The fate of the actress is a separate topic for a whole book. In addition to memoirs, of which a great many have been written, fiction there are many stories where main character namely the actress: “Theater” by S. Maugham, “Actress Faustin” by E. Goncourt, “Nana” by E. Zola, “The Seagull” by A.P. Chekhov and many others. The play “The Dressing Room” by the Japanese playwright K. Shimizu is among them. The experience of staging it in our country is very rich, although in general its work is not familiar to many people. Russian theaters love this play, and the audience loves it. So, despite the fact that the premiere of the play based on Shimizu’s drama at the Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov took place twelve years ago and received little good reviews from theater criticism, the production exists in the theater's repertoire to this day.

It’s difficult to say what this is connected with. The plot is very simple and even primitive: four women tell the audience about their difficult fate and passion for the theater. Two of them, Actress A and Actress B, are ghosts. They quarrel with each other, make up, tell different stories about their past life and act out scenes from different plays. The third, Actress D (who later also became a ghost), is killed in a fit of anger by Actress C, who, despite her far from young age, plays Nina Zarechnaya in the theater and never wants to give her role to anyone. Three ghosts, who were never able to break out from prompters into leading actresses, remain forever in the actor's dressing room, but continue to rehearse, still dreaming of one day going on stage. An unremarkable story. There is a lot of mysticism on stage, but it does not add originality to the play: ghosts often became actors in plays, starting with the Shadow of Hamlet's father and ending with the images of deceased heroes in the works of K. Capek and K. Simonov.

The text of the play, from the point of view of its unprecedented nature, is of little interest; In addition, it is filled with huge quotes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, excerpts from the original Japanese drama, “ Three sisters"Chekhov, and, of course, Chekhov's The Seagull. In general, there is so much Chekhov in this play that it seems as if the entire play is some kind of collection of quotes from the dramatic heritage of Anton Pavlovich. Perhaps this is the reason why “The Dressing Room” has become so popular in our country. I think that the performance of this play will also have a long repertoire future at the Ryazan Regional Drama Theatre.

The premiere of “The Actor's Dressing Room” took place in November of this year. Director Ursula Makarova and production designer Tatyana Vidanova tried to fill the performance with oriental flavor. The design of the stage (Japanese partitions - shoji, lanterns with paper lampshades), the choice of costumes (traditional kimonos and hairstyles), playing with the techniques of the Kabuki theater (dance with fans, plastic sketches in masks) were supposed to transfer the imagination of the public to the country rising sun. But the text itself and the acting of the actresses are so international that they almost completely erase elements of national identity. And the musical design (Sergei Potapov), well known to the viewer for its wide popularity, only sometimes proved that the action on stage was not taking place in Japan.

Perhaps this was not important for the director. The main idea of ​​this performance is higher value than its color. The fate of theater people who devote their entire lives to this hard and often extremely thankless work is only the upper semantic layer of the play. Main idea is that What Any person (no matter whether he is an actor or a painter) makes the goal of his life. Is this goal worthy of going towards it, overcoming all the pain, mental and physical, sacrificing family and friendship? Is it worth ordinary human happiness? This is the question Nina Zarechnaya asks herself in Chekhov’s “The Seagull.” And he says “yes” out loud and convinces himself of it. But does she really think so? Open question in the play. Apparently, it will remain open to everyone who lives only with passion for someone or something.

And the passion for acting on stage is one of the strongest. This is convincingly demonstrated by the heroines of the play. The monologue of Actress S (Natalia Morgunenko) consists of a series of justifications, full of sincere belief that on your path you need to remove all obstacles, everyone who can encroach on what you have earned through backbreaking labor. Even the murder of her rival, a young, serving high hopes, Actresses D (Anna Demochkina), supposedly can be forgiven. In the finale, she asks two ghosts, as if wanting to make sure whether she convinced them or not: “Am I Chaika?” “No, that’s not it,” they answer. Not convinced. A mediocre actress. And he doesn’t even evoke sympathy for himself.

The same cannot be said about Actress A and Actress B. These ghosts look like quite charming creatures, sweet, open, and would not harm anyone. I feel sorry for them. At the same time, they are very talented, although a little smug. By the way they perform the roles they loved in a past life, we can conclude that under other circumstances these prompters could become good actresses. But the reason for their failure in life lies not only in fatal circumstances (Second world war, unhappy love), but also in their narrow role. It’s not for nothing that in the finale of the play the actresses, quoting Masha from “Three Sisters”: “in the meantime, you have to live... you have to work, just work!”, they mean that you have to study in order to become a real actress, you have to play diverse roles. Actress B (Natalia Palamozhnykh) does a wonderful job of playing the role of Lady Macbeth, but she plays Zarechnaya in an extremely unnatural way. Actress A herself admits that she only played well male roles. But the power of the talent of Tatyana Petrova herself, and not her heroine, broke the image conceived by the author and director. Her acting is not “good”, but excellent.

For me, this is the case when it’s worth going to a play just to watch the actress in one single episode, but what one! Tatyana Petrova dresses up as Trigorin, Natalya Palamozhnykh enters the role of Nina, and they act out the finale of the second act of “The Seagull.” I had to see several Trigorins on different stages, and not one, in my opinion, completely corresponded Chekhov's hero. And for the first time on stage performed by Tatyana Petrova real Trigorin, without any admixture of director’s interpretations, without attempts at original interpretations of this image. Not an arrogant, ironic and proud writer, not a silent and weak-willed henpecked man, not a skillful and soulless lover, not a demon or an angel, but an ordinary man who fell in love with a young girl and then abandoned her - “a plot for a short story" In a funny wig and an absurd costume, Tatyana Petrova played so naturally and vitally, so truthfully that this episode alone can already be considered as a small performance within a play. This passage has nothing to do with the overall action, but it was it that transferred all the emphasis from the more eventful second half of the performance to the first... and even the spectacular murder did not help. Just as Chekhov's text overshadowed Shimizu's text, so the actress's performance at the beginning of the performance concentrated all the audience's attention on herself. The compositional harmony was involuntarily broken, the logic was broken, the climax (the monologue of Actress S) did not receive the intensity that it should have. But in order to see Tatyana Petrova in the image of Trigorin again, it’s worth coming to this production again.

There are such performances where everything stays only on the acting. So in this case: later life An “actor’s dressing room” depends primarily on its performers. Small hall, no special effects or impressive decorations, no intriguing plot and deeply philosophical, original ideas. Only four actresses, their skill and talent.

Photos taken from official page Ryazan Drama Theater in VK: http://vk.com/teatr_dramy

The Upper Foyer project includes small-scale performances, creative meetings, and musical and poetic compositions. The goal of the project is to meet and communicate with the audience in a special space where there is no line between the stage and the auditorium.

Based on the play by Japanese playwright Kunio Shimizu, "The Actor's Dressing Room" is a behind-the-scenes story of two ghosts, one murder and many unplayed roles, told by four actresses.

All the events of the play take place in an ordinary actor's dressing room, although they are not limited to relationships behind the scenes.

Four actresses dream of unfulfilled roles, and some even dream of the stage. They quarrel and sort things out, rehearse and prepare to go out. Because of the mad love for the theater, even ghosts cannot find peace. And if ghosts really can’t go on stage, then what to do but play tricks in the dressing room.

Cast: Irina Abrosimova, Oksana Sizova, Yulia Vlasova, Marina Rangaeva.

The 4th year performance by Alexei Borodin (RATI) is staged on the small stage of RAMT

The play by a Japanese playwright tells us about one dressing room and four women. Mystical tragicomedy. Two of the four actresses (and then three) are present in the dressing room as ghosts. They watch as the dressing room owner repeats the role, changes clothes and goes on stage. Then they adjust their gloomy makeup, talk about life in the theater, tease ("Say your line! Is this your line already?") They both dreamed of leading roles, but in reality they only prompted and appeared in episodes. Restless theatrical souls.
There are many inclusions of Chekhov in the play. The main living actress has been playing Nina Zarechnaya for 20 years. The Seagull pieces sound constantly. And in the finale, when another prompter migrates to the afterlife, they will straighten their hats, take empty glasses and begin to read “The Three Sisters” between the three of them. Endless rehearsal...

Actresses: Valeria Lyamets, Natalya Levina, Anna Antosik, Natalie Starynkevich

Photos by 3akoulok

I liked Natalie Starynkevich. Moves well, speaks well. In addition, she has one of the most touching monologues about how she was good in life kind person, which was not noticed, just as air is not noticed:

The performance is not bad, although not perfect. One thing is certain - it is not dusty; and they, these four young girls, are not dusty.
We are used to the fact that if in the theater they slap the sofa or squish a robe, dust flies. And here the “young prompter” takes out the pillow, throws it forcefully onto the bench, and... no dust.

A funny episode involving the audience also happened yesterday.
Having started another brawl, the ghosts called each other rats (water and needle) and each ran off to their own makeup table.
And in the hall, on her mother’s lap, a girl of about five years old was sitting, who said during this pause: “Stupid aunties.” The hall split!:

At first, choosing a play may seem straightforward. There is no particular depth in the material, and recently the Dressing Room was played in Kamergersky Lane.
But here comes the understanding that we are already actresses, but still students. The whole theater is still ahead. And they are already talking about hard-won roles, about pain and joy, about fatigue and inspiration, they talk about theater in the words of those who have been playing Nina Zarechnaya for 20 years.
It turns out that this is their initiation into actresses. An endless rehearsal awaits them :)

Dressing room. Moscow Art Theater named after A.P. Chekhov. Press about the performance

Vremya Novostei, June 17, 2003

Alexander Sokolyansky

If only I could spend eternity

Japanese ghosts on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater

The words of a critic are a terrible force. I was tempted to call the recent Lenkom premiere a “generator of hallucinations,” and it immediately backfired. I remember with my retina how Alexander Abdulov played in “The Sage” in the late 80s, but in reality the role of Glumov from the very beginning was the role of Viktor Rakov. One obsession is not enough: at the Chekhov Festival he mistook the BDT actor Andrei Noskov for St. Petersburg resident Ilya Noskov and said something about his popularity. Sorry, dear gentlemen, artists. From now on I promise to check everything and use the verb “I don’t know” more often - I’ll start now.

I don’t know who the Japanese playwright Kunio Shimizu is. I only know that he is the same age as Edward Radzinsky (1936) and a little older than Alexander Vampilov (1937-1972), Viktor Merezhko (1937), Lyudmila Petrushevskaya (1938). In a word, “seventies”: you can see it in the handwriting. Fame came to him after forty. Kunio Shimizu became famous for his play “The Dressing Room” (1977), directed by Elena Nevezhina and staged on Small stage Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov.

The characters in “The Dressing Room” are four actresses: A, B, C and D. Actress C (Marina Zudina) is the owner of the dressing room, a theatrical prima, experiencing a midlife crisis: she plays Nina Zarechnaya, although in everything (especially in character) she was better suited would be the role of Arkadina. Actress D (Yulia Sharikova) is a visitor, a crazy prompter who dreams of playing Zarechnaya. Actresses A and B (Galina Kindinova and Yanina Kolesnichenko) also dream about this role and about the stage in general. Or rather, they dreamed while they were alive. Now they are ghosts, in Japanese - "yurei"; not so much terrible as pitiful, not so much evil as tormented by the futility of the afterlife. If they were ordinary ghosts, they would, like everyone else, indulge in poltergeists and curse at spiritists using a tea saucer, but A and B were still actresses (they worked, however, like D, as prompters). Kunio Shimizu makes it clear between the lines that A and B are completely untalented, and D is not without abilities, but is unsuitable for the profession. This is how it should be: after death, talents move to heaven, and mediocrity settles at the theater. The dressing room, favored by ghosts, is a nook of meaningless eternity, but the deceased would not exchange it for any Elysium. If ghosts are absolutely forbidden to go on stage (A and B know: they can’t), then what can one do but play tricks in the dressing room.

The most remarkable quality of director Nevezhina is her love for theater in general, with routine, complications, squabbles... For her, actors are wonderful - not because they are talented, but because they are actors. Nevezhina is in love with the everyday existence of the theater, as only a person who fled to a theater university after a respectable history department at Moscow State University can do. The “dressing room” is a happy find for her. To love the theater the way Belinsky loved it is, of course, a big thing, but a little prompter, crazy with love for art, is taller than Belinsky.

Nevezhina is trying to revive a romantic myth at the most inopportune time. Today you can’t live on an actor’s salary, competition in theater universities has dropped to an all-time low, and artists read the distribution like this: Am I not busy? - what a joy, there will be time to make money on the side. And here enthusiastic fools in brown mantles are literally languishing with happiness to sit down at the dressing room table, try on a wig, and throw powder at each other. Of course, they are not Japanese at all: the stylized decor, wittily invented by Anastasia Glebova and Vladimir Martirosov, is in itself, and the characters have no nationality. People of the theater, and nothing more. “I’m a seagull!.. - No, I’m a seagull!.. - Are you a seagull? Okay, then I’m an actress!” Just think, they don’t exist in reality - that’s what theater is for, to cancel any “in reality”.

I'm not sure that the plot of the great worthless love is so clearly spelled out in Kunio Shimizu's play. The good thing about “dressing room” is that there are few set parameters in it: the director has to strain his imagination. The loose, womanish sensitivity of actress A, the bitchiness of B, the emphasized resemblance of D to Ophelia - all this was invented by Nevezhina. Even the ages of the characters are quite arbitrary: you never know that A was killed during second world war, and B committed suicide later. This ensures a difference in theatrical tastes, but how old the deceased were at the time of death is unknown, and after death they are unlikely to age. One thing is firmly stated: with D’s relocation to the afterlife, the relationship between the other world and this world changes, however, even here Nevezhina contrived. She structured the game in such a way that suddenly the question arises: where in the world are we ourselves?

Yulia Sharikova takes the stage in the same “ghost uniform” as Kindinova and Kolesnichenko. Whether she is a ghost who has finally come to scare Boat C, or whether she will disappear into a ghost before our eyes is unclear, and it doesn’t matter. It is important that now the ghosts, instead of quarreling over the role of Zarechnaya, can sort out the roles from “Three Sisters”, and the new girl will become Irina.

Imagine how the spells sound - “we must live”, “we must work”, “our life is not over yet”, etc. - when they are pronounced by creatures to whom nothing will ever happen again. As soon as you imagine, something will happen: the ghosts will notice the audience for the first time. Here it comes: the game was based on the fact that living people can only feel the presence of an otherworldly guest, but not see him with their eyes - but we saw them, and now they see us too. It turns out that in this construction we are not even shadows, but shadows of shadows, and therefore we perceive simple-minded calls “we must live” with skepticism. However, it’s too late to think about it. The actresses take their final bow: the applause is long and well deserved.

“The Dressing Room” is a smart, graceful, funny, short play. For a snack - that's it. The appetite, however, has only been whetted: we will wait for a new main dish to appear on the Moscow Art Theater menu.

Izvestia, June 17, 2003

Alexey Filippov

Three girls in shrouds

The Moscow Art Theater produced a play about how ghosts can love too

Among the hundreds of performances released, there are many bad ones, there are also good ones, but only a few give an answer to the short and simple question of why the theater staged this particular play. “The Dressing Room” by Kunio Shimizu at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater was staged by Elena Nevezhina. Shimizu is a famous author in Japan, but here he is almost unknown. Nevezhina is another matter - her name theater people familiar.

Many years ago, Nevezhina, still a very young director, released Kundera’s “Jacques and His Monsieur” in “Satyricon” - and made a splash throughout Moscow. And then something happened that happens very often: after “Jacques” there was “Double Bass”, followed by “100 Yen for a Smile”, then “Crime and Punishment”, “Running”, and all the premieres went well and smoothly. But Nevezhina never made anything equal to “Jacques,” and those who loved this performance are waiting - maybe she will again stage something that stands out from the general Moscow series?

Whatever you say, Kunio Shimizu’s play is unusual: there are four women on stage, all related to the theater, and three of them are ghosts. The souls of theater prompters cannot find peace: during their lifetime, the ladies dreamed of becoming actresses and now they still come to the dressing room. The hostess goes on stage, and they rummage through her things, gossip, try to play, quarrel and chat.

Japanese author in once again wrote that the theater is happiness and misfortune, a galley that tightly chains people to itself. Once again - because many people spoke about it before him. And many will say later: when a playwright has nothing to say, he writes about the theater. It's forever live topic, and Elena Nevezhina did not introduce her own meanings into it - her performance tells that living in theater is extremely painful, but there is no real life without it. The idea is not God knows how fresh, and there is no particular depth in it, but this is probably not required here. There are four actresses on stage, and for each of them “The Dressing Room” can turn into a benefit performance.

It stars the experienced Galina Kindinova and the promising Yanina Kolesnichenko, the very young Yulia Sharikova and Marina Zudina, who gains skill with each new performance. These are strong performers - and this is where they could play... But the impression remains strange: the actresses for a very long time fail to find the right tone.

This applies least of all to Zudina. She confidently and smoothly plays the theater-weary premiere, who, before going on stage, hastily adjusts her stockings, puts Visine in her eyes and busily clears her nose - the production process is underway, and there is no place for tormenting passions.

But with restless souls everything is worse: Elena Nevezhina decided that farce was appropriate here, and Galina Kindinova and Yanina Kolesnichenko play brightly, boldly - almost to the point of a foul. The ghosts make faces, mimicking each other, and at times it’s awkward to look at them. Everything is resolved in the finale - the last scene, when three ladies (they were joined by Yulia Sharikova's heroine, who was inadvertently beaten by an angry actress) try to play a scene from "Three Sisters", redeems a lot. This is really funny: they sit with their hands folded and their eyes wide, and listen to the march - the regiment is leaving the city. And then, having failed to play Olga, Masha and Irina, the ghosts begin to quarrel again: and everything rolls into the next circle.

The theater does not produce actresses, they will come to the dressing room until the end of time... The purely theatrical audience that filled the small hall of the new stage of the Moscow Art Theater at the premiere laughs - well, the performance is really very nice. But there’s no escaping the feeling of its guild specificity: theater experts and actors understand that the ghosts are quoting Chekhov, and immediately grasp jokes that talk about theatrical matters. God grant that ordinary, non-premiere viewers will succeed as well.

A beautiful, elegant, deftly made performance appeared in the Moscow Art Theater repertoire (designers Anastasia Glebova and Vladimir Martirosov and costume designer Svetlana Kalinina did a wonderful job). But to be honest, I was unable to understand why the director and the theater took on this play - as an author’s director’s statement, “The Dressing Room” is rather weak.

Kommersant, June 18, 2003

From the life of ghosts

"Grand room" of the Moscow Art Theater named after Chekhov

On the New Stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater they performed the play “The Dressing Room” by the popular Japanese playwright Kunio Shimizu. The play about the difficult life of an actor, staged by Elena Nevezhina and played by four actresses, according to MARINA SHIMADINA, turned out to be one hundred percent female.

The season is currently underway in Moscow Japanese culture. A kabuki play has exploded at the Chekhov Festival, and not only an equally famous troupe is preparing to replace it as the festival's headliner, but also director Tadashi Suzuki. “The Dressing Room”, which appeared on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, in this context looks like a continuation of the Japanophilia that has swept Moscow. Having sat down in the chair of the smallest Moscow Art Theater hall, you look at a huge mirror that spans the entire stage, along which paper lanterns are placed, mats are laid out and bamboo screens are hung. It feels like you saw all this just yesterday; The interior of this cozy dressing room, tastefully created by artists Anastasia Glebova and Vladimir Martirosov, recalls the Japanese origin of this performance. However, all the twists and turns of the plot (if it can be called a plot at all), all the fears and dreams, thoughts and feelings of the heroines of the play (if, of course, they can be called heroines) are completely international. They dream of roles and fame, quarrel among themselves, feel sad from loneliness and vying with each other to read Anton Palych, the main playwright of all times and peoples. But all this would be trivial if three of the four actresses who inhabit this dressing room were not ghosts.

Ghosts (yurei) are creatures that look like clots of fog. “The souls of the dead and perished, not finding peace for themselves, not realizing that they had died, and therefore appearing at the place of death, the souls of the unjustly offended, pursuing their offenders,” the program says. Guests from the land of the dead - a second greeting from the eastern homeland of the performance. But these ghosts appear completely in the European tradition - from through the looking glass. When the lights in the hall go out, the mirror turns into glass, behind which suddenly, making the audience flinch in surprise, silhouettes of women appear, greedily leaning against this transparent wall. Unnaturally whitened faces, some rags, terrible scars or a bloody rope around the neck - this is what these “clumps of fog” look like in the theater. As soon as the real living actress (Marina Zudina), having finished preening, leaves, ghosts (Galina Kindinova and Yanina Kolesnichenko) enter the dressing room. And while her owner is playing Nina Zarechnaya somewhere behind the stage, they are having fun behind the scenes, like real brownies. These former failed actresses, eternal prompters who missed their only chance, are extremely greedy for life. They are delighted with the most ordinary objects of actor's use - boxes and wigs, hats and fluffy powder brushes. Having not played enough in life, they selflessly play theater after death. They remember their previous “food is served” and comically act out scenes from “The Seagull”.

These former actresses don't need eternal rest. They are happy to exchange it for an acting share as the quintessence of life in general. This idea is clearly explained by the fourth actress (Yulia Sharikova), the crazy prompter of the heroine Marina Zudina, who demands that the prima give her the role of Nina Zarechnaya in exchange for a pillow - a symbol of reassurance. In the finale, this young girl, looking like Ophelia, with flowers in her hair and a blissful smile on her face, joins the ghosts and, with the enthusiasm inherent in youth, encourages them to perform another Chekhov play for three. Guess which one. “We have to live, we have to work,” the ghosts repeat enthusiastically, like a spell.

Probably, director Elena Nevezhina, like playwright Kunio Shimizu, loves actresses. Because in this performance all four heroines, despite their ridiculous complexes, stupid claims and petty grievances, look like charming creatures and deserving of sympathy. The new Moscow Art Theater performance does not just show theatrical cuisine. The dressing room is the place where the artist applies makeup and removes it. In this play, the makeup is removed along with the skin, meat and all the offal to reveal what is inside. And the souls of actresses are a special matter, they sneezed at heaven and hell, they prefer the dust of the scenes to the most fashionable afterlife places. They say there are such ghosts in every theater. The venerable shadows of the Moscow Art Theater must be glad that a play about them has appeared in the theater.

Culture, June 19, 2003

Irina Alpatova

Seagull sushi

"Getting Room" by Kunio Shimizu at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater

Exactly a year ago, at the end of the season, Elena Nevezhina staged her “essay” on the themes of Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment” on the same New Stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. That performance then sounded like a worthy final chord. Unfortunately, in the current fatally unsuccessful Moscow Art Theater season, such a finale did not happen. And “The Dressing Room” smoothly fit into the series of very modest and average performances.

This is very disappointing, because the clever Elena Nevezhina, of course, was clearly fascinated by the Japanese play by Kunio Shimizu (translation by Aya Maruti), which she spoke about with great interest in an interview with our newspaper. And so I wanted, following the fantasies of the talented director, to see on stage exactly this contrast of oriental restraint and clarity of form, superimposed on our daring acting behavior. There was practically no contrast or conflict, because the latter won by a clear margin. No “half-smiles” or “half-bows” for you – just rude laughter, grimaces, rolling on the floor and other plastic moments performed according to the principle “get itchy, shoulder, swing, arm.”

Shimizu's play - about theater women, actresses and prompters, living and dead. The latter, according to Japanese beliefs, turn into ghosts - “creatures similar to clots of fog.” Although, perhaps, in the Land of the Rising Sun they look like these “clumps”, on our stage they are absolutely full-blooded and very loud creatures, differing from the living only in exaggerated makeup and robe kimonos with an image of a seagull on the back (costumes by Svetlana Kalinina).

The seagull, as it turned out, is not only an eternal Moscow Art Theater symbol, but also a kind of talisman-dream of all Japanese actresses, real and “through the looking glass”. There is a life and death struggle for the role of Nina Zarechnaya. In the most literal sense. When actress D (Yulia Sharikova) comes from the hospital demanding the return of her lost role, her current happy performer, actress S (Marina Zudina), pushes the poor thing away with such passion that she, having hit her head, immediately becomes a ghost. However, judging by the acting performance, it is hardly worth taking this role away from S. Zudina, since she, the only one of all, is capable of playing it with dignity. In reality, Zudina never met Nina. And it is unknown whether she dreamed of her, like her heroine, but even in such a “truncated” version she managed to play very sincerely. Especially the final dialogue with Kostya, turned into a monologue - alone, in her dressing room, in a fashionable modern outfit, not counting on the audience's attention (except ours, of course). And this “theater for oneself”, “theater for the soul” turned out to be all the more valuable, since a little earlier Marina Zudina managed to ironically demonstrate a typical example of a Europeanized actress, clearly resembling Arkadina.

A dressing room inhabited by the living and ghosts, with a secret (set design by Anastasia Glebova and Vladimir Martirosov). A table, chairs, makeup, wigs... And the indispensable mirror, but suggesting the existence of a looking glass. From there the souls of deceased actresses appear, boldly leaving their refuge in the absence of the current owner of the dressing room. Having appeared, they continue the same eternal game, which even physical death cannot put an end to. Old woman actress A (Galina Kindinova) and young actress B (Yanina Kolesnichenko) lustfully grab hold of makeup, blow clouds of airy powder, try on wigs, and create hairstyles. And they remember, improvise, rehearse, imagine - mischievously, recklessly, temperamentally. But there is not a penny of “ghostliness” in them, only grotesque parody of comedy, with the exception of the rarest moments of “silence”. And this, you see, goes against the interesting director’s idea.

“The Dressing Room” contains a huge number of phrases, replicas and monologues from “The Seagull” and “Three Sisters”. Nevezhina admitted that during the work this layer increased even more. And a paradoxical thing happened - the genius of Anton Pavlovich, in general, “crushed” the Japanese playwright. What the latter wanted to tell the world about became clear in the first minutes, and after half an hour it was exhausted to the limit. What remains is a more or less elegant paraphrase on Chekhov's themes. As usual, for an intelligent viewer who is ready to catch it all on the fly and be touched by his own knowledge. The stage and mirror story looked, although dramatic in places, but simple and understandable to the point of banality, without secrets or riddles. A kind of “trifle”, which, although beautiful, is certainly not so pleasant. Especially, as already mentioned, against the backdrop of the lackluster season of one of the most prestigious Moscow theaters.