The program “Master” of the festival “Golden Mask” was opened by Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, again staged by Lev Dodin at the Maly Drama Theater – the Theater of Europe in St. Petersburg after twenty years. The director was expected to enter the stage, but he could not come to Moscow due to illness.
Kama Ginkas, Sergey Zhenovach, Polina Kutepova, Evgeny Kamenkovich, Viktor Ryzhakov, Alexander Gelman, Yulia Vysotskaya, Andrey Kuzichev, film director Andrey Smirnov came to the performance. Dodin is one of the few directors whom colleagues go to. His “The Seagull” is fresh, extraordinary. It seems that a young man put it on, and not a gray-haired master.
The play underwent a drastic correction, amputation of some of the characters, declared as a composition for the stage by Lev Dodin based on Chekhov’s play “The Seagull”. There are only seven characters on stage instead of thirteen in the original. Some lines of missing heroes are given to those who survived.
The former The Seagull, staged by Dodin in 2021, was first presented during the World Theater Olympiad in Moscow. Chekhov’s heroes pedaled bicycles, sat on the grass. Arkadina was played by the director’s wife Tatyana Shestakova. “Seagull” on wheels was replaced by “Seagull” in boats. And what is interesting, both then and now they said and say that we have not seen such a Dodin. If in his first production the characters were mature and even elderly, up to Treplev, who did not pull on Arkadina’s son, now they are all young. They sit in boats, reminiscent of gondolas moored for the night, rocking in them. This whole wonderful world was created by the artist Alexander Borovsky.
The waves are splashing. There is an illusion that the stage hatch is filled with water, because Dodin likes to stage on the waters. We remember its pools in Chekhov’s “Play without a title” and “Chevengur” according to Platonov, for the sake of which a pavilion was specially built in Moscow’s Sokolniki, which was supplied with water. The actors swam, and it made a strong impression. In Molly Sweeney, the action took place at the bottom of a dry pool.
And here comes the water again. All eight characters are sitting in the boats, watching a play based on the play by Kostya Treplev on a witch’s lake, where the beautiful and self-confident Nina Zarechnaya (the beautiful Anna Zavtur, Ksenia Rappoport played in the first “The Seagull”) pronounces the monologue “People, lions, eagles and partridges. ..”. In the second act, when the cold sets in, the women will put on winter coats and wrap themselves in furs. The boats are turned over, and it will be possible to jump from one to another, as if on boulders.
The couples here are not paired, and the meetings are solid non-meetings. Everyone loves someone who does not reciprocate his love. There is always a third that violates possible happiness. Masha is in love with Treplev, and he is in love with Nina. Nina is hunting Trigorin, and Arkadin is trying not to lose him. Masha (played by Marina Goncharova) will eventually achieve her goal, if not sublime love, but carnal. Arkadina will keep Trigorin. And someone will lose everything.
Arkadina is finally young and beautiful. She is played by Elizaveta Boyarskaya. How quickly time flies. Yesterday, still a young actress, now she has become Arkadina. Boyarskaya pronounces Masha’s monologue from The Three Sisters about Vershinin, and it will be appropriate in The Seagull. It has everything that characterizes the relationship between Arkadina and Trigorin. It is curious that Igor Chernevich, who plays him, in The Three Sisters, not here, but in another performance by Dodin, plays Vershinin. Zarechnaya in the second act looks like the same age as Arkadina, somewhat similar to her and allows herself to call her Ira. The characters scream like seagulls, and this is good, unusual and frightening. Arcadia is great. She is cleverly and subtly played by Boyarskaya, who only once stumbles and plays the scene of Trigorin’s appropriation too boldly, banally praising him.
What is he? Trigorin, as Chernevich plays him, is a dim person. There seems to be nothing attractive and joyful in him, but it is he who is chosen by beautiful women. In some ways, he reminds Chekhov. In addition, he pronounces not only his native text, but also gleaned from Anton Pavlovich’s notebooks. He constantly writes down life observations, remarks of people who are nearby in a notebook, and then quotes them to him. Even about the death of his son Arkadina, he first sketches something and only then informs her about the tragedy. In fact, before our eyes, the play “The Seagull” is being born from his notebook.
Nina will be a traitor. Treplev will immediately surrender, laughing at his literary experiments, as soon as Trigorin appears. Treplev “shoots” repeatedly, but does not kill himself. First he brings a bloody gull. A stuffed animal will be made from the unfortunate bird, which Medvedenko will present to Trigorin. He ordered it, but he doesn’t remember.
Sorin and Dorn seemed to agree in the same character of Sergei Kuryshev. Formally, he is Sorin, brother of Arkadina, the only one here who understands and supports Treplev. At the same time, he pronounces Dorn’s lines. Kuryshev swam in the previous performances of Dodin, in The Seagull in 2001 he played Trigorin, and now he is as evidence of total loneliness. Nikita Karataev as Treplev is very good and modern. His hero is talented, not mediocrity. Nina reads a monologue written by him, reflecting what is happening: “… all lives, having completed a sad circle, died out”, “the earth does not carry a single living creature”, “cold, cold, cold. Empty, empty, empty. Scary, scary, scary.” Teacher Medvedenko (excellent work by Sergei Ryazantsev) talks about a beggarly life worth 23 rubles in such a way, he is so convincing that these figures stick in my memory. When else did we react so much to this meager salary …
Lev Dodin does nothing to surprise. Why is it for him? He has proven everything to everyone. And now he clears Chekhov of the layers of interpreters, returns his word to its original meaning. Listening to the text is a pleasure. Arkadina will dance a waltz with her son, and Treplev will no longer be so afraid that, as a mother, she is almost incapable of loving. But a tragic ending is unavoidable.