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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Is such fame a difficult test or vice versa?

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

“It turned out to be a completely different story”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My wife is a better actress than me”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never travel with a dead person.

W. Blake and J. Jarmusch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scenes from the play. Photo by O. Chumachenko

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scenes from the play. Photo by V. Lupovsky

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

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

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

Scenes from the play. Photo by V. Lupovsky

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

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

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

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

Scenes from the play. Photo by V. Lupovsky

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

What do we have left?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A performance for all times - today the Gorky Moscow Art Theater celebrates the centenary of the legendary “Blue Bird”. This is the only production by Stanislavsky that has survived to this day in its original form. The scenery, costumes, music are the same as in the last century. And the hall is still always sold out.

Report by Maria Torlopova.

Memory of best performances The Moscow Art Theater is carefully stored in the museum on Kamergersky Lane. There are costumes, props and even fragments of scenery. Only a tiny part of the exhibition is dedicated to the legendary “Blue Bird,” but this is not because there is nothing to show. The fact is that all the original costumes, scenery and props are now on stage, in the current performance of the Gorky Moscow Art Theater.

Konstantin Stanislavsky spent a long time racking his brains on how to make the performance magical. One day he walked into his children’s bedroom at night and saw a carriage driving down the alley. The light from the lantern fell on the wall and illuminated the shadow. This is how the whole “night” scene appeared. And composer Ilya Sats, to write the music of Water, spent the whole day on the roof in the rain.

Margarita Yuryeva, People's Artist of Russia: “There should always be a fairy tale inside a person, especially an actor. This is some kind of magic, fantasy, something that is in children.”

The Blue Bird, like the most precious treasure, is passed on by one generation of Moscow Art Theater students to another. Alexei Batalov, Nikolai Ozerov, and Evgenia Dobrovolskaya grew up watching this performance. "The Blue Bird" was for them a lucky ticket to theatrical life.

Evgenia Dobrovolskaya, People's Artist of Russia: “I had a meeting with wonderful artists of the Moscow Art Theater, of that generation. Konstantin Gradopolov, Our Wonderful Sugar. And we were children in this performance.”

The performance has never disappeared from the repertoire. But after the Moscow Art Theater was transferred to self-supporting, they played two “Blue Birds” a day in order to save money. Then two pictures were removed from the production - it became shorter. But it remained just as magical.

Maria Pavlova, Natalya Medvedeva, actresses of the Moscow Art Theater. Gorky, performers of the roles of Mytyl and Tiltil: “We had a lot of overlays of all kinds, the cage did not fit through, the diamond did not light up. But all this has already been adjusted. And now we play with pleasure! Because when you play and hear how the voices of the children fade away - this It's worth a lot!"

This philosophical fairy tale was written and staged for adults. What the soul of a dog cries about, why the dead ask to be remembered more often, and where the mysterious Blue Bird is hiding, children may not fully understand. But every single one of them dreams of seeing the Blue Bird again.

Larisa Zhukovskaya, actress of the Moscow Art Theater. Gorky: “This is an unusual performance. It is immortal, it was staged by the immortal director Konstantin Stanislavsky. This performance will go on forever. As long as the theater is alive, it will go on!”

Over the course of a hundred years, the play was performed on stage more than five thousand times. They say in the theater that the Blue Bird is fit to become a symbol of the Moscow Art Theater on a par with the famous seagull.

The world remembers Maeterlinck primarily as the author of the children's fairy-tale extravaganza “The Blue Bird,” which has been triumphantly performed on stages around the world for more than a hundred years. The play was first staged by the Moscow Art Theater; this production became one of the landmark events of the century. The story of its creation is amazing and incredible...

Theater and playwright

They called me;
I went out. A man dressed in black
Bowing politely, he ordered
I Requiem and disappeared.
A.S. Pushkin. "Mozart and Salieri"

The doorbell interrupted Maeterlinck's work. He left. The stranger said in French with a Russian accent: “Here’s a check for you...” and named the amount of several thousand francs.

Maeterlinck recalled: “...My play “The Blue Bird” was performed by special order of the Moscow Art Theater and represents a true story famous theater. A stranger came to me and said: “Write a supposedly fantastic play for the tenth anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater. This means that you will receive material on the history of our theater, use this material without moving away from the facts of reality, but put the facts themselves in fantastic forms.” ...I created Tyltyl and Mytyl from the inspirers of the theater: Messrs. Nemirovich-Stanislavsky. The image of Berlengo’s simple-minded neighbor, who then turns into a fairy sorceress, was remade by me from a certain Mr. Morozov (philanthropist Savva Morozov), who all the time played the role of a good genius in relation to the Art Theater... This is how I portray him, changing only his gender. ...The name was formed like this. The charming writer Chekhov gave his play “The Seagull” to the Art Theater. This play became the soul of the Art Theater... In a word, I conscientiously tried to portray the history of the Art Theater, and let others judge how I did it” (“Russian Word”, 1908, October 14th, Tuesday).

Did Stanislavsky know about this secret order? He recalled: “Maeterlinck entrusted us with his play on the recommendation of the French, strangers to me.” For two years, the unpublished manuscript of “The Blue Bird” “was at the disposal of the Art Theater, but the performance was shown only in the fall of 1908, during the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Moscow Art Theater.” Moreover, Stanislavsky, admiring Maeterlinck’s fairy tale, abandoned the style of children’s extravaganzas, ignored all the author’s stage directions and created on stage something “mysterious, terrible, beautiful, incomprehensible” with which life surrounds a person and what captivated the director in the play. Surprisingly, Maeterlinck was delighted and in a letter to Stanislavsky in November 1910 he wrote: “I knew that I owed you a lot, but I did not imagine that I owed you everything.” True, he did not see the play, but the playwright’s wife did.

Fate

Maurice Polydor Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was born in 1862, exactly one and a half centuries ago. Writer, playwright and philosopher, he became a laureate Nobel Prize according to literature for 1911 - “for multilateral literary activity, and especially dramatic works, distinguished by their richness of imagination and poetic fantasy.” From birth he found himself on the border of two worlds and cultures: in a prosperous, prosperous family, in the Flemish province - in the Belgian city of Ghent, in conditions of a naively cozy, old-fashioned, chaste life, but in close proximity to France and Paris. Native language is French.

At the insistence of his father, he studied law in Paris and there became interested in the work of symbolist poets. Becoming a pioneer in the field of "new drama", outstanding theorist and playwright of the European Symbolist theater, created an aesthetic theory and published it in the book “Treasures of the Humble.” In his work he often turned to biblical, fairy-tale and historical subjects. He became famous for his play-fairy tale “Princess Malene”; one-act plays “Uninvited”, “Blind”; the drama “Peléas and Melisande” is “the dramaturgy of silence, hints and omissions,” as critics dubbed it.

In 1940, Maeterlinck fled the German occupation to the United States and returned to France after the war in 1947; died in Nice in 1949. Lived to be 87 years old! This is what good genes mean, childhood and youth among fields, forests and gardens in peaceful Flanders.

Bee carrying honey

A flourishing, full-blooded, true Fleming, in appearance he resembled the images of the great son of Flanders Rubens, and in character - the ardent, witty and life-loving hero of the legends of his homeland Till Eulenspiegel, the winner in many adventures “funny, brave and glorious in Flanders and other countries.” The world seemed to him a blooming garden, which Maeterlinck spoke about in books about bees, ants, termites and the intelligence of flowers. In this planetary garden, Maeterlinck himself lived, like the bee he sang: he was given the opportunity to collect the fragrant honey of hopes and justifications, and he fulfilled his purpose to the end. A bee carrying honey cannot release its sting. A writer with a consciousness of happiness cannot blame and blaspheme. His biographer Nikolai Minsky noted: “Maeterlinck’s eyes, blinded by bright visions of the future, do not notice the fleeting clouds of the present. But maybe the poet is right: his visions will seem like reality and truth in the future.”

Many are surprised by the appearance of the complex thinker Maeterlinck in Flanders, because the Belgian people, according to the prevailing opinion in Europe, have always allegedly always consisted of hardworking and honest materialists without higher spiritual needs. However, Maeterlinck, comparing the sacrifice of Belgium to save civilization with the greatest feats of antiquity, proves that the Belgians surpassed all known heroes: “The Belgians knew that by blocking the road to the invasion of the barbarians (the war with the Germanic tribes of the Franks in the 5th century. - Author), they would inevitably sacrifice their hearths, wives and children. By refusing to fight, they could win everything and lose nothing - except honor. History has known individual people who sacrificed their lives and the lives of loved ones for the sake of honor. But for an entire people to consciously sacrifice themselves for the sake of an invisible good - this has never happened anywhere.” The world saw the soul of Belgium emerge from the fire of trials selfless and fearless. The soul of the Belgian people was reflected in the genius of Maeterlinck. What is on the people's mind is on the poet's tongue.

Magic cap

For more than a century, “The Blue Bird” remains the only play in the world that, with the depth of its concept, raises children to understand the most complex truths, and with the brightness of its form allows adults to look at the world through children's eyes. How many generations of children sang: “We are following the Blue Bird in a friendly line”?.. A fairy tale knows no age. She lives in eternity. However, maybe Maeterlinck’s play was originally written for adults? The children captured her later and have not released her to this day.

This tale contains the wisdom of the Apostle Paul: “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the sight of God.” The proud wisdom that comes from the human mind is insignificant. Genuine “wisdom that comes from above is first pure, then peaceable, humble, obedient, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and without hypocrisy.” Childish, perhaps... But that’s how it is.

Actually, “The Blue Bird” is a symbol of happiness, which the heroes are looking for everywhere, in the past and future, in the kingdom of day and night, without noticing that this happiness is in their home.

On the night of Christmas, brother and sister, Tiltil and Mytil, are visited by the fairy Berylyuna. The fairy's granddaughter is sick; only the mysterious Blue Bird can save her. What is wrong with the girl? "She wants to be happy." The fairy sends the children in search of the Blue Bird - the bird of happiness. To help Tiltil, the fairy gives a magic cap that allows him to see the invisible, that which is hidden from ordinary eyes, and is accessible only to the eyes of the heart: the souls of Milk, Bread, Sugar, Fire, Water and Light, as well as the Dog and the Cat. The souls liberated by children - symbols of good and evil, courage and cowardice, love and falsehood - go with the heroes of the fairy tale. Some happily come to the children's aid, others (Cat and Night) try to interfere...

In search of happiness

Children find themselves in the Land of Memories, where they meet those who have already left this world. Then they find themselves in the palace of the Queen of the Night, the keeper of all the secrets of Nature; in the Kingdom of the Future, where the souls of those who are yet to be born live; in the Gardens of Beatitudes is a haven of human desires, from the most base to the most sublime, and it turns out that in addition to the Bliss of Satisfied Vanity, there is also the Great Joy of Being Just and the Great Joy of Contemplating the Beautiful.

In the Land of Memories, children learn: “The dead who are remembered live as happily as if they had not died.” And in the Palace of Night, the unsolved secrets of Nature are revealed to children. But they want Happiness, Bliss! Only... who would have thought?! In the magical Gardens of Bliss there are harmful Blisses that must be saved from: The Bliss of being sudden, Knowing nothing, Sleeping more than necessary... Children learn to see and feel other, beautiful and kind Beatitudes: The Bliss of being a child, The Bliss of being healthy, Breathe air, Loving parents, Bliss of Sunny Days, Rain... And there are also Great Joys: Being Fair, Kind, Joy of Thinking, Joy of Tomorrow's Work and Mother's Love...

When, at the end of the scene of the Azure Kingdom of the Moscow Art Theater, a “joyful choir of mothers” suddenly rang out from an unknown depth towards the unborn souls, the audience’s “tears squeezed their hearts.”

The Kingdom of the Future in the play is a hymn to man and Time, to future inventors, scientists, philosophers who will make humanity happy, who have yet to be born. So where is Bluebird, in the distant future?

Returning home at the end of the play, Tyltil finds her... in his room: it is a simple turtle dove in a cage. “But this is my turtledove! - Tyltil shouts enthusiastically. “But when I left, she wasn’t so blue!.. But this is the Blue Bird that we were looking for!.. We followed her to such a distance, and it turns out that she is here!..” Tyltil gives the turtledove to the neighbor girl, and she recovers. And the neighbor herself is surprisingly similar to the fairy Berylyuna! This is how brother and sister find true happiness - in good deeds, simple bliss and joys. This is how childishly ingenuous “wisdom comes from above.”

In many ancient cultures, happiness took the form of a bird. It's hard to catch and even harder to hold. All the bluebirds that Tiltil finds lose their magical blue in the light of day, and he is forced to continue his search. "The color of heaven, Blue colour"calls the heroes on a difficult journey. “You haven’t caught the only Blue Bird that endures daylight yet... She has flown away somewhere else... But we will find her,” the Soul of Light tells Tiltil after another failure. The campaign of Tiltil and his sister Mytil for the Blue Bird turns out to be a search for a path to oneself, to what a person should become. And this search is endless. For, as Pythagoras said: “Do not chase happiness: it is always within yourself.”

"...Like a child's dream"

It’s amazing how many events happened after the premiere of “The Blue Bird” at the Moscow Art Theater: the performance survived the First world war, revolution, Civil War, collectivization, industrialization, 1937. Surprisingly, Stalin saw it and did not take it off. And then the Marxists didn’t shoot her. “Blue Bird” survived the Second World War, perestroika, the dashing nineties and remained alive.

The glory of the first performance was fairly shared by director Konstantin Stanislavsky, composer Ilya Sats and artist Vladimir Egorov, whose scenography was largely transferred even to the 1976 film. Stanislavsky set the tone for many years: “The blue bird should be naive, simple, light, cheerful, cheerful and illusory, like a child’s dream, and at the same time majestic.” Having decided to show the souls and deities of the other world on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater, he filled the performance with stunts incredible for that time: the heroes broke off their fingers, which grew back; cymbals danced under the cover of darkness; milk, bread, fire, water came to life.

The director paid special attention to costumes and makeup, which played a vital role in creating fabulous images and have remained almost unchanged to this day. People of any age who have ever been lucky enough to see this performance remember it gratefully throughout their lives. Artist Alexey Batalov states: “I have never seen anything childish except “The Blue Bird” in my life.” An anonymous viewer once wrote in the Moscow Art Theater guest book: “When everyone around is talking about benefits, Maurice Maeterlinck dares to talk about what is important. Otherwise it’s impossible to breathe.”

By the way

Maeterlinck once remarked: “What we usually lack is not happiness itself, but the ability to be happy.” And one more thing: “Humanity was created to be happy. I hope the day will come when everyone will be happy and wise.” Maeterlinck himself was happy.

I accepted the invitation to watch the first part (there are three in total) of “The Blue Bird” by Boris Yukhananov with pleasure.

Although I was not a big fan of Yukhananov’s performances, I nevertheless watched them from time to time: such unimaginable fantasy is rarely found in theaters. From the very beginning of the Electrotheater, I wanted to see what the director is doing now, when he is responsible not only for his personal work, but also, as a leader, for the entire creative process.

In addition, the Electrotheater is a globally rebuilt Stanislavsky Theater, which, in former times, I often visited, knowing not only the auditorium and foyer there, but also the backstage. I wanted to see what came out of the theater after its global reconstruction.
It turned out, in general, well. You will, of course, have to get used to eclecticism, a combination of deep antiquity and avant-garde, but there is much more space for the public, and since tickets are checked directly at the entrance to the hall, you have the opportunity to drop into the dressing room, look through theatrical literature at the kiosk, eat a pie and visit the toilet ( very cozy!).
The hall now combines the former (from the outside, I didn’t go up there) balcony and a stepped amphitheater with chairs. The latter is not very elegant... But, apparently, the theater needs it in this form.

As for the performance...
It is stated that the duration of part 1 of “The Blue Bird”, which we watched, is 3 hours 30 minutes. In fact, it lasts longer - perhaps due to the fact that the intermissions are not short. During the second intermission, everyone was asked to leave the hall; perhaps this was required in order to catch a school of cute... flying sharks nestling under the ceiling.

The production combines text classic work Maurice Maeterlinck, memories of actor Vladimir Korenev (Ichthyander!) and his wife, Aleftina Konstantinova, as well as many, many other things invented by Boris Yukhananov - for example, the same flying sharks; dancing of cheerful penguins; the appearance of Tarkovsky and Fellini, as well as the Demon on high “hooves”; the birth of the Souls of objects, taking place in the traditions of Noh theater; reading chapters from "Eugene Onegin" on Chinese... well, and, in general, a lot of other things.

In general, I really liked it, and many hours of action flew by unnoticed, although for me it was not all quite uniform... Either it was simply breathtaking and I wanted to prolong the charm, then, like Gorky’s Baron, I exclaimed: “Next!”

For example, the birth of Souls even made me tired... But big stage before this, when the minutes appearing one after another were added up to hours - both into hours, as a measure of time, and into a mechanism that shows this time... in general, it was a beautiful scene.

Most of the images that were born before our eyes were beautiful. Then an endless round dance of giant Christmas tree decorations appeared (and the wonderful: “Are you frozen, poor people? Go there…”, after which the toys disappeared). That - the hero's father, a handsome man in a white admiral's overcoat, danced to the song of the "Accord" quartet. That's Grandfather and Grandmother, beautiful as Greek gods, younger and prettier, but so immeasurably yearning in their eternal sleep.
And what wonderful crows roamed around the stage!..

Fairy tale. And suddenly - a completely everyday story, an anecdote, interaction with the audience...
Not only Maeterlinck’s Grandfather and Grandmother rose from oblivion, but also the actors who once appeared on the stage of the Stanislavsky Theater...

Well, if we get philosophical, yesterday we saw a story about how “on the edge of a dark abyss”, at the edge of a life-burning fire, you can stop for a moment... catch the edge of your memory on some little thing - a bowl you filled, a couple of words spoken in a dance, an old book taken from the shelf, a “bearded” joke... and not only to preserve ourselves in the ranks of the living, but also to draw closer to us those dear ones who once left us and “went further than overseas”...

Will I go see the remaining two parts of the trilogy? I'll go (especially if they invite me again).
Preferably, a little later, so that I can absorb what I undoubtedly liked and think about what caused bewilderment.

Fire, Bread, Time and Demon.
Costumes by Anastasia Nefedova -