In modern Ukraine “musical drama theater” is often a synonym for aesthetic decrepitude and decay. This appellation is justified when productions are oversaturated with illustrative songs and dances of a pseudo-folk or pop character. However, when Belarus’s largest dramatic company, the Yanka Kupala National Academic Theater, came to Kyiv, it proved that it is music that permeates dramas of human destinies, expressed through contemporary rhythms and intonations, which dictates plasticity of movement and awakens the soul’s vibrations. It is capable of expressing and conveying a nation’s character, mentality, and consciousness. It is important to listen to contemporary music, feel its paradoxical poetry, and express this in the theatrical language of stage images. These are its necessary components.
MUSIC, POETRY, PARADOXES
The Kupala Theater succeeds in nearly all respects. Their eight productions on this tour are filled with music, mystery, and paradox.
The program started with Yakub Kolas’s Simon the Musician. At one time the brilliant Ukrainian stage director Les Kurbas staged the complete text of Shevchenko’s “Haidamaky.” Nikolai Pinigin, who matured as a stage director under Kupalo’s wing, followed the same principle of scenic imagery when he retold this Belarusian classic through theatrical metaphors.
Simon, a young shepherd, is considered odd by his relatives and fellow villagers because with his heart he can feel “the music of the winds and the whispering of the grass,” the rustling of sand, the rhythm of butter being churned in tall wooden mortars, the threshing and whistling of scythes in the field, and the melody of the mother tongue on the lips of Grandpa Kuryl (H. Habruk). The violin he receives as a present from his grandfather leads the boy out into the big world, where he encounters paupers, blind beggars, witches, drunks, well-wishers, tavern keepers, evil adventurers, and an old man by the name of Zhebrak, who cuts a very colorful figure.
But V. Manaiev is very generous in sharing his eccentric talent with the audience, unwittingly supplanting the main character played by A. Molchanov and his more tactful but no less masterful performance. His Simon lives constantly in the realm of music, in the way he plays his violin (with a professional violinist appearing and standing back to back with him as his alter ego), the way he says his lines, the way he stares at the audience for a long time and then soars to the vaults on a chandelier to the accompaniment of music by the great Chopin.
The vividness of this play is simple, meaningful, and easily comprehensible to the audience. Those who are about to die “sail away” in a boat escorted by guardian angels, with Simon’s father (I. Denisov) wearing a horse collar around his neck and his mother with a basket containing a hen on her head. Young ewes huddle at Simon’s feet while those that were killed by wolves lose their white woolen jackets. This image-bearing simplicity is not an illustration but a visual implementation of folk concepts. This play is the high national folk poetry of Belarus.
The production features Mozart’s exquisite music from The Magic Flute with quotes from Rachmaninoff and a “symphony orchestra” (19 actors going through the motions of playing their instruments with amazing verisimilitude) with an eccentric conductor, who looks as though he has just escaped from a contemporary psychiatric hospital or like a reincarnation of 250-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus, no less. The paradox of this play written by Kyiv’s Maria Lado lies not so much in the virtuosity of the music — although it is very enjoyable — as in the conductor’s ability to restore in the musicians of his orchestra their love of their metier, attention, and tolerance to one another, as well as empathy, the foundation of coexistence in this complex world of human relations.
In other words, this play is not so much about music and Mozart as, through them, about our relationships with each other, about our illusions and estrangements, about the sicknesses of our souls, the loss of commonality and faith in peoples’ ability “to play in the orchestra” of life. If there were a maestro, it would be preferable if he were of Mozart’s caliber. Sadly, such maestros are generally perceived as lunatics these days.
Director Aleksandr Hartsuiev truly became the maestro of this production. He succeeded in putting together a flawless cast, actors who exist in the realm of music even when there is no music, only silence. Roman Podoliaka, who plays the role of the Conductor, is filled with either the madness of inspiration or the inspiration of insanity. He is clearly not of this world, perched somewhere on a mountain top. But he is capable of reaching the innermost recesses of human souls with an instrument, a crooked twig with a green leaf — his conductor’s baton. Podoliaka’s talent as a “neurasthenic” actor is rare. Herein lies his strength and uniqueness, which conceals a touch of danger for this young actor playing the paradoxical role of the capricious Prince Philippe (Yvonne, the Princess of Burgundy) in which he uses the same expressive acting techniques.
In the role of the Student (in the play S.V) he is completely different. It is worth remembering an actor by the name Roman Podoliaka.
FAIRY TALES FOR ADULTS
The creative insolence of the Kupala Theater’s production S.V., based on Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, stunned the theatrical world. This artifact still has no name; it is a new theatrical genre. The main characters of The Cherry Orchard have lost their names and become simply: the Landlady, her Brother, Daughter, and Stepdaughter, Student, Merchant, Governess, and Passerby. Only Firs has retained his name as a reference to the original source. The rest of the characters have disappeared. Instead, now and then silent government clerks wearing bowler hats emerge on stage, personifying outstanding debts. They take measurements of the premises to turn them into cottage plots; they also measure people to fit their coffins.
Here you do not hear a single Slavic word. Instead, the governess’s long monologue in German (a la Charlotte, played by Svetlana Zelenkovskaya) sounds completely understandable, but this is not a drama. The play includes ballroom, folk, acrobatic, even classical ballet dances performed in a virtuoso manner. Yet this is not ballet. The actors communicate with gestures, foreshortening, and movements, but this is not pantomime. There is hocus-pocus here, and large puppets thrown onto the floor come alive. But this is not a circus.
This is a musical drama in which the actors act and dance, each in his own plastic character and imagistic action. The performance stars Zoia Belokhvostik, Merited Artist of Belarus; we remember her as a starlet and we rejoice in her current mastery. In a psychologically tragic and technologically virtuoso manner she reveals spiritual paradoxes and nuances of the Landlady (a la Ranevskaya). As Queen Malgorzata (Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy), Belokhvostik succeeded in conveying through her convulsive dancing the complex forms of poetic works of which this woman is ashamed and which she carefully conceals because they betray her beautiful, pure, but mutilated soul.
The images of S.V. are so saturated that it would take longer to explain them with words than the duration of the play (80 minutes). So I will say only a few words about the finale in order to give some idea of this dramatic paradox staged by director Pavel Adamchikov. The Merchant (a la Lopakhin, played by D. Yesianevich), who recently danced a tango of love with the Landlady, appears dressed in a white suit. He walks over to a small dying tree planted in a dented garden pot and proceeds to pluck out twig after twig. The rest of the characters mill about in confusion near some wooden coffers. The Landlady takes off her luxurious red dress and stands in a tattered slip. The other characters follow suit, throwing their garments on the stage, and “naked and barefoot” they form a line like an imaginary train and disappear into the famous wardrobe out of which shines a bright light. Then Firs enters with a flashlight and locks the wardrobe doors. He covers the mutilated little tree with a white shroud, lies down on the coffers, and snowflakes, or cherry blossoms, or the remains of a life start falling on him. The paradoxical musical collage of the play blends with unexpected harmoniousness Verdi’s Cavatina of the Duke, French chansons, the Russian dance “Korobochka,” the sounds of daily life, and footsteps — even the actors’ movements make sounds.
Kupala’s current productions incorporate a lot of mysticism: the mystical legend of love The Dark Maiden Nesvizhu; the mystical comedy Chichikov; the mystery play Simon the Musician; the mystical motifs of Maestro (with an orchestra and conductor appearing in the finale, dressed in costumes from the age of Mozart); the skeletons in the closets of Charlotte’s parents (S.V.); the phantasmagoria of the royal court in Yvonne; the fall of the empire and the inevitable resurrection in Friedrich Durrenmatt’s Romulus the Great, and others.
Clearly, vibrations of vague alarm and spiritual discomfort are rankling in the hearts of our colleagues. They are defending themselves with beauty, love, and questions that they ask of themselves (and us), and faith in life. This is particularly evident in the productions of Kupala’s chief director, Valery Rayevsky, who has occupied his post for nearly 33 years, ensuring the company’s creative development, success, and constant renewal.
Rayevsky’s The Dark Maiden Nesvizhu, based on Aleksei Dudarev’s script, is a legend about the brief but supreme love affair between Sigmund, the king of Poland, and Barbara, the ruler of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy. It is no more than a fairy tale for adults, but what a beautiful tale! We are in dire need of such stories about beauty and loyalty in our destructive times. The refrain sounds: God is love and we are now love. This love is danced on a huge white silk coverlet, underneath it and inside it, and the beautiful bodies of the actors S. Zelenkovskaya and M. Prylutsky shine poetically through the white clothing. Ladies in waiting, clad in rich, elegant gowns and carrying roses (whose colors change symbolically) recreate the sumptuousness of the royal court. Black-and-white angels are helping the plot to unfold.
According to all the laws of fairy tales, the actors play the roles of the heroes: the lovers, the evil queen (A. Yeliashkevich) and the virtuous brothers of the heroine (G. Maliavsky and I. Denisov. Only one character violates the fairy-tale style, the courtier Mniszek, who is the chief evildoer and intriguer. The playwright depicts this character according to the laws of psychological drama, and in the end the main evil hero commits suicide in the wings, probably after repenting of his sins. But M. Kyrychenko has too little textual material for such a portrayal, so the actor has no time to convey his character’s inner catastrophe. Even in the earlier short scenes, during which he must assume different personas, the actor fails to rebuild himself. The finale produces an especially strong impression on the audience. Boris Gerlovan, the set designer and visual bulwark of Rayevsky’s production for many years, made the carved figures of the saints in the old Roman Catholic church slowly rise, while the organ pipes lit up like huge candles, illuminating the image of the Mother of God that was painted, according to legend, for the cathedral in Vilnius, and modeled on the beautiful Duchess Barbara Radziwill.
Chichikov, Andrii Kureichyk’s stage version of Gogol’s Dead Souls, leaves a number of unanswered questions. Rayevsky sees in Chichikov (played by Oleh Harbuz) as “one of the first entrepreneurs on the horizon of commercial-economic relations” and one of the first victims of the state racket, with his naive questions in the finale: “Why me?” The production raises a number of questions about the theatrical form, i.e., to the director. The vast, empty black space of the stage is suddenly transformed into a huge curved mirror in which the figures of the actors are multiplied and distorted, including the guests to the ball and Chichikov (production design by Boris Gerlovan). One is reminded of Gogol’s famous epigraph: “Do not blame the mirror when the mug is crooked.” In this distorted reflection of the mirror all the characters become “dead souls,” and this powerful metaphor practically exhausts the sense of the play by overwhelming the viewer’s imagination.
Yet this mirror phantasmagoria does not affect the cast members, who describe their heroes with charming details of daily life, like the flying hands of Manilov (V. Manaiev), the gesture of the widow Korobochka (A. Sidorova) pointing to the ground, and so on. Only Avgust Milovanov succeeded in playing the tragic, grotesque destiny of Pliushkin in a short scene and explaining his background and the causes of degradation. The director helped him a great deal by having a spotlight trained on him while he was reciting his short monologue, thus singling him out of that realm of death souls. Another heartrending scene involves Manilov’s children, all of them mentally handicapped, who are dressed by their mother and nanny in the background. The other characters did not receive this kind of directorial support, so their verisimilitude and abridged lines proved to be inadequate for conveying the mystical grotesqueness of Gogol’s poem.
Instead, irony, spectacular nature, and philosophical paradox of the great Durrenmatt’s Romulus the Great in Rayevsky’s production clearly echo the first production of the young Rayevsky on the stage of the Kupala Theater — Bertolt Brecht’s Man Equals Man. In both plays the main role was played both tenderly and penetratingly by People’s Artist Avgust Milovanov. In both cases one finds eloquent associations with contemporary life. Heads of great states may have different hobbies, like raising chickens or bees, martial arts, or collecting medals. Their empires may collapse, but the idea of empire is immortal. Even if a decayed country is smashed to smithereens, one day someone will come and ask to submit to the strong rule of the “elder brother,” even if his might and grandeur are only a myth. Isn’t this like reading newspapers?
SIMPLE TRUTHS
Valery Rayevsky’s favorite production is probably Dudaiev’s Evening, maybe because this old play reflects eternal themes and absolute truths. Once upon a time there lived two old men and an old woman near the ends of the earth. There was no one left but them. One of the old men talks to the sun and pours fresh water on the remains of his former neighbors’ houses. The other one ruthlessly searches for the truth, and through this ruthless truth searching he destroys the harmony of life. Only the woman knows how to preserve goodness and justice in the world order.
Evening has been staged in many countries; it was staged by the Franko Theater in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine. It was also staged earlier by the Kupala Theater; this production is Rayevsky’s updated version. It has two strong but essentially different casts. Nikolai Kirichenko (Vasil), Aleksandr Podobed (Nikita), and Zinaida Zubkova (Anna) create strong characters that feature one trait or another, just like in a folk picture. These highly professional actors specialize in Belarusian peasant images. Accordingly, People’s Artists Hennadii Ovsiannikov, Hennadii Harbuk, and Tamara Mironova do not seem to be actors; they are old Belarusians who live in a Polissian backwater. Without emphasizing anything, they simply live there, smoothing wood with a plane, drinking real milk, getting sick, and settling their conflicts placidly for the most part. In the evening, sitting on the last threshold, they do not shout at each other but think; they do not bustle about but reach conclusions. The rug in the little house that they share is made of fallen leaves, and outside the window is the immense sky.
The Yanka Kupala Theater is amazingly cultured in terms of production, cast, and world view. Its actors are intelligent and highly professional, and they do not distinguish between small or big roles. They are never loath to perform a dance in a crowd scene or sing with the choir; they act as stage hands or even as living stage props. They are often unrecognizable when they play different roles, as is the case with Aleksandr Podobed, who is the immaculately dressed gentleman standing by a concert piano in Simon the Musician, the cynical Kirpich in Maestro, and the mumbling angry Gastrit in Evening. Svetlana Zelenkovskaya is the golden-haired Barbara, love incarnate in The Dark Maiden Nesvizhu and the tragic puppet of a governess in S.V. Igor Denisov is the hard-working father of Simon the Musician, the silent tragic Valentin in Yvonne, and the envious and confused Salieri.
The audiences were especially impressed by the striking mastery of the company stars Zoia Belokhvostik, Gennady Garbuk, Viktor Manaiev, Avgust Milovanov, Gennadii Ovsiannikov, to mention a few. The young actors Anna Khitrik, Oleh Harbuz, Aleksandr Molchanov, Roman Podoliaka, Nikolai Prilutsky, and many others are capable of securing a bright future for this company. The Kupala Theater has become noticeably rejuvenated.
Valery Rayevsky often entrusts other directors to stage plays. They are adding fresh blood to the company, mature as it is, without distorting Kupala’s overall image. Even though the paradoxes of the Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz (Yvonne, the Princess of Burgundy) were not a complete success in the inventive director Aleksandr Hartsuiev’s production, these shortcomings were effectively overcome by the director in his Maestro. The bold Pavel Adamchikov (S.V.) and the experienced Nikolai Pinigin (Simon the Musician) have creatively diversified the Kupala’s repertoire.
All these varied productions are united by one theme: every individual must have talent and the right to remain true to himself under any circumstances, even at the cost of his life. A talent for love, loyalty, music, creativity, raising chickens, entrepreneurship, unity with the world, a talent for goodness, empathy, tolerance, and respect for fellow humans — all this raises man to a higher level and makes him beautiful, says Valery Rayevsky together with his theater.
