The Day begins a series of publications dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the National Ivan Franko Drama Theater. In the past nine decades, this legendary stage has seen a lot of productions that spotlighted the talent of many actors, directors and set designers. The prominent Ukrainian theater critic Valentyna Zabolotna suggests recalling Stolen Happiness, an outstanding play that has more than once attracted the theater’s company. Although seldom staged, this production has always been their calling card.
In January 1920, the theater formed by merging the New Lviv Theater and various acting companies in Vinnytsia was named after Ivan Franko, for most of its actors were Galicians. But, paradoxically, this theater produced not a single play of their patron in twenty years.
Then came the fall of 1939. Western Ukraine joined its parent country. Lviv became easy to reach, and the Franko Theater troupe arrived at their ancestral home. One who did this with special enthusiasm was Amvrosii Buchma, already a celebrated Ukrainian theater actor, a movie star, a teacher at the Kyiv Theatrical Institute. He had been born and begun his stage life in Lviv, played the First Guy in the Stolen Happiness production (Act 3) of the Ruska Besida theatrical company. He adored Vasyl Yurchak, the first performer of the role of Mykola Zadorozhny, and shook hands with the play’s author himself.
Buchna’s son Ihor Bzhesky says that, after coming back to Kyiv, the actor decided to personally produce Stolen Happiness on stage. The Franko Theater’s artistic director Hnat Yura was going to play Mykola Zadorozhny, Natalia Uzhviy – Anna, and Buchma himself – Mykhailo Hurman. As rehearsals went on, Yura saw that he, a short and pudgy man, stood no chances of winning the love of Anna in the rivalry with the handsome Mykhailo (Buchma was 48). The wise and cunning theater director changes the setup: he assumes stage direction, instructs Buchma to play Mykola, and assigns the role of Mykhailo to the young (33), very tall and extremely attractive Viktor Dobrovolsky who had just been released from jail where he had been held for “nationalism.”
Meanwhile, dressing up as Zadorozhny, Buchma suddenly began to apply a turned-up nose and bags under the eyes, stoop his back, and move slowly and awkwardly – in other words, he made his hero look older. When Dobrovolsky asked Buchma about this in surprise, he answered: “Where would your Mykhailo have been had I left Mykola young?” The actor cared about the production’s overall philosophical content rather than about rivalry in a melodramatic love triangle. It is actually his version of Mykola Zadorozhny (in which role Buchma by no means imitated Vasyl Yurchak, as, incidentally, Bohdan Stupka never imitated Buchma in this role, although he also remembered his acting to the minutest details) that gave the production a profound sense and a tragic pitch that had stunned audiences for decades.
There was no stage direction as such in Stolen Happiness. Like in other productions, in which Buchma played in the post-Berezil period, direction played a secondary role here. The show automatically pivoted on him, a Kurbas school actor, “a philosopher and acrobat.” Every time Buchma managed to form a true ensemble on stage, his partners worked with him on the same wavelength of energy and esthetics. This was confirmed by Natalia Uzhviy and other Franko Theater actors. Besides, Buchma brought in the inimitable Hutzul dialect and the details of highlanders’ everyday life which he knew very well – what boys and girls did at vechornytsi (evening gatherings), how they made the sign of the cross and danced (to stage young people’s Candlemas dances near the village inn, Buchma advised inviting Chuperchuk, the profound connoisseur of Hutsul folklore, later the organizer and director of the celebrated ensemble Trembita). The “lasso dance” he staged – with witty sayings and changeable rhythm and tempo – became a classical example of this.
…The curtain is being raised to a quiet Hutsul song. A snow-covered roof is hanging menacingly off the Zadorozhnys’ house (set designer Umansky). Fire is glowing in a painted-tile stove on the left, creating a warm and cozy atmosphere. Anna (Uzhviy) and her neighbor Nastia (Bzheska) are standing by the stove. And there are young people all around the house, for it is vechornytsi. Already tired of working and dancing, they are doing whatever one pleases. The boys are embroidering and making something from leather, the girls are weaving, and all are singing sotto voce. Then the host women bring in dishes full of dumplings. The young people literally swoop on them. (During the war, in evacuation, hungry actors would stay on the stage until they ate up all the “outgoing props.”) Then the cheerful crowd goes rushing through the door, saying a polite good-bye to the hosting lady.
There is no need to retell the whole production in detail, all the more so that it was, fortunately, filmed in 1952 under the direction of I. Shmaruk and one can watch it if necessary. Yet the film does not convey the energy aura that the live stage production once beamed out. Besides, Buchma was incurably ill as the film was being shot, and the stage play was filmed in short sequences and separate plan positions.
Yet it is worth focusing on some of the production’s fragments and details, especially those linked with Buchma’s acting because his Mykola in fact became the bearer of the main conceptual message. The very figure of Zadorozhny was eloquent. His stooped back meant customary obedience, old-age weariness, and a soft nature. Buchma’s Mykola always cowered and buried his head in his shoulders, as if he constantly felt cold and frosty – even in a warm house and in mid-summer. This inner cold of a lonely and humiliated person is the dominant trait of Mykola played by Buchma.
Buchma’s natural, credible, and true-to-life manner of acting, the powerful truth of his mastery, made Mykola Zadorozny a generally serene and poetic image. He showed the gospel truth of life on stage, which has nothing to do with naturalism but, instead, bears a poetic image of reality.
Of extreme eloquence was Buchma’s entire psychophysics in the role of Zadorozhny – his back, arms, and legs. Buchma’s Zadorozhny never straightened his back, for it carried the weight of hard work, bitter destiny, and uneasy everyday life. His shoulders looked rounded because his heavy hands reached out every now and then for plow handles, reins, and axe. He sometimes bowed his head to a slightly raised right shoulder, as if defending himself from woes and questions to which there is no answer. Only once and for a moment does Buchma’s Mykola draw himself up – when he swings the axe over the gendarme, his offender. As is a flame flares up… and goes out.
The legs. Mykola’s legs are also heavy and bowed. They “perform their mission” in the final scene, when the gendarme brings Mykola the court summons again. Buchma carefully takes this tender white paper with his gnarled fingers. He looks at it, holds it upside down, and even peeks at the reverse side. Then he slowly tears it in half, puts (rather than throws or drops) the pieces on the floor and awkwardly treads on them – without a challenge or affectation, as if by chance but firmly and confidently. He no longer fears the Kaiser’s court, an official summons, and a gendarme – he is ripe for a protest, just a quiet act of resistance, not a revolt. According to the playwright, there should be a bright flare-up here, but the actor remembers that there follows a stronger scene – a murder. So, by contrast, he is being well-balanced and almost apathetic. This is the main thing, for his heart has changed and drawn itself up, regaining dignity and strength,
As for the hands of Buchma’s Zadorozhny, it is nothing but an eloquent and lyrical poem. When being arrested, Mykola first extends one hand and only then the other to be chained. And his hands always forget that they are in captivity. In the final scene, however, Zadorozhny extends both hands to the dying Mykhailo: he is prepared to receive a punishment for the murder he committed but never to forgive or make peace. Melodrama goes out, tragedy comes in. The hands of Buchma’s hapless Mykola protected his head from the village head’s beatings, from the fear that Mykhailo instilled by calling himself a dead body; they protected him from woes and the gendarme’s violence. When Zadorozhny was in a drunken insanity, his clever and bustling hands with a modest silver ring on the right one’s forefinger were of no use: they were awkwardly dangling near their owner – ill-coordinated and unneeded to a pathetic pitch. Equally unneeded were they in a minute of prayer: they could be making the sign of the cross or waving away flies, but they would not even cover the mouth of their owner when he yawned right in God’s face.
Mykola’s hands are the speakers of his love for Anna. Although rugged and clumsy, they become incredibly tender when they touch his wife’s shoulders. Their caresses are gingerly and light – he wanted to stroke his beloved one’s face but did not dare to do so with his rough and stone-callous palms. He wanted to hug Anna, but when he felt her silent alienation, he withdrew his hands in respect for her feelings to Mykhailo.
This illiterate, superstitious and ignorant Hutsul shows an exquisite culture of feelings. Buchma denies his Mykola the only kiss that Franko allowed him to make – when the arrested Zadorozhny is being taken out. Anna hides from him behind her bags, and the kiss, intended for her forehead, dies out on his bitter-looking face. Only in Act Three does Mukola kiss his wife, who has turned away, into a bit above the elbow; he kisses her so jealously, tenderly and piously as he could perhaps kiss an icon in the church. This kiss conveys all the sanctity of his love for Anna, all the respect and pity for her.
The purity of Buchma-Zadorozhny’s heart and his tactfulness is really striking. When Mykola suddenly came into the house and saw his wife kissing the gendarme, his face scowled. His hands that held a flail trembled, and his entire upright body seemed to fall. He shrank back and shut the door quietly. And when Hurman had gone, Mykola sidled into the house with eyes downcast, as if he was to blame for this shame. He was painfully ashamed because he saw “something that the tongue will not dare say.” He is unable to look up at his wife. He paces the room up and down, making erratic movements. He forgot why he had come over: a link had gone out of the flail, you see, so he came for some rope to fix it… At last he dared to say a word, although he seemed to have lost his voice forever.
This makes him ask his wife three bitter questions about their love and marital relationship.
And then come three bitter answers, the three final No’s, which made Uzhviy famous in the role of Anna. The actress thus reminisced later about this scene and her partner Buchma: “What helped me the most were Mykola’s eyes – full of docile love and sorrowful, imploring and hopelessly doomed, passionately indignant and protesting. So when Mykola asks Anna in Act Four if she is, was or will ever be in love with him, she says ‘No’ three times. She pronounces the first ‘No’ confidently, without looking at Mykola. She finds it very difficult to say the second, terrible for him, ‘No’ – she looks him in the eyes but still manages to say it as softly as she can, as if apologizing for being unable to love him. And she says the third ‘No,’ averting her eyes from Mykola, as he does the same, because Anna cannot stand his sufferings, even though she herself is also struggling for her love, her Stolen Happiness. It is for this reason that there were three different intonations, three psychological conditions, in response to these three ‘No’s.” (Literaturna Ukraina. April 5, 1951).
Then the dialogue of Anna and Mykola sounds like a musical duet. Extremely excited, they exchange verbal blows, letting each other hear their partner’s words every time they breathe in or out. In general, the actors formed a strong and superb verbal, plastic and singing ensemble. “Crane, oh my crane” – this drunken song of Zadorozhny’s neighbors in Act Five is nothing but lamentation over the many instances of Stolen Happiness – to each his own. The dancing of young people near the village inn on Candlemas Day is a very fiery, chaste and adroit game, but when the pair of sinful lovers, Anna and Mykhailo, joins in, people begin to stumble over, resist, and be unwilling to dance. The three neighboring gossips – B. Bzetska, L. Komaretska, and V. Chaika – look like three hounds in pursuit of somebody else’s sin: hands crossed on the chest, small-step movements, buttoned-up lips, and high-pitched intonations of false sympathy.
Full of the details of Hutsul everyday life, the production looked authentic and true, as well as aroused interest of the audience in little-known lifestyle of Western Ukrainians: festive and daily clothes, smartly-tied headscarves, bast shoes and coarse socks, men’s metal-studded broad leather belts, small-size axes, rectangular dark-green bottles, genuine straw, the yarn from which Mykola tries to make a rope for the flail and with which he wipes his scanty tears away. Besides, the nicely-painted, as it were not in a theater, backcloth of Act Three with pine-trees and mountains, a little cobble-stone bridge on which Mykola walks on his way from prison, greeting all the way the young people who have come to celebrate the feast of spring. Finally, the characteristic drawling intonations typical of highlanders, unusual word stresses, odd-sounding words and greetings – all this allowed the production to breathe freely, show the convincing truth and poetic depth.
The production Stolen Happiness was awarded the Stalin Prize. Among those who advocated this prize was Solomon Mikhoels, a prominent Jewish actor, member of the Stalin Prize Committee. He not only saw this production several times in Kyiv but also played some of its fragments, especially Buchma as Mykola, at a committee session because none of the illustrious jurors was inclined to travel to some province to watch a play, and what good could that province show, after all? Mikhoels’ talent convinced them to award the prize.
The 1940 production became the theater’s calling card and was on the Franko Theater repertoire for a long time, almost thirty years. The gravely sick Buchma gave way to Dmytro Miliutenko who had earlier played this role occasionally. Then this role was assigned to Mykola Shutko and others. After Uzhviy, the role of Anna was played for a longtime by Olha Kusenko. In the course of time, younger actresses came to replace Kusenko. After Dobrovolsky, the part of Mykhailo was played by Mykhailo Zadniprovsky. But as the fast-running time was bringing changes to the problems and esthetics of life, theater directors did not care much about the production which was catastrophically going out of date and turning from a masterpiece into an artistic corpse, thus stirring up surprise and a negative reaction among audiences.
So Serhii Danchenko, the new chief producer of the Kyiv Ivan Franko Theater, was right to begin his job with a fundamentally new production of Stolen Happiness in 1979. Danchenko had successfully staged this play before – in the Lviv Maria Zankovetska Theater. And again, Danchenko’s Stolen Happiness has been shown, albeit very seldom, on the Franko Theater’s stage for almost thirty years. This raises again the problem of going outdated and, at the same time, strengthens the belief that this play by Ivan Franko is immortal.
