The idea of ​​Mark Zakharov, the patriarch of theater and film directing, is already ten years old. To tell the truth, few people believed that “The Day of the Oprichnik,” Vladimir Sorokin’s darkest parable about the near future of Russia, could actually appear on the stage of the respectable and in recent years opportunistic Lenkom. However, the incredible happened. And this is an event, whatever you say. The performance here is of the master himself, and not of his right and left hands, as often happened before. The cast is filled with the best of the best - from the legendary Leonid Bronevoy (his character Prince Sobakin is artificial and unnecessary, but the actor’s appearance on stage in a wheelchair gives the audience a few minutes of happiness) to the temperamental Anton Shagin (adjutant Fedka). Sovereign Platon Nikolaevich is played in turns by Dmitry Pevtsov and Viktor Verzhbitsky.

True, the action was moved “100 years after the premiere,” but who might be confused by this? Everyone has long been accustomed to Aesopian tricks; no one believes in the future, but the present is here, more than clearly and recognizable. Even the first striking decoration, gas pipe with Chinese characters seems to be an attribute of today.

The scenery, while we’re talking about it, in “The Day of the Oprichnik” is expressive, even if Alexey Kondratiev does not have such an individual style as the late Oleg Sheintsis, who passed away exactly ten years ago - at the same time when the idea for this performance was born. Movable giant structures clearly indicate the insignificance of man within the system, clocks go backwards, wolf heads hang on the walls, and a rusty rocket rises in the middle of the stage. In oprichnina Russia, it doesn’t matter what year it is: it’s always here and now. Oprichnik Day is also Groundhog Day, it is the same as other days.

In any case, this was the case with Sorokin, who responded with his day as a cheerful executioner to the textbook 24 hours in the life of a victim - the basis of informal Soviet literature, Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” For Zakharov, everything is somewhat different: his Komyaga (Viktor Rakov, absolutely organic in the role of a businesslike punisher) wakes up as a guardsman, and greets the sunset as a free man. This is a turning point in his life.

Here is the first and probably the most important complaint about Lenkom's staging. One could immediately assume that the apotheosis of Sorokin’s grotesque, the “oprichnina caterpillar,” Zakharov would not transfer to the stage: no matter what age rating you put, no matter how you quote a ritual homosexual orgy in the circle of secret service killers, they will still be brought under the article (and if there is no such articles will be invented on purpose). However, the artistic director of Lenkom went further. He introduced a love line into the plot, making the main character - who by the end grows into the Virgin Mary - the widow Kunitsyna and, accordingly, his daughter and favorite actress Alexandra Zakharova.

You can criticize Zakharova’s somewhat monotonous manner as much as you like, or even gloatingly recall her age, which is supposedly unsuitable for romantic material. However, in this theater she is an undisputed star, her appearance on stage is greeted with almost an ovation; The very conventional style of directing allows you to accept any assumption in the field of casting. But not in drama. The problem with the widow Kunitsyna is that she takes Sorokin’s narrative to a different plane that is not organic to it. The outstanding murderer Komyaga, even proud of his murder, suddenly appears before us as a shy boy who fell in love with an unfamiliar woman - so much so that he sent his entire career to hell. Within the framework of the most general theatrical abstraction, there is no way, no way, to believe this.

To make it clear, remember “Kill the Dragon,” Zakharov’s last film, where he kept the gentle maiden Elsa as his bride right hand Dragon - careerist and scoundrel Heinrich. They were played by the same Zakharova and Rakov. Now imagine the ending of that story, in which Lancelot dies, and Henry reforms, offers Elsa escape - and so the lovers elude the tyrant lizard. Can you imagine this? Even in the hopeful year of 1988, when the film was released, it is unlikely. And today, when the day of the guardsman has really come, and even more so.

Otherwise, as it turned out, the eclectic pop aesthetics of Lenkom are not so contradictory to the eloquent monolith of Sorokin’s filigree satire. The play is full of gags, and often you believe in it without difficulty: if it wasn’t in the book, then it could have been. The number with the clairvoyant Praskovya Mamontovna (Tatyana Kravchenko), pushing around Chinese slaves and heating the stove with collected works of Russian classics, is one of these. As does the duet of the sovereign - Pevtsov superbly plays something like the Dragon with his three different heads, changing intonation registers on the go - with his son-in-law, the perverted Count Urusov (Alexander Sirin). The textured Sergei Stepanchenko turned out to be the ideal Batya, a close security official. Best Role The performance, without a doubt, belongs to Ivan Agapov: his character, the mysterious Demyan Zlatoustovich, comes out at the beginning of the first and second acts to expressively read to the audience a sermon from Telluria: “If the sovereign’s top manager seeks for the glory of the CPSU and all the saints for the happiness of the people and only by the will of God, at the behest of world imperialism, at the will of enlightened Satanism..."

Sorokin’s pasta Volapuk brilliantly conveys the mess in the brain, where a complex interweaving of cliches that have long lost their meaning has killed even a hint of any ideology or faith. But Zakharov contradicts the writer and himself: no, it didn’t kill, and in pitch darkness you can fall in love and be saved, too, and the night will be followed by dawn. It’s hard to say what is more in this catastrophically uneven, but still extraordinary performance, beauty or despair, idealism or cynicism (after all, the public loves happy endings). Only one thing is clear: Sorokin searched and unmistakably found the guardsman in an ordinary person similar to us, and Zakharov still hopes to find the humanity in the guardsman.

Mark Zakharov is staging a play based on Vladimir Sorokin’s story “The Day of the Oprichnik”

Sensational news. Mark Zakharov directs Vladimir Sorokin’s “The Day of the Oprichnik,” an evil dystopia about the Russia of the future and the new Middle Ages. “Kommersant-Lifestyle” managed to arrange a meeting and ask the artistic director of “Lenkom” about this work, and at the same time about relations with the authorities, pseudo-patriotism and the Russian idea. Of course, we also asked about Konstantin Bogomolov.

Mark Anatolyevich, you are currently working on a play based on Vladimir Sorokin’s story “The Day of the Oprichnik”. Tell us what prompted you to take on this particular material.

Sorokin is an amazing, shocking writer. Something may cut into the ear and cause negative emotions, but without taking away the depth. His “Day of the Oprichnik” is a wonderful satire, today’s “Dead Souls”. Sorokin describes the imaginary Russian state. The program will indicate that the action takes place 100 years after the premiere. Still, it’s not 2027, as in the original. I want to stay away so as not to bear unnecessary responsibility.

- Sorokin is often called a prophet. The parallels with today are, frankly, frightening.

Unfortunately, this is a difficult period in our history. Many fantastic things suddenly take on their nature. “The Day of the Oprichnik” concentrates fantastic moments that, in the author’s opinion, can triumph in our fatherland. Some of our complexes come from Slavophilism and some exaggerated idea of ​​​​the merits of our history.

- You have been working towards this production for nine years. Why now?

Indeed, I tried to start Sorokin for a long time. I even started rehearsing, but then canceled the work. It seemed to me that something wasn’t working out for me and that I was getting too deep into the sphere of power. And I’ll tell you honestly, I wouldn’t want to aggravate the relationship between the Moscow Lenkom Theater and our government structures. A pause was taken. When he wanted to return to the work again and turned to Sorokin, for some reason he developed a negative attitude towards this idea. He was sure that time had already passed. I began to rummage through reference books and found an interesting fact: “Dead Souls” were published in 1842. And he began to convince Sorokin: “Well, how can it be, I consider you a continuer of the traditions of our classics, is it possible that “Dead Souls” were interesting in 1842, but in 1843 or 1844 they were no longer any good.” Convinced. We made a contract and he agreed for me to do everything my way. It's like in cinema - he ceded his right to the theater and allowed us to make our own stage version.

-Did you write the dramatization yourself?

Yes, I included “The Day of the Oprichnik” and some fragments from “Telluria”. Sorokin really wanted Telluria to be there. I don’t, but I’ve come to terms with it. There are interesting things there too. Although inferior to “Day of the Oprichnik”.

- How did you deal with scenes of violence and homosexual scenes?

To be honest, I didn’t bother with the homosexual scenes. This is a very painful, complex, multifaceted problem. As for some of the words and buzzwords that Sorokin allows himself, we left them at our own peril and pronounce them from the stage. If there is no harshness and popular rudeness, there will be no Sorokin. Just like in the play “Walpurgis Night” based on Venechka Erofeev, the text is pronounced practically without cuts. Now, however, we are thinking about how to make a film-play. On television, an ironclad requirement is to do without “those” words. In some cases this is possible. And in some it is impossible.

- Sorokin is an evil writer. Do you think evil literature can be healing?

Maybe. Sorokin is indeed an angry writer, but his texts have a comedic basis. He is, by and large, a comedian, always laughing at his characters. Just like Gogol laughed. For example, Plyushkin is a very scary figure. But in the end it also evokes a comedic perception. He is a manifestation of certain aspects of our national character. By the way, it’s remarkable that Gogol did not travel around the cities of Russia and did not look out for his characters. He wrote, in a sense, about himself, about what was inherent in him. This is the most correct and interesting thing. I think that Sorokin is not a writer of everyday life, but a researcher of our consciousness and subconscious.

Today in Moscow it is incredibly difficult to make a performance about which critics will write “must see”.

- What mood are you working in today? Laughter at the absurdity around us or is it still anxiety and pessimism?

Anxiety and pessimism are present, but a comedic attitude to all these stories still prevails. I hope that Russia will protect itself from possible excesses. I don’t even know what to call it, some old-fashioned word came to my mind - the excesses of the Stalinist period. No, these are not excesses, these are complexes. Our chimeras that lie dormant in our consciousness and, under certain circumstances, can materialize. God forbid. This is what we are staging the play about.

- IN Soviet time censorship was rampant and your productions were banned. Aren't you afraid of repetition?

Not afraid. Although the return of censorship is possible. But self-censorship is more likely to flourish. In Soviet times, this was decided somewhere at the Politburo level, for example, the issue of “Juno and Avos”. It may or may not be shown abroad. Now there is reinsurance on the lower floors of our management. But I hope for the best option. That we can always do what we want.

You are now talking about Lenkom. And if we talk about trends in general, about the new theater policy, about the requirement to stage correct productions?

I am puzzled by the culture law. It is impossible to plan a masterpiece in the executive's office. It is necessary to help talented artists (how to determine whether a person is talented or not is a separate big conversation), but it is impossible to evaluate from the point of view of the law. If they show you modern painting and ask you to answer where the general line is and where the side and undesirable lines are, you will not answer. It's difficult. Things that at first seem absurd, then turn into multimillion-dollar paintings. “Black Square” by Malevich, if at one time they had taken it around our provinces and asked ordinary people“what do you think?”, 80–90% would regard the picture as bad joke. But in fact, this is a contact with space.

To support talents, you invited Konstantin Bogomolov to your theater, and, according to rumors, also Timofey Kulyabin?

I supported Kulyabin at a time of aggravation of relations between him and the so-called Orthodox community. I called him on the phone and said that he could count on our theater. As for Konstantin Bogomolov, of course, yes. It was important for me that the troupe and artists come into contact with a different technology, a different theatrical worldview. It's useful despite all the risks.

- What is close to you in his aesthetics, what perhaps is not? Do you influence his work?

When I invite a person to the theater, I do not interfere or put pressure. There were moments in my life when I was under pressure from the artistic management of the theaters where I worked. I don’t want to extend this tradition to Lenkom. I like Bogomolov’s passion for form, his unpredictability. Shockingness. It is necessary for the theater to be diverse. But I understand that this may not be to everyone's liking. "Boris Godunov" caused a mass negative reviews. But also positive ones. In any case, people are willing to buy tickets. This is important for today's market relations.

- How does the troupe react?

I don't get any harsh responses. And then - after the premiere, the press appears, where many are praised. And the artist must be praised. He cannot exist without approval. Therefore, even if there are doubts and dissatisfaction during work, then they evaporate. The actor's joy and positive emotions prevail.

- Who is involved in the “Day of the Oprichnik” among the Lenkomov stars?

There we have a star on a star. And this causes difficulties during rehearsals; people constantly come to me with requests to let me go on set. For now I'm tolerant of this. We will still play the premiere in the fall, now I’m ready to make compromises. Main role played by Viktor Rakov, who has grown up a lot and has become a reliable, good artist. Ivan Agapov, Tatyana Kravchenko, Alexandra Zakharova play, young people take on the role of guardsmen. So far in rehearsals it all looks very good. I don't know what will happen next.

- Do any disputes arise during rehearsals?

Honestly, the artists believe in me so much, it’s even scary sometimes. Therefore, there are no arguments with me, no matter what stupidity I say, it is perceived as a reasonable thing. Then I can evaluate the failure myself. With the performance “Til” in 1974, I gained a strong authority in the troupe, and no one conflicts with me.

- This can hardly be regarded as a positive moment.

Absolutely right. The only person who was rude to me was Grigory Gorin. Only he could say: “Mark, what kind of vulgar thing are you doing, shame on you, how could you allow this to happen.” But immediately, sensing my confusion, he said: “We need to try this and that.” Sometimes he suggested lines in performances that he had nothing to do with.

- Are you a doubter yourself?

Unfortunately, very much. I’m constantly tormented: is it so, isn’t it, will it be interesting. Today in Moscow it is incredibly difficult to make a performance about which critics will write “must see”. We live in a field of information storms and whirlwinds. There are 80 theaters in Moscow with budget funding. And somehow we were in the presence of the president at this round table They said that when a friend asks you “where to go?”, well, five names, well, six will appear. But not 80.

Theater art should not be abstract. Kandinsky created wonderful paintings, but his example in the theater is impossible.

- Is there anything that makes you happy about the country, no matter what?

Younger generation. When I was teaching, I often noticed that my students were smarter than I was at their age. They not only admire the master, they demand attention, to be taught and “packed.” They study literature deeply and know it. This smart people. True, not everyone remains in the theater field; they go to television and cinema. But that's right. Someone told me that in England theater education is given with the aim that a person can get a job not only in the theater. The main thing is the amount of knowledge in art. This is a good theater education.

- Most of these well-educated and smart young people choose to leave the country.

This is a problem that requires special and serious research. Once during the Lenkom tour, two of our artists stayed there. One doubled for Karachentsov, now works as a doorman in America. The second is a capable actress - she has her own small cafe for 3-4 tables. An unenviable job and career, in my opinion. It is impossible to fit into Western European or American art if you were raised in Russia. Theatrical art is based on a great layer of culture. This is the source that feeds a person throughout his life.

- Could you call yourself a patriot?

Yes, sure. I just don't like this word. Very often people beat themselves on the chest, declaring themselves patriots. This raises doubts in me about the validity of the confession. It's like a relationship with God and faith, an intimate thing. And it must manifest itself correctly, carefully, intelligently.

- Everyone today is looking for the Russian idea, if you were asked what it is, would you be able to answer?

Solzhenitsyn rightly said about the need to protect the nation, to help those people who find themselves outside living wage. There are a lot of them. Our leadership owes a great debt to the population of the country. And this debt is unpaid.

- Theater, which you have been doing all your life, is it an ivory tower for you or a platform for discussion?

One cannot abstract oneself from what happens outside the theater walls. And I am sure: it should be included in performances and art in correct subtle formations. Theater art should not be abstract. Kandinsky created wonderful paintings, but his example in the theater is impossible.

- The main lesson from life that you learned?

Take care of your health. Because the author’s theater is structured so unfairly that a lot depends on the well-being of the main person, the artistic director. If you get up in the morning with a headache or have a fever, this affects the work of a large team, which is not to blame for the fact that you got sick.

Natalia Vitvitskaya

— it would seem that other, later generations grew up and were formed on the writer’s dystopias and postmodern satire. It’s interesting that he staged it right now - in principle, Sorokin was staged: at the Theater in the South-West, in Praktika. But they staged little and for a long time - at a time when swearing was not yet prohibited by law, and hysterical conversations about spirituality seemed still in bad form. The Theater in the South-West staged “Dostoyevsky Trip” and “Shchi”, at the Comedian’s Shelter he staged “Not Hamlet” based on the play “Dysmorphomania”, at the National Theater in Warsaw Konstantin Bogomolov made “Ice” (and is now making a film based on the story “ Nastya").

And yet today, in 2016, the very name of Vladimir Sorokin on the poster of the bourgeois Lenkom, where the wealthy public comes to look at the stars, seems like a challenge and a slap in the face to public taste.

Actually, the reaction of the premiere audience is also indicative - “Day of the Oprichnik”, like any, in general, modern material, does not unite, but, on the contrary, becomes an object of controversy. At the “Day of the Oprichnik”, most of the audience sits quietly, tensely, many with confused faces: both the material itself and the language are too unusual; All these journalistic games with grassroots culture do not fit in well with the repertoire of Lenkom recent years(if you don’t take into account the performances, which were still some kind of separate theater on this site).

In obvious conflict with the wary majority are groups of enlightened people scattered around the hall: here and there deafening, but, in general, rather lonely, understanding and sympathetic laughter is heard.

Lenkomovsky Sorokin, despite the serious disturbances that occurred with the original text, with all his audience qualities - dynamic rhythm, bright, almost clownish sometimes existence of the actors, abundance of humor, sometimes rude - creates a field for discussion in the hall.

“Day of the Oprichnik” at Lenkom is not a re-enactment. This is an independent play, written in the theater, based on selected passages from two stories by Sorokin.

In addition to “The Day of the Oprichnik,” texts from “Telluria” are recognizable here: the prayer of the sovereign’s top manager, in which all the “isms,” everything high and low, everything momentary, merged into a dense jumble, precedes both the first and second acts of the performance.

In the embroidered vestments of the church hierarch, he begins with pathos and goodness, so that by the end, in despair, he throws off his headdress and jumps into the abyss; in the second act, his tone is that of a half-crazed dictator, his eyes wander around the hall, and in his speech Latin is mixed with German.

Sorokin's story is sober futurology, detailed description Russian government structure in the near future, a dystopia, which by 2016 in some ways important details turned out to be prophetic.

It is not for nothing that until recently there were humorous requests on the Internet for Sorokin not to write anything else, since his caustic satires turn into a reality in which one has to live.

Even the radio program “Russian Mat in Exile,” which the guardsman Komyaga listens to on the enemy, emigrant wave, was echoed in the corresponding recently adopted laws. Sorokin's story describes everyday life, describes the mores of the new elite, the new hierarchy and ideology, cobbled together from a nationalized faith, from a castrated history, imperial complexes and hatred of others. Describes a reality in which the dense Middle Ages have become friends with new technologies, and patriotism has become friends with mutual responsibility and an economy built “on the concepts” of the 90s.

In Sorokin's world, everything is one color, and each character is built into the system. In Zakharov’s play there is not everyday life, but adventure, and here, as in a traditional play, the conflict is obvious and good openly opposes evil.

Victor's hero and guardsman Komyaga refuses the honorable privilege of being the first to rape the widow of a beheaded centurion who fell into disgrace. She, in turn, flaunting her insolence, asks for intercession, asks to return the child, whom the sovereign’s mannered kisser Averyan took, as expected, to the orphanage. Having survived a number of troubles, having met with the sovereign, the queen, and having flown to the clairvoyant Praskovya Mamontovna, Komyaga and his faithful adjutant Fedka find themselves in disgrace. In the finale, the widow of the centurion Kunitsyn, as if from 2137, clutches a bag with a baby and prays, kneeling down. All three of them run along a sliding path in the hope of escaping from the system and getting to the ocean on a white horse.

And behind them, pressed against the wings, guardsmen are waving spears and wooden hammers and journalists in gray jackets and red hipster trousers are clutching microphones in their hands.

The balance of power in the play is also emphasized by the manner of existence of the actors - perhaps only Rakov and, playing Fedka, are devoid of obviously comic features here: Komyaga is a generalized image of a person not enslaved by a dragon (it is Zakharov’s film “Kill the Dragon” based on Schwartz’s parable that comes to mind when you watch this performance), even through its conformism, through its narrow-mindedness, natural movements of the soul break through. All the rest are just characters, masks, sculpted with varying degrees of detail and originality.

Sovereign Platon Nikolayevich is performed by a whole series of different faces: from a burry parody of a movie tsar, standing on tiptoes in order to demonstrate military bearing, to a domestic boor barking at his subordinates.

The clairvoyant Praskovya () on a throne made of rough logs is like a character from the fairy tale “About Fedot the Archer” by Filatov, an epic witch of the Soviet hangover bottling. He shouts at the Chinese chirping servants, the “pissy ones under heaven,” swears deliciously and intricately, and generally speaks in reprises. However, her entire role is structured roughly, reprise-like, as if it were a separate, inserted number in the performance. The most interesting turned out to be Urusov, the disgraced son-in-law of the sovereign, convicted of perverted predilections - he plays him in detail, with many characteristics: he carefully aligns himself with the patron; like a naughty schoolboy, he fiddles with fashionable trousers, speaks neatly, like a snake, takes neat, small steps, and he is all somehow slippery, fluid - the god of mimicry.

Mark Zakharov’s performance changes not only the plot, but also Sorokin’s language: in the story “The Day of the Oprichnik” there is very little swearing (since it is prohibited by the sovereign’s law), but it is bright, succinct, and dry.

The characters in the play speak differently - in semi-censored slang, with many derivatives of well-known roots, with some euphemisms that sound somehow trashy, somehow much nastier than swearing as such.

However, one can also see the meaning in this violence against the Sorokin language: it is about how concern for cleanliness and good morals, coupled with ideological narrowness and cynicism, turns the living into the inanimate, replacing the natural word with a laboriously composed construction.

Notes from an amateur.

53. Lenkom. Day of the Oprichnik (Vladimir Sorokin). Director: Mark Zakharov.

Senility.

For a long time I could not get into “this theater” because of the high cost and my own policy of never paying more than a thousand rubles for a ticket. I almost gave up on this idea, but it happened that I was sitting on the balcony next to the sound engineer’s booth on seats that were more cramped than in the most seedy charter. Know your nest, as the respectable theater suggests...

The audience in the theater is homogeneous, extremely colorful, well-fed, in appearance they are all listeners of Echo of Moscow... Although, maybe it’s a thematic issue of the performance.

At the next buffet table, a middle-aged group is warming up with a bottle of cognac they brought with them; although I know from myself that you can’t drink a lot before the theater, the whole perception will go down the drain, which means that tonight is more of a social pastime for them, a cultural get-together, a fashionable performance.

There’s nothing wrong with anything, but the commercial spirit in Lenkom is in order - first they sold the program for 200 rubles, and then it turned out that without the magazine in the load (with a sarcastically smiling Mikhail Efremov on the cover) it was half the price; Five minutes later at the buffet the change for coffee powder was missing...
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It’s worth saying right away that the play has nothing to do with Sorokin’s intellectual satire, except for the name. Having already become famous, it is only trademark, a way to climb on other people's shoulders.

The vulgarity and director's gags (which amount to a little less than ninety percent) cause shock from the very beginning. You understand that only a Russian person, who is Sorokin, can describe the Kunstkamera called Russia elegantly, accurately, offensively, with real understanding. Everything else is just an offended dog barking, in this particular case, burdened with creative, physical and intellectual impotence, causing only contempt. Not even bile, but weak tremors of urine pouring onto his own pants. There wasn't enough for a bigger fuse.

The director's hilariously ridiculed fears and minor phobias are visible through and through: brute force, flashing lights and sirens, Caucasians, and so on. The symbols are deliberate and primitive - a pipe, a rocket...

A typical #joke from Markazakharova is when the character sent “to hell” looks for the recommended route using the Yandex navigator. I don’t know what happened to the refined Sorokin, who saw his brainchild on the Lenkomov stage. I hope that at least the compensation from the expensive and prestigious theater was appropriate.

Unexpectedly shown to be not hopeless main character Komyaga (Viktor Rakov) does not look real or logical, and his tortured dialogues with the widow Kunitsyna (Alexandra Zakharova), who hideously swears like a market woman, make the hair on your head stand out, causing bitterness.

The harassing clown “Sovereign”, performed by Pevtsov, invented by the director, caused only painful attacks of shame for what was happening on stage. And the fixation on the primitiveness and stupidity of the oprichniki degenerates was only a reflection of the director’s impotence, an indicator of the creative level. And why be so embarrassed? You have to leave on time...

Zakharov’s performance is like a liquid, rotten gruel from canned fish called “Tsar’s fish soup.” Not a fancy world, but a pathetic, ugly, flat caricature. An evil, caustic, deep, inventive satire turned into a rural skit with laughter from the nearby audience to the deliberately accentuated “assholes” and “phalluses”, i.e. into an extremely low genre.

Markzakharov’s “Day of the Oprichnik” is the disgusting delirium of an old man with dementia about a good book he read ten years ago.

And this, of course, is a test - to understand everything from the very beginning and sit, painfully wait for the intermission to escape. It becomes clear that getting to a good performance in our time is not an easy task. But if you exclude from the choice the Lenkom film, based on the story “The Day of the Oprichnik,” the chances will certainly increase. At 1/390th. Yes, that’s exactly how many theaters there are in Moscow today...

P.S. Yes, and the denunciation of the oprichnina in the theater looks especially comical, the director of which, Mark (also) Varshaver, is a well-known fan of driving a black SUV with “AMP” license plates on the sidewalk and arranging showdowns with passers-by who do not throw themselves in all directions from under the wheels. Russia...

#notes of an amateur
#dayprichnik
#sorokin
#Vladimirsorokin
#lenkom
#impotence
#I'm leaving
#the dog is eating the caravan
#theater
#review
#theaterreview

And below it - the thinker and patriot Demyan Zlatoustovich (Ivan Agapov) in black and gold brocade proclaims a toast to everything on which the oprichnina of 2137 stands (besides the pipe to China):

— If the sovereign's top manager seeks for the glory of the CPSU and all the saints for the happiness of the people and only by the will of God, at the behest of world imperialism, at the will of enlightened Satanism, at the burning of Orthodox patriotism... for dollars and for euros, for seventh generation smartphones, for the vertical authorities and for the proper storage of the common fund...

A black bamboo curtain is creeping. In “Day of the Oprichnik”, Rus'-2137 lives according to Feng Shui. The set design by Alexey Kondratyev accurately conveyed the mixture of fashionable Chinese, gilded pop music and dull oak panels with arshin nails. Elite nails, of course. Telluriums.

The “indigenous” guardsmen, a frightening team of the sovereign’s dogs in sables and camouflage, are storming the house of a “pillar” financier on Rublyovka, who has put his paw into Singaporean accounts.

The blue flashing light is howling. The oprichnik eagle Komyaga (Viktor Rakov) commands, the orderly Fedka (Anton Shagin) faithfully fusses around him. From under the felt (there is a hidden camera in every skin, log, shell casing) the puffy, truly sovereign face of commander Bati (Sergei Stepanchenko) looks out.

And of course: there is a shock of coincidence in this scene. Although “Day of the Oprichnik” was written in 2006.

Somewhere in Tobolsk, Rasputin of the 22nd century is dancing in Khlyst style with Chinese hay girls - the clairvoyant Praskovya Mamontovna in an embroidered caftan with lala-yahonts (Tatyana Kravchenko). The stoves in her upper rooms are heated with Russian classics: it burns painfully brightly, especially Chekhov.

Voivode Sobakin, Leonid Bronevoy, rides out in a rich chair on wheels. Almost the entire Lenkom troupe is involved in “Day of the Oprichnik,” from Bronevoy to Anton Shagin. (Shagin could easily play not the orderly Fedka, pure in heart, like Petrusha Grinev, who has no intention of betraying the disobedient Komyaga, but a much more subterranean, oprichnina and interesting character.)

The most difficult role is played by Dmitry Pevtsov. His Tsar of All Rus' is sad, like his own Chichikov.

Sovereign Platon Nikolaevich, a Kremlin keeper in Sorokin’s dystopia, is an oprichnina guard in the “masher” of the polar wolf. Underneath, however, is a gray suit and the tired face of a decent and intelligent gentleman. He knows the value of his camarilla: from kats to counts. He blessed (if not brought to life) this thick mixture of embittered “originality”, fenced off from the world by a wall on the western border of Rus', a false “spirit of splendor”, samovar gold, permitted violence, surveillance of everyone and a general demonic dance.

But, it seems, he believes that he holds this world (able to survive only in a log greenhouse behind the Western Wall, hence the loyalty to the sovereign) in steady hands, — until he is hooked by the epileptic. And the mise-en-scene of the sovereign’s anger almost turns into the picture “Ivan the Terrible kills his son.”

In the first act, Sorokin’s phantasmagoria works effectively, with terrifying power. What doesn’t get in the way of dashing remarks “from the theater”: in “Sheremetyevo” they sell from trays a gift edition of “Russian Mat in Exile”, orderly Fedka busily explains the prophetic Mamontovna: “Modern playwrights, mother, we still have Apple Spas hanged."

In the second act, it seems that the theater itself cannot withstand the horror of Sorokin’s hyperboles. And he urgently cuts through the oak blocks of “Day of the Oprichnik” a window to the light.

In the staging of "Lenkom", the brutal guardsman Komyaga does not have lust for the widow of the pillar banker Kunitsyn, who was personally strung up by Komyaga. Here the guardsman gradually realizes that he loves the widow Kunitsyna (Alexandra Zakharov) seriously. Having thereby violated the pillars of the inhuman world of the sovereign cranberry with AKMs in plain sight and offshore accounts under the floorboards: one cannot feel sorry for the victims here, much less love them. In the finale, the heroes flee. And they are saved.

After the run Mark Anatolyevich Zakharov told Novaya Gazeta about the premiere:

— Mark Anatolyevich, how did you come to this story by Sorokin?

— I read “The Day of the Oprichnik” a long time ago: long before working on this play. This is a long-standing idea. I rewrote the dramatization more than once. We talked a lot with Vladimir Georgievich Sorokin. Moreover, at a certain point the author expressed concern.

It seemed to him that for the first time I started working on the play “The Day of the Oprichnik” on time and in a timely manner. And now - that is, at the time of our conversation - the urgency of the topic has gone away.

I objected to Sorokin. Gogol wrote Dead Souls in the 1840s. They, of course, were topical for contemporaries. But did Dead Souls really cease to be relevant in the 1860s, after the liberation of the peasants - and even after all the reforms of Alexander II?

It seemed to me that Vladimir Georgievich was mistaken. This is often the case with authors: they find it difficult to appreciate the significance of their books. And we agreed that the theater would buy the rights to the stage version of “The Day of the Oprichnik” and “Telluria” from the writer. The themes of this book are also included in the play. There are pages of amazing prose in Telluria! The final love scene between the guardsman Komyagi and the widow Kunitsyna is taken from there. And the monologues of our Demyan Zlatoustovich are also “Telluria”. Well, then... I naturally tried to stylize the stage version of the book “like Sorokin,” preserving his thoughts and his vocabulary. But in some ways, fantasizing.

— That is, several years ago, to Vladimir Sorokin himself, the Western Wall and the voluntary burning of foreign passports by citizens on Red Square in the “Day of the Oprichnik” seemed excessive hyperbole? Was the author beginning to think that his 2006 dystopia was outdated?

However, the Fatherland made a sharp turn... and went straight into the nets laid out by the “Day of the Oprichnik”. Sorokin’s phantasmagoria (the same Western Wall) have become much closer to reality...

- Yes, it's amazing. How sometimes a person is ahead of his time... Of course, Sorokin contains some kind of warning to our social consciousness. And our social consciousness - in my feeling - has shifted recently. From some normal state (if it was such) - towards excessive glorification of any historical characters... “Everything that happened to us before was wonderful!” We persist...

Hence, I think, this ill-fated monument to Ivan the Terrible in Orel - and some other actions. This is still pseudo-patriotism. Not real love to the country. And true love always requires the truth and... albeit a ruthless, but sober assessment of what happened.

So you can erect a monument to False Dmitry...

— Which one? There were two of them.

- Yes, two. And Tsarevich Dimitri’s mother recognized both of them... It doesn’t matter: just put it that way. Two.

But let’s return to “The Day of the Oprichnik”: Sorokin generously, evilly, vividly fantasizes about what could happen to us if our Slavophilism, taken to the point of absurdity, makes us forget all sober thoughts about the path that Russia has traveled. And a kind of black cloud will rise from the incense of the past.

The remarkable thing is that Sorokin wrote his dystopia with humor. He's probably black. He's shocking. But “The Day of the Oprichnik” and “Telluria” sparkle with furious wit - and it is clear that the author does not treat the picture he painted with “animal seriousness.” There's a lot of irony here.

“Aren’t you too generous to the guardsman Komyaga?” In the finale of the play "Lenkom", he becomes downright a defender of widows and orphans, a repentant hero on a white horse. For Sorokin, this hero is different. There is no talk of any repentance or love for the victim.

“Perhaps there is some fantasy of the theater here.” I wanted to show the image in motion. After all, sometimes - although this does not happen often enough in our reality - people begin to evaluate their path and themselves differently. And we took it upon ourselves to show such a transformation of the “indigenous guardsman.” At first, he faithfully carries out all orders. But gradually doubt grows, even internal torment. And then Komyaga leaves his black craft.

— In 2001, you staged Grigory Gorin’s play “The Jester Balakirev.” The performance ended with Peter's prayerI(Oleg Yankovsky) for Russia: “Come on! Tighten up... Gather all your strength!”

I interviewed Oleg Ivanovich then. He said that in each performance “Shuta Balakireva” prays for the country, asks it to come to life, to come out into the light - seriously and in full force.

In 2016, Oprichnik Day also ends with a prayer at the ramp. The heroine of Alexandra Zakharova asks the Mother of God for one thing: let me be saved, run away from here with my infant child...

- No, I didn’t think through this parallel. It happened by chance.

But I think that even after us, people living in a Christian culture will pray. For our happiness, for our development. For our brains, which should become healthier. Throw out all the chimeras and everything that pulls us to the bottom. Or back.

— Which of Sorokin’s warnings (there are many of them in “The Day of the Oprichnik” and “Telluria”, they merge into an eerie integrity) seems to you the most formidable and most important?

- The worst thing would be - truly, like the “alternative Russia” of the “Day of the Oprichnik” - to fence off from the whole world. Consider yourself a special—untouchable and beautiful—country. And the only right people in all. Everyone else on our planet is mistaken. We are not.

If you listen to some of our analysts recently, it turns out that almost all countries have fallen into unheard-of heresy and degradation. And we are a saving island.

Cuba is the island of freedom, and we are the island of virtue. Where, if you believe these people, there is complete splendor, love of truth and prosperity. And increasing. Spiritual, first of all...

This confusion, this unshakable patriotic satiety, false only because its bearers do not believe in it at all, is very well described in “The Day of the Oprichnik.” She seems scary.