Through Salieri’s Eyes

An attempt to stage Pushkin’s “Little Tragedies” at the Chekhov Art Theatre ended in failure.

By Marina Davydova, Moscow News

“Little Tragedies” is not only a classic school text, etched into the consciousness of the statistically average Russian intellectual in the form of a collection of quotations. To utter these words as if they are being read for the first time is practically impossible. But no one’s compelled to do that. Why burden yourself unbearably when you can choose a load that suits your shoulders? If Roman Kozak, who staged “The Covetous Knight” and “The Stone Guest” on the New Stage at the Art Theatre, had been staggering under a weight, the criticism would have been different. It’s not that Kozak can’t lift the weight – he doesn’t even try.

“Why don’t we take on William Shakespeare?, ” asks an amateur director in a film that was loved all over the Soviet Union. Kozak, it seems, has asked the very same question. He assaults Pushkin’s dramatic work using hatred and insolence, possibly pardonable in a neophyte or an amateur. But Kozak is no neophyte.. It’s not the lack of professionalism, but, to put it grandiloquently, the common cultural context.

Lightness of thought was the trademark of the times – a magazine in the newspaper-tacked-on-a-wall genre, an evening of poetry in the spirit of light conversation, the drama in the tradition of the skit. In our case not even a skit, since the last presumes wit and gaiety, while the Art Theatre production (not counting isolated snippets), wound up being inarticulate and boring, for itself and its friends, who will watch everything holding their heads in their hands.

At one time, a young Roman Kozak produced Ludmila Petrushevskaya’s “Cinzano” at the Chelovek Theatre Studio. The relationships between the characters, who understood each other with half a word, coincided almost exactly with what was unfolding inside the small troupe. Of course, some things in Kozak’s latest play recall former times. The knight commander, who speaks with the voice of the theatre’s main director, Oleg Yefremov, was wonderfully conceived. His gypsum statue (more precisely, its lower half) could stand in diminuitive form in the chambers of Donna Anna, and in grotesque magnification, it would outclass Don Juan’s nether regions. Indeed, Don Juan himself, performed by Sergei Shkalikov (perhaps the sole acting success of the play) is also youthfully, and occasionally childishly, unconstrained. This Don Juan, mingling cynicism with directness in a surprising way, bored during Donna Anna’s confessional story, and fearlessly throwing himself at the feet of the knight commander’s statue, bears no resemblance to a Pushkin’s character; more a heathen Don Juan, incapable of love, from Tirso de Molina’s “El Burlador de Sevilla”. Shkalikov’s hero is probably the sole hint of a concept to which, generally speaking, the director applied himself and which doesn’t burden the audience.

Making a travesty of a classic, as is well known, is simple but not gratifying. You won’t surprise anyone with grotesque on stage; since it’s initial reception as an innovation, it long ago became circulating currency. And is it worthwhile disturbing the shadow of the great one “to see what it tells us? ” There is, however, yet another factor which makes the parody at the Art Theatre senseless. In our minds, production of nearly all Russian classics are brought off on the theatre stage somewhat more easily than Pushkin’s dramaturgical legacy. As applied to Gogol, Lermontov, or Dostoevsky, one could talk of a certain stage tradition. With Pushkin you begin with a blank page every time: there are no canons. Parody inevitably implies the existence of these canons. It’s absurd, of course, to assume Salieri’s pose and exclaim with pathos: “I don’t think it’s funny when a contemptible buffoon dishonors Alighieri with parody.” And in fact, it’s not funny. In order to think so, you’d probably have to be a Mozart. Ordinary mortals have to look at bad parody through Salieri’s eyes.

V. Discuss the play “little Tragedies” as:

· two critics

· an actor and a journalist

· two theatre-goers.

VI. Write a review of any theatrical performance (a play, ballet, opera, etc.)

VII. Give a talk on the following topics.

1) Theatre and its place in modern life.

2) How can theatre help in developing the qualities necessary for a future teacher?

3) The place of the theatre in the process of upbringing the young generation.

4) The theatre can help establish close contacts between nations and provide for better mutual understanding.