At the Vakhtangov Theater new season began with the premiere - production by Rimas Tuminas "False Note" based on the play Didier Carona. A detective story about how mistakes of the past can affect the whole later life, the French playwright wrote just a year ago. Worked on the set design Adomas Jacovskis- laureate of national and international awards.
The floor of the orchestra pit, together with the chairs attached to it, is raised above the stage, towering over the actors. On the stage itself there is antique furniture.
There are only two roles. They are performed by two famous actor — Alexey Guskov And Gennady Khazanov.
What is the production about?
The action takes place in 1989 in Geneva. A fan, Dinkel (Khazanov), comes to the dressing room of the famous conductor Miller (Guskov) after a concert (with which he, by the way, was very dissatisfied). He says that he came to this city from Belgium specifically to attend the performance. And now he only needs one thing: to get the maestro’s autograph and a photo as a souvenir.
However, is everything as harmless as it seems? Especially when it becomes clear that there is a long road ahead. psychological battle, a difficult conversation between a German and a Jew.
The man who called himself a fan has his own scores to settle with Miller: he many years ago killed his father in Auschwitz.
What kind of music is playing
We can say that music plays the third main role in this performance. At the very beginning, the audience hears the piece Wagner- as you know, this is Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer.
Closer to the middle - suite Pavel Haas, Czech composer. He created it while a concentration camp prisoner. Haas hoped that his tormentors would like the work and that he would remain alive. But I made a mistake.
In addition, there is music Mozart, whom Alexey Guskov calls the purest composer, and also Faustas Latenas.
How the performance came about
It all started when one day Gennady Khazanov, the head of the Moscow Variety Theater, came to Rimas Tuminas with a proposal to stage one very an interesting play, and also completely fresh. The artistic director of the Vakhtangov Theater could not refuse.
“The biggest difficulty was getting Tuminas’ consent to stage this performance. Everything else is normal workflow. To be honest, I had little faith that Rimas Vladimirovich would find the time and, most importantly, express the desire,” admitted Gennady Khazanov.
Moreover, he saw this play only on Vakhtangov stage and no one else. According to him, the play would have failed if it had been staged at the same Variety Theater or somewhere else.
“And I think that if Tuminas had refused, it is quite possible that this play for me as an actor would not have seen the light of day,” he added. It’s interesting that once Gennady Khazanov was not accepted into Shchukin School, they said he lacked humor and temperament. So he dreamed of the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater for a very long time. Through 55 years the dream has become reality.
It was no coincidence that Alexey Guskov was invited to this production: he had already played musical genius. In film "Concert"(2009) he reincarnated as a conductor Bolshoi Theater. Preparation for the role was extensive back then: the actor watched tapes with Bernstein, Temirkanov, Svetlanov, Fedoseev many times, studied their manners and behavior on stage. By the way, his work in “False Note” is his fourth in this theater.
The director himself was pleased with the result. “I am glad to meet again with Alexey and very happy to meet with Gennady Khazanov. It was interesting and will be interesting, I am grateful to him for his action,” said Rimas Tuminas.
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How did the work go?
“I need to learn from him, and not only me,” says Guskov about Khazanov. He said that every time after he went on stage with Khazanov during rehearsals, he had to clean up his text and think about a more appropriate phrase. After all, working with words is very important. It happened that Khazanov even called his partner in the middle of the night with a proposal to change something in the text, asked his opinion.
Khazanov recalls: he watched with great interest how Guskov worked with his character. Of course, during rehearsals there was some grinding and a period of getting used to each other, but all this was very quickly overcome.
Rimas Tuminas is often asked how he decided to stage a duet play, and whether he is afraid of failure. He has one in stock for this occasion. story: once Oleg Tabakov invited him to stage a play by Beckett "Waiting for Godot". Oleg Pavlovich himself wanted to play Vladimir. His partner is Valentin Gaft. Tuminas was very familiar with the work, so he did not fully understand how such a difficult text could be transferred to the stage. I was afraid that the viewer simply wouldn’t understand. He asked Tabakov what would happen if the production was unsuccessful. “Rimas, look: it’s you, Valya, me and big stage Moscow Art Theater What failure? - answered Oleg Pavlovich.
Today Rimas Tuminas answers the same way: “ Here is Alexey, here is Gennady, here is the main stage of the Vakhtangov Theater - what kind of failure is there?»
Ksenia Larina, New News, 16.12.2008
One of the most depressive and gloomy works of Leo Tolstoy, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” was brought to the Small Stage of the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater by director Anton Yakovlev, a representative of the famous dynasty. From Tolstoy's multi-layered prose he pulled out what attracts the public always and everywhere family drama giving it a somewhat neurasthenic Bergmanian flavor.The director’s focus on family values did not impoverish Tolstoy’s story at all, although it somewhat shifted the emphasis and storylines and allowed us to achieve confession, which is so necessary and rare in the current theater. The treatise on family, emotionally performed by Mikhail Porechenkov, sounded like a crazy waltz.
Visual image of the performance musical staff. Music opens the drama, and it also ends it. The instruments are live and only violin. No pianos, despite the author's indication of the heroine's passion for playing the piano. Black and white keys replace black and white outfits and refined figures of women - both heroines (Liza Natalya Shvets, Polina Ksenia Lavrova-Glinka) are graceful and thin, almost transparent (or ghostly), similar to the drafts of a crazy composer. The same drafts are in the hands of the main character, Vasily Pozdnyshev (Mikhail Porechenkov). A disheveled bundle of finely written sheets periodically disappears from his hands, but inexorably returns like Bulgakov’s Frida’s handkerchief, as if reminding him of what has already been accomplished, and that this story is not a figment of a sick imagination, but a fact documented in the protocols. Viewers who suspect the actor of using cheat sheets with the text of the role should not worry - Porechenkov actually has a musical score in his hands. Yes, and it’s funny to try to deceive the public in such a chamber, almost intimate setting when the actor is at arm’s length from you, any falsehood, any fraud grows to the size of a disaster. Cheat on Small stage this is a deliberate failure.
Porechenkov works extremely honestly. If in two or three months it is still possible to learn such a quantity of text, then mastering and appropriating it, saturating it with subtexts and feelings, charging it with energy and logic is only possible for masters of the level of Smoktunovsky or Borisov (and even then, I doubt, those former ones in two They haven’t done performances for months, they couldn’t even think of something like that!). Sincerely believing in the heavenly origin of the acting nature, let me remind you that there are no miracles in art - in the sense that nothing can be born from Nothing. And before lifting the wire under the circus dome, the tightrope walker lays it out on the floor. Porechenkov laid out his role as if by notes: from introduction to coda, from piano to forte, changing musical meters and tempos (maybe the score in his hands really helps him?), not forgetting where the orchestra enters, where the choir, and where female soprano.
The actor, perhaps, has never demonstrated such a varied and rich performance anywhere: neither in films, nor in the theater (in any case, on the Moscow Art Theater stage). Viewers have already learned Porechenkov’s range by heart, from “cutie-darling” to “good-natured jock.” Such a charming hulk, a joker, the life of the party, a friend of the hero, a comic warrior, in short, this role is well known in the Russian theater - a classic simpleton. Director Avdotya Smirnova tried to pull him out of the simpletons, entrusting him with the main male role in the love melodrama "Connection". Porechenkov diligently portrayed a taciturn “macho”, in lyrical episodes he made his eyebrows look like a house, in erotic ones he breathed often and noisily. In his terrible directorial debut, he tried to pretend to be Schwarzenegger, which naive viewers took as a parody. So the role of Pozdnyshev will be a real acting discovery for many. Everything he possesses came in handy here: stage charm, irony, emotional agility. And a lot of surprising things were added (or revealed), previously not too noticed in Porechenkov’s acting palette. Firstly, this is an extremely detailed existence on stage, without internal “smoke breaks”, without empty pauses and empty chatter. Secondly, this is the ability to keep the audience in suspense, working exclusively for close-ups and almost the entire performance is facing the viewer. And most importantly: Porechenkov found his hero, invented him, trusting, on the one hand, the wise classic Lev Nikolaevich, and on the other his intuition and nature. Of course, this is not “Meek” yet ( legendary performance Lev Dodin with Oleg Borisov in leading role), but certainly the first stop on this route.
The actor's solo sounds almost flawless, with the ensemble so far big problems. Artists who play several characters in a play with one main character are doomed to the role of extras. They do not have time (and they are not required to) either fully show or reveal their images to the maximum, limiting themselves to small sketches and sketches, which, against the backdrop of a full-blooded Hero, look either pale or caricatured. Both Natalya Shvets (Liza, Girl) and Ksenia Lavrova-Glinka (Polina, Lady) play very nervously, often not knowing what to do with themselves on stage, who to seduce and who to cry. Despite their rather active existence in the performance, both women were unable to tell anything about themselves: perhaps that is why they did not find the proper sympathy from the audience, and despite the unabated suffering, they did not evoke pity. The director, in turn, did not offer anything interesting to the actresses, except for stupid girlish antics, which in the first minute causes tenderness, in the fifth - bewilderment, and in the tenth - irritation.
Anton Yakovlev did a pretty decent staging. Together with artists and musicians, I came up with a visual image of the performance - with transparent black tulle, with the movement of shadows and a train, with a fragrant apple - a burning red spot in a black and white space. Of course I entered live music into the plot, made her a real character. Found mutual language with the main performer. I built a role with him like a mountaineer, from the bottom up. But closer to the top, the director’s imagination failed, and he didn’t have enough strength for the finale: he couldn’t accept the incoherent muttering of the actors, from which it was difficult to isolate, as a director’s decision. keywords“knife”, “nothing happened”, “killed”, “she’s dying”? After this, Mikhail Porechenkov is given a large copper pipe, he hardly blows out eerie guttural sounds from her, which gradually turn into a moan.
The play “False Note” is a detective abstraction, a psychological conflict with unexpected plot twists and an unpredictable ending. Close attention The audience is held by two actors throughout. The brilliant play has two characters who change roles several times during the course of the action. The victim for a moment turns into an executioner, the accuser becomes the defendant, the accuser becomes guilty.
The main character is the conductor of the Geneva Philharmonic. He just lowered his baton in a crowd filled with spectators. concert hall. The simple gesture drew a storm of applause. Conductor Miller bows and goes into the dressing room. Several minutes of solitude and silence pass when an unknown person knocks on the dressing room. This is a fan of the musician Dinkel, who specially came from Belgium to attend the concert.
A mysterious visitor comes for an autograph and a photo, but the true purpose of the visit lies deeper. From a modest guest, he transforms into a persistent investigator: he asks tricky questions that concern not only musical career, but a past musician.
Against the backdrop of a simple, artless setting, an expressive, feverish confrontation between two bright personalities plays out. A battle without condescension or pity, with the vanquished and the winner. They are both madly in love with music, but even art cannot soften a fierce argument.
Didier Caron (June 12, 1963) began his career as an employee of a small bank. But soon Caron’s creative nature demanded change. He tries himself in literary genres, writes the first play “Charity by Order”, which was staged at the Splendid Theater, and several one-act plays, tries the role of an artist, starring in small TV series.
Recognition and success in 2002 would be brought to him by the play “True Happiness”, based on which he would film his first feature film. Since then, Caron has been actively working as a director, actor, and playwright. Since 2008, he has directed one of the oldest and most popular Michel theaters in Paris. Today, his repertoire includes two plays by Caron with great success - “The False Note,” in which he plays one of the main roles, and “Alphonse’s Garden.” “False Note” was written in 2017 and was shown at the Avignon festival in the summer.
The premiere of the play “False Note” took place on September 15, the opening day of the 98th season, on the main stage of the Yevgeny Vakhtangov Theater.
To play the high temperature of the memory - this still had to be dared. How to follow the notes from the pinnacle of glory to the extreme of despair. From confidence in one's greatness to complete self-abasement. From the consciousness of one’s own superiority to extreme repentance, not in one’s actions - in life in general. In one place. One evening. In one theater. New production Rimas Tuminas's "False Note" puts the premiere of the Vakhtangov Theater Alexei Guskov and the person invited to the role to the barrier in an acting duel artistic director Moscow Variety Theater Gennady Khazanov.
From the outside it looks more like an analytical experiment than an ordinary performance. WITH detective story and a session of sophisticated psychophysiological exposure at the end. A dream role (let’s put an exclamation point here), a gift for an actor who has thoroughly studied almost all borderline human states in his previous film and theater roles. I'm talking about Alexey Guskov, for whom entering into a simple and clear relationship with a partner on stage today would probably be too monosyllabic a theatrical theme. But to fit into an hour and a half the entire spectrum of feelings existing in nature is a super task that had no chance of remaining without his acting attention.
The Vakhtangov Theater performed not just a modern play, but a freshly written (2017) French play. Playwright, actor, director and director of the Parisian theater "Michel" Didier Caron, paying tribute to the common genre of psychological detective, turned the plot in such a way that music began to control the fate of people. This is not a figure of speech: one false note here can cost a person his life. And the survivor is deprived of peace of mind, doomed to hellish torment.
This is not about creative maximalism. Scraps of Mozart's textbook serenade in G major for the two characters of the play turn out to be not only the main lyrical theme their destinies, but also an incurable mental illness. A pathological adhesion of their painful connection, which at first manifests itself quite harmlessly.
A famous conductor (Alexey Guskov), who has just completed a concert at the Geneva Philharmonic, is visited by a fan (Gennady Khazanov) backstage. Kind to the point of sweetness, obsessive to the point of indecency when it comes to compliments. The conductor does not have the patience to smile politely in response for long - the concert was disgusting, he has no time for admirers now, only wish- quickly be left alone with your thoughts. To give free rein to your emotions, turn the conductor's baton into a fencing rapier in your imagination and pierce your orchestra on the third bar along with the most stupid first violin in the world...
At the invitation of Rimas Tuminas, Yuri Butusov became the chief director of the Vakhtangov Theater
The unpleasantness of the visit of an uninvited guest is further aggravated by the fact that the admirer knows everything about the conductor. From the name of his wife to his habits hidden from prying eyes. Down to the origin of a barely noticeable signature gesture, which over time turned into a chronic muscle spasm- when he begins to conduct, he holds right hand left. The detail is important to the consequences; The tired conductor will find out that the fan came not only for an autograph and a photo session as a souvenir when they are left completely alone in the Philharmonic. The night alien will force you to listen to yourself at gunpoint. And from this moment on, the situation, which is not devoid of comedy, will give way to “drama after tragedy.” Where old photographs will become “witnesses” for the accusation.
Chairs, music stands, a massive antique dressing room table, a grand piano, a violin - the soul of a musician, a glass of wine... The set design by Adomas Jacovskis does not distract from the main thing. The lion's share of the story of repentance and forgiveness falls on the shoulders of Gennady Khazanov. On nervous system Alexey Guskov - the most detailed, authentic dramatic presentation of the role-event, performance-deed.
Composer Faustas Latenas, a regular collaborator of Rimas Tuminas's plays, gives the story a very neat sound. He wrote music with the “leitmotif” that “a person comes not to avenge guilt, but, on the contrary, to free him from guilt: to free him for creativity. After all, not only the one who committed a sin walks with a burden on his soul: the one who has committed a sin also carries the same burden.” who has not forgiven. Forgiveness is the purification of both for a “clean note”. And with purification comes freedom..."
Tuminas's desire for a pure note in his directing has become a cult. After productions that were complex in construction, he made a laconic, almost ascetic performance in terms of external effects, where the play goes into the most difficult theater to implement - psychological. With incredibly detailed analysis inner life two very different strangers, but as if connected to each other by one umbilical cord. Especially when the imaginary orchestra freezes, the horror of loneliness will fill the chairs and empty music stands, beautifully forgotten by the set designer somewhere between heaven and earth, in the middle of the stage. And the theatrical mystery of "False Note" with an unexpected denouement will come to an end, giving its main character the desired peace.
In the end, forty years from the moment of the crime to repentance and forgiveness is enough time to pull oneself together.
The premiere of “False Note” was played on the opening day of the 98th season of the Vakhtangov Theater. The Vakhtangov theater's immediate plans include "Faust" directed by artistic director Rimas Tuminas and "Don Quixote" by Yuri Butusov, who this year, at the invitation of Tuminas, has become the chief director of the Vakhtangov Theater.