A person cannot be absolutely happy - Yes, our entire culture came out of Russian, both good and bad. Why bad? Because the length of the speeches of our politicians is the same as that of Russian politicians. The Russians, not the Americans. And the theme of suffering in Russian

Gleb Sitkovsky

In the sky with a tag on your leg

“One absolutely happy village”, B, Vakhtin, director Pyotr Fomenko. Theater "P. Fomenko's Workshop"

In a village far, far away, there lived a guy and a girl. They loved each other, and then, when the girl became pregnant, they got married. And the day after the wedding, the guy was taken to war and killed.

This story, simple as the singing of a shepherd’s pipe, was written by the Leningrad writer Boris Vakhtin in the 60s, and Pyotr Fomenko wanted to dramatize his friend’s story back then, but the censors didn’t like it, and the play was not released.

Now, decades later, Fomenko has undertaken to fill his new house on Kutuzovskaya, with those voices that have long been silent, with those people who have long been gone, he began to inhabit and warm his new theater space with his breath.

The space is cramped and insignificant, but director Fomenko doesn’t care about this: it seems that he is able to command the whole world, even being enclosed in a nutshell. Under the ceilings of a former Soviet cinema, he easily places the sky - from which our dead are looking at us, and the earth - in which we have to lie down, and the river - on the banks of which we will while away our lives.

There are a few spectators on the “banks” (thirty-six on the left and thirty-six on the right), and the river itself and, in general, all this leisurely and fast-flowing life flows in the middle. Fomenko shows the river in just two strokes: he places basins of water everywhere and throws village bridges across the entire space, where women usually do their laundry.

Fomenko deliberately reduces a simple story to completing tasks that are also simple, almost educational. To give pictures village life, a few sketches of stage speech and stage movement are enough. Here is the sketch “Women Weeded Potatoes” - a funny patter coupled with the energetic body movements of the collective farmers. Or the sketch “Tractor”: someone’s arms and legs are convulsing, and in time with the convulsions, “karrrrr-burrr-rrra-torrrrr”, “acckkkkk-sellll-le-rrrrrratorrrrr”, “mattt-perrrre-mattt” rushes from a large box "

This is a typical city dweller’s view of rural life, and, as usual, it contains both our eternal romantic craving for the land and healthy urban irony. “An outside view” is, in general, probably the main thing that determines the essence of this performance. We look at this whole life either with the dispassionate eyes of a garden scarecrow (“What does he say to her? And what does she tell him?” asks Karen Badalov with a crow’s nest on his head), and then with the wicked eyes of a cow (Madeleine Dzhabrailova). Suspended on a chair between heaven and earth, the history of the Absolutely Happy Village is observed from the very beginning by the chronicler-teacher (Oleg Lyubimov), and we will watch the finale through the eyes of a dead soldier: Mikheev (Sergei Taramaev), with a tag on his leg, will climb into his heavenly hammock and... from there conduct tender conversations with his poor Polina (Polina Agureeva). Everyone is an actor, and everyone is a spectator.

The love scenes of Mikheev and Polina would be a credit to any theater. Sergei Taramaev plays not only tenderness, but also strength. Polina Agureeva plays not only girlish obstinacy, but also womanish pity. And to feel sorry is, in a rustic way, the same as to love. The episode in which Mikheev unwinds a long canvas flowing like a river on Polina could be included in some theatrical anthologies as an example of a key mise-en-scène that organizes the space of the performance.

Not only rivers flow in this performance, but also songs. At the very beginning of the performance, the village teacher will explain to us that this story, in essence, is “a rather long song.” And the songs really almost never stop during the two and a half hours that the performance lasts. “I believed, I believed, I believe” smoothly flows into the flirtatious song “In our village you will not find another Chanita like this,” and “The gardens do not bloom for me” - into “Lili Marlene.”

“In the village, God does not live in corners, as scoffers think, but everywhere,” the poet once said. Pyotr Fomenko, who animates every animal and every object in his performance, ensures that at some point the viewer suddenly forgets about the numerous corners of the former Kiev cinema and remembers only the notorious “everywhere”.

Today, June 22, 2000

Maya Odin

Delicate realism

"One absolutely happy village" in the workshop of Pyotr Fomenko

The DIRECTOR'S skill of Pyotr Fomenko has one absolutely stable property. Fomenko plays tricks and tricks on all his performances. He reads the text, getting to the bottom of the semantic shades of each suffix, rearranges the prose for the scene in a special way, known only to him, adjusts each line, or even syllable or sound, to the chosen one. musical theme, carefully sets the light, going through all the shades of white and measures every step under the feet of the artists. But the plays he chose had long ago started a game with the master, stronger than the “Pharaoh” of Countess Anna Fedotovna with his “threes, sevens and aces.” They are like werewolves-rogues - they turn out to be his or not his. If not his, but someone else's, then the performance turns out to be a masterfully assembled construction, where every twist of the director's extraordinary thought is visible and even a trace of inspiration that could have been, but for the most unknown reasons is absent. Fomenkov’s trademark “light breathing” turns into heavy and painful sighs.

But as soon as Fomenko finds himself in his textual element, everything in his hands begins to play and sound. As a lucky player, all cards go into his hand. He stops cluttering up capital decorations and makes do with the most ordinary objects: pots, baskets, curtains. And the tightness of the playing space turns into an unprecedented and fantastic scale - behind every object on the stage, dress, word, gesture of the actors, not only the life, the way of life of a town or village appears, but also a completely specific landscape, time of year and even the weather of that day appears before your eyes. which brought about all these events that attracted the attention of the director.

“One absolutely happy village” based on the story by Boris Vakhtin is a performance from a series of lucky hits. Fomenko guessed his card again, and the win was not long in coming.

Having designated the genre of what is happening on stage as “studies of a workshop on story of the same name", Fomenko glorified the spare realism of the Soviet village in the language of a pagan poet. The crane well, the garden scarecrow, goats, cows, gracefully and wittily played by the actors of the workshop, found not only their own voice, but also their soul, and character, and each - their own story. The well keeps the never-revealed secret of the main character Mikheev (Sergei Taramaev), the scarecrow is concerned about how to shelter tender lovers, and the goat is almost ready to cry when a captured German appears in the village and ties her to a peg. The play space is filled with boxes. , basins, benches, prepared for sawing logs, expands to the vast expanses of our homeland and reaches abroad.

Fomenko unleashes his imagination to the fullest. A long piece of sky-blue fabric turns out to be a river, cold and wide. Basins are intended not only for village women to bend over and wash clothes in them. They play the role of puddles, into which the beautiful Polina steps, gently shaking off the drops, on a hot day, or, without making out the road in the darkness of the night, tired feet in tarpaulin boots plop down. Boxes turn into tractors, wells and trenches. Village women turn out to be Venetsianov's beauties, Malevich's workers, or painter's widows. Soviet artist Sergei Gerasimov. And the main characters - village lovers Polina and Mikheev, performed by Polina Agureeva and Sergei Taramaev - resemble the mythological characters of Botticelli.

Fomenko dissolved the text of Vakhtin's story in songs and tunes. From the flirtatious “In our village you will not find another such Charita” and the sad “Gardens do not bloom for me” to the comforting German “Lili Marlene” played on a harmonica. He divided every step of the actors into steps, cuts, forced them to step over streams and puddles, to play not only such love that “I’m crying because of him, damned, when I think that they’ll kill me,” but also dreams, impending drowsiness, mortal fatigue and calm , peaceful happiness. And they do it masterfully.

Fomenko knows how to bewitch and convert to his religion. This time it is light and poetic. In “One Absolutely Happy Village,” even the innocent dead smile from heaven.

Kommersant, June 23, 2000

Elena Kovalskaya

Fomenko built a village

At the finale of the theater season, the new premiere of "Pyotr Fomenko's Workshop" sounded a quiet but unexpected note. In the new performance, Fomenko performed in a new capacity. Not just the director of the play. Not only the teacher who brought his students of three generations to the stage. With “One Absolutely Happy Village,” Fomenko gives a master class in simple worldly wisdom to the public itself.

For many years now, Pyotr Fomenko has been reading “War and Peace” with his actors. For many years he has been building his theater house. They thought that “War and Peace” would open a new “Workshop” building in the winter - but no. Gorky's "Barbarians" directed by Yevgeny Kamenkovich were the first to appear there, but Tolstoy was still not there. However, the performance based on the village prose of Boris Vakhtin, which Pyotr Fomenko produced quietly, under the hues of the dacha season, seems to be a test of his voice just before “War and Peace”.

“One absolutely happy village,” as they say in the play, is not a story or a poem. Is a song. A simple-minded song all about the same war and peace, about the happiness of living and the sinfulness of despondency, which was sung in the “Workshop” with incredible clarity and conviction. Fomenko teaches his lesson on simplicity, staging it as a school of theatrical craft. Actors from three Fomenkovsky releases take part in it. Among the seniors is Sergei Taramaev (Mikheev), who recently joined the troupe, who worked with Sergei Zhenovach for a long time. Among the average ones are Madeleine Dzhabrailova, Oleg Lyubimov, Tagir Rakhimov, Karen Badalov, Sergey Yakubenko. Among the younger ones are Polina Agureeva, Olga Levitina, Thomas Mockus, Andrey Shchennikov and Ilya Lyubimov. Next to them is Lyudmila Arinina, who has already played in “Barbarians”. The performance was made up of acting sketches - like those in theater institute learn to do in the first year, playing gopher or refrigerator. On the wooden walkways laid across the stage, the Fomenki playfully create a new world. They don’t revive the collective farm paradise of Vakhtin’s story (Fomenko has reason not to feel nostalgia for the past), but they inhabit their brand new stage as a tabula rasa. Testing the stability of the bridges and logs with your feet, you test this world for strength. They settle in, populate it with living creatures and objects, which they play with the delight of elemental pantheists. People are also admitted into this pantheon, which includes an old well and a garden scarecrow, a black goat and a collective farm diesel generator - a one-armed chairman, three old women, red-haired Mikheev (Taramaev) with his obstinate beloved Polina (Agureeva). People here have conversations with the scarecrow and listen to the earth. When war breaks in here, more unfamiliar words will arise and materialize. The plywood rattle sheet will be Fear. Tag on the big toe of the bare foot - Death. The sky will open - a hammock under the very roof, where red-haired Mikheev will go in his underwear. He will smile from there and give advice to the living. There is a lot of water in the performance: they splash in it, they pour it into glasses, they step into it - as if they are taking communion. Lots of wood and white canvas. Lots of light and air. What “One Absolutely Happy Village” lacks is pathos and edification. There is no school pointer pointing at a sixth of the land on the map, saying, here it is, the homeland. Which does not cancel the love for this land. There is no finger raised to the sky. Which does not cancel the thought of heaven. In a word, it's just a song. Not a hymn, but a quiet hymn chant.

Vedomosti, June 23, 2000

Larisa Yusipova

Seventh continent

New performance in the "P. Fomenko Workshop"

By June 22, 2000, Pyotr Fomenko released a play that he dreamed of staging back in the 70s - “One Absolutely Happy Village” based on the story of his friend, little known then, and even now, writer Boris Vakhtin (1930-1981).

In the 70s he failed, in the 80s too, and it’s unlikely that it’s just a matter of ideology - the fact that “The Village” was published first in “Ardis”, and only then here, and that one of its heroes, a German prisoner of war named Franz is not at all like the Germans who appeared in books, plays and films on the 30th or 40th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Only a person who has lived in the world for a long time and has long been thinking about what absolute happiness is could have created an “absolutely happy village” - such as it has appeared now.

At the end of the performance, the German Franz holds in his hands a gramophone with a spinning record of “Lili Marlene” and meticulously, word by word, translates this German hit into Russian. And it seems that the melody, known to the post-war generation of non-Germans only from the famous film by Fassbinder, sounded the entire performance - a story about a woman who survived, without even really realizing it, a global catastrophe

But if Fassbinder’s heroine is carried along the very crest of waves raised by a storm, then the village girl Polina both lived and lives in her quiet corner along with goats, sheep, chickens, a garden scarecrow, a well crane and old-maiden aunts who sacredly guard some fatal secret.

The Fomenko Theater has long turned into a miniature version of the Mariinsky Theater - a place where, for reasons unknown to anyone, wonderful actresses appear one after another, despite the fact that in all other places there is a terrible, terrible shortage of them. In "The Village" there are no famous Fomenkov stars: neither Galina Tyunina, nor the Kutepov sisters, and Madeleine Dzhabrailova is busy in two tiny roles - the cow and the woman Fima. The play is staged by Polina Agureeva, a very young actress, for whom this is the first leading role on the Moscow stage and who now clearly must move from the “junior group” to the main cast of the “Fomenki”.

Her Polina falls in love, gets pregnant, gets married on June 21, 1941, and on June 22 her husband (Sergei Taramaev) goes to war. He is killed, she gives birth to twin boys, and then a captured German appears in the village - and Polina gives birth again: twins - girls. This is where the story, in fact, ends, and it becomes clear that this was a story of absolute happiness.

Perhaps in 1965, when the story appeared, discussions about happiness in relation to a godforsaken corner of the USSR sounded quite ironic. But Fomenko’s intonation is completely serious: his “one village” is not a Stalinist collective farm, it is a whole world where everything is connected to everything, inanimate objects have compassion for animate ones, and the dead tell the living what to do, because you can still see better from above.

Unlike the global dystopia that Lev Dodin aimed at with his “Chevengur,” Fomenko’s “Village” is not only not (anti)utopian, but also not global at all. Actors playing very close to the viewer, a long blue canvas depicting a river, trenches that look like sandboxes, and the promised heaven - on a hammock suspended high in the trees near a country house - a very cozy world that disasters cannot destroy, because they , disasters, are also planned by someone and are needed for something.

Life has conquered death - where is the nominative case, where is the accusative case? - wrote Daniil Kharms. Fomenko staged a play in which the nominative managed to occupy his life. For the sake of such a result, it wasn’t even a shame to pause for 30 years.

Vremya Novostei, June 23, 2000

Alena Solntseva

Radiant rocker

Pyotr Fomenko staged a play about true happiness

The premiere took place on the Day of National Mourning - June 22 in Russia marks the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. In Soviet culture, this day was almost always described in the same way: complete happiness, summer, joy, white clothes, bright hopes - suddenly sudden darkness, grief, the roar of shells... In the story by Boris Vakhtin, on which the play “One Absolutely Happy Village” was staged, everything happens according to the same pattern as in many other literary works, plays, films, songs: the hero goes to war on the day of his wedding, which crowned a tender and passionate love story, and dies. Unusually different. The happiness that flooded the stage in the first, joyfully serene lyrical scenes does not go away. It returns along with the murdered Mikheev, who even after death remains in his village, where the river with a bend and the right bank, as it should be, is low, where there is a well with a crane, a scarecrow, cows, his beloved Polina and two twins grow, albeit on cabbage with potatoes, but also heroes. He stays and teaches his widowed wife that she must “take a man into the house,” and she will love him, Mikheev, all her life, and this will help her. And again everyone is in white clothes, and the gramophone is playing a German love song, because the prisoner Franz, who was written off from the camp by a kind captain, fell in love with Polina, and she bore him two twin girls...

The workshop of Pyotr Fomenko has gained the reputation of a theater that is especially good at things that are light-hearted, joyful and seemingly childish. Critics even accused his actors of being childish and inability to play deep and complex feelings. The new performance seemed to undertake to prove that, using only the light part of the palette, it is possible to create voluminous, complex works - and not lose that reverent freshness of feelings and transparency of colors, which, God knows, is not a disadvantage, but a rare and valuable quality.

A simple story is made not banal by poetry and sincerity. This is difficult for modern culture to achieve - not in Fomenko’s Workshop. The genre of the play is defined as “sketches based on the story of the same name.” Its fabric is woven from educational exercises - playing with imaginary objects, depicting things and animals (Karen Badalov wonderfully “shows” a well crane, Madeleine Dzhabrailova - a cow, and Thomas Mockus and Andrey Shchennikov - a stalled engine). In general, everyone barks, clucks, bleats and grunts quite excitedly. The stage play on the theme “women weeded potatoes” evokes delight and applause from the audience. The ABC of theatrical acting helps to move on to the rather simple, sixties ideas of the story without violence against the sophisticated experience of modern cultural consciousness.

Sergei Taramaev, who played the main role of the life-loving Mikheev in the play, at first is very similar to Leonid Utesov from the film “Jolly Kids.” “White-toothed smile, straw curls, dance movement... Actually, the performance is built on the principle of a jazz composition - each character enters with with their variation, the motifs are repeated, grasped in free combinations and scatter on the periphery, various themes that are recognizable from a semi-sound arise - for example, after the death of Mikheev, there is a conversation about the meaninglessness of life in the name of a bright tomorrow, but everything social, political, journalistic is secondary.

For the time when Vakhtin’s story was written, the idea that a person’s personal happiness was independent of social conditions was almost seditious. Then it was perceived in the context of freedom. Today it sounds different: happiness is a matter of talent. It takes talent. For actors to play such a state is an incredibly difficult task. Sergei Taramaev and Polina Agureeva (Polina) cope with it perfectly, although in different ways. For Taramaev, playing the hero’s integral and strong character, his almost animal, instinctive joy, is largely a matter of mature technique. For Agureeva, it’s rather the youth and infectiousness of her acting nature. But be that as it may, their love shimmers on stage like living mother-of-pearl, warming up and relaxing the audience, ready to cry, laugh, obediently follow the emotions of the characters, and after the performance take with them a state of softness of the soul that is unusual for today.

The story was staged by Fomenko himself, transposing the motifs of village, collective farm, military prose into a rural pastoral, in which a dear friend, an amiable shepherd showers love on his chosen one, the river splashes, cows moo and there is no falsehood, and everything lives reverently and innocently, as if there were no There is no postmodernism in the world and never has been. Women carry buckets on a yoke, the water is heavy, their backs straighten, their butts arch, their legs tense, and, you know, what happens to young guys...

At the recent Kinotavr, actor Viktor Sukhorukov, who played in the film Brother 2, fought off at a press conference the unspoken, but in the air, reproaches for the triumph of violence and the crime genre on the screen. We have such a time now, he said, that life will change, and you will see - the cranes will fly... In Pyotr Fomenko's Workshop they have already flown.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 29, 2000

Olga Galakhova

Take off, ladies!

Premiere at the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop

IT would seem that the story of “One Absolutely Happy Village”, staged in the “Fomenko Workshop” by the master Fomenko himself, based on the prose of the Leningrad writer Boris Vakhtin, is most difficult to call happy: a pre- and post-war Russian village, hungry, always washing by the river; a peasantless one, where women do all the hard work; a village depleted by war. Why happy?

Here Polina has just given birth, and her man happily volunteers for the front and dies, and dies instantly, without even having time to understand that he was killed. There are two twin children left, it’s hard to earn a living, and the employer is pestering you. Polina raises the children on potatoes. Every day he crosses several kilometers through mud to get work. For Fomenko, the difficult physical survival of the post-war village is the background: a few touches of the master, and the whole life of a non-domestic performance appears.

Here the women walked along the thin bridge, singing and telling jokes, out onto the river with tin basins to wash clothes: they dashingly wring out the sheets, so that the splashes fly at the viewer. This kind of naturalism is quite often characteristic of theatrical performances. In rough semi-prisoner's padded jackets from a man's shoulder, in boots five sizes larger, from a man's foot - but how they fill the space of the stage with joy! The precarious walkways are a kind of podium for their village life; They come out onto this podium with excitement and courage to do their laundry, not for themselves, but, it seems, for the whole world. And it’s not hard for them at all, but happy. And although the director does not recreate nature in Moscow Art Theater detail, it seems that the sun is shining so brightly and the water in the river is clean, transparent, and the world around is huge, beautiful, perfect.

Pyotr Fomenko is surrounded by fair love and respect from both his students and the theater community. The strength of his authority probably lies in the fact that he is uncompromising in his search for answers to questions about man as such and about modern theater. That’s why Fomenko’s path to a performance is difficult: there are legends about how he tortures actors, how he suffers himself, how difficult it is for an actor to deceive him at rehearsal, and how easy it is to lose his favor if you are incapable of sincerity. His students seem to believe the Master unquestioningly and are ready to throw themselves into any proposed or not proposed circumstances, to justify the possible and the impossible. At times you think that if Fomenko tells them to fly, they will fly.

Behind what we see on stage in the play “One Absolutely Happy Village,” we can feel the amazing energy of the affirmation of life and the affirmation of the theater.

It seems no coincidence that Fomenko turned to his unrealized plan thirty years ago, closed by censorship: military prose as an occasion to talk about happiness. This village is happy because it has the energy to live as long as there are people who can love. The vital force is all the more powerful the more difficult, unbearable the circumstances of life are, forcing a person to discover in himself such spiritual reserves, thanks to which he humanizes himself and, therefore, the world. In fact, the plot of the play is so simple that sophisticated theatergoers may be perplexed. But it is precisely from sophistication that Fomenko runs, the director does not complicate the simple, but reminds that the simple today turns out to be the most complex both in the theater and in our lives, in which there remains less and less of this very life, a living, genuine feeling that communicates the joy of being. It’s simple: to love, to give birth to children, to survive the loss of a loved one who died at the front, in order to begin to love again and give birth to children again, and to discover and love the world again.

When the macroworld - peoples, states - go crazy, in the microworld - in the village - a person naturally preserves the person in himself and in others. However, Fomenko is far from sentimental admiration of the village and its people. This is not the view of a director, raised by the village writers of the seventies, in which the world is narrowed to the village; in Fomenko, on the contrary, the village is wider than the world.

Fomenko saturates every centimeter of the playing space, concentrated in the center of the auditorium, with theater: the floor raised by walkways becomes a river bank, front-line trenches, and a factory workshop; The side walls of the hall are the refuge of the narrator-teacher; a garden scarecrow, played by Karen Badalov, also almost hangs on them. In the play he is the dense grandfather and the well with the crane; the ceiling here is the heights of heaven, to which the pure souls of the murdered Mikheev (Sergei Taramaev) and private Kuropatkin (Andrei Shchennikov) go.

The space of everyday life and symbol organically coexist, flowing into one another. The real and the metaphysical coexist simply, without guile, since they are a natural reflection of the spiritual structure of the “absolutely happy village.”

The murdered Mikheev does not disappear from existence, he simply passes into another dimension, not cut off from life in the world. That is why his wife Polina (Polina Agureeva) does not seem to be a widow; she talks with him every day and not because it helps her survive: dialogue with the afterlife is devoid of psychological self-interest and exalted mysticism. Mikheev, however, cannot be called an “afterlife soul.” He cheerfully and simply from under the heavens in only his underwear watches the life of his wife, and Polina does not lament, does not sob, but funny, childishly reprimands her husband, saying that he is very guilty that he was killed.

Love does not disappear with death, but continues to live and form a special spiritual field, subject not only to the laws of the material world. The space of the soul turns out to be deeper, wider, richer than the visible and tangible way of life. The duet, led by actors Polina Agureeva and Sergei Taramaev, is performed powerfully, heartily and reverently in this part of the performance. (In parentheses, we note: in our opinion, Sergei Taramaev succeeds Mikheev after his death more than Mikheev did during his lifetime.)

The simplicity comes to the point that it seems that Polina will marry again because of the leaky roof. "Well, what should I do?" - she will ask her husband, as if he were sitting next to her, and he will also simply answer: “Bring a man into the house.” The person who will enter the house will be the captured German Franz, patronymic Karlovich (Ilya Lyubimov). The villagers will take him in as a slave labor force, wrap up information about him so that he can work for the village, which lost its peasants in the war. The living trophy - the German - will go to Polina, and she will bring him into the house with fear: they say, there should be no sinful thoughts there, just work. But the more the young widow instills this ideology in herself, the more obvious it is that she is drawn to this enemy. Here she is pouring water from a ladle to a captive German, trying with all her might to be as rude as she can, but we feel how a physical attraction arises between them, how she fails to play the role of a strict, caring housewife in a motherly way, but it turns out not at all motherly... They, Pauline and Franz, will have twins, the German will want more children and for some reason will not want to leave this anarchy, in which there is absolutely no order dear to the German heart: here they don’t even tie cattle to pegs. The foreigner will show the natives the first object lesson right away: he will begin to teach the goat to order. Franz Karlovich will become a leader on the collective farm, the locals will accept him into their community, love him and notice: “he is not a careerist and does not drink.” The biography of this character begins with an episode at the beginning of the play: in a Tyrolean cap, with a harmonica, he blithely descends, say, from the Alpine mountains, not yet knowing what trap the course of history is preparing for him, that a terrible war lies ahead in the snows of Russia. All Franz's life The life he lived before the war will flash like this, but he will begin to truly live in the war and in captivity. Ilya Lyubimov plays the German with good humor, without turning into a caricature: you get used to the drawn-out speech of a foreigner with an accent, you manage to fall in love with him, just as he manages to fall in love with the village and its inhabitants, at whom, or people like them, Franz had recently shot. The actor reveals a lyrical voice in his character.

He hugs Polina, it seems, on a moonlit summer night, going out onto the porch of the house, and the space of the village is transformed, losing its geographical specificity. Sounds famous song, with which the German soldier did not march, but lived, just as the Russian did with our “Katyusha” - “Lili Marlene”. Franz translates every line of the song to Polina, perhaps remembering his homeland, his war and his hopes of surviving. After all, what every soldier dreamed of in the war: to return and find that you were waited for and loved, loved and waited for. “Lili Marlene” gave such hope, and for Franz this song is the prayer of a front-line man, a dream that came true: he survived, fell in love and was happy in a disorderly Russian absolutely happy village. He doesn’t translate, but repeats to Polina those words of prayer, who helped to endure Russian frosts, the death of comrades, captivity and believe, believe and believe again in the power of life.

Culture, June 29 - July 5, 2000

Gennady Demin

Happy village of Peter Fomenko

Surprise at the end of the season

It becomes clear what an obvious civic feat the youth are performing by restoring the connection of times.

The meager theater season in the capital suddenly ended with a string of unexpected surprises.

Perhaps the most valuable event of the current season is the premiere in the small hall of the P. Fomenko Workshop. Younger theatergoers will immediately remember the radiant beginning of this troupe - the exquisite and mysterious "Adventure", the subtle and graceful "Wolves and Sheep". Those who are older will inevitably be reminded of the even more famous “Brothers and Sisters”, which glorified the Maly dramatic Dodin, since Fomenko has the same theme - the Russian village of the pre-war and war years. However, there is a significant difference: Leningrad artists are the children of those who survived a terrible time; For today's Muscovite actors, the living family connection has faded, become thinner; it is no longer the parents, but the grandparents who keep the family memory. Add another gap between today's metropolis and the then outback; finally, a gap in psychology caused by a change in guidelines in society, and it will become clear what an obvious civic feat the youth are accomplishing, restoring the connection of times.

Boris Vakhtin's story "One Absolutely Happy Village", which is the basis for the play of the same name, is a sketch of rural life and a love story. The morning after the wedding, the first guy, Mikheev, went to the front to quickly deal with the fascist and return to his beloved Polina. Yes, it was not easy for him there, he was delayed - and she had to pull out two twins alone. And then a cruel piece of paper arrived.

The performance of “Fomenok” (as critics and the public have lovingly called them for a long time) was born from a student’s thesis from the Master’s latest graduation – and reminds us of that with its openness, naivety, and freshness. In a small hall with 80 seats - the foyer of a former cinema with preserved columns - the audience is seated on both sides of wooden benches of different heights. This is a table, and bridges on the river, and trenches, or even a barn or a plot in a field. Basins with water - here you have the river, and eternal village puddles, and household utensils. On the wall opposite from the columns there are windows that look out onto Moscow, noisy and disturbed by the construction of the next ring. Movable blinds will close them, revealing others, on the glass of which is a transparent sketch of a lovely Russian landscape.

Participants sketch portraits of their characters just as simply and cleanly, with clear colors and subtle strokes. The most energetic woman in the village, Baba Fima, an eternal and tireless rural worker, is completely unrecognizable from the fearless and lively Madeleine Dzhabrailova. The irrepressible gossip Egorovna, poking her sensitive and curious nose everywhere, is the sonorous work of the tender Olga Levitina. The invariably positive and reasonable, slightly boring Neighbor is Sergei Yakubenko. Three catchy, polished sculptures at once - the hilarious Garden Scarecrow, a witness to many village events, the equally ancient Well Crane and the Dense Grandfather, who, with his ear to the ground, hears the knocking of military trains - are sophisticated creations by Karen Badalov.

However, most of those involved in the play play several roles, sometimes managing to create a complete, full-blooded character in seconds of generous stage dedication - like that voluptuous guild foreman (Tagir Rakhimov). The director mixed students from different classes - from mature, confident artists to completely green ones. Among the newcomers, the discovery is Andrei Shchennikov, a trench comrade of the main character, a clear-eyed Yaroslavl boy with a funny surname Kuropatkin, who dreams about girls at night (one of the most heartfelt scenes of the play). Ilya Lyubimov also promises a lot - Franz, at first a well-groomed and respectable burgher, then a prisoner of war, left in that very village and retaining the German passion for order in the midst of Russian disorder.

The greatest demand is from the central pair. Polina Agureeva, an actress with a strong comedic and lyrical streak, is more successful in the initial scenes in her namesake - here there is swimming in a wide river, represented by a long wet sheet, and funny and sincere rural courtship. For the second part - after the departure of a loved one, the war and post-war - there is probably a lack of life experience.

Sergei Taramaev is the most star-studded member of the play, a Hollywood winner. His Mikheev, a fabulous good fellow who indulges in cunning while pursuing the girl he loves, is simple-minded and cunning, reliable and serene. It’s probably difficult for now to play the maturity that happens in war. And then in an artless paradise - a cloud-sieve suspended on ropes - sitting with a dangling tag on his naked toe, advise the wife left on the sinful earth: find yourself a man who will help raise your children. He still needs the riotousness, prowess, and epic strength to become not only the main character of the story, but also the parable that the director intended.

However, it seems that everything will come with time. After all, “One Happiest Village” was created - quite obviously - from sketches. All together they form a mighty epic, a bewitching picture of people’s life, from which the throat constricts and treacherously tingles under the eyelids.

And the epithet “the happiest” in relation to the village is perceived without a shadow of irony - it preserved the spiritual fortress bequeathed by its ancestors and passed it on to subsequent generations.

And the director who can produce such a production is also happy. Happy are the actors who play in it, especially those who begin their creative journey with it. Happy, finally, are the spectators who got to see such a humane and heartfelt performance.

Moscow News, July 18, 2000

Nina Agisheva

The village where there is always war

The performance by Pyotr Fomenko gave a new breath to the old story by writer Boris Vakhtin

This is not the first time that the combination of the most refined domestic theater with so-called village prose gives excellent results - let us remember the famous trilogy by Lev Dodin based on the novel by Fyodor Abramov. Today the performance was performed by Pyotr Fomenko, whose studio members staged Boris Vakhtin’s story “One Absolutely Happy Village.”

The plot seems to be simple: Polina and Mikheev lived in a village lost in the vastness of Russia, loved each other, and then the war began, and Mikheev was killed. The first part - peaceful - "Fomenki" is shown in the form of theatrically sophisticated and emotional sketches, filling the tiny hall with the columns remaining from the old cinema with the sounds of laundry rinsing in the river, splashes of water from buckets on the yoke, women's songs and the roar of a tractor that won't start. Here the actors Sergei Taramaev and Polina Agureeva are soloists, and if the leader in any troupe matches his talent, then Agureeva, who plays more and more in episodes, now appears as a real lyrical heroine - temperamental, natural and unlike anyone else. It must be said that the master came up with amazing scenes for them: just look at the bathing episode alone, when there are two actors on stage, a piece of blue linen and a complete illusion of cool evening water, a naked female body, chaste and erotic love play. Theater is an illusion, after all, and the more believable it is, the better the theater.

In a word, you enjoy an idyll of love in a poor Soviet village, called a collective farm in those days, and you think: why was Vakhtin once considered a dissident writer? The solution is in the second part of the production. Mikheev, of course, is killed in war, but they are killed by their own people - due to lack of coordination of actions. And the conversation between the major, the political officer and the captain, as a result of which Mikheev’s partner Kuropatkin ends up in a penal battalion and, of course, also dies, is simply the apotheosis of the stupidity and cowardice of military commanders, which is still alive and thriving today, as can be judged by at least some reports from Chechnya. At the performance of "Fomenok" you simply physically feel how in an instant Mikheev, who only yesterday loved Polina and even managed to marry her, and Kuropatkin, who did not manage to marry anyone, turn into cannon fodder, into nothing. When Mikheev dies, it is as if he climbs into the sky, and in the play he climbs onto a net suspended from the ceiling, and a tag is attached to his bare leg. And the rest of the action is already happening under this bare leg hanging from the sky with a piece of paper attached to it. So for Vakhtin, who wrote his story a long time ago, the anti-war pathos of these “studies” even today, at the height of the general’s enthusiasm, sounds quite dissident.

The outgoing season did not spoil the viewer with any discoveries, but at the end it left a strong and piercing impression. And) without in any way belittling the merits of the work of Pyotr Fomenko and his actors, you think: didn’t the reigning Lately Is there a tense atmosphere in society of expectation of change for the worse, to something that seems to have already passed, but still crawls out of oblivion, like the monument to Dzerzhinsky on Lubyanka? Thank God that at least our theater has an ineradicable tradition of telling the truth in defiance of some general opinion encouraged from above.

Having begun in the vein of village prose, Vakhtin's story ends in the style of fantastic realism. No one dies in it, because those killed in the war laugh), remember and even talk with the living. Mikheev, for example, advises Polina to take a man into the house, since she alone cannot cope with the birth of twins. This man, that is, Polina’s new husband and the father of her new twins, becomes a captured German. Then Polina, and her mother, and Mikheev’s aunts will also go somewhere to heaven with fluttering white butterflies in their hands, and life in “one absolutely happy village” will continue. And funerals will come there again, as if more than half a century had not passed.

General newspaper, July 6, 2000

Irina Dementieva

Fomenki play happiness

Premiere at the "Workshop" on Kutuzovsky

It is useless to RETELL the plot; it is simple and familiar. The two fell in love, he died in the war, she was left a widow with two children. She was lucky, a good man appeared, married her, and had new children. Some of the originality of the collision is that the good person is not one of his own, not a local one, but a captured German who wished to stay after the war in Russia, in “one absolutely happy village.” The collective farm authorities weakly persuade “Comrade Franz Karlovich” to return to his homeland “for the sake of order,” but Franz, to the sounds of the soldier’s song “Lili Marlene,” explains that his dream has already come true. Utopia, of course, but directly indicated by the very name of the play “One Absolutely Happy Village,” staged by Pyotr Fomenko based on the story of his late friend Boris Vakhtin. However, the utopia played on the stage of the “Workshop” by fomenkas (as it became customary to call the master’s students) turns out to be no more idyllic, but much more authentic and humane than real world, lying outside the outskirts of a happy village and occasionally reminding of itself either by war or by the cynical cunning of someone’s superiors. In a sense, they came together and changed places, reality and fiction, happiness and grief, at the same time turning the viewer’s soul upside down.

And the theater does not seem to be concerned with realities and details, easily rejecting all authenticity of rural life: the wooden flooring serves either as a walkway from which women rinse laundry, or as a parapet of a trench where soldiers Mikheev (Sergei Taramaev) and Kuropatkin (Andrei Shchennikov) are hiding, or rural square, where the fate of “Comrade Franz Karlovich” (Ilya Lyubimov) is being decided. The heroine (Polina Agureeva), bathing in the river, simply wraps herself in a transparent blue scarf, one of the women on the shore (Madeleine Dzhabrailova), without changing her makeup, temporarily becomes... a cow, the actor (Karen Badalov), playing the reasoner, aka a garden scarecrow quite naturally becomes a well with a crane. And the almost circus sketch with an attempt to start a tractor engine fits perfectly into Russian self-irony; by the way, it’s a very funny sketch, where Fomenko masterfully uses not only the physical flexibility of young actors, but also their understandable inclination to the most unexpected solutions for stage exercises.

How from all this eclecticism one can recognize the impression of light summer day with the mooing of cows, the smells of water and earth - a secret. Gorky once admitted that in his youth, after reading Flaubert’s “A Simple Soul,” he stared at the pages in the light, trying to figure out by what magic black letters turn into living life. I am unable to understand the magic of transforming a chain of sketches and mixing the genres of lyricism, epic, humor, even crude eccentricity into a single living fusion of performance. The secret is just that, a secret. The secret of the director's talent plus absolute faith in the limitless possibilities of the theater.

Even the war here is not scary at all. Here is a sheet of tin in the hands of the German soldier Franz, either, rattling, representing a formidable weapon, or, rolled up into a pipe, becoming a dugout or a tank. The murdered Mikheev climbs up a rope, just like in a school gym, onto a net like a hammock suspended from the ceiling. Death does not at all exclude him from the life of his family and his fellow countrymen. It’s just that someone who died in the war is taken to heaven, where he lies in his underwear, with a tag on his leg, and gives his remarks from there. One day he even goes down the same rope to give his young widow, who has not yet worked out, pitying her, sober advice - to let a man into the house, otherwise he will not be able to feed the twins and will not be able to manage the household.

Well, what’s not true here is if, discussing their everyday issues, they sit side by side, but without touching each other, obediently separated by death. What is not true here is that millions of killed Mikheevs returned after the war to their happy villages, going back to the historical memory of the people and at the same time descending to the intimate memory of their family and wife. What is reality here, where is reality, where is the dream, where is the line between tears and a smile?

One of the critics of the play said: this is a song. So the author called his story a song. That's where it all begins. On a chair suspended from the ceiling by ropes, the author, who is also a rural teacher, holding a book in his hands, tries to explain what the song is about. Several times he enters: “this song is about that...”, but he is interrupted by living life, over which the author no longer has control, but only from the side and a little above follows the characters, understands them, loves them, forgives them and laughs.

And yet this song is about the love of Mikheev and Polina. About the eternal love game, about the harsh and patriarchal collective farm authorities, about an absolutely ordinary and, therefore, happy life. But why does my heart ache so much for the entire two hours and twenty minutes that the performance lasts? How frank and at the same time chaste the scene of their love union is, there is so much carnal joy and human tenderness in it, how defenseless and confused the wayward Polina is before the upcoming separation: “Well, why on Sunday, when people should rest?” - she reproaches Mikheev, who on that very Sunday, June 22, leaves to fight. For the sake of one more day with her beloved, she is ready to ignore, to push back the war itself.

The performance-song is also accompanied by specific songs-zongs, sung sometimes desperately loudly (by the lover Mikheev), sometimes slyly, in a low voice (like Polina’s “Chelita”), sometimes distantly sincerely (female choir), sometimes without words at all (pre-war tango), coinciding and, conversely, not coinciding with the meaning of what is happening on stage, but necessarily lyrically interacting with it. But songs are also arrows on the scale of years, returning us to real time. Although... there is not a single military song in the play! The war in it is extremely conventional and completely devoid of heroism.

Consider the ominously comical scene of the explanation between four officers and the soldier Kuropatkin. They sent the only soldier who did not die to a penal battalion for surviving the assault on an empty barn. The ingenious logic according to which the soldier should have carried out a stupid order and at the same time fought for its cancellation is absolutely remarkable. And the surname Kuropatkin is played up funny and skillfully by military leaders in order to frighten each other with the name of the soldier’s namesake - the Tsarist general. Soldier Kuropatkin goes upstairs to Mikheev in white underpants, where he continues the dreamy story interrupted by their deaths about his few male victories and is bitterly jealous of Mikheev, who has experienced his only love and managed to get married.

Oddly enough, the satirical scene does not destroy the lyrical intonation of the performance. Perhaps this does not happen only from the point of view of the Russian viewer. After all, each of us lives in our own absolutely happy village.

New news, July 6, 2000

Elena Yampolskaya

Happy Village on Kutuzovsky Prospekt

"Pyotr Fomenko's Workshop" revived Boris Vakhtin's wonderful story from oblivion

Pyotr Fomenko is a man in himself. You could even say - deep within yourself. Being endowed by nature and fate with the talent and profession of a director, he stages performances in his own image and likeness - closed, introverted, as if slightly complex: if you want, delve into it, if you want, join in, no, we’ll get our kicks without you. A certain sectarianism is, perhaps, the only drawback of Fomenko’s impeccable works from the point of view of skill. However, fans of Pyotr Naumovich, as well as his troupe, colloquially referred to as “Fomenki,” are not inclined to consider this feature a drawback. On the contrary, the ageless studio romance on stage and the limited (small number of seats) circle of understanding connoisseurs in the hall seem to them to be signs of a high theatrical purpose. There is absolutely no point in discussing this matter. Theater is an intimate matter; like a man, you either like it or not. (For men, perhaps, like a woman, although I can’t judge: there are noticeably fewer theatergoers of the stronger sex in Russia.)

“One absolutely happy village” fully corresponds to the jealous principles of Fomenko and the “Fomenki”. To really taste it, feel it and get a taste for it, an ordinary viewer (not a fan) needs to wait in the hall on Kutuzovsky, 30/32, for about an hour. It will be a rather boring hour, full of bewildered anticipation, but then it will be rewarded with an hour of painful and happy emotional excitement.

Fomenko's village saga begins unpretentiously. Not because Fomenko himself is simple, but because the Russian village - like Russian cuisine - in its pure form is too bland. The actors enthusiastically imitate the sounds of a barnyard and other sounds related to rural life, namely: a woman’s squeal, a drunken bass voice, the splashing of wet laundry, the rattling swearing of a tractor driver and the fanatical droning of a teacher with a sacred name for Russia - Fyodor Mikhailovich. A masterly score, accompanied by witty plastic sketches and seasoned with elements of “fantasy”: a living garden scarecrow indifferently observes the measured flow of life around him; the well crane laments its creaky fate; the well reveals old secrets...

No time. No plot other than cute love story, where a lovely girl (Polina Agureeva) resists with all her might a stubborn guy (Sergei Taramaev), whom she loves, but whom she categorically refuses to marry - shows character. Pastoral, and that’s all. For the spectators in the first rows, the idyll, however, is blurred: they are sprayed with water in the vile theatrical fashion, and barefoot, not very clean actor’s heels flash before their noses in abundance (since it is impossible to keep heels clean on the Russian stage).

The plot begins when time arises. It turns out that before us is not just summer, but the summer of 1941. On June 21, Saturday, Polina, already pregnant, manages to be dragged down the aisle, and the next day, Sunday, the young wife, with blood, swearing, tears and despair, tears away her curly-haired husband, who decided - for reasons unknown to her - like this, with on the move, straight from the wedding bed, like the last fool, rush headlong into the newly opened inferno... Here, frankly speaking, the cynical consciousness of the viewer requires a little to go back and explain how quiet Peisan happiness was possible during the active pre-war collective farm construction , but the claims, of course, are not against Fomenko, the claims are against the author, but Fomenko, defending and shielding the author, unexpectedly accelerates the action, like a steam locomotive downhill. So there is no time for returns.

The main character, charming Mikheev, a tenderly loving husband and absentee father of two twin boys, contrary to everyone’s fears, is not killed on the first day of the war.

He is killed on another, nth day.

However, even hovering above the stage in white underwear, he continues to have detailed conversations with his beloved wife, and their eternal arguments do not stop with the constant saying: “You, Polina, do not misunderstand me...”. - “I can’t understand you correctly, Mikheev...”. It is absolutely amazing how a very young actress lives on a small stage, eye to eye with the audience, lively, sincere, unbearable mental pain. Taramaev-Mikheev is absolutely amazing: even with a tag on his leg, he continues to sing with all the being of a born poet a small part of the earth, his happy village.

Those who have not read Boris Vakhtin (1930-1981), and what to hide, the absolute majority have not read him, can be explained: “Happy Village” is a distant resemblance to Platonov (not in terms of the level of genius, of course, and not even in syllable, but in tender, sensual and chaste perception of the world) with some echoes of Voinovich when it comes to the delusional mess of war...

The story does not end here, it will go further, new characters will appear, and in general - in just over two hours in the “Fomenko Workshop” a whole life manages to pass. That’s why after “Happy Village” you come out tired and wise - life is not an easy thing. And yet, the large village of Russia maintains peace, not destroyed by collective farms, wars, or other tragedies and dramas. You can disrupt it, you can mess it up, you can destroy it - no. The ripples pass, the surface smoothes out, the sun plays. And only the souls of the killed soldiers flutter above the water, like Fomenko’s, like white moths...

Evening Moscow, June 26, 2000

Olga Fuks

This is why theater was invented

B. Vakhtin. "One absolutely happy village" Dir. P. Fomenko. "Workshop of Pyotr Fomenko"

This performance is like sparkling wine. You drink without fear, almost like water - a kind of long drink with an unobtrusive sparkling taste. And suddenly you realize that you are absolutely drunk, that you have been “taken away” by the happy and sad intoxication. When last work"Fomenok" will be tested on the audience and will become "virtuous", it will become comparable in sincerity and depth with "Brothers and Sisters" by Lev Dodin or "Song of the Volga" by Rezo Gabriadze.

Leningrad writer and translator of ancient Chinese poetry Boris Vakhtin, of course, is inferior in popularity to Pelevin and Akunin. But there is a certain circle of Vakhtin, consisting of former and present St. Petersburg residents who still get together, preserving the memory of this little-known and early deceased writer. Among them are Yuliy Kim and Pyotr Fomenko. The latter dreamed of staging “One Absolutely Happy Village” back in the seventies. Yes, they banned it. The plot, where a young soldier’s widow with two young twins in her arms marries a captured Nazi who for some reason wanted to stay forever in a Russian village, was considered blasphemous. As if life, with its power and fragility, paradoxes and transparent simplicity, could be squeezed into some kind of framework, especially an ideological one.

By the way, one absolutely happy village actually existed - this is Shishaki in the Poltava region, from where it is just a stone's throw from Gogol's Mirgorod and Dikanka. Vakhtin built a house there for himself, but did not have time to finish it. And from Vakhtin’s prose it’s a stone’s throw to Plato’s whimsical language, and to Zoshchenkov’s irony, and to Chonkin’s situations (the soldier honestly carried out the order, despite his obvious delusion, for this honesty he ended up in a penal battalion and died).

But literary influences are from the field of philology. There is also the essence of phenomena, which everyone understands, lives, comprehends and expresses alone. Fomenko is one of those who wants to get to the very essence. He, like no one else, feels the danger of what other theaters only strive for (quite often in vain). The danger of mastery or simply skill, which so often hides a lack of sincerity (with skill, sincerity can be played). He decided for himself that he needed to return his “fomenki”, young masters, again and again, to the element of pure apprenticeship, and began with them with the etude method (1st year of the institute). There are, for example, such sketches - on the animation of inanimate objects. This is how the philosophically minded Garden Scarecrow, the boring and greedy Well with a Crane (both performed by Karen Badalov, who has five roles in the play), the angry, talkative Tractor (Andrei Shchennikov), and the shy Cow (Madeleine Dzhabrailova) appear. During the performance, the Fomenki and their heroes make a gradual journey from the animation of things, mechanisms, animals, rivers to the animation of humans, the animation of life. From pure play to pure living. From earthly, horizontal life - to spiritual, vertical life. Precisely spiritual - not spiritual. Let's leave the spiritual to the ideologists and ethicists. And here, without any commandments and canons, they comprehend the simple truth that they go to war in order to return from it. That our dead do not disappear from us anywhere, they are nearby, and love does not end with their death. It’s just that since we have been given the opportunity to live on, we must, we are obliged to love the living. Love is the only justification for our life.

The deceased Mikheev (Sergei Taramaev) from the sky (a hammock for relaxation made of fine mesh) persuades his obstinate wife Polina (Polina Agureeva) to be sure to “bring a man into the house.” She pouts her lips and is offended - how can he not understand that she loves him to the point of unconsciousness. A hero to me too! And just as offendedly he brings a silent, wounded German into the house. And Mikheev, hanging from his hammock sky, looks, is jealous and rejoices. And, lying down more comfortably, again and again he mentally returns to his Polina, happy because now he will never get away from her. For scenes like these, people invented theater

Vremya MN, June 21, 2000

Irina Korneeva

The story will wait - first about the cow

Premiere of "One Absolutely Happy Village" at the "Pyotr Fomenko Workshop"

How many generations of theater scholars and critics agree that the play “Brothers and Sisters,” staged by Lev Dodin based on the story by Fyodor Abramov, is the most perfect and unsurpassed that the Soviet and post-Soviet stage has ever known. The premiere at the Pyotr Fomenko Theater based on the story of the same name by Boris Vakhtin can be called a belated echo of Dodin’s “Brothers...” that reached us decades later. Like Dodin once, Fomenko chose the same prose, unfashionable for these times - rustic. “Fomenki” try to influence the same spectator’s heart, touch the same strings of the soul, conduct the action without making unnecessary pauses between the funny and the tragic, and even in the scenography shadows of the legendary Dodinsky performance are revealed - they love on the boards, conceive children, say goodbye to life. After all, the tale about an absolutely happy village is not a story or a poem, it is, according to the director’s definition, a song into which the war broke into.

The performance has many conventions, but it is free of ambiguity. Even the ascension of the soul of someone killed in war occurs visually - the actor climbs under the ceiling, from where he will spend the entire second half of the action looking at the life of the village, dangling his bare feet and occasionally giving advice to the living. The space of a small hall in the new theater building on Kutuzovsky Prospekt is used both horizontally and vertically. Not for reasons of saving space, but with the aim of filling the space with healing Vakhtin prose, translated by Fomenko from sketches, sketches, and fantasies into stage poetry. “Boris Vakhtin was a scientist and a writer, whose scholarship did not prevent him from writing what touches,” Pyotr Fomenko conducted an educational program before the second run-through of the play, which, according to his admission, “was still swayed by the wind,” but judging by where the wind was blowing, things were going for the better.

What was not said in the play was sung.

Admire the main characters lyrical history forced. I would like to write about Polina (Polina Agurseva): life flows out of her over the edge, it’s a sin not to fall in love with such a diva, and Sergei Taramaev, who plays her betrothed, can admire her completely sincerely, without playing anything.

Pampered with the unusual. It has long been known that Karen Badalov can play anyone and anything. 3 “The village” gave him such an opportunity - there he was, a well with a crane, and a garden scarecrow, and a dense grandfather, and a political officer; and so he is uniform in all the faces, as if all his life he had been studying sketches of “I am inanimate in the proposed circumstances.”

School teacher, who took on the mission of the chronicler of the village, was suspended on a chair “between earth and sky” in the play. So as not to interfere, because we are not talking about history, as the participants constantly interrupt him, - first about the cow...

Where this absolutely happy village is located, the “Fomenki” promise for nothing from the very beginning of the performance. Why she’s happy - they ask you to guess for yourself. Maybe that’s why she’s happy because she’s also the most ordinary one, with only one philosophy of life - simple. And also, perhaps, because they know how to speak with loved ones through space and consult with them through time. They can have conversations with them even after their death, and complain to them, as if they were their closest neighbors, about how unbearable it has become to live in their village. Where, just like everywhere else on earth, when the husband is nearby, the wife constantly argues with him, when he is not there, she constantly agrees with him, but where the spiritual connections of people are stronger than in any city. And it's not about fresh air and clean well water...

Of course, the effect of Dodin’s “Brothers and Sisters” could not be repeated, that’s why they are perfect and unique. But after such a performance I want to go to the village. Let it be happy not absolutely, but relatively. Yes, at least somewhere - away from the city madness, closer to nature.

Izvestia, June 20, 2000

Alexey Filippov

Happy Theater

Premiere of Pyotr Fomenko's Workshop

The main event of the current theater season will probably be the new performance of the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop. It’s called “One Absolutely Happy Village,” and its premiere will take place today, but the Izvestia correspondent managed to get to one of the working runs...

This is a touching, warm, subtle performance, the likes of which you probably won’t see now: it is clear that its director internally lived what is being discussed here, grew up on the prose of the “village people”, and managed to capture the echoes of the Patriotic War.

This is a performance in which you can feel both the wisdom of an elderly person and such a fresh, clear, acute sense of life, which only happens to people who have crossed a certain spiritual threshold and look at it a little from the outside. In fact, this is a lyrical confession of the wonderful director Pyotr Fomenko, who staged sketches based on Boris Vakhtin’s story “One Absolutely Happy Village” in his Workshop: the performance is touching and simple, filled with a piercing feeling of the charm - and doom - of existence... This is one of the most interesting works by Fomenko and, perhaps, the best premiere of the current season, which turned out to be extremely successful: it is not so much the level of skill that captivates, but the feeling that lives in it.

And this, perhaps, is the main thing that determines the true price of the performance, the director, and the theater; mere skill, algebra that verifies harmony, is not enough here. A director and teacher, Fomenko has been educating his artists for many years: first there was a course at GITIS, then the studio, which became a theater, then the second and third generation of actors came to it - and in the best performances of the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop there lived the same feeling of almost musical coherence, unity, professional and human brotherhood, which is palpable here too. They said that his actors had matured, and the youthful charm behind which they hide on stage no longer suits them (the reason was given by the penultimate premiere of the Workshop - Gorky’s “Barbarians”), but this work, which, despite the chamber form of the performance, was strong , almost epic intonation, must be judged on a completely different scale.

A small hall that cannot accommodate even hundreds of spectators, in the middle there is a stage, on it the artist Karen Badalov, frozen at a pillar with a stuffed crow on his head - he portrays a garden scarecrow. Later he will be an old well, and the grandfather of the main character, and a political officer (the most unsympathetic creature in this set), and Madeleine Dzhabrailova will be both an old collective farmer and a cow. Rural Arcadia appears on a small stage - the village guy Mikheev (Sergei Taramaev) is courting the beautiful Polina (Polina Agureeva), and this passionate, funny love ritual, full of simple-minded eroticism, is captivatingly good.

There is naive painting, when the world comes to life on the canvas, seen with a clear gaze freed from cultural canons - and Fomenko in this performance creates a naive theater. Mikheev is victorious, Polina is flirtatious and sly, the well is prone to pessimism and philosophizing, the cow (aka Baba Fima) is stubborn and bratty - the man discusses his problems with the garden scarecrow as equals, and while sitting at the performance you inevitably remember either Pirosmani or Chagall with his idyllic village houses and a loving couple hovering above them.

Mikheev will actually take off: he will be killed in the war, a death tag will be attached to his bare foot, and he will climb into the sky - onto a basketball net pulled up to the ceiling. The dead will watch life of the living, talk with them, with open arms he will greet those who will finally come to share his loneliness - closer to the end, a kind and funny theatrical fairy tale turns into a parable, and it is about nothing more and nothing less than the meaning of life.

A young man could not have created such a performance - the wisdom of the production is too clear, too transparent, Fomenko sums up some internal conclusion here. Life, whatever it may be, is an absolute good: the last scenes of “Happy Village” are seen by the viewer through the eyes of Mikheev, who is in the mountainous heights. The village peasants are wearing white jackets, and even their faces seem to have smoothed out - to those who are “there”, life here seems like paradise... But life is really good - a prisoner appears in Polina’s house, and so on and the German who remained in the village, who fell in love with a woman, became Russified, fixed up the neglected farm and finally started the village tractor (an almost animate creature) that always refused to start. In "Absolutely Happy Village" everything ends well - as it should be in all other villages. And in the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop there was an unusually bright performance - one that you probably won’t see anymore.

Pyotr Naumovich Fomenko is a force of nature, an unpredictable theatrical phenomenon, an inexplicable phenomenon. Perhaps there was no modern Russia a director who thinks more paradoxically and knows how to “explode” a situation, turning its meaning around. Whatever he took on, a classic or a little-known contemporary work, it was always impossible to predict what was happening on stage until the day of the premiere. So “One Absolutely Happy Village,” based on the work of the undeservedly forgotten Soviet author Boris Vakhtin, created a sensation in its time.

About the play “One Absolutely Happy Village”

“One Absolutely Happy Village” is a performance that has become a classic of the repertoire of the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop. Unfortunately, the director who staged it is no longer alive and sooner or later the production will go down in history. And now this is a unique opportunity to “touch” the work of a paradoxical genius who has become a unique theatrical phenomenon - Pyotr Fomenko.

While working on this production, Pyotr Naumovich tried to create an atmosphere on stage that was as close as possible to the story described by the author. To do this, he chose the form of stage sketches in which life, fantasy, and dreams are intertwined. And, of course, they are all united by one common theme - the beginning of a war that forever (or not forever?) changes the life of “One Absolutely Happy Village.” In the center of events is the pregnant Polina, who with tears sees off her newly-made husband to the war and almost immediately receives a funeral. But he still returns to his beloved, in the form of either an angel or a cloud, and even conducts a dialogue with her.

The premiere of the play “One Absolutely Happy Village” at the Pyotr Fomenko Workshop Theater took place on June 20, 2000. At the end of the season, he became a laureate of the international prize named after. K.S. Stanislavsky in the category " Best Performance" And already in 2001 he was awarded the “Golden Mask” award in the category “Drama - small-form performance”.

Those without whom the play “One Absolutely Happy Village” might not have happened

Despite the fact that Pyotr Naumovich Fomenko has not been with us for a long time, his performances, and he staged more than 60 of them during his life, continue to live. Last years he worked only in his own theater, on the stage of which he presented to the audience “Theatrical Novel (Notes of a Dead Man)” based on M.A. Bulgakov, “Triplich” based on A.S. Pushkin and other works.

The play “One Absolutely Happy Village” became one of his most striking productions, conquering the theater stage not only in Moscow, but also in St. Petersburg and Dresden. Not only the choice of the work taken as a basis, its interpretation, but also the cast involved were unexpected. The main roles were played by Polina Agureeva and Evgeny Tsyganov. Together with them in “One Absolutely Happy Village” Oleg Lyubimov, Karen Badalov, Madeleine Dzhabrailova and others play.

How to buy tickets to the show

Every year it becomes more and more difficult to buy tickets for the play “One Absolutely Happy Village”; in 2018, their cost reaches 20,000 rubles. Which, in general, is not surprising, because in this production the stars “aligned” on stage - always actual topic, thoughtful author's reasoning, talented actors and brilliant directing. But we are ready to do the almost impossible and help you. Each of our clients can count not only on the coveted tickets, but also on:

• consultation with an experienced manager who will answer all your questions and help you choose the ideal option in terms of price-quality ratio;
• free delivery of orders in Moscow and St. Petersburg;
• discount when purchasing more than 10 tickets.

For your convenience, various payment methods are provided - by credit card, transfer and even cash upon receipt of the order.

Oleg Lyubimov, a graduate of RATI-GITIS, who completed his studies in 1993, works in this team.

The public appreciated the bright images of Golovastikov in “Barbarians” and the Captain in “Adventure”, Onufriy Paramonov and Ivan Ivanovich in the play “Modern Idyll”, created by the talented actor. Oleg Lyubimov carefully prepares for each appearance on stage; his inspired performance is admired by numerous fans.

In the production of Ulysses, the artist appeared in the roles of Lawyer, Lister, Patrolman and Lenehan; in Twelfth Night he played a priest; in Three Sisters he played the Man in Pince-nez.

Now Oleg Lyubimov plays the roles of Argatifontidas and Polidas in “Amphitryon”, Gerasim Gornostaev in “ Theatrical novel", The Shopkeeper and Jean II in "Rhinoceros", he is also busy in other plays of the current repertoire.

In the film-play “Belkin's Stories. The Undertaker" Oleg Lyubimov made his debut in the role of a bookbinder, the nephew of the merchant Tryukhina. Later he played “Shaggy” in the multi-part action film “Joker”, Evgeniy in the film “Above the City”, Ilya in the melodrama “False Witness”. The artist’s filmography currently includes eight projects.

In the production of “Barbara” he perfectly performed the role of Pritikin. Now the public can appreciate the acting talent of Ilya Lyubimov by watching the play in which he creates the image of Vershnev. In the play, the artist brilliantly plays Paratov.

Ilya Lyubimov plays the role of Franz in the play, and plays the Italian in “Family Happiness”. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky in the dramatization of L. Tolstoy’s work is one of the most striking roles of the charismatic actor.

He made his film debut in the short film “Morning is not the time for girls”, then played Erkhov in the series “Citizen Chief”, Vitaly in “Inadequate People”, and was busy in other films. Fans of the series appreciated the memorable images of Alexander Voropaev in “Don’t Be Born Beautiful,” Max Mayorov in “The Diary of Doctor Zaitseva,” and German Vorozhtsov in “The Ship,” created by Ilya Lyubimov. The actor's filmography includes sixty projects.

For his talent and work on stage, Rakhimov was awarded the O. Tabakov Foundation Prize in 2000, and in 2004. theater award"Gull".

The filmography of Tagir Timerkhanovich includes seventy-two works. Viewers remembered him in the roles of the major from “The Palmist”, Alikbek from the detective story “Urgent to the Room”, the traffic police inspector from the adventure film “The Maltese Cross”, Sorokin in crime film“Isaev”, Petit from “The Forester” and many other characters. In the drama “Cosmonautics” Rakhimov played the main role.

Sergei Ivanovich was the head of the studio at the Moscow Theater of Dramatic Improvisation on Arbat and the studio at the Experimental Theater of Variety Miniatures. As a director, he staged the play “Kill me, my dear” for the Odessa enterprise, “Forest Musicians” in the theater studio in Odintsovo, as well as “ Winnie the Pooh"in the Omsk Youth Theater - this production became the best at the International Festival "Theater of Childhood and Youth" in 2000.

On the set, Yakubenko played investigator Gorin in the crime drama "Stranger Among Our Own", Rizin in the film "Life and Fate", Henry in "Frozen Dispatches", a bailiff in "Boris Godunov", a foreman in the melodrama "All for You" and other film roles .

Thomas Chaslovo Mockus is actively working on the set. His first film role was Kostya from the drama “I Planned an Escape.” He also played Anton in the comedy “Formula”, Grigory in “Spare Instinct”, Heinrich in “The Golden Calf”, Gennady in “Hunter”. In total, this artist’s filmography includes more than three dozen roles in films and TV series.