Kyiv is always glad to receive guests, especially good old friends. St. Petersburg’s Lensovet Theater has more than once toured Ukraine. We still remember watching thanks to it such famous and beloved actors as Freindlikh, Piedogorova, Petrenko, Boyarsky, Solovei, et al. This theater is now directed by Vladislav Pazi, well known to Kyivans, whose refined production of Invitation to the Castle kept the audiences of Kyiv’s Russian Drama Theater spellbound so long.
Pazi is a representative of those directors who adhere to the simple, basic, and traditional principle of Russian theater — expressing the main idea in a vivid, fine, and figurative shape. Both productions they have brought are in this mold.
Vladimir Nabokov is usually considered a profound philosopher, talented psychologist, and master of paradoxes. Refusing to bow to this cliche, Pazi looks at our contemporary classic novel King, Queen, Jack through the eyes of a sober-minded theatrical professional. Aleksandr Getman’s play draws a simple and rational grain out of Nabokov’s ornamental prose: beware of digging your own grave, to put it in more contemporary terms: the idea is material and often boomerangs on its author.
A sexually tinged whodunit unfolds onstage in the true spirit of Nabokov: beautiful Martha, crazy from wealth and sexual frustration thanks to her old rich husband, seduces the awkward and shamefaced Franz, sweet-talks him into murdering her nuisance spouse, perhaps harboring the idea of eventually bumping off the hapless lover as well, and finally dies herself — either of pneumonia or by the efforts of her wise husband who uncovered her plot and dealt a preemptive strike.
Director Pazi treats these games with irony, gloating over the breakneck developments and commenting on the situation by means of rhythmic dance numbers by a classic love triangle. The now famous actors Anna Kovalchuk and Andrei Zibrov, together with a promising colleague, put on a virtuoso display of acrobatics. On the other hand, a dance of male mannequins produces the full illusion of robots, to the utmost delight of the audience (choreographed by Nikolai Reutov).
Beautiful Meritorious Artiste of Russia Yelena Komissarenko (Martha) and Mikhail Porechenkov (Franz) somewhat overdo in showing the risqu О means of expressiveness: jack Franz is too awkward and queen Martha too refined. Yet, these actors never lose their sense of proportion and artistic taste. They look natural and true in all their exaggerations. In this play, actors also lay themselves bare (ah Nabokov!) so routinely and matter-of-factly that it seems funny and virtuous.
Aleksandr Sulimov is also brilliant and expressive in the part of the landlord who rents an apartment to Franz: some details suggest that the character he plays is insane. He will emerge completely insane in the final, wearing an outlandish getup. For all that happens onstage — love affairs, intrigues, murders attempted and committed — is the raving lunacy of not only Nabokov’s characters but also our contemporary world.
Perhaps only People’s Artiste of Russia Dmitry Barkov stands slightly above the game. In the role of king Dreyer, the cuckold husband, he behaves quite seriously and naturally, without a hint at the double standards of this tender wolf.
The show’s spatial image (production designer Mariya Briantseva) carries three main symbolic features: doors, steam locomotives, and a boat. A host of doors move, form mazes, mark settings, and express the ideas of despair and deadlock. Two large toy steam locomotives occasionally roll across the stage (the entanglement begins in a railway car), alluding to mortal danger. The boat, which might have been a murder weapon, sways, imitating the characters’ actions on a blue silken wave and finally turns into the coffin that carries Martha to oblivion. Elegant and unusually beautiful costumes add splendor to the people and overall design of the spectacle.
It is true that, by esthetic reckoning, the production of King, Queen, Jack is a part of mass culture.
But who said that mass art should always be primitive, clumsy, or vulgar? Not at all. It can be elegant, fine, noble, and refined, as is Pazi’s production. The point is this art puts across simple truths. But we have of late got so mixed up in those truths and are so different from each other in understanding them that it is time to recall that black is black and white is white instead of red or blue.
The production, Jacques and His Master, also teaches simple truths, this time with the aid of Denis Diderot, the French Encyclopedist and one of the authors of the eighteenth-century revolution of the minds. What makes the situation piquant is that Diderot wrote his famous novel about Jacques the fatalist in Petersburg, and, two hundred plus years later, a modern Petersburg theater performs its own variations on Diderot.
It will be recalled that it is Diderot who laid the theoretical groundwork for drama as a serious genre. He also linked the nature of man with his social background and made the third estate — the young middle class, working people, craftsmen, and servants — heroes of serious drama. The eighteenth century is known as the Age of Enlightenment. Encyclopedist Diderot enlightened people by means of simple, well-known, albeit forgotten or unseen, truths. Now this simplicity and obviousness disclose the philosophical essence of being through a merry paradoxical form, fun and joke.
Director Pazi also likes playing with paradox. He allows actors to adlib, make fun of themselves and the creator himself, joke about pressing serious matters. People’s Artiste of Russia Sergei Migitsko (Jacques) and Meritorious Artiste of Russia Yury Ovsianko (Master) turn in a stellar performance. A lanky lively-faced Jacques and his puny and frail master seem to openly show the difference between the great mass of people and the thin upper crust of the ruling class. Playing up, watching, and participating in a number of anecdotal situations, this dualistic pair in the long run leads us to simple and clear truths:
“If you are a master, you must lead the people. Where? Forward, of course. And what are you doing?”
“A servant must obey his master’s orders, but he himself formulates and prompts the master these orders” (the electorate’s mandate to deputies).
“Forward movement is deceptive. There is only circular movement. The wind cometh back to its circuits. Meanwhile, love children have grown up to make a new spiral of this turnover.”
“Do not humiliate a woman because her vengeance is terrible, sinister, and inescapable.”
“Do not trust your eyes, look into the essence and depth, not at pretty faces or well-rounded butts.”
“Value your friends for their deeds, not words...”
So much for that. Diderot conceived, Czech writer Milan Kundera, a Prague spring veteran in exile in Germany and France, wrote, stage director Vladislav Pazi conceived, and the talented and free-minded actors of Lensovet acted out the merry and didactic story of Jacques and his master. Why then does the show appear not so funny and sometimes even dull? You perceive it a bit strangely, contemplating but not delving deeply into the plot. Or is this the way it should be? Enlightenment, you know.
Yet, the point seems to be different. Let there be rationalism, play of intellect, and mental crosswords, for they are interesting in their own way. Still, the show looks sluggish and lackluster because the seemingly rapid action in fact slows down, often repeating and explaining what is already clear and obvious. This triggers a kind of circular movement devised by playwright Kundera. The show’s energy is wearied, mechanistic, and short of actors’ passionate desires. Although the central actors keep impeccably to the general outlines of their roles, it is noticeable, however, that they are not so young, to put it mildly. In this case all their reasoning about forward movement, circular perspective, and hopes for the future becomes problematical, if not futile, because they thus shift emphasis. Yet, I will not defend this impression to extremes.
What nobody can deny is that the Lensovet Theater has shown Kyivans high stage culture, virtuoso acting, team spirit, a fine sense of style, philosophical thinking, and a daring creative pursuit.
