Ukrainian audiences finally have a choice of theaters of different directions, esthetics, and dimensions. So, ladies and gentlemen, love what you can love, be interested in what interests you, and don’t forget that what may be unexciting and strange for you may spark interest and pleasure in someone else.
On the occasion of the anniversary of Donetsk oblast, the Donetsk Oblast Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater has brought a number of productions to Kyiv that are absolutely different in genre and form: a traditional Ukrainian melodrama called Herbs, based on Olha Kobylianska’s well-known novel On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs, a musical stage version of the popular American film Some Like It Hot, and a real opera — The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. All three offerings are classics in their own genre.
Each of the productions is a dazzling extravaganza full of dances, songs, lighting effects, and music. There are a lot of beautiful people singing and performing on the stage. They are not just extras in crowd scenes: they mingle with each other and play up to the heroes. This is especially obvious in The Marriage of Figaro (produced and staged by Olena Negrescu, a native of Kyiv, who is underappreciated in Ukraine).
It turns out that an opera production, even in the original language and with an electronic board above the stage showing a few key phrases in Ukrainian for spectators to follow the plot rather than a poorly-translated text can be a fascinating and inventive spectacle that is easy to grasp. The artists are not tied to the baton of conductor- arranger Yevhen Kulakov, and they do not wait for an opportunity to demonstrate their beautiful vocal skills but function as dramatic actors, filling their arias with sincere emotions, moving freely across the stage, and strictly following the inner logic of behavior. I wish some Ukrainian opera houses would do this.
The secret of this successful production is simple. The young artists Denys Fedorenko (Count Almaviva), Liubov Dobronozhenko (Countess Rosina), Dmytro Fedorov (Figaro), and Alina Yarova (Susanna) graduated from a conservatory but were ignored by the Donetsk Opera. But the far-seeing Mark Brovun, general manager and artistic director of the Donetsk Drama Theater, hired them as choristers. They did some singing and dancing in crowd scenes, acquired basic acting skills, and were then ready for solo performances. Negrescu also managed to create a clear-cut pattern of each role (missions, reactions, striking details), and a new production worthy of the finest opera stages was born.
The production’s main inflection is irony, which is ingrained in Mozart’s music and displayed by means of the actors’ on-stage techniques and behavior. Cherubino, the page, whom the count sends to the army, wears camouflage fatigues, albeit in the 18th-century fashion, as do the “soldiers” who perform a march-like dance to his singing. The count goes hunting on a horse consisting of three sections: one boy holds the horse’s head on a stick, two carry the saddle on their shoulders, and another boy carries the croup and tail. Later, in a scene set in the count’s stable, the horse’s head (left of the hay) and tail (right of the hay) reacts humorously to what is happening with the heroes.
Production designer Svitlana Kan created “trees” for the park, made of crinoline-style wedding dresses on wheels with white plumage and foliage. The trees rotate and whirl, as if the characters are dizzy. So do the haystacks in the stables. On stage is a large baguette frame in which the charmingly-dressed heroes suddenly appear, while the canvas, taken out of this frame, serves as a screen on the right. This screen always shows a video that corresponds to the location or the heroes’ mood. If Almaviva is angry, the screen shows a thunderstorm and lightning; when passions are running high, the screen turns red. Spectators can see a picture of the luxurious hall in the count’s chambers or a high domed ceiling in the courtroom scene.
Unfortunately, the picture of the stables with live horses was shot very badly, and the video and the action do not always fully coincide. These cinematic effects begin with the title page of Mozart’s opera and his portraits from different times; it ends as the actors take their final bows, with a list of credits and pictures of the Soviet- Neoclassical-style building of the Donetsk theater and the streets of Donetsk in the evening, crowded with promenading people.
The classical opera then gives way to classic Hollywood and Billy Wilder’s immortal film Some Like It Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe. Director Oleksandr Arkadin-Shkolnyk wrote his own script, adapting the movie to the theater. A huge structure made of metal tubes and a host of stations, steps, and T-pipes, created by the artist Tetiana Medvid, makes it possible to shift the scene from place to place in an instant: an elevator, a railway car, a yacht, a night club, a beach, a foaming bathtub in which Joe/Josephine (Andrii Romanii) hides soaking in full costume, and a bowl-shaped stage on which Babe Sue’s all-girl band is playing.
All the actors, no matter whether they play bit parts or the main roles, relish what they are doing. Even the orchestra players, who come from the orchestra pit onto the stage and into the hall, function as actors. The thespians also double up as musicians. For example, Romanii deftly handles the saxophone and triggers outburst of emotions when he plays percussion instruments, which reminded the Kyiv audience of Anatolii Khostikoiev’s similar musical improvisations in the Ivan Franko Theater’s production of Kean IV.
Naturally, some actors were pleased to appear before the public as both energetic gentlemen and enchanting young women. The talented actor Mykhailo Kryshtal, once the company’s top actor, has not had major roles for a long time. So his Jerry/Daphne is full of subtle details, comic tricks, and deep sincerity. Kryshtal is a reliable partner in the duet with the brilliant and unbridled Romanii (Joe/Josephine).
Alisa Suvorova, in the role of Sugar, is right in not trying to copy Monroe. She has nothing in common with the Hollywood legend except for a blond wig. The “girls,” Joe and Jerry, are also bleached blondes — that’s what’s funny. The actress sings nicely, a blue swimsuit fits her lithe figure, she moves around easily, her behavior and diction are perfect — what more do you need to feast your eyes on this musical heroine?
The show is very entertaining. It is a risque joke, and the actors usually draw the line, although there are lots of gags about breasts and what lies below the waist. But playfulness, a light touch, and ironic exaggeration save the situation. Sometimes, however, this exaggeration is too much, perhaps because of the actors’ disproportionate desire to make an impression on the Kyiv audience.
This may be why some demanding spectators did not like Herbs wholeheartedly. Moreover, the play was shown to a VIP audience after lavish greetings from statesmen and politicians. Director Anatolii Kantsedailo, who was invited from Dnipropetrovsk, is an expert in updating the national classics. He knows how to weave unexpected and exquisite psychological strands into a canonical text.
But the unconventional Donetsk production turned out to be full of contradictions. Vasyl Vasylko’s old stage version, although somewhat revised now, is esthetically outdated: it is too earthy, at times too wordy, and it lacks Kobylianska’s images. The director tries to tackle this problem. He places the scene in a special black space with a wooden floor and a magical glowing moon (although a crudely-fashioned lightning bolt in the finale looks funny rather than exciting). He introduces many beautiful, unconventional, and poetic Ukrainian folk rituals into the show. He builds paradoxical stage settings. For example, Hryts, with his back turned, feels the presence of his beloved Turkish Tetiana. The never-ending, wild commotion on stage reveals Hryts’s Gypsy nature, his innate bent for roaming, and his inability to sit still.
Kantsedailo clearly tried to impart philosophical depth to the production, but he failed to generate a response from the actors: not all of them were prepared to experience the play’s short scenes in a way that could bring together the artificiality of the production, the truth of passions, and the objective assessment of the paradoxes of human destiny.
Hennadii Horshkov’s performance in the role of the old gypsy Andronati, supposedly the philosophical pivot of the play, was a failure. Stripped of the traditional black hat, which could have added a vivid expressive detail, the emotionally superficial and artificially temperamental actor spoke his lines too easily, without connecting emotionally with them. He only marked the twists of the plot instead of living through them and changing his persona in each of them.
The young heroes Hryts (Volodymyr Shvets) and Tetiana (Zoriana Huska), although wonderful as Ukrainian stage types, were also superficial and indistinct. Even though Shvets was trying hard to show his fiery temperament, his performance came off as abstract and amorphous. It was hard for the actor to cope with his role because Hryts’s character is woven out of love, while it is very difficult to play love on stage if one focuses on love as such rather than on what cements it. The young Huska was more successful in showing the heroine’s madness than her astute character and tempestuous love.
The director’s concept found a readier response from Hanna Terekhova (Mavra, Hryts’s mother) and Alisa Suvorova (Nastka, Hryts’s fiancee). Mavra nearly becomes the central figure. Since her story takes up a considerable part of the action, Terekhova had to respond quickly to the changing age-related and psychological requirements of her role, and she largely succeeded. At times her almost uncontrollable energy was unwarranted.
Meanwhile, Suvorova, such a nice Sugar among those who like it hot, managed to strike the right chord by showing the psychological side of the abandoned girl, Nastka, who struggles for her love and happiness. Unfortunately, this struggle failed to encounter fitting resistance on the part of the other members of the love triangle.
The actors, who found themselves at an esthetic crossroads, sought salvation in the Ukrainian artistic instinct that implies a fervent abstract temperament, external beauty, melodiousness, and superfluous emotionality. Only a Ukrainian woman can burst into fountains of tears as soon as she steps onto the stage. Thus, Herbs turned into an almost impeccable example of the traditional Ukrainian theater in all its mummified nature, which only makes it look beautiful, original, and interesting.
All this raises the point that perhaps the actors should not be blamed for parting ways with the director. There is a difference in esthetics in which these masters are accustomed to working. Kantsedailo tried to impose his own visions on the Donetsk troupe, but they relied on their own experience and artistic habits. This means that the Donetsk Drama Theater usually offers audiences a gorgeous performance that rules out psychological complications or esthetic paradoxes. The superb ballet, charming choir, exquisite costumes, picturesque scenery, and various special effects are very appealing to the spectator. All the actors have to do against this backdrop is be uninhibited, sincere, elegant, beautiful, plastic, and melodious, and be able to paint a picture of their roles with a few expressive touches. And they know how to do this. A production by the Donetsk Music and Drama Theater is always an exquisite, joyful, and radiant show. But it is difficult to imagine the dramas of Chekhov, Ibsen, or Vynnychenko on its magnificent stage.
