The play Forest at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, buy tickets. Towards the end of the past year, the Art Theater burst into the brightest and most memorable premiere of the current season. Kirill Serebrennikov released Ostrovsky's "Forest" on the big stage of the Moscow Art Theater.

Oleg Zintsov.

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Ostrovsky’s “Forest” sprouted during the Soviet era (Vedomosti, 01/11/2005).

Marina Zayonts. .

"The Forest" by A. N. Ostrovsky, staged by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Moscow Art Theater.

One of the wonders of classical Russian drama, Ostrovsky's "The Forest" is written in such a way that each director will certainly have to make a choice which of the two main plot lines of the play to take as the main one. Or focus on the events in the Penki estate, where the landowner Gurmyzhskaya, not in her early youth, sells timber, pines for the young Alexis Bulanov and eventually marries him to herself. Or enlarge the roles of two traveling actors, the tragedian Neschastlivtsev and the comedian Schastlivtsev, who have become household names.

As a matter of fact, the average interpretation of "The Forest" consists of a collision of two worlds - a dense landowner swamp and the freedom of a provincial theater, the two knights of which do not have a penny in their pockets, but do not lack nobility.

Raisa Pavlovna Gurmyzhskaya (by the way, the name of Ostrovsky’s heroine is not “Ostrovsky”, but as if from a Soviet comedy) lives in clothes and interiors copied from the German magazine “Neckermann” miraculously brought and read to holes by her girlfriends. So the girlfriends themselves are right there - the director has sharply increased the concentration of women in the list of characters, instead of neighbors Uara Kirillovich and Evgeniy Apollonovich, neighbors appeared in "The Forest" - Uara Kirillovna and Evgenia Apollonovna (the latter, by the way, is charmingly and stylishly played by a veteran of the Moscow Art Theater troupe Kira Nikolaevna Golovko, who at one time saw Meyerhold’s “The Forest” and played Aksyusha in the Moscow Art Theater “The Forest” in 1948). And instead of the elderly servant Karp, there are a couple of hilariously funny maids in starched tattoos, exactly from the party special buffet. In general, the play contains many clearly recognizable and very well-functioning signs, details and sounds of the era: crystal chandeliers and radio, home chairs and simple attractions from the playground, a gray passbook in a box and huge photo wallpapers that cover the entire stage, Lolita Thores and Vysotsky’s song to guitar. Plus a children's choir on stage, giving the whole atmosphere of "The Forest" not only a musical mood, but also a logical completeness.

In the nostalgic hell of Soviet childhood, in this “city of women” by Kirill Serebrennikov, the uncontrollable passion of an aging lady for a young man arises and grows. The director seems to have awakened Natalya Tenyakova from an actor’s slumber that had lasted for years: she carefully and courageously traces the transformation of an aunt with ridiculous pigtails into a lustful, broken hetaera in a short dress and high boots. You should see how Mrs. Tenyakova glances sideways at the young man doing home gymnastics in shorts and a T-shirt. And how the unusually talented young actor Yuri Chursin plays a different transformation, from an awkward ugly duckling to a boorish housekeeper, is also a must see.

Kirill Serebrennikov leads his heroes to a happy epilogue and at the same time to a deadly dead end: it is no coincidence that already in the shadow of the closing curtain, the maidservant Ulita manages to place a funeral wreath at Gurmyzhskaya’s feet. The heroine Evgenia Dobrovolskaya in the play also had moments of longed-for female emancipation - the middle-aged, homeless klutz Arkashka Schastlivtsev could have come in handy. But unfortunately, the character of Avangard Leontyev turned out to be an actor, and disappointment with his social status turned out to be stronger for Julitta than the temptation of the flesh. In the new Moscow Art Theater "Forest" the theater has no magnetic power at all, and poor relative Aksyusha runs away from the estate not at all because Neschastlivtsev initiated her into an actress. Judging by the mood of her fiancé Peter, the young people are going to hippie and have a blast on the dance floors.

It is with the theme of the theater that the main mistake of this boldly and talentedly conceived and generally captivatingly performed performance is connected. In my opinion, the director’s unfortunate mistake was the appointment of Dmitry Nazarov to the role of Neschastlivtsev. Mr. Nazarov, an actor of heroic build, sweeping gestures and unbridled temperament, works full-bloodedly and energetically, not below his capabilities. But this is just bad: it’s as if his Neschastlivtsev wandered into the Moscow Art Theater “Forest” from a completely different performance. And against his will, simply due to his natural abilities, Mr. Nazarov almost broke the entire director’s game, almost trampled on the main theme. It is quite possible that he will receive the main portion of the audience's applause. But don't delude yourself. After all, since the director’s plan is connected with a certain era, one should remember that those years in question were marked by a completely different type of acting, non-showy, merging with life and shunning buskins. What would happen if a luxurious, respected wardrobe from another era were suddenly introduced into the interiors of the discreet chic of the 70s?

Newspaper, December 27, 2004

Gleb Sitkovsky

"Your bison children do not want to die out"

"Forest" at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

It’s becoming more and more interesting to follow the Moscow Art Theater adventures of Kirill Serebrennikov. Serebrennikov’s clear directorial style and inventiveness in terms of mise-en-scenes instantly made him a persona grata for all sorts of Moscow theaters, but in the last two seasons this director was almost privatized by the savvy producer Oleg Tabakov, in whose hands Serebrennikov became addicted to the classics. A year after Gorky’s controversial “The Bourgeois,” the director took on Ostrovsky’s play “The Forest,” achieving much more significant success.

Serebrennikov is not a thinker, he is an inventor. Instead of hardworkingly carving out well-trodden paths for himself through dense masses of text, he every time strives to slip through the cracks, to slide along a smooth surface - from bump to bump, from one spectacular number to another. Not every play will produce such a trick, but if you come off a bump, you know, you can knock off your tailbone.

But in the case of Ostrovsky’s play, such an exciting slalom gave impressive results: it is clear that in this “Forest” Serebrennikov had studied all the paths ahead of time.

The suffering of the sweet girl Aksyusha (Anastasia Skorik), who is not allowed to marry by the mistress of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, was not very interesting to Serebrennikov, and this role itself was transferred from the main to the secondary. The two strongest acting works and the two obvious semantic accents of the performance are Gurmyzhskaya (Natalia Tenyakova) and Neschastlivtsev (Dmitry Nazarov). Forest and freedom. And, since such opposition has arisen, then Peter (Oleg Mazurov), pining for Aksyusha, cannot do without Vysotsky’s song about the disastrous forest: “Your world is a sorcerer for thousands of years...”

The thousand-year-old forest of the Soviet people does not relax its grip, its branches clinging to people, and the sacred melody goes on and on, as if on a broken record. Only sometimes, somewhere high in the branches, a thought flashes with a neon red light, jumping into the head of one forest dweller, then another: “SHOULD I NOT HUCK MYSELF?” The culmination of Sererenikov's performance is the wedding revelry in the restaurant accompanied by the same mournful Pakhmutova. A whole variety act was created: the young well-intentioned groom of Raisa Pavlovna (Yuri Chursin), stamping his heel on the ground, turns into the spitting image of Vladimir Vladimirovich. The inauguration (“Gentlemen, although I am young, I take not only my own, but also public affairs very close to my heart and would like to serve society”) takes place to the groans of a laughing audience.

All this bombast and outright farce did not, oddly enough, come into any significant conflict with Ostrovsky’s text, and such an approach to the old play could not help but recall the legendary production of Meyerhold’s “The Forest” in 1924. It was to Meyerhold that Kirill Serebrennikov dedicated his performance, and this dedication did not seem forced. In the end, the famous “montage of attractions” is clearly based on Sererenikov’s part.

Taking on Ostrovsky, he planted a whole “forest” of attractions - most of them turned out to be appropriate and witty.

NG, December 27, 2004

Grigory Zaslavsky

Good in the forest!

Ostrovsky's Comedy at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

“The Forest,” directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, is the best thing that could be seen this season. Imagine: Schastlivtsev (Avangard Leontiev) comes out with three metal nets for eggs, where he has some Soviet plays, wearing glasses taped to the bridge of his nose and tied with an elastic band that ruffles the sparse growth on the back of his head. And the little goatee is torn off from his chin at the first request of Neschastlivtsev (Dmitry Nazarov).

It's a prop, brother! And the merchant Vosmibratov (Alexander Mokhov), coming to woo, brings with him the children’s choir “Voskhod” - about thirty people: “A forbidden melody, a forbidden distance, the light of a crystal dawn - a light rising above the world...”

Instead of a forest in the play, there are photo wallpapers (set design by Nikolai Simonov), and the brother-actors meet not in a clearing, but in the station buffet, where a dozen mugs of beer are passed at the counter with conversations and memories, and business travelers, business travelers pass by... And when he talks Happy people talk about living with relatives and come to a terrible thought, the famous question “Should I hang myself?”

a red neon ribbon lights up above their heads.

How good Tenyakova is! How fearless, how extreme, how willingly she goes to all the director’s provocations. And Kira Golovko, who - so as not to try to calculate her age, we will refer to another date, from the program: she joined the Art Theater troupe in 1938. And, despite her maturity, she hooligans along with the others, finding special pleasure in the fact that in her game there is neither academic stiffness nor respect for faded shadows.

From the program you can find out that the creators of the play dedicate their interpretation of “The Forest” to “the Soviet Theater and Vsevolod Meyerhold.” With Meyerhold it’s clear: in the mid-20s he staged “The Forest,” where there was also a lot of self-will.

Overwhelmed by the feeling, Aksyusha grabbed the rope and began to circle, lifting her feet off the ground. There was such an attraction called “giant steps”.

In Serebrennikov, Aksyusha also rises above the stage, with wings behind her back. Having gathered into actresses, to the question “Are you going?”

answers instantly with a practiced actor's tongue twister: "I'm driving through potholes, I won't get out of potholes."

When Bulanov (Yuri Chursin, who made his successful debut on the Moscow Art Theater stage) gets married, and Gurmyzhskaya accordingly gets married, she appears in over-the-knee patent leather boots and a short white dress, he in a formal suit. He comes up to the microphone and says what he is supposed to say. Gurmyzhskaya advised him to calm down, and metallic notes appeared in Bulanov’s voice, his speech moved in familiar short “rushes”, with intonations remembered by the public from a recent three-hour conversation with the journalistic community... And then there was the choir - forming up and singing “Belovezhskaya Pushcha”.

For the Moscow Art Theater, which is in no hurry to remove the YUKOS emblem from programs and posters, this innocent fun has turned into a civic act. The audience instantly “deciphered” all the hints and began to applaud with such enthusiasm that the applause almost disrupted the continuation of the performance.

Izvestia, December 27, 2004

Marina Davydova

To the "Forest" in front

Towards the end of the past year, the Art Theater burst into the brightest and most memorable premiere of the current season. Kirill Serebrennikov released Ostrovsky's "Forest" on the big stage of the Moscow Art Theater.

Serebrennikov has always been something of an outsider for the Russian theater. Now, after the premiere of "The Forest", it has finally become clear why.

The action of "The Forest" is transferred to the end of the Russian sixties with all the ensuing visual and musical consequences - passbooks, an entryway, supposedly Venetian glass chandeliers, bamboo-like door curtains, a chest-like receiver, an orange women's slip... Raisa's estate itself Pavlovna Gurmyzhskaya (Natalia Tenyakova) resembles some kind of boarding house for first-category vacationers with a banquet hall and a concert piano. Clearly off-season. The owner of the copper mountain, in the sense of a boarding house, is suffering from melancholy. All around is the female kingdom.

The second storyline - the aforementioned Peter (Oleg Mazurov) and Aksyusha (Anastasia Skorik) - was also well conceived (these children of the sexual revolution, humming to Vysotsky’s guitar, didn’t give a damn about any moral code), but played weaker. Aksyusha is so clumsy in her passionate impulses that the director always has to cover her up with various tricks, including flying on a longue under the grate, but this does not save the theme as a whole. Finally, the third, perhaps the most important line - the theme of the theater, the free acting, the lucky and the unlucky, despising the philistine world of owl-nobles and the related world of high society - was played superbly (and who would doubt that the acting duo Dmitry Nazarov - Avangard Leontyev does not disappoint), but was conceived less convincingly. The world of provincial tragedians and comedians of pre-revolutionary Russia, even putting the poems of the disgraced Brodsky into the mouth of Neschastlivtsev, is difficult to transform into the semi-dissident acting bohemia of Soviet Russia. These two worlds existed according to different laws, and by and large they are united only by their love for strong drinks, clearly demonstrated by the brilliant duet. The savory acting gags with which the Moscow Art Theater production is generally full (how the impatient Schastlivtsev, unbuttoning Ulita’s dress on the back, puts glasses on his nose, how Gurmyzhsky touchingly corrects Neschastlivtsev’s wig, which has slipped off in an argument), save the shortcomings of the concept.

These gags - or, more simply put, the specifically Russian benefit style of acting - combined with the principles of the theatrical European avant-garde (only a blind person would not notice that in the scenographic design of this performance Christophe Marthaler spent the night together with his faithful ally Anna Fibrok) and create the special style of Kirill Serebrennikov, around which the theater community never tires of breaking their spears, as if forgetting that having your own style in itself is synonymous with talent. It is confusing, however, that towards the end, this style, as if by sin, begins to slide into pure socialist art, and from it - generally into some kind of “Funny Panorama”, where Gurmyzhskaya in a short dress resembles Alla Pugacheva, and her Komsomol husband with well-washed cheeks - a young clone of GDP. I don’t understand, for the life of me, why, if so many great things have been invented, it is necessary to leave what was invented so-so or was not thought out at all (for example, the attempt to turn Julitta into Katerina from “The Thunderstorm”).

Serebrennikov's performance is generally very redundant and uneven. Behind its postmodernist “forest”, which smells tartly of freshness and beckons into its wilds, sometimes you can’t make out the trees. But in everything he does, there is such a drive, such a powerful energy of delusion, such a desire to be modern, that this in itself is worth a lot. After all, theater is generally an art for contemporaries. And only those who hear the voice of time should practice this art. Kirill Serebrennikov hears him.

Vremya Novostei, December 27, 2004

Anna Gordeeva

For whom the wedding, for whom the truth

Kirill Serebrennikov staged “Forest” at the Moscow Art Theater

Seventies?

The seventies, but not the 19th century (when Ostrovsky wrote “The Forest”), but the 20th. Kirill Serebrennikov brought us a hundred years closer to the story of a fifty-year-old lady who married a high school student and two actors who wandered into her estate.

Serebrennikov is a passionate inventor, a bright genius.

He rushes to every remark and colors it up (“Please give me a pen” - and Gurmyzhskaya holds out her hand to have her blood pressure taken; Schastlivtsev’s thought “should I hang myself” is illuminated by light bulbs and turns out to be a slogan hanging in the air). But juggling with details, the director rigidly constructs the performance - in the finale the lines precisely converge.

One line - Gurmyzhskaya and Bulanov. Gurmyzhskaya by Natalia Tenyakova is a masterpiece. Petty-cunning and lordly-impressive; not very smart, but significant; during the dialogue, counting the rings on the hands of the interlocutor; for a wedding with a high school student, dressing a la Alla Pugacheva (a short white coat and black boots above the knees) and walking in this outfit so defiantly and happily that it would not even occur to you to laugh.

And there are no middle options here. Aksinya (Anastasia Skorik), who did not follow the acting path, but chose domestic happiness with the timid Peter, clearly loses: in the play her husband is a merchant calf, here he is the son of an entrepreneur (again “time fails”; in the 70s - the director of the base ?) with gangster connections and the same manners. Nothing good will come out of their marriage. (It’s an excellent idea: at the moment when Peter - Oleg Mazurov - needs to restrain Aksinya, he sings Vysotsky - both because he doesn’t have his own words, and because this is a sign of romance familiar to the young bandit.) The rulers are having a wedding (inauguration?) , the actors go off to wander penniless. It’s interesting that the current Moscow Art Theater - rich, favored, prosperous - can speak out so harshly.

This is what it means to welcome young directors.

Rossiyskaya Gazeta, December 27, 2004

Alena Karas

More dense than the forest

Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov showed another play by Ostrovsky

In THE FOREST, Kirill Serebrennikov finally secured his position as the most socially oriented director of the new generation.

All other characters live in a stagnant world, at the “end of a beautiful era”: the death of the Soviet empire has not yet been signed in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, but the song about Belovezhskaya Pushcha already heralds the end of all social ideals and values. Gurmyzhskaya's house is a kind of paradise for the socialist nomenklatura, party widows and government wives. In this Belovezhskaya Pushcha, women dominate in strength and sensual power, while men are just pathetic and cynical opportunists. The Gurmyzhskaya mansion is designed in the fashion of the late 70s of the last century. But Serebrennikov does not insist on signs of the era of “stagnation.”

When Vosmibratov (Alexander Mokhov) bursts into the house, the style of gangster capitalism of the early 90s is clearly read in his habits, and in his infantile son Petrusha (Oleg Mazurov), as well as in the young opportunist Bulanov, a clear greeting to the most recent times can be heard. Actually, before us is the story of how the era of Russian “yuppies” was born - indifferent clerks who adapted to any power at the turn of the millennium.

Perhaps the most radical metamorphoses occurred with a couple of lovers, with Aksyusha and Peter. Devoid of illusions, the young heroine of Anastasia Skorik is ready for any turn of her fate, and when Neschastlivtsev invites her to become an actress, she easily agrees. Placing bets is so real. And if the spineless Petrusha is not ready for decisive action, it is better to leave him and hit the road.

Gradually, as the play progresses, Alexis Bulanov (Yuri Chursin) will undergo new metamorphoses, first dressing as a fashionable “major”, and then as an ambitious “yuppie” in an elegant suit.

His “inaugural” speech as the future husband of the wealthy landowner Gurmyzhskaya is a brilliant parody of the pragmatists of the new Russian forest. But the meaning of this “Forest” is by no means the boldness of direct parody. Behind the hero of Yuri Chursin one can discern a more dangerous phenomenon - young, devastated cynics of the new era, following any regime together. Serebrennikov composed his most decisive opus, in no way inferior to the social criticism of his Berlin colleague in Ibsen's play "Nora", recently shown in Moscow.

Russian Courier, December 28, 2004

Elena Yampolskaya

Gurmyzhskaya Pushcha

"Forest". Main stage of the Moscow Art Theater, production by Kirill Serebrennikov, set designer - Nikolai Simonov. Cast: Natalya Tenyakova, Kira Golovko, Raisa Maksimova, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, Dmitry Nazarov, Avangard Leontyev, Alexander Mokhov, Yuri Chursin, Oleg Mazurov

Mr. Ostrovsky's work "The Forest" is positioned as a comedy. This reflected, to put it mildly, a peculiar idea of ​​the nature of the funny, which has been characteristic of our authors from time immemorial.

Let's take "Forest" as an example.

A rich lady - gray hair in a hairpiece, a demon in the rib - was inflamed with passion for the handsome young man and drove her own nephew out of the house.

The nephew, a man no longer young, without a penny of money and any firm hopes for the future, trudges around Russia, covering absolutely fantastic distances on his own two feet (between Kerch and Vologda, according to my calculations, about 1800 km). A pretty girl lives with the above-mentioned lady as a poor relative, without a dowry, and throws herself into the pool due to unhappy love.

However, they take her out, give her artificial respiration, after which they first offer her a creative field - to wander around Russia following two losers, and then give her 1000 (in words - one thousand) rubles so that she can marry a worthless daddy's boy and exchange her hateful house Gurmyzhskaya on the high fence of Vosmibratov’s fist...

You'll want to laugh.

A serious conversation between Gennady Demyanovich and Aksyusha takes place on the playground, among various rocking carousels.

Schastlivtsev makes an appointment with Ulita on a park bench (there are not enough sculptures nearby: if not a girl with an oar, then a pioneer with a bugle); and unmasking herself in front of her new lover, Julitta remains in a creepy Soviet jumpsuit from the “once you see it, you won’t forget it” series. Petya strums Vysotsky’s guitar: “You live in an enchanted wild forest, from where it is impossible to leave,” absolutely accurately characterizing Aksyusha’s situation, but in vain promising her a bright castle with a balcony overlooking the sea.

Bulanov says “you must be baptized”, but he himself does “be ready” with both hands. “Please give me a pen” - meaning the pressure gauge cuff - Gurmyzhskaya is measuring her blood pressure. The verb “to call” no longer denotes a bell for calling a footman, but an ordinary telephone set, albeit of an antique appearance, in modern times.

It is clear that we are facing a human tragedy, an aunt’s dream, that Bulanov will milk the old fool and throw him away, and those who came to draw up a will and ended up at the festive table did not in vain drag wreaths with them.

The wedding bells will sound like a death knell for Gurmyzhskaya.

Here he stands, the groom, at the solemn moment of inauguration... excuse me, engagement. Feet shoulder-width apart, hands in place, and the voice is so insinuating, and the smile is so pure, and the gaze is so transparent. And the audience roars with laughter, because there is nothing left for us except laughter. Russia, an old fool, fell in love with a young man.

In "The Forest" not only do ends meet, but, most importantly, the actors in Three Pines do not wander. If at first there is a feeling that Ostrovsky’s text and Serebrennikov’s visuals are stretched by two parallel lines, then the point of intersection of these lines is found quite soon - in the waiting room, where, under the roar of electric trains, Schastlivtsev and Neschastlivtsev met over a glass of beer.

They are conducting an extremely relevant dialogue about the death of the performing arts, and the more empty dishes on the counter, the greater the pathos.

Moreover, the drinking companions were awkwardly perched on buskins made of beer mugs. Schastlivtsev’s dangerous thought: “Should I hang myself?” written in height with colored light bulbs. It’s like “Happy New Year 1975, dear comrades!” or "Glory to the CPSU!"

Literally a few details transform the essentially unchanged space from Gurmyzhskaya’s house into a spit-stained station buffet, and it, in turn, into the banquet hall of the only restaurant in the entire area. What is this catering paradise called? Well, of course, “Should I hang myself?”...

Arkashka and Gennady Demyanich, Avangard Leontyev and Dmitry Nazarov are a brilliant duet. They play completely differently, demonstrating two types of humor.

Serebrennikov's performance is dedicated to "The Soviet Theater and Vsevolod Meyerhold."

In fact, in my opinion, it was made in memory of our childhood - the childhood of the post-post-Meyerhold generation.

And childhood, even though it is school and stagnant, is impossible to remember otherwise than with nostalgic tenderness. Well, I can’t accept Neschastlivtsev’s guilty verdict against the inhabitants of the Penka estate (the one five miles from the city of Kalinov, where Katerina drowned herself).

Are these ladies at the age of elegance “owls and owls”, “the offspring of crocodiles”?

They are from my childhood. I simply cannot help but love them.

The musical refrain of "Forests" is Pakhmutov's "Belovezhskaya Pushcha". A song overloaded with meanings: firstly, “forest” equals “forest”; secondly, when Bulanov, in the guise of VVP, performs it together with a lovely children’s choir, there is no escaping the political allusions; and finally (don’t care about all the hints) the audience is almost beginning to sing out the chorus with soulful and solidarity.

“Your bison children don’t want to die out,” - what generation in this country is being sung about?

Or rather, which generation does this not apply to?

And there will also be a common final “Letka-enka”... Oh, damn, I’m even sorry to tell you everything. It’s a pity that it won’t be a surprise to you about what so pleased, amazed and touched me for three and a half hours.

Kirill Serebrennikov, who stages classics, is true to himself, who stages classics. This explanation, I think, is important, since he is perhaps the only one of the new generation of directors who retains interest and taste for new drama, and the plays of the Presnyakov brothers in his productions, one after another, acquire a successful and happy stage life.

But when Serebrennikov takes on classical drama ("Sweet-voiced Bird of Youth" in Sovremennik, "Bourgeois" in the Moscow Art Theater, now - "Forest"), questions begin. With the era of the play, it is shifted closer to the calendar existence of our contemporaries. With artists, big and very famous ones are always taken. Here Serebrennikov looks like a seasoned and strong professional, who knows by heart how, quite traditionally, according to his role, to stage a play for a troupe.

The artist Nikolai Simonov also fills the space of the game with details that he probably remembers from childhood. Here it is, socialist chic: brown wooden panels, satin curtains, crystal chandeliers made in Czechoslovakia, crocodile-shaped metal carousels in the park (we all rode a little of them). But the poisonous lighting of the backdrops or the silvery “rain” of the curtain are, as it were, something of the present, boring, it’s true, but certainly not the day before yesterday. There are also photo wallpapers with forest views. I remember this is how those who had acquaintances in the trading environment decorated their apartments. The merchant Vosmibratov - Alexander Mokhov and his son Peter - Oleg Mazurov wear leather jackets and coats from the era of developed socialism.

Therefore, the tedious question is: what is the play about? - Shall we not ask? And here we will!

Although this wedding is already a perfect stage, a concert number.

Bulanov, with his speech into the microphone, imitates the current President of the Russian Federation.

The ubiquitous children's choir (music school named after I.I. Radchenko, conductor Galina Radchenko) starts the polyphonic "Belovezhskaya Pushcha". Wonderful, dressed-up old women, Milonova - Kira Golovko and Bodaeva - Raisa Maksimova, are walking around - either museum workers or trade unionists. In this hopelessly soviet ecstasy - apotheosis, which, by the way, suspiciously often sprouts in our lives, Gennady Demyanich Neschastlivtsev had a blast.

He sang French chanson beautifully.

I realized that it was inappropriate. He barked at Arkashka: “Hand up, comrade!”, and they, darlings, went through the cities and villages, leaving the wedding party to finish eating their salads and herrings.

If "The Forest" had played about the new Russians, it would have come out flat and rude. If it were on estates, with boots and undershirts, the director would be blamed for the lack of new forms.

Serebrennikov went to an era that still evokes vivid memories for everyone, even the youngest. As you know, the favorite slogan of this time was “a feeling of deep satisfaction.” The scrappy concept of the performance does not evoke this bright feeling. Of course, it is a long way from new forms.

The action of Ostrovsky's play at the Moscow Art Theater is moved 100 years into the future. That is, not in “today,” as in Ostermeyer’s “The Burrow,” which was recently shown in Moscow, but in the early 1970s, where, for example, the action of another Ostermeyer production took place, “Kinfolk,” very close to the new “Forest” in degrees of sarcasm. At the same time, by the way, the Riga "Inspector General" by Alvis Hermanis, played in the interior of a Soviet canteen, from which, it seems, two obese cooks came to the "Forest", also got stuck.

It’s almost unnecessary to explain why the 1970s - for all three directors (Ostermeier, Hermanis, Serebrennikov) this is the time of childhood. But if in Alvis Hermanis’s play the smell of rancid butter and fried potatoes caused a sharp attack of pity and nostalgia through laughter, then one can only be moved by “The Forest” as a fool. There’s even the phrase “Shouldn’t I hang myself?”

flashes not in Arkashka Schastlivtsev’s story, but right above the stage - in clumsy luminous letters.

The young man took root with Bulanov (Yuri Chursin), who in the finale is married to Gurmyzhskaya, meaner, smarter and therefore luckier than everyone else, but Aksyusha (Anastasia Skorik) and Peter (Oleg Mazurov), who plays a Vysotsky song with a guitar, are not fundamentally different from him. It would be nice if this “Forest” were a nature reserve, but Serebrennikov does not fuss and stuns the audience with a rude, pamphlet-like ending: upon taking office as her husband, the wonderfully transformed Alexis Bulanov reads the inaugural speech in a recognizable presidential manner.

In itself, the trick in the spirit of Maxim Galkin is quite harmless, and the audience willingly laughs: the TV variety show really teaches us to relate a joke to its context. Meanwhile, Serebrennikov made the first Russian performance in many years, in which accusatory pathos was consistently and clearly voiced. Not at a specific address, of course - this “Forest” is generally about where things came from.

Serebrennikov's "Forest" is a quagmire of suppressed sexual desires.

The longing of the viscous, sucking, female era for a powerful hand.

For clarity, the neighbors are turned into old women neighbors, enviously discussing the young owner's beneficiary. Natalya Tenyakova fearlessly plays the lust of the decrepit Gurmyzhskaya, and even the maid Ulita (Evgenia Dobrovolskaya) in this sense is in no way inferior to the mistress. In this nutritious environment, notorious youths logically flourish, moving from ingratiation to rudeness.

There is no one to save here, and no one needs saving. But should someone at least try? Schastlivtsev and Neschastlivtsev, two poor comedians, the personification of the acting free spirit, at any glance, wandered into this “Forest” from a completely different era and another theater. Having excellently played out a meeting in the station buffet over a dozen glasses of beer, the huge Dmitry Nazarov and the nimble Avangard Leontyev begin to bend the traditional line, presenting their characters exactly as is customary in the average production of Ostrovsky's play.

Everything falls into place only when Nazarov-Neschastlivtsev opens a shabby suitcase, takes out fake white wings from there and gives them to Aksyusha.

"The Forest" by A. N. Ostrovsky, staged by Kirill Serebrennikov at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, became a real sensation of the Moscow theater season

IT'S REALLY, YOU NEVER know how our word will respond. Only critics unanimously complained (after the end of the NET festival) that we had stopped creating large, significant performances on big stages that were relevant and correlated with real life, and Kirill Serebrennikov staged just such a performance. It’s tempting to say that the director shook up the old days here (meaning the successes of the Soviet theater of the 60s and 70s, this kind of performances cracked like nuts) and proved that our theatrical community still has gunpowder in its flasks. It will sound banal, of course, but Serebrennikov really shook up this antiquity like a stale feather bed, gave it a modern presentation, spun it at a frantic pace and shot - right on target. In any case, we haven’t seen such wild, crazy success for a long time. We are not talking here about the final applause, which is easily distributed right and left, but about the complete and absolutely happy merging of the audience and the stage, when almost every gesture that is important for the director was understood and received by the audience with a bang.

Actually, it’s written in the program: the newest Moscow Art Theater “Forest” is dedicated to “the Soviet Theater and Vsevolod Meyerhold.”

Just like Meyerhold once did in his legendary “Forest,” Serebrennikov took a classic play into his hands to speak about the present day.

Not only about the turn of the 60-70s of the last century, where the action of Ostrovsky’s play was transferred, is discussed in his performance, but also about you and me. That is, about what will happen after Raisa Pavlovna Gurmyzhskaya, a lady of considerable age, gets married to young Alexis Bulanov, and two actors - Gennady Neschastlivtsev and Arkashka Schastlivtsev - finally shake off their nobility and dissolve in the Russian expanses.

Instead of a forest across the entire width of the scene, there are photo wallpapers. Massive radio, Romanian furniture, Czech chandelier. The Penka estate of the landowner Gurmyzhskaya turned into a kind of boarding house for party workers (set design by Nikolai Simonov). Fat maids in starched white aprons scurry back and forth, a piano stands in the banquet hall.

For the director, everything is important here, Golovko’s age, Chursin’s youth, and the children appearing on stage. Rapidly changing times are the main thing in this hilariously funny performance. And the game with Meyerhold’s “Forest” was not started by chance; here, in addition to the direct roll call, you can read a lot of interesting things.

And of course, the actors Schastlivtsev (Avangard Leontiev) and Neschastlivtsev (Dmitry Nazarov) are not spared from lyricism, although they are associated with many comic tricks, generously scattered throughout the performance. Nazarov and Leontyev play luxuriously, sweepingly and freely, but they, violent, self-willed artists from God, were brought here into the general channel, into the main, dominant theme. During the years of revolutionary romanticism, Meyerhold was inspired by the idea of ​​​​the triumph of comedy over life, his wandering free artists left Penki as winners; with Serebrennikov today, alas, everything is not like that. Here life is on its own, and the theater is on its own. They don't influence each other, even if they hang themselves.

By the way, hanging over this entire Soviet dead kingdom, with lit bulbs shimmering, is a question, voiced comically by Arkashka: “Should I hang myself?” Well, these actors are free from state theaters, they don’t play in anniversary party plays, they dissent on the sly, they read Brodsky from the stage (Neschastlivtsev comes to his aunt with this number), so what? Nothing. Bulanov (and everyone else) is like water off a duck's back. He’ll take the artists’ autograph, drink some vodka, and get ready for the wedding.

The noble eccentric artists leave the stage beautifully (and what else is left for them), and everyone else, lined up behind each other’s heads, obediently dances the tap-hole. Jumping vigorously from the 70s of the bygone century straight to the present day.

Notes from an amateur.

Branded emerald programs that are sold at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater well satisfy the hunger for information - it tells the repertoire, the history of the production, its participants, biographies of actors and creators, there is even a glossary and many photographs. How will one of the most famous modern theater directors (including scandalous ones) Kirill Serebrennikov satisfy the audience’s spiritual hunger?

The action is transferred from a 19th-century estate to the 70s of the last century, to a Soviet retro setting, where part of the interior you can see a Rigonda radio, a crystal chandelier, and in the children's courtyard from the past there is a wooden bench, a swing and steel horizontal bars and young people listen to jazz . The backdrops, replacing each other, depict a forest, sometimes autumn, bright red, sometimes winter, white and blue.

The characters are also “modernized” and actualized to the point of scandalousness: Gurmyzhskaya has turned from an imposing, sedate landowner into a pretentious, domineering pensioner, talking cheekily to everyone in a nasal, seemingly drunken voice. Always dissatisfied with everyone, insolent, she has one passion - to marry young Alexis; the landowner neighbors became old friends of Milonova and Bodaeva, who loved to gossip together, lounging in armchairs; young people, without exception, have become stupid, imbued with cynicism and exceptional pragmatism: Bulanov is now an opportunistic gigolo and hipster, jumping around the stage like a Playboy bunny; Aksyusha and Peter are two impudent, frivolous and clueless teenagers, overwhelmed by the effects of hormones, Peter has become an impulsive idiot with slicked-back hair. Julitta has become younger and with her stupidity, obsession and activity gives a head start to everyone else, bringing dynamics to the action, frantically serving her mistress.

The bright duet of Neschastlivtsev and Schastlivtsev, performed by Dmitry Nazarov and Avangard Leontyev, deserves a special word, tightly captivating the attention of the audience with its selfless and reckless performance. There is a feeling that the actors are enjoying their roles, they cause laughter. This half-mad couple of two wandering artists who love to give in, a tragedian and a comedian, ragamuffins and scoundrels, is remembered almost more than everything else in the play. Neschastlivtsev, a comical balabol of gigantic proportions, however, is not at all evil and completely disinterested and is not averse to getting involved in any adventure that comes along. He loves impromptu, often talking nonsense using his acting literary baggage and theatrically straining himself. He seems completely confused about where reality is and where the game is. The absurd and beautiful-hearted idiot Schastlivtsev, with a plastic bag on his head and metal string bags in which he carries his simple belongings, acts as his faithful squire.

The merchant Vosmibratov predictably evolved into a modern businessman. During the next deception when buying forest, he easily returns to his roots - turning into yesterday’s “brother” from the 90s in a leather jacket, black glasses and thieves’ habits. The modern panopticon of characters is completed by two surprisingly fat women from the servants, moving around the stage at wild speed, furiously swaying their fat sides, adding an atmosphere of slight surrealism.

The story of Gurmyzhskaya and Bulanov is interrupted with the appearance of another main couple - Neschastlivtsev and Schastlivtsev. The irrepressible Neschastlivtsev invades Gurmyzhskaya’s world and takes the initiative. All the most striking scenes of the play are with the participation of Dmitry Nazarov: the meeting of Neschastlivtsev and Schastlivtsev in a cheap station pub with men talking “about life” and a “serious” conversation with Vosmibratov over an underpaid thousand rubles. Neschastlivtsev becomes the main character.

The director does not let the audience get bored for a minute. One of the author’s techniques is when something happens in the “background”. Here, near the backdrop, Peter looms, tucking his shirt into his pants, drinking vodka or bawling songs in his family shorts while small talk is taking place on the front stage. Live music also greatly refreshes the perception - a quintet plays in different combinations in the performance: piano, double bass, wind instruments, guitar and accordion. A large children's choir with a conductor appears several times.

Children sing about Belovezhskaya Pushcha - the remnants of a primeval relict forest, and if Ostrovsky has “owls and eagle owls” in the dense forest, then Serebrennikov’s forest has become much denser, more ancient, and the inhabitants have turned into overgrown bison and mammoths. It must be said that the director makes fun of his experimental characters, even mocks them. They are grotesque, turned inside out. Gurmyzhskaya gesticulates wildly and awkwardly, wringing her hands, Julitta performs the duties of a servant with abnormal zeal and grimaces, and Neschastlivtsev drools from his mouth during a pretentious monologue. This performance is not about money, love and power, but about modern people who are tired of life, who have long lost their way and whose morality has fallen asleep. They regressed, became dull, and deteriorated even more. And if earlier they tried to cover up the unseemly with good manners, now there is not a trace left of manners. People have become more vulgar, more cynical, vulgar, more unpleasant.

The audience receives the performance and the story about themselves wonderfully - you can hear a lot of laughter, sometimes hysterical. So, a strange gray-haired and tall girl, at first quietly choking and gurgling with laughter, in the end she loses control of herself and laughs more and more loudly, starting to clap at random and shout “bravo!” - unspent energy rushes out. But this is still not a classic, but entertainment; there is little left of Ostrovsky here. Sterlet fish soup with burbot liver and milk in a porcelain plate turned into Doshirak from a plastic box.

Here is the absolute favorite of the season - what a season, in the last few years there has not been a performance that has caused so much noise. Light but significant, homerically funny and alarming at the same time, daring and at the same time terribly touching, this performance lasts four hours, but watches in one breath. In connection with it, they are talking about European quality directing of domestic production, about the return to the big voyage of a major actress - Natalya Tenyakova, who played the main role. That's all true, but I'm talking about something else. For the sake of order, let me remind you of the content of the play. So, “The Forest” by Ostrovsky. The landowner Gurmyzhskaya has designs on yesterday's poor high school student, whom she settled with her and wants to marry her poor relative Aksinya, so that he can be closer. But the poor girl loves the merchant’s son and wants to marry him. But a scandal broke out in the noble family not for this reason, but because Gurmyzhskaya’s over-aged nephew, who once showed up at the house with a friend, turned out to be an actor. So, do you imagine a landowner’s house from post-reform Russia? No matter how it is. Photo wallpaper depicting a forest, bamboo curtains, a radio on long thin legs, chandeliers made of Czech glass, passbooks instead of gold, leatherette jackets, wedges, embroidered sheepskin coats - Serebrennikov moved the action a century forward, to the Brezhnev seventies. It would seem that this is also a trick for me - classical plays have been converted everywhere, but this time the flight takes my breath away (is it because these are the attributes of childhood?). Gurmyzhskaya (Natalya Tenyakova) has become older, now she is like an elderly nomenklatura widow. Her confidante Ulita (Evgeniya Dobrovolskaya), on the contrary, has become younger, and her respectable neighbors have changed their gender to female. The Indian kingdom, in a word. At first glance, all these operations have the same meaning - to make it funny. Of course, it’s funny when Schastlivtsev and Neschastlivtsev (Avangard Leontyev in bandaged glasses and the huge, loud Dmitry Nazarov) meet for beer in the station buffet and by the end of the drinking session a neon sign lights up above their heads: “Should I hang myself?” Vosmibratov (Alexander Mokhov), in order to please Gurmyzhskaya, comes to her with a children's choir: white top, black bottom, white knee-highs, “Forbidden motive, reserved distance...”. Neschastlivtsev, having come to a house where he had not been for many years, reads Brodsky with a tremble in his voice, and Peter sings to Aksyusha at night on the playground with Vysotsky’s guitar. Every second scene will resemble a separate concert number - since the time of Meyerhold, this directorial style has been called “montage of attractions.” But this “Forest” is not good for its editing swashbuckling. They wrote about Meyerhold's performance (1924) that it was a satire on the past and agitation for the new. Young, new people Aksyusha and Peter soared above the stage on rope “giant steps” - it was such a fair attraction. Serebrennikov, who dedicated his performance to Meyerhold and the Soviet theater, has a different story. He has Aksyusha and Peter (Anastasia Skorik and Oleg Mazurov) swinging on a cramped children's swing, and if the ridiculous, shameful, but humanly understandable lust of an elderly aunt for a young body somehow, at least with a stretch, can still pass for love, then these new ones have no flight, no feelings, just a penny calculation. One might think that in his performance the imperious old women and sad youth are opposed by a special tribe - reckless, open-hearted people, actors. And that's true. But what Serebrennikov is actually getting at becomes obvious only in the finale - and this is pure social art.

At her own wedding, Gurmyzhskaya is a diva in a blond wig and over-the-knee patent leather boots. “Gentlemen! - the neatly combed young whippet Bulanov (Yuri Chursin) comes to the fore and freezes in a familiar pose: a mixture of determination and lack of will, his hands clasped in the groin area - either this is the guarantor of the Constitution himself, or the parodist Galkin. “Although I am young, I take not only my own but also public affairs very close to my heart and would like to serve society.” The children's choir takes on “Belovezhskaya Pushcha” in a new way. “Your bison children don’t want to die out,” says the tiny, lop-eared soloist, taking the same pose as Bulanov’s. The confused, limp bride's eyes are watering with happiness.

In four hours, Serebrennikov told a lot of things: about the acting freedom in the contract world, about the first love of new people, cool as a dog’s nose, and about the last love, blind and shameless. But in the end, for all four hours he talked and lamented about how weird this elderly, domineering woman, yearning for a strong man’s hand, was, Russia.

Of the previous, most successful productions in Serebrennikov’s Moscow career, “The Forest” is my favorite performance. And there was also “Kizhe” and “The Golovlevs” - I managed to rewatch them 11 years after the premiere before they were removed from the repertoire, and unfortunately, at that time some unsightly scraps remained from them.

I’ve only seen “Kizhe” once; he ordered us to live long even earlier. And “The Forest” is still on, but I still can’t get to it. But then, after Bogomolov’s run through on the small stage, he decided to run in after intermission. And wow, the performance is absolutely alive! True, Dmitry Nazarov in the role of Neschastlivtsev somehow acts very “backhand”, recklessly - maybe these are quirks of memory, but it seems that before his hero behaved a little more carefully, especially since in a duet with Nazarov, brightly, in a farcical manner, but at the same time, without forgetting for a second, there is the Leontyev-Neschastlivtsev Vanguard, whose role, it would seem, involves much more grotesque colors; and next to him, Nazarov’s overlaps smack of foolishness, in which it is not clear what is more - archaic but sincere author’s pathos, hidden director’s sarcasm, or cliches that have grown on the performer over many years. In addition, Nazarov’s subsequent, especially recent premieres - both “Dear Treasure” and the recent “Sleeping Prince” - while worthy works in their own way, are still not among the achievements that contribute to the creative growth of even a very experienced artist. But of course, Natalya Maksimovna Tenyakova is still amazing, if not more so than before, brilliant, fearless, uncompromising. After “The Forest,” she didn’t have many significant premieres, off the top of my head — Bogomolov’s “The Year I Wasn’t Born” and “The Jeweler’s Anniversary” and that’s it, but at least the grandiose “The Jeweler’s Anniversary” is now somewhat unexpected, “ “unearthly”, casts a metaphysical light on the grotesque everyday character of her Gurmyzhskaya in “The Forest”.

However, in addition to the desire to refresh my long-standing admiration, I also had a very specific interest in “The Forest” in its current state. And I watched the premiere performance, and I re-watched “The Forest”, naturally, with Yuri Chursin. It’s been many years since Chursin left the Moscow Art Theater, and for some time now (I must admit, I haven’t kept track of when) Bulanov has been played by Alexander Molochnikov. Few people appreciated and made sense of Molochnikov’s entry into “The Forest” - unlike Bogomolov or Butusov, Serebrennikov has virtually no fan audience, visiting the same productions of his dozens of times over the years. I, in turn, am not one of Molochnikov’s unconditional fans, I have my own prejudices against him, but definitely his presence in “The Forest” gave the production, which at the end was perceived as an experimental revelation, and now looks like a masterpiece that has stood the test of time, a textbook classic modern Russian-language theater (so it is impossible to believe that “The Forest” was staged by the same Serebrennikov, who is now using an assembly line method to rivet semi-amateur pretentious crap in his “Gogol Center”, in comparison with which even the amateurish directorial experiments of the same Molochnikov at the Moscow Art Theater benefit a lot ) not only a new vital impulse, but partly also new content. Twelve years ago, the wedding of the characters Chursin and Tenyakova was seen as a parody-“mystical” (the concept of “sacred” entered everyday socio-political usage later) marriage of Putin and Pugacheva, “old”, decrepit, but not leaving the stage of the late stagnant world and crushing it under themselves as if a “new”, unscrupulous and shameless generation of figures with not entirely clear, but frightening intentions:

Today's redneck audience is inclined to consider this move (also outside of a historical perspective - not everyone in the audience realizes how old the play is and when the premiere took place!) "unmistakably" guesses Pugacheva and Galkin in the Tenyakov-Molochnikov pair - despite the fact that Molochnikov has microphone, no worse than Chursin, reproduces the corresponding intonations, plastic and facial patterns in the banquet episode of the last act. This turns out to be a harmless social “cabbage” - what’s funny is that at the time of the premiere, no one had any reason to fantasize about a possible marriage between Pugacheva and Galkin, starting with Maxim himself (I know this for sure), but go on, how perceptions change depending on the context and over the years! But it’s not just a matter of context - objectively, Chursin’s and Molochnikov’s Bulanovs are very different. There is nothing sinister in Molochnikov’s Alexey; on the contrary, he is not without negative charm, a kind of artistry - not just in contrast, but also in similarity with Neschastlivtsev! In the character of Chursin there was something demonic, and yet some kind of petty, but rational element, and Molochnikov, mobile, like a jointed doll, embodies a clot of irrational energy, devoid of any reflection, vile in its animal nature, not in head calculation.

In general, life has become worse, and the theater has become more fun - the comedy, or rather, vaudeville beginning of Serebrennikov's "Forest" has not only not been lost over the years, but has gained a lot - and it was I who, running in during the break, missed the hilarious duet scene of Gurmyzhskaya and Snails in the first act (“But you and I are the same age?..”). The socio-political sharpness of the original plan, on the contrary, has softened a little - but not because the performance itself has fizzled out, but due to the changed situation around. However, what is also striking is that despite the somewhat artificial and intrusiveness of the composition built by Serebrennikov, with abundant direct quotes from Shakespeare and indirect allusions to him, the existential plan of the performance today sounds piercing - and is mainly carried out through the image of Julitta, as he, in many respects contrary to the play, was invented directed and played by an actress. When I came to “Les”, Evgenia Dobrovolskaya was on yet another maternity leave and my beloved Yana Kolesnichenko was playing the role of Julitta.

Dobrovolskaya gave birth and returned, having since celebrated a significant anniversary, but against the author’s instructions, the young Julitta still remains the most important counterpoint for the production concept of “The Forest,” both with her eternal female dissatisfaction and with an almost infernal insight, especially clearly manifested towards the finale the monologue of the mad lady from “The Thunderstorm” with a “Hamlet” skull in her hands and, right at the curtain, a funeral wreath, which Julitta throws at the feet of the bride-Tenyakova at the final common entrance.