: trees, benches in the depths, festively dressed audience. At the signal of fanfare enter: KING IGNATIUS, QUEEN MARGARET, PRINCE PHILIP, CHAMMERGER, KIRILL, CYPRIAN, ladies and gentlemen of the court.

QUEEN. What a wonderful sunset.

CHAMBERLAIN. Truly wonderful, your majesty.

QUEEN. Looking at such beauty, a person becomes better.

CHAMBERLAIN. Better, without a doubt.

KING. And in the evening we will play cards.

CHAMBERLAIN. Only Your Majesty is given to combine an innate sense of beauty with your natural propensity to play bridge.

Fits BEGGAR.

What do you want, good man?

BEGGAR. Please provide financial support.

KING. Chamberlain, give him five groszy. Let the people see that we remember their needs!

QUEEN. Give me ten. (Turning towards the sunset.) At the sight of such a sunset!

LADIES. Ah-ah-ah!

KING. What's there - give me fifteen! Let him know his sovereign!

LORD. Ah-ah-ah!

BEGGAR. May the Lord Almighty bless the Most Serene King and may the Most High King of the Lord Most High bless. (Exits singing a song.)

KING. Well, let's go, we shouldn't be late for dinner, because we still need to take a walk around the entire park, fraternally communicate with the people on the day of the national holiday.

Everyone heads for the exit except PRINCE.

And you, Philip, are you staying?

PRINCE (picks up a newspaper lying on the ground). Me for a minute.

KING. Ha ha ha! It's clear! Ha ha ha! He has a date! Just like me at his age! So let's go, ha ha ha!

QUEEN (reproachfully). Ignatius!

Fanfare signal, everyone leaves except PRINCE, KIRILL and KYPRIAN.

KIRILL and KYPRIAN. End of boredom!

PRINCE. Wait a minute, here is the horoscope for today. (Reads.) From twelve to two ... No, not that ... Here! - The period from seven to nine in the evening will bring you a powerful surge of vitality, an increase in individual qualities, and will give impetus to wonderful, albeit risky ideas. This is a watch conducive to bold plans, great deeds...

CYPRIAN. And what is it for us?

PRINCE. ... conducive to success in love affairs.

KIRILL. Then another matter. Look, some girls are spinning over there!

CYPRIAN. Forward! Don't delay. Let's do our duty.

PRINCE. What? What's the other debt? What do you mean?

CYPRIAN. Our duty is to function! Function! Nothing else but to function with blissful joy! We are Young! We are men! We are young men! So let us fulfill our function as young men! Let's give more work to the priests so that they can function! Ordinary division of labor.

KIRILL. Look, a very elegant and seductive lady is coming. And the legs are nothing.

PRINCE. No - how so? Is it the same again? And so on to infinity? Again and again? Again and again?

CYPRIAN. Don't you agree?! What can she think of us?! Of course, again and again! Always!

PRINCE. Don't want.

KIRILL. Do not want? What? What?! Refusing!

CYPRIAN. (surprised). Don't you, prince, feel sweet, carefree pleasure when sweet lips whisper: "yes", as if once again confirming their unchanging readiness?

PRINCE. Of course, of course, naturally ... (Reads.) "contributing to bold plans, great deeds, strengthening individual qualities and sharpening emotions. These watches are not safe for overly proud natures, who are characterized by an overly heightened sense of self-esteem. The cases that you will start in these hours, can be useful, but possibly harmful ... "Well, it's always like that.

ISA enters.

We greet you!

CYPRIAN. With the greatest pleasure!

KIRILL. With admiration!

ISA. Good afternoon What are you, Prince, doing here in seclusion?

PRINCE. I am doing my duty. My father inspires his subjects with his appearance, and with mine I immerse their daughters in the dreams. Why aren't you with the Queen?

ISA. Late. Here I'm chasing. Was on a walk.

PRINCE. Ah, you're chasing. Whom?

ISA. What are you, prince, absent-minded. Why is there such melancholy in his voice? Are you not enjoying life? And that's all I'm busy with.

PRINCE. Me too, and that's why...

PRINCE. Hmm... (Looks at them carefully.)

ALL. So what?

PRINCE. Nothing.

ISA. Nothing. Are you well, Prince?

KIRILL. Cold?

CYPRIAN. Migraine?

PRINCE. No, on the contrary, something just came over me! Something has surged! Believe me, I am literally overwhelmed with emotions!

CYPRIAN (looks around). Oh, nothing blondie. Quite... quite...

PRINCE. Blonde? If you said - brunette, it would not change anything. (Looks around with a depressed look.) Trees and trees... Let something happen.

KIRILL. Oh, and there's another one coming.

CYPRIAN. With aunts!

KIRILL. With aunts!

Enter YVONNE and her two Aunts.

ISA. What's happened?

CYPRIAN. Yes, you look, prince, look, you will die of laughter!

KIRILL. Quiet, quiet, let's hear what they're talking about.

1st Aunt. Let's sit on the bench. Do you see, my child, those young people?

YVONNE (silent).

1st Aunt. Yes, smile, smile, my child.

YVONNE (silent).

2nd Aunt. Why so sluggish? Why are you smiling so languidly, my child?

YVONNE (silent).

2nd Aunt. Yesterday you were out of luck again. And today you are not successful. And tomorrow, too, no one will pay attention to you. Why are you so unattractive, dear? Why not sexy at all? Nobody wants to look at you. The true punishment of God!

1st Aunt. We spent every last penny of our savings to order this floral dress for you. You cannot complain to us.

CYPRIAN. Well, ugly!

ISA (offended). Why same immediately - ugly.

KIRILL. Wet chicken! And the nose turns up!

CYPRIAN. Crybaby! Everything is wrong with her! Let's go show her our contempt! Let's hit the nose!

KIRILL. Yes Yes! This inflated roar would be nice to teach a lesson! Our sacred duty! You go first and I follow you.

They pass with sarcastic mines right in front of Yvonne, and then burst into laughter.

CYPRIAN. Ha ha ha! Right under your nose! Right under your nose!

ISA. Leave her - it doesn't make sense!

1st Aunt (to Yvonne). See what we're going through because of you.

2nd Aunt. She makes everyone laugh at us! God's punishment! I thought that even in my old age, when the end of my female disappointments comes, I can not be afraid that I will seem ridiculous. And now I have grown old, but because of you I continue to endure bullying.

CYPRIAN. Do you hear? Now they are talking to her. Ha ha ha, she deserves it! Get it right!

2nd Aunt. They laugh at us again. But you can’t leave, then they will laugh after us ... But if we stay, they laugh in our face!

1st Aunt (to Yvonne). Why didn't you even move your foot at yesterday's ball, dear child?

2nd Aunt. Why isn't anyone interested in you? Do we enjoy it? We have invested in you all our feminine ambition, and you... Why don't you run skiing?

1st Aunt. Why don't you take up pole vaulting? Other young ladies are jumping.

CYPRIAN. How clumsy she is! Just looking at her annoys me! Damn annoying! This crap just pisses me off! Now I'll go and turn the bench over! How, huh?

KIRILL. No, it's not worth it. Why so much effort? It is enough to show her a finger or wave a hand, or something else like that. Any gesture towards such a creature would be a mockery. (Sneezes.)

2nd Aunt. Here you see? We are already being sneezed on!

ISA. Leave her.

CYPRIAN. No, no, let's do some trick on her. I came up with an idea: I'll pretend to be lame, and she will think that even a lame dog does not come to her for tea. (Intends to go to the bench.)

PRINCE. Wait! I came up with something better!

CYPRIAN. Wow! I give up my seat!

KIRILL. What did you come up with? Looks like you're about to do something unimaginable!

PRINCE (laughs, covering his mouth with a handkerchief). Fortel - ha-ha-ha, fortel! (Approaches the bench.) Allow me to introduce myself. I am His Highness Prince Philip, son of the King.

Aunts. Ah-ah-ah!

PRINCE. I see, dear ladies, you have some problems with this nice young lady. Why is she so apathetic?

1st Aunt. Just trouble! She has some kind of organic ailment. The circulation is sluggish.

2nd Aunt. And from this puffiness in winter, and mustiness in summer. In the autumn she has a constant runny nose, but in the spring - headaches.

PRINCE. Excuse me, you are literally at a loss as to which time of the year to prefer. And no medication helps?

1st Aunt. Doctors say: if she were livelier, more cheerful, blood circulation would increase and all ailments would stop.

PRINCE. Then why can't her mood improve?

1st Aunt. Due to poor circulation.

PRINCE. So, if it becomes more alive, the circulation will increase, and if the circulation increases, then it will become more alive. Funny situation. Some kind of vicious circle. Hmm... of course, yes... you know...

2nd Aunt. You, Prince, of course, are being ironic. Well, we can't ban it.

PRINCE. I'm being ironic? No, I'm not ironic. Too serious right now. Don't you feel a certain strengthening of your individual qualities, a surge of vitality - don't you feel intoxicated?

1st Aunt. We don't experience anything, it's just a little chilly.

PRINCE. Strange! (To Yvonne.) And you - don't you feel anything either?

YVONNE (silent).

2nd Aunt. Where is she, what can she feel?

PRINCE. You know, when I look at you, I'm tempted to do something to you. For example, take on a leash and drive forward, or deliver milk to you, or prick you with a pin, or mimic. Your appearance annoys me, you are like a red rag, you provoke. Yes! There are people, as if created in order to unbalance others, annoy, drive them to madness. Such people exist, and each of them affects only a specific person. Oh! How you sit, how you touch with those fingers of yours, how you dangle with your foot! Unheard of! Just wonderful! Amazing! How do you do it?

YVONNE (silent).

PRINCE. Oh, how silent you are! How silent you are! And what an offended look! And you look just wonderful - like an offended queen! All filled with anger and resentment - oh, how much dignity and pretension you have! No, I'm going crazy. Everyone has their own creature, leading him into a state of delirium tremens, and you are such a creature created for me! And you will be mine! Cyril, Cyprian!

KIRILL and KIPRIAN come up.

Allow me to introduce you to this insulted queen, this proud Anemia! Look how she moved...

In Yvonne, directed by Grzegorz Jażyna, the idea that a person in this world is afraid to be different is important. Photo: Press Service of the Theater of Nations

They put pressure on her - and she chokes. Because every personality in itself is like a bone in the throat.