Comparisons are known to be unreliable and risky. Still, the Echo solo performance festival, just ended in Kyiv, must be compared to its predecessor, a similar forum titled Kyiv Portrait held for several years, based on the Suzirya [Constellation] chamber drama company. The new festival is without doubt better in several respects: greater scope, better representation, and an impressive material basis allowing to rent several stages. On the other hand, as is often the case with such worrisome undertakings, there were goofs. Thus, the miniature Koleso audience, accommodating most performances, was not big enough for all wishing to squeeze in, causing constant conflicts and misunderstandings. Another negative aspect was poor informational support, so that people did not always know exactly where the next show would be. The booklets and press releases, actually the only sources of such information, were made so that they often led the reader astray, directing them, say, to the Vynnychenko Library or Actor’s House instead of Suzirya. Naturally, people came and found locked doors.
Fortunately, such unpleasant aspects did not affect the festival’s general atmosphere. The organizers succeeded in showing the solo performance genre in all its splendor, ranging from comedy to high tragedy. Let us worth starting with the comedians.
Solo comedy is quite widespread, because everybody loves a clown. There were enough such shows during the Echo festival, although only one was actually worth watching: Andriy Franko’s Franek, the Virtuoso Janitor (Kyiv). Relying on the usual circus stunts, the young actor nevertheless surpassed the limits of traditional buffoonery. By the end of the show he built a real drama with an emotional message to the audience; a janitor will never be a star, but, being an expert in his field, he can reach the most callous heart.
Another kind of solo performance is more akin to a literary- music soiree. Recitals of prose and verse with a maximum economy on means, including the theatrical ones. The result being the theater replaced by a cheap cabaret, as was the case with The Yellow Tango based on Vertinsky songs (Moscow’s Golden Lion drama and music group). A more elegant solution to the problem was found in Igor Pekhovich’s Life is a Takeout with Brodsky verse accompanied by the legendary and artistic saxophonist Sergei Letov.
Solo performance reaches its peak, however, when handling sophisticated dramatic plots. Many will remember Yaroslav Stelmakh’s Blue Automobile performed by Akop Kazanchian from Yerevan’s Street Crossing Theater. The Kyiv audience was, of course, most exacting in view of Oleksiy Vertinsky’s brilliant production at the Youth Theater and the playwright’s recent tragic death. At first, the Armenian version makes one wary; the hero starts his monologue sitting in a wheelchair with an IV, but then Kazanchian finds some extra energy, inner resources to adequately deliver an impassioned bitter confession. And when the video screen comes alive with documentary scenes showing Stelmakh, one is simply terrified. This might be rough stuff, but the effect is very strong – and effect is the strongest weapon in the stage arsenal.
Lviv’s Men and Puppets Theater brought a graceful and highly entertaining version of the mystic Japanese story, “The Peony Lantern,” played by Oleksandr Panchuk who had to recreate all the characters, using traditional Japanese accessories: a screen, brightly colored kimonos, fans, ribbons, grotesque mimicking, and timed plastique. The first half hour of the show is truly bewitching: a story about fateful love overcoming even death, related using sparing, precise, and powerful accents, in a way a hieroglyphic spectacle. But then it becomes clear that the producer’s (Oleh Novokhatsky’s) assortment of such devices is not too diversified. Running short of stage effects, one ought to rely on one thing supposedly be infallible: the actor’s mastery and temperament. Alas, not in this case. The actor started repeating himself, so the audience already knew what would happen next and was openly bored in the end.
The Greek producer Dimitris Economou chose to cope with a far more difficult text, an excerpt from Joyce’s Ulysses, specifically, Molly Bloom’s famous closing monologue. Molly was played by Aglaya Pappas. Her Molly turned out a woman to the core. Pappas is far remote from the Slavic theater of empathy. Hers is a rigidly rational drama school. So it was precisely this refined reserve, combined with a skill to time every gesture, that Economou capitalized upon to cope with Joyce’s most sophisticated stream of consciousness. Pappas’s Molly is extremely feminine, restless, teeming with earthly passions. She is controversy incarnate, coquettish, suffering, independent, and capable of profound devotion. At certain moments her Molly becomes a living symbol of femininity. In her one finds all the women of the world, or rather all their emotional conditions that only a gifted actor can impersonate. Of course, she cannot convey the rhythm of the Universe filling the last pages of Joyce’s novel, but what she can do on stage is enough for a truly memorable performance.
Patrick Susskind’s solo play Contrabass staged by Illia Schatz and played by Igor Karas (Moldovan Mission Theater). Graduate of the Moscow Academic Art Theater studio, Karas overcomes Susskind’s hopeless tragedy by showing his hero’s outstanding character. This towering scantly dressed and bow-legged giant matches his capricious and at the same time majestic instrument. He delivers a lecture on music, he is terribly depressed by having such a minor part in the orchestra; he complains of private failures, he is madly in love with the soloist Sarah. His vital strength is such that no one would ever think of calling him a small man. And Susskind portrays him precisely that way. He dares cheat on his double bass with a saxophone which he appears to play just as well. Finally, he leaves his cabin, fully armed not for another routine concert, but to shout at the top of his voice for Sarah, thus receiving his long-awaited freedom.
These performances, of course, far from exhaust the list of the Echo events, but offer a sufficiently accurate outline of the solo performance as such. The main inference is that this genre is actually capable of diversifying its repertory, constituting a rich backdrop for their large scale and far from always successful projects. In this sense, creating contrast, an irritant for the big stage if you will, made this festival a success. However, to evolve as a tangible factor determining the development of at least the studio movement, the Echo needs growth hormones: better promotion, maybe pre-selected performances, and of course unswerving self-confidence.
