Performance Blue Bird. Journey

The grandson of the People's Artist is getting married and will soon make him a great-grandfather

At the renovated Stanislavsky Drama Theatre, now the Stanislavsky Electric Theatre, new artistic director Boris YUKHANANOV presented the first premiere. The extravaganza performance “The Blue Bird” based on the play by METERLINK runs three evenings in a row. Based on the famous fairy tale, the fate of Tiltil and Mytil, played by Vladimir KORENEV and his wife Alla KONSTANTINOVA, unfolds. The performance is filled with personal memories of the acting couple: childhood, youth, coming to the theater, scenes from productions they once performed, memories of colleagues. This is a real benefit performance for the luminaries of the stage.

- Vladimir Borisovich, you came to the Stanislavsky Theater in the early 60s under Mikhail Yanshin.

Mikhail Mikhailovich saw me in a graduation performance at the educational theater. He assembled a luxurious team, and our theater was jokingly called a branch of the Film Actor's Theater. Because in the troupe there were Evgeniy Vesnik, Evgeny Urbansky, Evgeniy Leonov, Lilya Gritsenko. Everyone in the theater adored Yanshin. When he left with the Moscow Art Theater, where he served as an artist, on foreign tours, he brought gifts to everyone: a tie, a fountain pen, a keychain - everyone, including make-up artists and stage workers. Mikhail Mikhailovich registered the actress in his apartment. Back then, it was impossible to work in the capital without having a residence permit, and Yanshin registered a stranger with him. At that time, a very extraordinary and humane act.

- What else do you remember about Mikhail Mikhailovich?

He loved to eat delicious food, but it was impossible for him, he suffered from excess weight all his life. And in our theater there was a buffet at the restaurant level. And the artistic director periodically went to the Institute of Nutrition for treatment, and then gained weight again in the buffet. But Yanshin was not as good-natured as he might seem. He had strong views that he was not afraid to defend. For example, he was repeatedly blamed for maintaining relations with dissidents. He also had a passion - running. Half of what was built on the hippodrome was probably built with the money he lost. He even took one actress into the troupe, because her father is a jockey. Mikhail Mikhailovich thought that he would tell her which horse to bet on. But this did not happen. - Is it true that once the audience almost disrupted the performance when they saw you on stage, that is, the living Ichthyander from “Amphibian Man”? - Yes, it happened on tour in Kuibyshev. In the play “Days of the Turbins” I was given a small role of a cadet, just a few words. But as soon as I left, there was an ovation in the hall. And I was removed from this role.

You and your wife, actress Alla Konstantinova, studied together and have been in the theater together all your life. Has this ever bothered you?

Earlier, maybe. And over the years, I realized what a native person is. I miss her and have to see her all the time. Alena is a wonderful actress, and I have always rejoiced at her successes. And now in “The Blue Bird” the way she plays two scenes from “The Seagull” is of the highest level. And then, a man and a woman in the theater are different, there is no rivalry here. I believe that simple human joys - family, health, friends - this is happiness. - Well, you say that now, but in your youth you probably had great ambitions.- I had no ambition, and I never competed with anyone. In art, you don’t have to stand in line behind anyone. The main thing is that every evening when you go on stage, you have a holiday.

-Has it ever happened that you earned a lot of money and didn’t know how to spend it?

Once I starred in a film in Yalta, received a large fee and decided: I’ll go to the famous Oreanda restaurant and order the most expensive dish. It turned out that it costs 38 rubles. At the same time, my salary was 85. The dish was called “cocotte bardoles”. The waitress looked at me ambiguously and brought me a tiny silver cocotte maker with a lid. There were... sausages in tomato sauce. She explained that this Spanish sauce is very difficult to prepare. Okay, I was caught like an idiot. It was necessary to recoup somehow. He came to his film group and boasted about how luxuriously he had dined at Oreanda, ordering the most expensive dish. The next day, ten idiots came to the restaurant and also ordered cocotte bardoles. You should have seen the waitress's face! But my friends didn’t have time to beat me, I left for Moscow in the evening.

- It was a long time ago. In general, did you buy expensive things for your wife: a fur coat, jewelry?

Of course, she has no one but me. But when we got married, we lived in a decorative shed at the theater, we had nothing. - But you are a Muscovite. They could bring their spouse to their parents.- I wanted to be independent. My wife raised me. I started earning money and became a professor.

Your daughter plays with you in the theater, and we were all waiting for your grandson to grow up and be Korenev number two, because he is very similar to you. But Yegor, it seems, didn’t become an artist?

He doesn't want to, and maybe that's good. He is a second-year student at the Higher School of Economics. In this sense, his head works. He teaches me how to sell a car, but I don’t sell it, I act like Pushkin in “Eugene Onegin”: Onegin “read Adam Smith and was a deep economist,” but “his father could not understand him and gave the lands as collateral.”

- Your grandson probably lives separately from you?- Yes, separately and going to get married. This is happiness - procreation. I have never measured happiness by profession.

-Are you a confident person in life?

No, doubter. I'm always prepared for the worst, so I'm calm. First of all, I don’t know how to rejoice, they didn’t teach me. I don’t like holidays, I don’t know what to do. I don't like big halls and lots of people. Peter the Great slept in the closet. He also appreciated small spaces. - How do you feel about traveling?- I love my dacha. I love to eat delicious food and cook it myself. I have a good neighbor there, we have picnics with him. I like to cook lagman and pilaf. I learned on tour. - Do you observe the pilaf ritual? First, fry the cracklings and drink a glass...- Necessarily! I have a whole shelf of interesting cookery books.

One of the vivid memories of my childhood: an empty stage, in the center of it there are two chairs, a girl and a boy are sleeping on them. Magic music sounds. Here the children wake up, and with them an amazing, magical world wakes up - Water, Fire, Bread, Sugar come to life; The Cat and the Dog begin to speak human language... How I wanted this to happen to me! Maybe that’s why the production of Maurice Maeterlinck’s amazing fairy tale at the Moscow Art Theater has remained forever in my heart. Gorky.

The play “The Blue Bird” became the hallmark of the theater and was performed on its stage for many years, being updated and revived with each new young generation of artists. It is still in the repertoire of the Moscow Art Theater today.

And the premiere of “The Blue Bird” took place back in 1908. Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky, founder and artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater, to whom the right to first stage the play was transferred, said: “The production should be naive, simple, light, joyful, like the dream of a ten-year-old child, but at the same time grandiose, for it should be the embodiment dreams of a great poet. The performance should delight children and awaken serious thoughts in adults.” The task was not an easy one: to bring to life on the stage of a realistic theater, based on the deep psychological work of the actor, the extravaganza of the symbolist Maeterlinck. But difficult means interesting. For Stanislavsky it was like a motto. And before the start of rehearsals, he specially went to Maeterlinck, to the former Saint-Vandril Abbey in Normandy, where he lived, in order to better understand what the author himself wanted from the future performance.

“I looked around and saw a shaven, venerable, gray-haired, stocky, handsome man in a gray coat and a driver’s cap. He helped me pack my things. The coat fell, he picked it up and carefully threw it over his arm; then he led me to the car, sat me down next to him, packed my luggage, we set off and flew off. The driver skillfully maneuvered among the children and chickens along the dusty village street and rushed like a whirlwind. It was impossible to admire the views of the charming Normandy at the speed with which we were rushing. At one of the turns, near a protruding rock, we almost ran into a passing carriage. But the driver made a deft turn without hitting the horse. While driving more quietly, we exchanged comments about the car and the danger of speeding. Finally I asked how Mr. Maeterlinck was doing.

„Materlink? - he exclaimed in surprise. - C "est moi Maeterlink!" ("Maeterlinck? I am Maeterlinck!")

I clasped my hands, and then we both laughed long and loudly. Thus, the pompous phrase of the prepared greeting was not useful. And it’s great, because our simple and unexpected acquaintance immediately brought us closer together,” this is how Stanislavsky described his first meeting with Maeterlinck. Simplicity, cordiality, openness, modesty and at the same time childish enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, desire to learn new things, to delve into the essence struck the director in this man. “We walked a lot, talked, discussed the play itself, the characteristics of the characters. During these negotiations he spoke extremely clearly. But when the conversation turned to the stage director, he could not imagine how his instructions would be carried out on stage. In this area, I had to explain to him figuratively, perform a whole play, tell him some tricks that were performed at home. I played all the roles for him, and he picked up my hints on the fly. Maeterlinck, like Chekhov, turned out to be accommodating. He was easily carried away by what seemed successful to him, and willingly fantasized in the suggested direction.”

The performance was a stunning success and received only positive reviews from the audience and the most demanding critics. Since then, “The Blue Bird” has been loved and staged in all corners of the world, played in different languages, and more than one generation of children has grown up with it.

Perhaps the secret of the play’s long-term popularity is in the questions it poses to the characters and to the audience, inviting them to stop and think: what is happiness and where is it, is life limited by everyday realities, or is “the world ruled by the invisible”?

Tyltil and Mytil, brother and sister, go at the insistence of the fairy in search of the Blue Bird for her sick granddaughter. What is wrong with the girl? To this question from the children, the fairy replies: “It’s difficult to determine. She wants to be happy." This begins the amazing journey of the heroes in search of the bird of happiness. They find themselves in the land of Memories, where they meet their grandparents who have already left this world; to the palace of the Queen of the Night, keeper of all the secrets of Nature; to the Kingdom of the Future, where the souls of those who are yet to be born live; to the Gardens of Beatitudes, the haven of human desires, from the basest to the most sublime - from the Bliss of Satisfied Vanity to the Great Joy of Being Just or the Great Joy of Contemplating the Beautiful. To help Tiltil, the fairy gives him a magic cap, which allows him to see the invisible, that which is hidden from ordinary eyes, and is accessible only to the eyes of the Heart. And he frees the soul of Milk, the soul of Bread, Sugar, Fire, Dog, Cat, the soul of Water, who go with him in search of the Blue Bird, and the Soul of Light, which helps and often saves those who seek.

In many ancient cultures, happiness took the form of a bird. It is difficult to catch and difficult to hold. All the bluebirds that Tiltil finds turn gray or black in the light, lose their magical blue, and he is forced to continue his search. But what is he really looking for? Facing various dangers that lie in wait for him along the way, overcoming his doubts and disappointments, fighting the temptation to stay “to dine in the garden of fat bliss,” fighting his base desires that can delay him, he strives to find that One Bird that will make him happy Man and will reveal to him all the secrets of Nature, will return true vision, that is, the ability to see the hidden nature of things and phenomena. Blue is the color of the Sky, the color of the Dream that calls the hero on this difficult journey. “You have not yet caught that only Blue Bird that endures daylight... She has flown away somewhere else... But we will find her,” the Soul of Light tells Tiltil after another failure. The journey of Tiltil and his sister Mytil for the Blue Bird is a search for Happiness, a search for Truth, a search for the meaning of life, purpose, a search for oneself and the path to oneself, to what a Man should become. And this search is endless. Only for a moment does it seem that you have caught, “grabbed by the tail” the Bird of Happiness, understood something, opened it - and it already flies away to give you the opportunity to move on, search further, do not stop in your search, do not stop hoping, believing, love. It flies away to call and call for itself, further, higher...

In the finale, another Blue Bird turns out to be a turtledove, who lived in Tiltil’s cage and to which he did not pay any attention, but it was she who the sick girl wanted to receive as a gift, and it was she who gave her untold joy. “But this is my turtledove!.. But when I left, she was not so blue!.. But this is the Blue Bird that we were looking for!.. We followed her to such a distance, and she , it turns out, here!..”

It turns out that you don’t have to go so far to find happiness, it is always there, you just need to learn to see it, recognize it and renew it. “Do not chase happiness: it is always within you,” said one of the greatest sages of antiquity, Pythagoras. At the beginning of the 20th century, the symbolist Maeterlinck tried to tell us the same thing with his fairy tale. Happiness is not in finding, but in the search itself, in the Path itself. And also Happiness is in giving, because Tiltil does not go in search of his own happiness, but in the end he himself is happy, because he can give happiness to another person by giving, sharing what he has been looking for for so long. At the end of the day, the Blue Bird disappears again. Happiness is a moment, but the memory of it calls and will lead you further. And the heroes will never be the same again. Happiness is seeing and feeling that same invisible connection with everything: with Nature, with people, with Heaven. You must be able to return this Happiness through your own efforts, not for your own sake.

“We are following the Blue Bird in a long line” - the heroes of the fabulous Moscow Art Theater extravaganza have been singing from the stage for a hundred years now. For a long series of generations, people are looking for their path to happiness, the meaning of their existence. And truly happy is the one who was beckoned by the Bird’s blue wing and who responded to her call!

for the magazine "Man Without Borders"

On April 13 and 14, the Stanislavsky Electric Theater will host the premiere of the play “The Maids of Sunset Boulevard.” The theater's leading actor and director Vladimir Korenev tells how the production was created, why the set design is interesting and what experiments attract him.

Vladimir Korenev is one of the most prominent and prominent figures in Russian cinema. Back in the 1960s, he fell in love with audiences thanks to his role as Ichthyander in the film “Amphibian Man.” His peers wanted to be like his hero, and his peers bombarded the handsome actor with love letters.

More than 50 years ago, Korenev came to the Moscow Drama Theater named after K.S. Stanislavsky and eventually became a leading actor. The new life of the theater under the name "Electrotheater Stanislavsky" began in 2015 with the fantastic play "Blue Bird", in which Vladimir Korenev and his wife Aleftina Konstantinova played the main roles - the boy Tiltil and the girl Mytil. The theater’s new play “The Maids of Sunset Boulevard” is the actor’s first directorial work on his native stage.

— Vladimir Borisovich, your performance is based on two works at once - Jean Genet’s play “The Maids” and the film “Sunset Boulevard” by Billy Wilder. What did you take into your plot from each of them? What is your production about?

“You will have to watch the performance, and only after that everything will be clear.” This cannot be explained in a nutshell if a person has not watched Wilder’s film or read the play. To be honest, I would be surprised if anyone read it - I myself became acquainted with it at the age of 60. This is a very complex piece. A very rich woman, Madame, lives in a luxurious apartment, with her two maids - young girls, sisters Solange and Claire. Madame has a lover who is put behind bars. The maids like the hostess's lifestyle and are captivated by all this glamor. He becomes their obsession.

I thought the boundaries of this story needed to be pushed. What if the main character is not just a rich woman whose lifestyle is envied and admired by many, but a truly talented person, a star, an actress? And so two maid girls fell in love with her on-screen images, ended up in her house, and are trying to do something for her. And she pushes them around, she doesn’t need them at all. And no one needs her, as it turned out. They begin to hate her and realize the tragedy that happened to them. That's what I tried to bring, to put it simply, into this performance.

— In our country, the play “The Maids” has gained enormous popularity thanks to the production of Roman Viktyuk. Have you seen this performance?

- Yes, and more than once. He is very successful, wonderful, beautiful, he has toured the whole world.

— For Roman Grigorievich it is a mixture of kabuki theater, improvisation and dance...

- Indeed, he made a performance of an existential form, where the form is the content. But what happened, what happened in this story itself? Roman Grigorievich solved the problem not with the help of the language of dramatic theater, but with the help of the language of plastic, almost ballet. I was very interested in this plot, I wanted to work on it. I often asked myself the question: why is this play not performed in other theaters? After all, it can be really truly beautiful.

— But visually your performance is not inferior to Roman Grigorievich’s production. For example, you have very interesting decorations - made from black and white recycled plastic bags.

— Yes, it was suggested by Anastasia Nefedova, the main artist. The idea is unusual, I did not immediately support it, because I understood what I would get from my artists when they saw the scenery and costumes. Gradually everyone got used to it and began to like them.

But the main thing is the play. I am grateful to the artistic director of the theater Boris Yukhananov, who gave me the opportunity to experiment with this very dangerous material, because it’s easy to fail on such a play. I decided to do something that is close to people in my profession. In the lives of actors, I have seen a lot of fans, fans who pursue our brother. What motivates them? Why do they subject their lives to this?

— After the role of Ichthyander in the film “Amphibian Man,” you also became incredibly popular. Is it true that you received letters from fans in such quantities that you had to put them in refrigerator boxes?

- Is it true. But I didn’t answer, there were too many of them. To do this, I would have to abandon all my other affairs. Although it happened that I answered very rare letters, in the event that what was written caught my attention. And so, you know, young actors are written not by philosophers, but by young girls who simply fell in love with the image you created. But it was nice, of course, that they treated me so well.

— Is such fame a difficult test or vice versa?

“The question, rather, is not to get sick from it.” When they say “copper pipes,” they mean a test of success. And it can be very scary. But somehow I got carried away. I had wise parents and good friends next to me. And then the understanding comes that we must also correspond to this popularity. You can live your whole life as a narcissist, looking in the mirror: “How God rewarded me, how handsome I am!” Or you can strive for something more. For example, Misha Kozakov, who also played in “Amphibian Man.” Handsome, popular, he could always remain in this role and not need anything. And he began to direct and make films. “Pokrovsky Gate” is a wonderful painting. You begin to respect a person when you see that he uses his talents, and not just his appearance.

“It turned out to be a completely different story”

— Is “Maids of Sunset Boulevard” your debut as a director?

- Not really. For example, I staged the play “Dangerous Liaisons” based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos at the Arkhangelsk Theater (Arkhangelsk Drama Theater named after M.V. Lomonosov. - Notemos. ru). This is a large theater with fifteen hundred seats. The audience accepted the production and it was sold out. I also headed the theater arts department at the Institute of Humanitarian Education and Information Technologies for 12 years, and every year I staged several performances with graduate students. And I simply can’t count how many excerpts I staged. So it's not really a debut. I just do what I like, and I have the opportunity.

—Which side do you feel more comfortable with—being a director or an actor?

- And this is almost impossible to separate. What do actors and directors do? Psychological analysis. What is the joy of an actor? The fact is that he has the opportunity to swim in the ocean of proposed circumstances that the author creates. Every day they are different. It's the same for the director. As a rule, most often the director leaves the actor. Maybe I wanted to try something new. When you stage a play, you still internally lose for all the actors, you check this story with yourself. In art, everything depends on your personality. The more different you are from the rest, the better. The more you differ from some recognized norms, the more interesting it is to others.

I'll tell you a story about this. One day a young playwright came to Konstantin Stanislavsky and said: “Give me some interesting topic for a play.” He answers him: “Well, here you go: the young man went abroad, returns, and at this time his girlfriend fell in love with another.” The playwright says: “But this is banal.” And Stanislavsky objects: “Alexander Griboedov wrote “Woe from Wit” on this topic.” Do you see how important it is to be able to look at the world differently? I think this is wonderful. So I got a completely different story about the maids.

— Will you be staging anything else in the near future?

- I don’t know how it will go. You never know whether the performance will be successful. I hope you like it. I can only say one thing that we did it with great interest and love. We tried to make it clear so that the viewer would be excited by the story. If it works out, I hope Boris Yuryevich will give me something else to stage that I like. I also want to say that my actors are just fantastic. I'm proud of what they do. I don’t know who else could play this complex story so easily and freely.

“My wife is a better actress than me”

— One of the roles is played by your daughter Irina, and in the play “The Blue Bird” you appear on stage together with your wife Aleftina Konstantinova. Is it true that it is more difficult to work with family members?

- When and how. My daughter has a very difficult character. When we argue with her, sparks fly in all directions! She is a very independent person. And the wife is simply an outstanding artist. It so happened that she and I very rarely played together in the same performances, somehow it didn’t work out. But she's just a wonderful actress, much better than me.

— The play “Blue Bird” is a hit at the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre. When Boris Yukhananov invited you to participate, did you immediately agree? Or did the project seem too radical to you?

— When Boris Yuryevich (Yukhananov - website note) The first time I talked about it, I was shocked. I asked him: “What is it like to be a boy at my age?” He says: “When you come to a children’s theater, you know that the role is played by an actress.” She speaks in a child's voice - and after five minutes the viewer gets used to it. These are the terms of the game.

Then Yukhananov said: “You and your wife went through the same path that these brother and sister went through, they also went to seek happiness, this is our whole life. And when your story intersects with the story of these boys and girls, the viewer will think and reflect on what awaits these heroes next.”

— For you, this is not only the role of a seven-year-old boy, but also your memories, your personal stories.

— Yes, especially since my wife and I didn’t have a very simple life. Before Aleftina's eyes, her mother was killed - during the war years. And I have seen so much sad and tragic in my life. But, of course, there was also happiness. Boris Yuryevich is absolutely right: “The Blue Bird” is a completely unchildish work. There is an old Hollywood film based on this work, Elizabeth Taylor starred in it. I think the film is a failure because it is not clear what age it is intended for. And our performance is for adult spectators. And Maurice Maeterlinck is truly a serious philosopher. He wrote this play for reflection. And Boris Yuryevich came up with an absolutely innovative move: I don’t portray something on stage, I’m an ordinary person who talks with the audience.

Anatoly Korolev, writer, especially for RIA Novosti.

These days, the Russian theater is celebrating an unusual date - the centenary of the production of the play “The Blue Bird” by Konstantin Sergeevich Stanislavsky. This is the only play staged by the great reformer on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, which has survived to this day (now this performance is performed on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater named after Gorky, under the direction of T. Doronina). And although, of course, the production has changed a lot over the past years, the scenery and costumes have been updated, the roles have changed, the main thing is that the mystery in Maeterlinck’s fairy tale has survived, the spirit of the production has been preserved. This is how the aroma of cognac is preserved and strengthened over the years.

In fact, we have a miracle before us.

None of Stanislavsky’s pearls have reached us, but this diamond has survived. Perhaps only one “Princess Turandot”, staged by Vakhtangov in the 20s, can compete with Stanislavsky’s masterpiece in terms of its duration of existence on stage.

The secret of such long-term success has several answers.

Most often, Stanislavsky was very serious, rehearsals stretched on for years. Each mise-en-scène was checked hundreds of times. Like a jeweler, the director peered into the scene, as if into the face of a diamond during cutting, and then suddenly the great worker took a break.

"From time to time you should
Have a glass of Clicquot!

For him it was - I quote - “my relaxation, my joke, which is occasionally necessary for an artist. In the French chansonette it is sung... (read above).”

In part, this story is reminiscent of the case of young Stevenson, who for a long time could not sign his name and was writing dull philosophical novels that he could not finish, and suddenly the publisher offered to write him something light, adventure, for teenagers. For boys?! Stevenson trembled and, returning home, wrote his first masterpiece, “Treasure Island,” in one gulp. Why in one gulp? Because I freed myself from the heavy burden of initial attitudes to write seriously.

So, having decided to almost fool around, drink a glass of Clicquot, and create a performance for children, Stanislavsky first decided to go to the author himself, to Maurice Maeterlinck in France, who then lived 6 hours away from Paris.

I (Stanislavsky recalls) got ready to travel in Russian style: with a lot of packages and all sorts of gifts. I wrote a magnificent greeting on the cuff...

But, alas, no one met him at the station, and, as luck would have it, there was not a single porter on the platform. With an armful of packages, Stanislavsky headed to the parking lot, where drivers were crowding. Here they demanded his ticket, as is customary in the West. The packages scattered. And then some brave driver in a gray coat and a driver’s cap rushed to collect his things. He asked in French: Monsieur Stanislavski? He put me in the car and drove off at terrible speed.

Frightened by the speed, Stanislavsky sat without saying a word, and only half an hour later he decided to ask the driver: how is Mr. Maeterlinck doing?

Maeterlinck? - the driver exclaimed in surprise, - I am Maeterlinck!

Stanislavsky clasped his hands, and both laughed long and loudly.

This unexpected reprimand became the capital letter for the further work of Stanislavsky, who always could not remember his acquaintance with Maeterlinck without laughing. Smile, irony, and its eternal companions - sadness and melancholy - penetrated into the performance.

Having let go of the reins, Stanislavsky did the job easily and naturally. He even allowed the actors to improvise while he focused on inventing magic. He did not want to stage just a children's fairy tale, but began to compose a magical parable about the expansion of space, about the journey of children beyond the world, to the secrets of existence.

Black velvet helped him with this installation.

Stanislavsky for the first time decided to try the magic of this fabric, which - one has only to cover a thing, whether an actor, with a piece of black velvet - makes objects invisible. Velvet gave the stage the appearance of a mysterious abyss that hides behind an ordinary set of objects: behind the table, behind the bed, behind the dough tub, behind the fire in the hearth... From the solemn game of invisible people was born that divine bustle of miracles, which gave the performance the amazing charm of the night and the beauty of dawn, which has still preserved the purity of the diamond and the brilliance of the cut and illuminated us with rays of magic.

The premiere took place in the fall of 1908.

The production designer was the wonderful master V. Egorov.

The music was composed by composer I. Sats.

The sister and brother, Mytil and Tiltil, were played by A. Koonen and S. Khalyutina.

The role of the Cat was played by the great I. Moskvin. The faithful and stupid Dog was played by V. Luzhsky, the lush Bread - by V. Gribunin, the brittle Sugar - by A. Gorev, and the role of the fairy was played by M. Lilina.

The fairy tale was a resounding success among both children and adults.

The critic noted “that the audience felt tears clench their hearts.”

The perfection of the work, done easily by Stanislavsky without exhaustion and with brilliance in the spirit of Mozart, provided “The Blue Bird” with that unprecedentedly long life, the centenary of which is celebrated today by the Russian theater.

The author's opinion may not coincide with the position of the editors

"Blue Bird" A trilogy based on the play by M. Maeterlinck and the memoirs of Aleftina Konstantinova and Vladimir Korenev.
Electrotheater STANISLAVSKY (Moscow).
Director Boris Yukhananov, artist Yuri Kharikov

Never travel with a dead person.

W. Blake and J. Jarmusch

The situation when a new artistic director comes to the theater and stages a play, which he dedicates to this theater, trying to outline his program, has already happened in St. Petersburg. This, of course, is “Alice” by Andrei Moguchy at the BDT. Only for Boris Yukhananov, instead of falling into the depths of a rabbit hole, he travels after a blue bird in three evenings. As a journey to the afterlife and back and as a ritual of passage. The history of the former Drama Theater named after. He “reads” K. S. Stanislavsky as if he were some kind of “book of the dead.”

The conductors are the luminaries of the theater - the married couple Vladimir Korenev and Aleftina Konstantinova, who simultaneously act for Tiltil and Mytil.

Immersing his heroine - Alice, Alisa Brunovna Freindlich - into a theatrical wonderland, Moguchiy operated exclusively with images and legends of the BDT. The realities of human biography were verified and replaced by images of roles once played. In his composition, each image was dual, or even triple, repeatedly reflected and refracted by the “distorting mirror” of the theater: through Carroll’s images the images of the roles and image “masks” of the artists shone, and behind them the human glow glowed. That is why the artistic result, although secondary, was not contradictory.

Boris Yukhananov inherited not so much a legendary theatre, but a theater troupe with a legendary reputation as “devourers” of the main directors.

I’ll say right away that in “The Blue Bird” the connection between personal and artistic plans is largely mechanical. Vladimir Korenev and Aleftina Konstantinova either act as Tyltyl and Mytil in the circumstances of Maeterlinck’s fairy tale and surrounded by surreal pop art images, or act on their own behalf, telling stories from their personal or artistic biography, or even act out entire scenes from performances played over 50 years back in the theater that no longer exists. And young colleagues illustrate these stories with images of varying degrees of artistic merit.

The seams between these plans are somehow even deliberately exposed, indicating the dual task set by the director.

Each of the three evenings was made with the predominance of certain genre tasks and a certain tonality. The first, “Journey,” is the most intense, a pure extravaganza and exhibition of the achievements of “surrealist farming.” The second, “Night,” is a transparent and meditative ritual taking place against the backdrop of a majestic lifeless lunar landscape. The third, “Bliss,” is the most controversial, cobbled together from what was not included in the first two, and gravitates towards a show, a variety show. Hell is presented in the form of a circus, the “bliss” spills into the arena in fluffy polyester suits, like characters from a simple matinee.

The modernized plot of “The Blue Bird” is presented in great detail in the libretto. Therefore, I will only indicate the beginning: the aged Tiltilya and Mytil fall asleep in the cabin of a Boeing 777 (a cutaway model, almost life-size, is presented on stage), the Soul of Light - the flight attendant straightens their blankets, everything that follows is their dream...

Scenes from the play. Photo by O. Chumachenko

As in any extravaganza, artistic lawlessness and fantasy triumph here. Giant crows, vaguely similar to the blue mischief-makers from Yellow Submarine, walk sedately across the stage, occasionally resounding with hoarse cawing. Grandparents Tyltil and Mytil are presented as somewhat inhibited, but eternally young Olympian gods. Each of the souls of things has its own plastic “exit”, arranged, as in the Noh theater, and musically sounded accordingly. When V. Korenev remembers the filming of “Amphibian Man”, footage of the underwater world from the film is shown on the screen (the exotic beauties of which, as you know, were filmed in an aquarium due to the poverty of the Black Sea flora and fauna), and people swim through the hall above the heads of the audience, moving tails, giant fish. The live shot is constantly combined with inventive video graphics and scored by a real live orchestra, located, as if in a church “choir,” on the balcony, behind the backs of the audience, which is why Dmitry Kurlyandsky’s music miraculously envelops the entire hall.

The central duet, depending on the situation, either diligently plays kids in flannel pajamas (Korenev especially succeeded, lisping and using the entire arsenal of speech defects), or speaks in the first person, but also in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a creative evening on the channel “ Russia".

I will only touch on how some of the episodes are presented. Those where the story and the image provoked by it enter into an interesting “chemical reaction”.

Thus, in one of the first dream scenes, Aleftina Konstantinova recalls how during the war, she, a six-year-old girl, and her mother were driven to Germany. The convoy was shot, the mother died, and the girl was then raised by her grandmother. At some point in the story, the heroine is surrounded by giant retro Christmas tree decorations: there is a Snow Maiden, a huge cotton bird, and a pair of gilded soldiers in earflaps who are aiming at her... The image of childhood as something magical and dangerous (bright, but fuzzy) permeated with a sense of threat, given both in direct sensory perception and in the refraction of the child’s perception of the stories of older participants in the events.

Korenev’s story about his father, a handsome admiral, war hero and favorite of women, who knew “Onegin” by heart and learned conversational Chinese in a month and a half, undergoes a no less wonderful metamorphosis. “Tatyana's Dream”, stylized in the spirit of Chinese opera and performed by the Russian reader - Tatiana with knitted eyebrows and a Chinese bear translator (aka Onegin), sounds excited and passionate and is arranged as a "running line" of a comic strip under an old black and white miniature.

A thick cultural morsel of animated quotes does not let the audience get bored. Vladimir Korenev’s simple (to put it bluntly) reasoning about the advantages of Fellini’s creative method (“it gives hope!”) over Tarkovsky’s method brings to life two - literally - “lights” of world cinema with light bulbs in the place where the head is supposed to be. An animated Dostoevsky throws lightning from his eyes, like a pagan Perun, while a colorful devil with spring legs and a shaggy scruff attacks Napoleon with a whip, and gravediggers in quilted jackets comment on what is happening with quotes from Hamlet. Not to mention the fact that death and the afterlife are presented in a wide variety of forms over the course of three evenings - from the already mentioned gravediggers to the Egyptian pantheon of gods against the backdrop of a toy Kremlin mausoleum.

Scenes from the play. Photo by V. Lupovsky

And now I will say a very dangerous and perhaps unfair thing. No matter what spectacular “dress” Boris Yukhananov sews, the fact remains: kings are naked. Both in the artistic “frame” of the image, and when they try to convey stories from their lives from the stage. Konstantinova’s stories sound more sincere, while Korenev’s are wrapped in a thick layer of theatrical tales and anecdotes, but this difference does not make a difference.

Whatever one may say, it turns out that in the life of Vladimir Korenev there is no more vivid memory than the filming of “Amphibian”, and their echo lasts a lifetime. The most piquant “novel” turns out to be letters from a fan, in each of which she sent a piece of a photo of her naked body... At some point, a collage woman in tight tights appears on stage, crawling straight out of a giant envelope and dancing a seductive dance. And when she takes Vladimir Korenev, an old man with unclear diction, into the same envelope, there is something poignant in this...

It turns out that Aleftina Konstantinova had big roles in her life, but, alas, the “reconstruction” of “The Seagull” in the form in which it is shown to us - with pathetic exclamations and wringing of hands - does not withstand any criticism. And there’s essentially nothing to say about the old performances except that they were “wonderful.”

Scenes from the play. Photo by V. Lupovsky

There is also nothing to say about August 1991. The average set of emotions of people who spent August 19 in front of the TV screen and worried about their daughter, who left for Moscow, has to be colored by the dances of armored personnel carriers to “Swan Lake.”

None of these stories can be mythologized or provide intimate knowledge about a person.

All efforts seem to be devoted to presenting their life - on stage and off - in the most bourgeois-decent form. A life in which no one has ever betrayed “neither his wife nor his fatherland,” honorably overcoming all temptations and temptations, from A. Vertinskaya to the full barracks of ardent Ivanovo weavers, where our hero, at the age of twenty, had to spend the night during a concert “chess” "

The biggest shock: when Korenev passionately says that “in our theater there was no intrigue, no trickery, we, the actors, took care of this,” he speaks with all the sincerity and faith of which he is capable.

Scenes from the play. Photo by V. Lupovsky

So it turns out: that life, that roles, that the history of the theater is a complete fake, aberrations and substitutions of fragile human memory. And sometimes human life is much longer than theatrical life...

What do we have left?

"Environment" beat the kings. “Blue Bird” became a parade of the combat power of the “Electrotheater”, its entire material, technical and artistic base. And I am not being ironic, but honestly speaking about the ensemble, musicality, singing, dancing and - most importantly - the multi-sensibility of the young part of the troupe, who in a short time mastered the Chinese and Japanese languages, shamanic throat singing and - under the leadership of a representative of the great Kawamura clan - the basics of Noh theater, and not formally, but with all its ritual rigor and internal concentration.

V. Afanasyev (Rudakov), A. Konstantinova (Alla).
Photo by V. Lupovsky

The ambitions of the elders, basking in attention for three evenings, are satisfied.

It is difficult to underestimate the degree of directorial cunning of Boris Yukhananov, who equally satisfied the appetites of the veterans of the troupe and threw a magnificent farewell to the former Theater. Stanislavsky. The conjuration of the spirits of the old theater, their appeasement and subsequent expulsion can be considered completed.

Just tell me: am I the only one who thought that when in the scene with the grandparents Tyltil and Mytil the heroes are laid on a wooden table to check how the “children” have grown, measurements are taken from them for the coffin?

If it’s not just me, then there are more ethical questions about the performance than aesthetic ones.