The last theatrical season seemed remarkably dim, perhaps because Ukrainian culture suffered heavy losses last summer. Playwright Yaroslav Stelmakh died in his creative prime, followed by Serhiy Danchenko, an outstanding Ukrainian producer of the past forty years.
And every premiere lacked something to call it a real creative accomplishment.
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The Ivan Franko Theater’s new rendition of Martyn Borulia was splendid, rich in genuine Ukrainian character, drawing so many scandalous parallels with modern realities. V. Koliada (Martyn) played his best role. His dramatic identification was complete (even the habitual catch in his voice disappeared!), temperamental, without a single “gap.” Ye. Shakh (manservant) was ingenuousness incarnate. Z. Tsesarevych (Palazhka) and N. Korpan (Marysia) were charmingly straightforward. In contrast, V. Nikolayenko (Natsievsky) acted like an amateur comedian in a marketplace show. The producer was liberally approximate and the finale a sputter. Even if the play did not fall apart like a house of cards, it turned out painfully squirmy.
Aesop’s excellent cast is not an orchestrated whole but a number of spectacular figures wandering their separate ways, “against all common sense, to nature an affront,” [Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit, act 3, sc. 22] owing to the absence of any direction by stage director M. Hrynyshyn, known for two undeniable gifts: getting money for his drama projects and turning every premiere into a scandalous publicity stunt.
Othello was an altogether different story. Anatoly Khostikoyev had craved the part since playing a scene as a second-year student. He had cherished the concept, aided by producer Malakhov. Together they had worked out a version set in a swimming pool (the original setting is in Venice, and impressed the jury and audience at the Edinburgh International Festival.
The new rendition boasts a refined, witty, and ruthless setting (courtesy or production designer O. Lobanov), sophisticated and habitually ornate wardrobe (O. Bohatyriova and T. Soloviova), original commanding music (I. Nebesny), and the cast’s dramatic talent flourishes against this expressive background. Without doubt, this is the greatest asset of any performance.
Beniuk’s Iago is a mediocre bureaucrat who is especially awe- inspiring because of his inconspicuous quality, behind which lurks a sharp-tongued virtuoso of malicious intrigue. O. Batko’s Desdemona, instead of the impulsive loose-hair naive cliche, is skillfully transformed into a young woman in love. Khostikoyev fils made a successful debut as Roderigo. And his father was his usual captivating self in the title role (and actually as the author of the stage version).
Khostikoyev plays his role in a special way, as though reliving his own bitter life experience. Partially originating from the Caucasus, the actor stresses his character’s foreign nature by smooth flowing plasticity, accented speech, using Arabic in monologues and separate remarks (Othello is a Moor, meaning Arab, and the actor specially learned the Arabic words and phrases). He emphasizes Othello’s human dignity, trustful attitude toward information, Oriental temperament, reliability, shy affection, strength of feeling — any feelings. He thus makes one respect people strange to the local environs. In a word, Khostikoyev- Othello emerges as a true master boldly and trustfully exposing his innovating approach and world outlook to public judgment — and not all in the audience could appreciate this. Some even laughed at his accent and Afro-Oriental rites. One ought to feel sorry for those lacking intellect
Also, we feel sorry for V. Sumsky’s Duke of Venice. It is a small part but conceptually important for the entire plot, yet the actor proved amazingly provincial, ranging from vulgar antics to undisguised grandstanding.
In fact, grandstanding is one of the most conspicuous shortcomings of the modern theater. Unable to offer anything essentially new, drama companies try to impress the audience with all kinds of frills, risque approaches, scandalous overtones. This is what Ivan Franko’s producer A. Prykhodko did to Yukio Mishima’s Marquise de Sade after bungling Officer’s Servant Shelmenko at the Youth Theater. His version of the classic drama turned out a monstrosity. The microphones on the actresses wearing P. Adamova’s mock image- bearing costumes malfunction transformed them into puppets from a cardboard box. And they never acted by the laws of the screen — and there was very little one could make of the play’s aesthetic laws. The sound was deafening, drowning out 75% of the lines spoken on stage, destroying all psychological coloration, and wrecking the plot structure. One could only guess that L. Rusnak’s Renee was truly tragic and filled with paradoxical righteousness. But for I. Doroshenko as her mother (the first elderly woman played by the beautiful actress), with her striking contrast of outward and inner emotions, the play would not be worth mentioning at all.
Ambitions, may they abound!
O. Holotiuk’s ambitions, claiming recognition as a producer, and that of V. Koshevenko as an actor, while severing all limbs of M. Mitois’s psychologically paradoxical French dramaturgy in the Procrustean bed of the one-actor play, The Accompanist.
Producer O. Krytenko’s ambitious attempt to keep his version of Oleksandr Irvanets’s Liars alive, using the cast’s improvisations, does not work. Something must be wrong with the method of stage direction — as an old anecdote has it, a spontaneous rally is prepared three months in advance.
Ms. I. Koval, a foreign literary critic, ambitiously claims dramatic, ethical, philosophic, and biographic insight in the so-called play Heathen Saints composed of diaries and letters of Leo and Sofiya Tolstoi. And then the Youth Theater came out with the long-suffering Lion and Lioness where the producer S. Moiseyev invented stage expressiveness and the guest star Bohdan Stupka made up for the weak image of Count Leo Tolstoi by his own powerful personality. Was it worth it?
A. Gerni’s Sylvia and A. Frein’s Spectators Are Not Admitted to the Performance at the Left-bank Theater are quite popular with audiences. They are so very touching, ending happily, funny, entertaining! Yet all are approximate and lacking in dramatic expression. The wife’s sense-forming image in the man-wife-dog triangle remains unsolved in Sylvia; the thread leading to the main idea in the Spectators... remains ambiguous, leaving both plays on the level of touching and funny entertainment. After all, [as Alexander Pushkin wrote in The Tale of the Golden Cockerel] “To you all, my lads, and each/Let this tale a lesson teach.” But we will do without hints. It’s best to listen to a dramatized lecture on Mozart and Salieri in the nice play, Ladies’ Games, at the same theater.
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This is why, lost in a maze of approximations, pretentiousness, and irresponsibility, and suddenly stumbling on a true creative success, bona fide creative quest, or a new and promising name, one feels like crowing the way a rooster does, spotting a grain of wheat in a bushel of chaff.
We have a unique vocal talent, Anzhelina Shvachka at the National Opera. As Carmen, she displayed not only her overwhelming mezzo soprano, but also a singular dramatic identification. Young lady, if you read this, hear our hip-hip hurrah all the way from Ukraine to wherever you are performing abroad. This country also wants to hear and see you on stage!
T. Khodiakova (soprano), another pupil of the celebrated Yevheniya Myroshychenko, made an excellent debut at the Children’s Music Theater. Her voice is crystal clear and strong and impersonations range from the Red Riding Hood to Pinocchio.
L. Yaremchuk shows a virtuoso impersonation in A. Gerni’s one-act play The Actor. She just sits at the table, wearing glasses and reading letters, yet she makes the audience relive and fully immerse in a long woman’s life, from childhood to youth to maturity to the disintegration of the personality.
D. Bohomazov’s new rendition of Sanctus (The Throat), based on E. T. A. Hoffman’s short story, is controversial yet remarkably harmonious, checked in every detail, with very sophisticated musical and psychological paradoxes. Here one sees in the new light the talent of actors O. Batko, O. Bondarenko, D. Lalenkov, et al. Not everyone in the audience can digest the ultramodern theatrical language of this ever-thinking and searching producer. It is important to trust him and let oneself be picked and carried by his emotional, aesthetic wave.
At the Modern Art Center, DAKH plays their musical Looking for Time Lost , starring the folk group, Bozhychi. Live singing, sharing real drinks and food with the audience, folk rites, painfully realistic reading of a dying statement — all this makes you look inside yourself, brings back nostalgic memories and longing for all that time wasted...
And so it appears that the past theatrical year was not that dim at the Kyiv theaters.
