September 2002

Maya Odina

"Black milk" in white clothes

Staging plays of the young, but already popular Vasily Sigarev "Black Milk" became the undisputed creative success of the Theater. Gogol and actress Alla Karavatskaya.

The first premiere of the theatrical season that has just begun was played at the Theater. Gogol. Main director theater Sergei Yashin staged "Black Milk" by Vasily Sigarev. The event is, although it happened within the walls of the most stationary and not the most popular theater in Moscow, it was pleasant. According to preliminary repertoire applications, the theatrical season 2002-2003 promises to be oriented towards contemporary drama, and a start has been made.

Sigarev, who became famous in Moscow for his play "Plasticine", which tells the story of the death of an orphan teenager, stuck with life, presented to the audience no less dramatic story... In it, the young author swung himself for more, trying to create a dramatic portrait of the Russian hinterland. Sigarev begins his "Black Milk" with a monologue to the audience, which is not the most pleasant, as it turns out later, the main character. the main idea the monologue is as follows - well, you are an unscrupulous young lady, Russia ... It turns out, however, that everything that happens in the play does not confirm this thesis, but casts doubt on it, although from the outside the guy is, in general, right. He pronounces his accusation, standing at a dull, spit-out station with tattered benches and ragged walls, leaning against which, a drunken man languidly swarms to death ...

The proximity of the Kursk railway station, its spirit, which is well felt, one has only to go to the porch of the theater. Gogol, the play is very useful. The scene, as if continuing the station unpleasantness, is decorated with a line railroad running away into the distance, semaphores, sidings and other attributes of the right-of-way. The young man and the girl who found themselves there are cynical salesmen. They actively sell to the non-drying beggars of the half-station residents a thing that they do not need for nothing - a superoster made of superplastic.

At first, the plot of "Black Milk" balances on the edge of black humor and parody. The guy smartly depicts the benefits of owning a toaster to the cashier Aunt Luce. In the meantime, people who have already bought goods in shabby katsaveikas are dragging stupid toasters back in droves and, with difficulty choosing non-maternal words, asks to take them back and return the money. Levchik and Melky (nickname of his pregnant girlfriend), who themselves do not have too much vocabulary, get rid of them as best they can, quarreling among themselves along the way. "I'm tired of it, damn it!", "Got it!", "Fuck it!" - artists Alla Karavatskaya and Ivan Shibanov didn't have to pore over memorizing the text. The author very convincingly presents to a clean public the wretched language of petty traders, the slang of the station cashier, the stupid tediousness of grandmothers and the aggressive delirium of drunken men.

However, the humor, albeit blackish, did not last long - it was time for the young lady to give birth. And not in a paid clinic, as she planned, but right in the backwoods, with the help of a homegrown midwife. And then a transformation happens. The rip-off who just disdained even to sit on the station bench and habitually sent others away, finding himself in desperate situation, appreciated the simplicity and breadth of the soul of all these Russian aunts, grandmothers and men. How they ran, how they forgot their squabbles and other important matters! How they drag milk, repaired and repaired carriages and blankets, how they tremble over someone else's baby ... With the same vividness with which the playwright painted their drunken antics, he depicts all the humanity of these inhabitants of the forgotten half-station, hidden for the time being.

Alla Karavatskaya plays a break in the soul of her heroine so that the audience freezes. From worries about Melkoy and her newborn daughter, the ladies take out their handkerchiefs, and the same nervous pause hangs in the hall, for the sake of which the actor should only go on stage.

The soulful play of the actress, as well as episodic exits of the old people of the Theater. Gogol, who perform their drunkards and worn-out old women with great enthusiasm, somehow smooth out the unpretentious and at times too banal direction of Sergei Yashin. Chief director of the Theater. Gogol thickly seasoned the production with piercing and one hundred percent stunning effects for the audience - snow falling from under the grate, the song "And it is snowing ..." and slow dance heroes in the foreground. But Sigarev's play could not be spoiled even with such directing.

By the end, the capital's theater-goer is convinced: not everything is so black in our unwashed Russia as it seems sometimes. And who, if not Vasily Sigarev, a native of a small Trans-Ural town and a student of Nikolai Kolyada, does not know this for sure.

Vremya Novostei, September 9, 2002

Pavel Rudnev

Frogs with wings

At the Theater. Gogol staged the play "Black Milk" by Vasily Sigarev

Moscow theaters continue to experience modern drama for strength. Vasily Sigarev, a student of Nikolai Kolyada from Nizhny Tagil, became famous for the play "Plasticine", which received the Anti-Bucker Prize in the manuscript, and later staged by Kirill Serebrennikov in the spirit of cool Sots Art. The collection of young authors, where Sigarev's play was published, was later called "Plasticine", indicating a whole direction modern literature trying to dazzle at least some image of the modern world on the ruins of the empire.

For another play by the fashionable Sigarev - "Black Milk" - two Moscow directors undertook at once: Sergei Yashin and Mark Rozovsky. The performance of the first has already been released, the second is promised to be shown at the beginning of next year. I must admit that Sigarev no longer has such plays as "Plasticine" - at least among those known to the theatrical public. And "Black Milk" is the most accessible, it is published in the anthology "Contemporary Drama". I would like to believe that "Milk" refers to student texts, in which the playwright is still mastering the methods of satirical "chernukha". The play was created according to a tried-and-true scheme: another everyday horror is demonstrated, accompanied by the cynical reactions of the heroes. But the finale is the most sentimental: it is proposed to believe that in the soul of any frog, birds rustle their wings.

Taking up "Black Milk", director Sergei Yashin decided the play in the old, still perestroika traditions: this is how problem plays about youth were staged, "Trap No. 26" and "Sports Games of 1981", just like "Little Faith" and " My name is Arlecchino. " Chinese toaster traders Levchik (Ivan Shibanov) and his pregnant friend named Melky (Anna Karavatskaya) arrive at a distant stop (on the stage - a disfigured and unheated cash register with broken seats). They try to shove fake toasters into beggars, then fight off the deceived customers. Petty gives birth to a girl and falls in love with the Russian wilderness, persuading Levchik to stay here forever. Then they beat her up, and the emotional impulse quickly fades away.

Sergei Yashin, following the play on track, fills the performance with such a number of parodic elements that the plot already ceases to be any plausible. On the stage - zombie shuttle traders with memorized advertising slogans, a boorish Soviet cashier, drunks not standing on their feet, a communist with the Zuganov inscription on her back, a truth-loving drunkard with a hunting rifle, a whining old woman in a quilted jacket and Aunt Pasha, a kind Russian woman. All this supposedly naturalistic entourage ten years ago was a common material for sketches from the life of the Russian provinces in the hands of "sold-out" satirists.

In "Plasticine" - a play about a teenager dying in a mossy, nightmarish world and having time to curse him in his own way, - Vasily Sigarev showed real life filled to nausea with violence, lies and stupidity. In "Black Milk" he swung at a plot from the life of the "children of the dungeon", but got scared and rushed back to the clichés of low literature, retaining the authenticity only in the language of the heroes.

The old woman begs to return her money for the toaster, and yesterday's scoundrel Levchik soon gives it back in a light rush of compassion. The drunk who just sang dastardly songs is already standing firmly on his feet and sobbing loudly, apparently over the fate of Russia. The girl, sucking now a menthol cigarette, now a sweet "lumpy", after a series of abortions gives birth to a child and claims that God came to her to ask "not to be a bitch." Sometimes it seems that this play was written not by a young man, but by a wicked old man-moralist, who got sick of this damned youth, and vile democrats, and American bastards. Small drops of cruel truth are drowned in abundant waves of sentimentality. Here they placate and console with tears of affection more often than shock.

Lost in time is not only the Mokhovoye station, but also the director Sergei Yashin. He seems to be trying to prove that since the creation of "Little Faith" life has not changed: young hucksters with the same zeal are singing both the old-fashioned hit "Earth in the window" and the ultra-modern song of Zemfira. At other moments, the theatrical loudspeakers hear retro music from the 70s, something about “white snow”.

For some reason, Sigarev settled his Chinese toaster traders in Moscow. Perhaps in order to support another common myth: about a respectable, but shitty capital and a drunken but blissful outback.

MK, September 10, 2002

Marina Raikina

At the Gogol Theater everyone got sick

Shopping tour to the province

The Gogol Theater began the season with the premiere of Vasily Sigarev's "Black Milk". The performance became a clear breakthrough for the theater - the same as the same author's “Plasticine” for the little-known Center for Dramatic Art and Directing Roshchin and Kazantsev a year ago. Directed by Sergei Yashin. Artist - Elena Kochelaeva.

Well, you fucking give it!

And you fucking got me. Up to the tonsils.

Shut up, horned deer!

Yes, you are a wet girl yourself ...

Modern vocabulary on the face. Just like its carriers - scumbags from small trading business ( Ivan Shibanov and Alla Karavatskaya). Sweet couple in puffy red jackets, making my shopping tour, I ended up at a godforsaken half-station where the TV does not work, where there is one cashier (Natalia Markina) sells train tickets to the nearest settlement and she also leads the genocide of the Russian people through the production of dubious quality vodka. The couple "mowed" a bunch of bucks for selling Chinese toasters to the uneducated population, and this very population does not know what to do with this miracle of household appliances - whether to bake buns in it, or hammer nails in.

The piquancy of the situation lies in the fact that the capital's thug female is in the eighth month of pregnancy. The beautiful blonde and her trained accomplice husband do not seem to speak, but vomit with words:

Well, you fucking got me!

You yourself got me, head with an anus!

Give me a bag! Why are you standing like a Kalmyk Jew in the Mongol steppe ?!

With their abomination, they get the hall from the very beginning - the young artists are technical, reliable, as if they themselves went through the marsupial school of the Luzhniki market. Against their background, the people from the provinces look unconvincing in their rustic grief and lose quality in quantity. young generation Of the Gogol Theater. However, due to the greater prescription of the images in the play, Natalya Markina plays well and Maya Ivashkevich(Petrovna), and also very convincingly a drunk man in a winter coat lies in the foreground (Vladislav Tsyganov), from time to time singing something from the Soviet stage.

Sigarev's "Black Milk", like his "Plasticine", causes shock, and some spectators can not stand it and leave. But it is Sigarev's dram production that makes it possible to feel the difference - what is the truth of life, and what is test-tube niello, produced in large quantities in the capital. His truth is enough for its simplicity of images and at the same time their depth. The second 50-minute act flies by unnoticed: the premature birth of the metropolitan huckster is clearly setting her brains. A frightening theomachist theme appears and is completely unexpectedly resolved. Instead of a slobbering and at the same time pretentious appeal to the image of Christ as the only value of a monstrous reality, a completely unexpected monologue arises: the heroine addresses him as “dear papa”, and ends with a hysterical despair: “I wanted to fuck you”. The scene is shocking, but not blasphemous.

In the finale, the cow's milk poured across the stage, as the hero says, turns black. The image gives the audience fantasy to choose different versions of blackness - from grief? from despair? hopelessness? But it reflects the stars and the sky. Which means ...

Kommersant, September 10, 2002

Fresh milk inflow

New play by Vasily Sigarev at the Gogol Theater

The Gogol Theater was one of the first to release the premiere at the beginning of the season. It was the staging of the play "Black Milk" by the young but already popular playwright Vasily Sigarev. The premiere was attended by MARINA SHIMADINA.

"What a mess ... Well, you are an unscrupulous young lady, my homeland is immense" - with these words the performance begins. And one immediately remembers the dirty and smelly passages in the Kurskaya metro area, along which spectators dressed up for the premiere have to make their way to the theater, and at the same time the Russian classic, whose name the theater bears, with his Where Are You Rushing, Bird Troika. Half an hour later, you are finally convinced that nothing has changed significantly since then. Only instead of the bird-three there are trains invisible to the viewer, which rumble along the windings of railway tracks, frozen on the stage in the form of roller coasters, which in America are called Russians. Nearby - the ragged wall of the station, two iron benches, on which you cannot sit without a covered newspaper, and the cash register window, over which the incomprehensibly related word "ended" is written in chalk. This is the Mokhovoye station, lost in Siberia, which, according to the playwright's calculations, is not so much the heart of our homeland, but an area somewhere below the sacrum.

It is into this hole that a couple of shuttle traders come from Moscow, under the guise of an advertising campaign selling cheap Chinese toasters to the trusting population. The inhabitants of Mokhovoy are almost Gogol characters: both "dead souls" and "pork snouts" at the same time. And a little more Shukshin's "freaks" who, with a Berdan in their hands, are looking for justice and with a bottle in their pocket cry for their souls. All this can be portrayed only with the help of a grotesque. Director Sergei Yashin settled on a caricature. The conflict begins in the second act, when the pregnant shuttlewoman Shura unexpectedly gives birth and the meaning of life is revealed to her: black suddenly turns white, "pig's snouts" suddenly turn out to be sincere people, and the old bastard life seems like a bad dream.

Alla Karavatskaya very convincingly played this transformation of a bitchy person, covered with kilograms of cosmetics and sprinkling with slang words through the word, the most abusive of which is "Hermitage", into a proper troublesome mother. But, to be honest, before the metamorphosis, she looked more interesting. Together with Ivan Shibanov (Levchik's husband), they played out a kind of ritual, with abuse and chanting of Zemfira, where the notorious "menthol", which the future mother drags on even between contractions, and "chupik", that is, "Chupa-chups", become fetishes of happiness. The transformed heroine, to whom the Lord God himself appeared during childbirth, rejects them as symbols old life, in which it is "fashionable to be bitches", and is going to spend "mowed doughs" on the restoration of an abandoned sawmill, which naturally provokes a protest from her companion who has not seen God. The good impulses of the transformed do not withstand the assertiveness of the insolent husband, and everything returns to its place. Fresh milk from a broken jar flows onto the floor and, mixing with dirt, quickly turns black. Such is the metaphor.

For the Gogol Theater, the appearance in the repertoire of a modern play of an up-to-date and even fashionable young playwright is, of course, an achievement. But the performance was unlucky in the sense that it will certainly be compared with "Plasticine" by Kirill Serebrennikov based on the play by the same author, who made the young playwright from Siberia instantly known throughout the theatrical Moscow. And the comparison will be clearly in favor of the latter. Moreover, "Plasticine" is a much stronger, downright bleeding play, next to which "Black Milk" is just cute sketches (although this year Sigarev received another "Eureka" for her). So the production of Serebrennikov was distinguished by its modern direction, and "Black Milk" was made soundly, but old-fashioned, "everyday descriptive", as if it were a performance based on besides Shukshin. But, apparently, the new drama promises to be an extremely fashionable phenomenon this season, since not only the Center for Drama and Directing, the Teatr.doc basement and the Moscow Art Theater, which is striving for progress with all its might, but even a theater designed to serve railway workers, cannot do without it now.

Izvestia, September 11, 2002

Alexey Filippov

Time Machine

New premiere of the Gogol Theater

"Black Milk" - a new performance of the Theater named after N.V. Gogol. Staged by the chief director and artistic director Sergei Yashin, the main stakes are placed on young artists - Alla Karavatskaya and Ivan Shibanov.

Gogol's Theater has never been one of the best Moscow stages, but despite a fairly large number of disruptions, the overall quality of its performances remains equal. Especially against the background of the current hack-work and aesthetic lawlessness.

"Black Milk" is a demonstrative performance, it reflects many features of the theater from Kazakov Street. Sergei Yashin took the play by Vasily Sigarev - it is about the Motherland. On the one hand, the scene (a small station where trains almost never stop) is located near the all-Russian anus, right in the middle of our great and vast country. On the other hand, its inhabitants have preserved living soul, and this distinguishes them favorably from residents of big cities.

On the one hand, the Mokhovoye station is inhabited by eternally drunken monsters. On the other hand, the sources of spiritual renewal are hidden here, to which Muscovites abandoned to the halt by commercial interest fall. In a word, we have before us variations on the theme of village literature, ornamented with modern youth motives and slang.

The result is a push-pull play: the author's heartfelt appeals to the audience peacefully coexist with a caricature of peripheral life and customs and sharp youth scenes. Judging by the money that young Muscovites wring up for their toasters ("in the city, the same are sold for fifty rubles"), this is happening right after the last democratic denomination of the ruble. The theater did not beat this in any way, and in relation to today the pricing policy of young heroes looks incongruous.

The performance is faithful to the spirit of the play: it is quite solid, a little archaic, in places entertaining, in places - boring. The latter is especially noticeable in the second act, when the author revives to a new life the Muscovite heroine who gave birth to a baby at the Mokhovoye station. Sergei Yashin is a solid director: he took this feature of the play seriously, and the excellent young actress Alla Karavatskaya in the second act plays the one who has converted to the true faith. It is difficult for her to do this quite convincingly - the text is too stilted. The acting work decorating "Black Milk" turned out to be blurry.

And this is very sad - the heroine of Karavatskaya, Shura (aka "Small"), stepped into the play from today's street: angular, impudent, relaxed, sophisticated in everything and, it seems, never tasted apples from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. .. Karavatskaya plays a modern Madonna, a girl without solid life rules and without a screw. The actress has no stamps, she is absolutely natural, her heroine is just as natural. In any case, until "Melky" begins to talk about the revival of the village and spirituality.

Apparently, Sergei Yashin sincerely believes the words of the heroine: this is not modern, but quite worthy. This is also his last performance - despite today's slang, he came in 2002 from a different time.

The times, when the stage action was full of music, were in honor of the scenery with blurred urban-rural-industrial motives, and the directors were not ashamed of open pathos and moralizing. Now such things are not in vogue, but this does not mean that they should not be. Moscow theater audience lives in different time: for someone in the courtyard in 2002, someone did not get out of the early 90s, but someone lives among the performances of the 80s and feels very comfortable in them.

Vedomosti, September 11, 2002

Oleg Zintsov

Moscow-Kurskaya

"Black milk" by Vasily Sigarev at the Theater. Gogol

The director Sergei Yashin staged at the Theater im. Gogol's play "Black Milk" by Vasily Sigarev. It's time to be touched - the theatrical rearguard has already taken up the new drama.

We should remember what the Theater is. Gogol. "The magnificent acting ensemble headed by the brilliant Svetlana Bragarnik, the inimitable Olga Naumenko, the talented Oleg Gushchin is the Gogol Theater today. A unique repertoire that you will not find on any Moscow stage ... It is difficult to imagine a modern theater talking about life, oh to the human soul ... "and so on - this is all from the program for the performance, and you really can hardly find such simple-minded self-praise anywhere.

Not to say that the theater in the vicinity of the Kursk railway station is a place completely forgotten by the public and critics, but if Sergei Yashin put Tennessee Williams here again, it wouldn’t be worth the conversation, as it shouldn’t be worth it, so as not to go far for examples, "Night iguanas ", recently perpetrated by Yashin at the Theater. Vakhtangov and fully characterized in one word: shame.

Black Milk, however, is an interesting premiere: not because the new drama can be played in exactly the same way as the old one (who would have doubted?), But because Sigarev and Yashin found a common pathos and a common language.

Vasily Sigarev, a 24-year-old resident of Nizhny Tagil and a student of Nikolai Kolyada, two years ago received the Anti-Booker prize for his play Plasticine, a depressing physiological essay about the horror and hopelessness of provincial life. Last spring, Kirill Serebrennikov successfully staged it at the Center for Drama and Directing. Plasticine was sticky, heavy text, scratching like an awkwardly opened tin can. "Black Milk" is written in almost the same language, organic, rough and at times scary, but in a different tone: a nightmare is a nightmare, and people are kind.

Plot: married couple Moscow peddlers, having landed in some Siberian hole and selling Chinese toasters to the local population, are waiting for the return train at the station. Stupid residents timidly demand money back, but get a turn from the gate. This is followed by drunken firing from a gun, from which the pregnant businesswoman begins to contract, and now the deceived Aunt Pasha, forgetting the offense, helps her as much as she can, takes delivery and calls her own, and the playwright starts a hurdy-gurdy about the cynical capital and unwashed, but sincerely generous Russia. In the second act, the heroine shouts that she will not go back to Moscow, that she has seen God, “tired of being a bitch,” etc. Then the hysteria ends, and the heroes leave for the soulless capital, leaving at the station a broken can of milk, which is mixed with dirt and turns black.

It would be strange to share Sigarev's pathos or not to notice the banality of situations and generalizations, but for all that "Black Milk" is an excellently and professionally made play, very solid, with a distinct intrigue, living language (Sigarev, in my opinion, has an absolutely phenomenal ear) , recognizable types and one honestly spelled out character, who happily turned into acting success in the play (Alla Karavatskaya in the title role).

The only trouble or irony is that this text seems to be specially designed for just such a premiere. In the Gogol Theater, capital by registration and provincial in essence, the plot instantly became caricature. It is rather boring to list Yashin's directorial stamps, since there is nothing in the play besides them, but for example - mixed choir old women and drunkards, in response to Moscow redneck, quietly singing "Hostile whirlwinds blowing over us", at once gives an idea of ​​the theater's staging techniques, and of the general marginality of what is happening. It's partly a shame for Sigarev, but the fact that Black Milk is staged this way and not otherwise has its own logic, of course: with this play, it seems, wherever you go, but everyone, like the hero of Moscow - Petushkov, will get you to the Kursk railway station.

Grigory Zaslavsky

No gloss

"Black milk" by Vasily Sigarev on the stage of the Gogol Theater

If "Black Milk" had turned out to be the debut on the stage of the playwright Vasily Sigarev, one can assume that his fate would not have been so happy. But we have already seen "Plasticine", staged at the Center for Drama and Directing by Kirill Serebrennikov. In "Plasticine" Serebrennikov managed to find what distinguishes Sigarev's plays from those that have long been dubbed "chernukha".

In the play "Black Milk", which was staged at the Gogol Theater by Sergei Yashin, there are almost no such differences, so that almost the main advantage is the author's ear for the street word, the very rumor that has always been credited to Sigarev's teacher Nikolai Kolyada. Modern slang the playwright "transplants" into the play so that this speech does not seem alien, it becomes his own in the mouth different heroes... Not successfully overheard words and expressions are heard, but the speech itself, in its everyday wretchedness.

Even if Black Milk was written after Plasticine, in this play the traces of apprenticeship are clearer. "Plasticine", in which the same rude speech sounds at every step, and the situations are harsher and more deadly, does not seem like a gloomy play, since its darkness, if you like, highlights the tradition of hagiographic drama, and the death of the young hero does not look like a point in his earthly life ...

In "Black Milk" talk about God, as if he appeared to the young heroine, does not inspire confidence. Yes, and it is banal - to break the consciousness of the heroine in such a manner. As they said in Russia, “God is God, but don’t be bad yourself, which can also be attributed to the art of drama, which requires much more serious justification.

So, young people, Levchik (Ivan Shibanov) and “Melkiy”, she is Shura (Alla Karavatskaya), land at the distant station "Mokhovoe" (by the way, actually existing), which the author himself defines as the backside of the vast Motherland and even its epicenter. They came here, not afraid of the weather, or the distance, or Shura's pregnancy, in order to sell Chinese toasters to the people, of course, superfluous in the local poor life. However, the business is going well and, probably, if the trains from the station ran with Soviet regularity, the play would not have worked, and there would have been no turning point in the heroine's mind. But trains almost do not run here, and therefore the young people will have to meet with the local people, who soon come to their senses and is in a hurry to give up expensive and unnecessary purchases. Then Shura gives birth, then - falls in love with this deaf and clean corner, the debunking of the dirty and soulless life of the capital follows. And the stamp floats on the stamp ...

In the streams of abuse, including swearing, it is still possible to make out that the young do not hate each other so much, as from time to time they try to prove to themselves. It's just that their love is today, it is rough, like life.

It is clear what could captivate the director in such a play. And what the director wanted to say is understandable. And the complex in front of the province is familiar to many who did not immediately move to Moscow or even lived in the capital all their lives. Another thing is that too straight lines and poorly adjusted “joints” provoke the same banal directorial constructions. Yashin's success, of course, was the choice of actors for the main roles: Sergei Shibanov and even to an even greater extent Alla Karavatskaya are so devoid of "familiar notions" that you take their acting at face value. Their cry evokes sympathy, and the experience - again sympathy and empathy. A recent student of Leonid Kheifets, Alla Karavatskaya in the role of Shura is a real discovery of the season that has begun. Vulgar and sincere, vulgar and simple-minded, cynical and in love, not losing hope for a different life, today, as if she just got off the train on the platform of the Kursk railway station ... And, not forgetting about all the shortcomings of the play and the performance, you note that Yashin is not for the first time opens a new name for Moscow.

He puts "Black Milk", perhaps, too straightforward, too trusting in the text and the author's word. The snow, which seems to be necessary for the plot, is too theatrical and as a technique - it is painfully beaten. But the decoration of Elena Kachelaeva this time was a success: just rails, just a wall, a lapidary structure, finally, without any rags.

It cannot be said that even in the proposed circumstances of the play, the stage director was able to understand everything. So far, the crowd looks like a mushy crowd, where it is difficult to isolate someone's voice, although it seems that it is from the crowd, from the "people with toasters" that Aunt Pasha (Anna Gulyarenko), the plenipotentiary representative of the Almighty in Mokhov, comes out ... But the sincerity that is at the theater refers to the values ​​of the past tense, it still captivates. To captivate with a story completely devoid of gloss is almost hopeless, but Yashin, now, succeeded.

Century, September 27, 2002

Vera Maksimova

Why is milk black?

Director Yashin believes that the crowd is not cattle, but suffering people

The same Vasily Sigarev, the author of the gloomy, highly appreciated in the capital, now famous "Plasticine", a young provincial playwright from Nizhny Tagil, who has now moved closer to his teacher and idol Nikolai Kolyada in Yekaterinburg, wrote a new play, gave it to the Theater named after N V. Gogol, and the dynamic and energetic Sergei Yashin, without wasting too much time, staged an "opus" with an intriguing and frightening title.

The premiere was one of the first in the new season, successful and very noticeable even against the backdrop of high-profile theater scandals in September. (As we assumed and wrote, the press collapsed like a thousand-ton glacier on the illiterate and shameless performance about Pushkin by Bezrukov the father for Bezrukov the son of the Yermolovites. noise and fury topical discussion about theaters - "courtyards", which are more and more in Moscow, among them there are not only weak, orphaned and small, but also very famous, almost "untouchable" for criticism groups, where for mysterious reasons can now stage performances by almost anyone who wishes.)

The work of Sergei Yashin, talented and significant, correlates with many of the problems of the contemporary scene.

There is no doubt that there is now an overabundance of new plays and that they are actively being played on the Russian stage. Two thick magazines barely have time to print "production". Two specially dedicated to the new drama and directing of the festival were born and, as soon as they emerged, they began to fight each other for a place in the sun. Aggressive, under the encrypted name "NO" (which means "New European Theater"), with a "base" in the semi-inactive Center. Meyerhold, using the pen of ideological critics, attacks. A calmer and more solid one, united around the Center for Drama and Directing of Alexei Kazantsev, he works, putting out performances one after another. (This year Kazantsev and Roshchin, the masters - the leaders of the center - were awarded the prestigious Stanislavsky Prize.)

New plays with their geography of "corners", the image of "asshole ... oh" Russia, which is "in darkness", with their language - banter, slang, and even obscenities - is clearer and closer to young directors. Peers of peers mainly and put. Sometimes the authors themselves are engaged in the incarnation, claiming the director's gift. It is not surprising that the performances turn out to be, as it were, "equal" to the plays, preserving and repeating their shortcomings, weaknesses, accumulated cliches, "commonplaces." There is also a type of performances where young directors seem to be touched by the work of young authors, stage performances "from their heels and knees."

Master directors rarely turn to new plays. Are not passionate about or do not know how to set them.

Sergey Yashin is a temperamental, furious, tireless, boyishly agile master, a shouter at rehearsals, oddly enough, already belongs to the older generation. His choice is rarity and risk. The attitude towards the obviously capable Sigarev is enthusiastic, respectful and sober. Yashin gave the author of "Plasticine" not a small, but big stage... The play was not only carried away, but also appreciated it correctly. (Of course, not bad if the process inner work The literary part also contributed its share of editing. The ear deafens, hearing the endless "pancake" and even worse! What a subtext there is! The text itself and the meaning elude understanding. And a lot of lengths, lethargy. And the story of the appearance of God to a woman in labor would not hurt to be removed. In which new play there is no such God! However, as you know, the time of great zavlits - invaluable internal editors, even co-authors of the playwright, remember Dina Schwartz at the BDT, Elizaveta Kotova at Sovremennik, Ella Levina at Taganka - has passed. Today - regardless of age and experience - “boy or girl for everything about everything.”) The new drama comes to life, bypassing the internal editorial work, traditional for our theater in Soviet and pre-Soviet times, artistic, not ideological editing. Is this not why, while increasing in quantity, it does not grow qualitatively and more and more reveals uniformity, cultivates and repeats itself?

Yashin-master acted as a kind of co-author of the playwright. Without touching the text with literary revisions (which, I repeat, it's a pity!), I rearranged the accents, mixed the depressing resemblance to Kolyada's letter, and singled out in Sigarev's play that which is her own, self-valuable, her own. Thinned the densely written everyday life to transparency (although not as terrible as in "Plasticine"); strengthened and thickened the fantasy of the play; conventionally decided a space with reared in black, twisted into a spiral by rail- artist Elena Kochelaeva; filled the action with cosmic hums (from trains rushing past); gave the performance the features of a modern parable. In the story of how two young and enterprising traders - he and she, whom chance brought to a distant Russian distance, fool the local aborigines by selling toasters they do not need, and when they find themselves in a critical situation (the girl gives birth prematurely), saved by one of the local residents , suddenly experiencing enlightenment, a return to goodness, - introduced notes of aching humanity and faint hope for our general revival... (Although, as it should be in a new drama, the ending is hopeless, the moment of kindness will pass, the heroes leave; unable to change anything in themselves or in the terrible life that has opened up to them, they leave broken bottle with milk for a newborn, which, mixed with dirt, turns black.)

In Yashin's play, the actors play wonderful - at the limit of dedication, furiously and selflessly spending themselves. The leading actors - Ivan Shibanov - Levchik, Natalya Markina - Cashier, Alexey Safonov - Mishan, but especially Alla Karavatskaya (the current Nina Zarechnaya at the Gogol Theater) is a wonderful opening of the last Moscow seasons, a tragic actress in full sense of the word, causing shock in the hall with a plea to stay, help people, start doing something in Russia. In the finale, she scares by returning to her usual life, but not of her own free will. It is clear that the heroine will not be the same, but worse, more dangerous and cruel.

However, you feel the core of the performance, its justification and meaning not only through the main characters, but in how Yashin decides the image of the crowd. Not everyday, not for individual figures, although they are visible, played, and remembered. Putting everyone together into a kind of desperate and not hardened, suffering, groaning and somehow touching multitude, Yashin makes us remember not Kolyada and others, whose crowd is always cattle, but a bright name Andrey Platonov who suffered for the people.

Yashin's performance has already attracted the most flattering assessments. In addition - one more. After it, I felt the prospect of a “new drama,” for the first time I believed that, perhaps, it would have a theatrical destiny, life in time, for people, and not a brief flash in the present confused and difficult moment for Russia.

Culture, October 3, 2002

Irina Alpatova

Rollercoaster

"Black milk" by Vasily Sigarev at the Gogol Theater

You have to start with yourself. Perhaps the only one of all the metropolitan critics I did not like the play "Plasticine" based on another play by Vasily Sigarev staged Kirill Serebrennikov lifted to heaven by these very critics. Which does not mean that the performance was so bad. It just didn't work out, it didn't get hit. It happens. The trouble is that the negative attitude has spread to Sigarev himself. Therefore, the premiere of the next play by the young Nizhny Tagil playwright had to go, as it were, on a professional duty, with a deliberate feeling of rejection. But it turned out differently: the thoroughly persecuted feeling of rejection of what was happening (well, you have to be objective in the end) by the end of the performance ran away by itself, dissolved without a trace. Even, I confess, with a single gesture with the entire audience I wanted to get a handkerchief. And this for a person who is not too sentimental in life, turned out to be a significant moment. After all, no matter how much praise the "modern play" is in itself, it cannot get away from the theatrical cloak. What is the cloak - such is the impression.

Such a personal preamble, perhaps, would not be important if the play itself, and the attitude of director Sergei Yashin towards it, and partly the actors themselves, were not imbued with the most serious confession. The intensity of Vasily Sigarev's desperate mental exposure seemed so enormous that somehow subconsciously hinted at a provocative feeling. Is he really so pure and naive at heart, this young author? And how did he manage it in our cynical times? What if this story is masterfully constructed by him? Detached and knowledgeably - that is, precisely those sensations and experiences, feelings and actions that many, carefully concealing, yearn for? The question is also very cynical, but the critic is not from another planet either. You have the right to be surprised and you have the right to hope for a negative answer.

Sigarev, by his own admission, fishes out his characters not from the fabulous "bottom", but from the epicenter of the place below the back. It is there, according to the playwright, that present-day Russia with all its inhabitants stays. And the dialogues were overheard there. But, fortunately, the playwright is not on a friendly footing with the notorious "verbatim". He not only mechanically fixes everything "fished out" on paper, but puts it into the form of a work of art. Let this artistry and with a wormhole. He conjectures something, generalizes something, fantasizes about something. In general, he creates. The way he knows how. That is why his couple of untied shuttle-traveling salesmen with goods - non-functioning toasters - are capable of not only swearing dashingly, spitting through their lips, but also "behold God." However, one should refuse it, having trampled the cross torn from the neck into the mud. That is why the real inhabitants of the same God-forsaken station Mokhovoe, where the symbolic word "ended" is displayed above the railway ticket office, sometimes seem to be almost fantastic creatures. In any case, from the point of view of civilized metropolitan residents.

So Sergei Yashin with set designer and costume designer Elena Kachelaeva, trusting the author unconditionally, create an almost cosmic environment from this "epicenter" (remember what?). But only this "cosmodrome" was abandoned a long time ago, and therefore turned into an almost mirage. The rails either abruptly break off into the void, or for some reason soar upward and, bending, are ready to collapse on the heads of the aborigines at any moment. It looks like a high-tech rollercoaster ride, but in Russian version, moreover, as usual, unfinished.

In the theater of Sergei Yashin (meaning not only the Gogol stage) we are in recent times we observe "another life". Sometimes exotic, sometimes chronologically and geographically distant, not ours. It takes, but more from an aesthetic point of view. Spicy music, dances, romances ... In "Black Milk" Yashin was not afraid to get into this "epicenter" himself. And he made the right decision. Perhaps, in some way he moved away from his own usual methods and did it with obvious pleasure. And we, the audience, became not only distantly curious, but hot. We didn't watch the characters, we believed them. Even their most ridiculous "twists". Walking in step with Sigarev, Yashin brought us down into a terrifying "life" (dirty benches, spattered floor, crumpled newspapers), but did not let us drown in it. And having put on the characters Chinese down jackets, dusty quilted jackets and shabby hats, did not turn them into cattle. He typed that "you can't live like that", but opened the window to "you can." He brought to the stage an absurd crowd, inappropriately singing "Hostile whirlwinds ...", and pulled out of it the faces of "human nationality." Such as Aunt Pasha Lavreneva (Anna Gulyarenko) - a mother of many children, almost the Mother of God in almost hell. Or an unnamed cashier (Natalya Markina) who sells burnt moonshine and is ready to hang herself because of an accidentally poisoned passer-by. And after all, mind you, all this without an obvious tune - simply, in a human way, like in a normal Russian theater.

About a couple of shuttles, Levchik (Ivan Shibanov) and Shura (Alla Karavatskaya), there is a special conversation. It is easier for Shibanov. His Levchik is equal to himself - moderately cynical, moderately decent, knows how to disguise sympathy for a pregnant wife under the mother tongue, but also to give a brutal rebuff to all her psychological metamorphoses against the background of new-found motherhood. But Alla Karavatskaya is a clear discovery not only in this performance, but also in the general, often faceless mass of young metropolitan acting. And only thanks to her absolutely organic naturalness, her not hysterical, but such nagging sincerity, all complex and, at first glance, ridiculous mental upheavals seemed justified and inevitable. But one could have laughed: is it a joke - to give up at least poorly established "business", move to this Tmutarakan, restore some abandoned sawmill and thus live.

By the way, life has nevertheless made its own adjustments to this naive-romantic plot, eliminating unnecessarily pink tones. Spreading out on the rails, Shura - Karavatskaya, who does not want to enter the carriage rushing towards civilization, will nevertheless reluctantly and heavily get up, pick up her bags and, as if on a leash, reach for her rational spouse. The roller coaster crashed down with screams and shrieks. Shura will return to where "you have to be a bitch." But for some reason it seems that she will no longer be a "bitch". Like her daughter ...

A play in two acts.

Characters

« Small", She Shura, 25 years

Levchik- 28 years

Cashier- 45 years

Mishan- 35 years

Aunt Pasha Lavreneva- 50 years

Petrovna- 70 years

Drunk man

People with toasters

Where to start something? I do not even know. From the name of the city, maybe? So this is not a city at all. And not even an urban-type settlement. And not a village. And not at all locality it's not any. The station is. Just a station. The station is somewhere in the middle of My Vast Motherland. Just in the middle does not mean in the heart. After all, My Immense Motherland is a strange creature and her heart, as you know, is in her head. Well, God bless her. With a head, in a sense. We would like to decide where we are. According to my calculations, this is the area of ​​the lumbar, sacrum, or even. ... No, not even or, but that's the way it is. This is where we are. Right in the middle of it. At the epicenter. It’s too painful here, everything is somehow different ... Even very different. This is not such that you want to scream, yell, yell, so that you only hear: “What a mess. ... Well, you are an unscrupulous young lady, My Immense Motherland! " Will he hear? Will he understand?

Thinking?

Do not know…

And this station is called "Mokhovoe". How correctly is not indicated on the plate. And why? And the trains don't even stop here. Passenger and cargo only. And "ambulances", "branded" and all sorts of others there sweep, without slowing down. Or even adding that he would not inadvertently see something like that. Not like that, in the sense. Trains here and even then not all stop. Only at 6.37 and 22.41 in eastward and 9.13 in the west. And that's all.

Action one

Station - wooden house with a slate roof near the railway track. November. Coldly. There is snow already on the platform. And in the snow there is a trail night right to the station doors. It's not so cold there. You could even say warmth.

Well let's go in? Let's get warm?

We go in. Nothing like that. It's not shameful. The walls are completely painted recently. Three years, maybe not more. Dark green paint, true, but, as they say, taste and color. ... Well, God bless them, with the walls. What do we have here? Is there where to sit? There is. Two sections of station seats right in the middle. A peasant sleeps in one of the chairs, which is closer to the iron stove resembling a column embedded in the wall. His head is thrown back, his mouth is wide open. Such a small peasant, frail, but well drunk on the other hand. Asleep. And let him sleep. Let's leave it for now. Let's look around for a start. So. There is a woodpile near the stove, a pile of rubbish, some papers. Further, the word is scrawled on the wall. Thank God it's decent. Then a plywood tablet with a prescription schedule. Arrival, departure, parking time. In the column where the parking time is, the numbers are the same everywhere. It is logical. Those who did not have time were late. Anyway. What's next? O! Automatic storage room. As many as six cells. They do not function and are creepyly filthy. It's a pity. Otherwise. ... Further, the door is made of iron. Fresh. Unpainted. A meter from the door is a barred window. This is the box office. A piece of paper is glued to the glass. And on the piece of paper the inscription: "ENDED." What ended, why, and when is not specified. However, this is not our business. A woman is sitting outside the window. Cashier. She is of the same age when the woman is a berry again. She has a lining from a Chinese leather coat and felt boots. The face is smeared with a French cosmetic face mask made in Poland. In the hands of knitting, in the eyes - boredom.

Only the peasant occasionally makes inarticulate sounds, and the knitting needles in the hands of the cashier click. And nothing else. As if all this is drawn, not alive.

Who else is this?

Let's see…

The door opens. A man and a woman appear. Both are young, well-dressed, well-dressed. In their hands are armfuls of checkered "shuttle" bags. Three pieces in each hand. With all this, the woman is also pregnant.

FEMALE ("A" - kayet, "g" - kayet, "and" - kayet) ... Well, the Hermitage in general. I almost gave birth all over. The fig in this hole in general just got out.

MAN ("A" - tosses, "g" - tosses, "and" - tosses) ... It's okay. The path was mowed down.

FEMALE (puts bags on the floor) ... How do they only live here at all? All fucked up. Ugh! Have you seen their nails?

MAN (puts bags on the floor) ... What?

FEMALE. They have nails in general. ... You will not see this in the Hermitage. Like those blacks have those nails. Have you seen your nails?

MAN. Well damn. Did not see…

FEMALE (looks at the seats) ... Do you think you can sit here?

MAN. What?

FEMALE. Contagion, maybe. Sticks. Gangrene. Tuberculosis. (Patted herself on the belly) ... I was told not recommended. Vaccinations and antibiotics are not allowed.

MAN. Lay the newspapers and sit as long as you like.

FEMALE. O! Exactly. In which?

MAN. In extreme.

The woman reached into her bag, took out a pile of newspapers, and covered the seat next to the man with them. She sat down. Sniffs.

FEMALE. It feels like it smells like armpits. Grandfather was there, remember, was one?

MAN (examines the schedule, doesn't care) ... Well. …Which?

FEMALE. With a beard, it seems. I don’t remember, in short.

MAN. Well. And what?

FEMALE. From him so perlo, you have no idea how.

MAN. How?

FEMALE. I was fucking sniffing. Breathing, damn it, every other time. Damn every other time. I’m going to die, I thought. Gas chamber. What kind of "x" did they get out of this hole in general, one wonders ... You're all ...

MAN. Well done, what are you doing.

FEMALE. How much, okay?

MAN. Fine.

FEMALE. What's the secret, or what, damn it?

MAN. Five bags, let's say, shake off, okay?

FEMALE. Not a fig! Powerful.

MAN. Well, duck ...

SILENCE

FEMALE. Fu, damn it! In fact, the armpits are pulling from somewhere. Hemorrhoids somehow. Fu, fig! (She took out a bottle of perfume, without looking, sprinkles it around herself. Her hand hits the man's open mouth. Looks. (Eyes go out of their way) ... Squeals. Jumps up. Runs out into the street.)

MAN. Small, what are you? (Looks at the guy) ... No fa. ... What are you doing here? (Fits.) Hey ... Grandfather ... Alive though? (He poked the man with his foot.) Why are you scaring people? Hey ... Do you need a toaster ?. Is free. Hey. ... Grunt, or what? Hey ... Will you take the toaster or not?

SMALL (opened the door, peeks in carefully) ... Levchik, who is there?

LEVCHIK. Uncle…

SMALL. Dead?

LEVCHIK. Bukhonkiy.

SMALL. Which?

LEVCHIK. Bukhoi.

SMALL (enters) ... Beast! Because of him, she didn't give birth a little, damn it. He sat down here.

LEVCHIK. Where were you looking?

SMALL. What did I see, or what! She sat down and that's it! Here I have no more problems, how to look at all "g". What does he want here?

LEVCHIK. What is sleeping.

SMALL. Let him go home to sleep.

LEVCHIK. Tell him.

SMALL. Speak yourself. I need it. Bit another bastard!

LEVCHIK. How?

SMALL. With your mouth!

LEVCHIK. He has no teeth. And it never happened.

SMALL. Like this?

LEVCHIK. So it is. Look yourself.

SMALL. Is it true or what? (Fits) .

LEVCHIK. Well, look, look.

SMALL (plugged her nose, looks into the man's mouth) ... Exactly after all. Where are they with him?

new first

What connects the heroes of the play "Black Milk or an Excursion to Auschwitz" - German teenager Thomas, Polish policeman Tomas and 16-year-old Isabella? Past. Namely Auschwitz (in Polish) or Auschwitz (in German).
And this past is so terribly terrible that arrogance and show off from a German teenager, who, having been there, does not want to be German anymore, does not want to speak his native language. German and burned my passport.

The Polish policeman hates the Germans, considers them all Nazis, and it was at his station that this guy turned out to be. The very same police grandson of the Pole Marika and the German soldier Peter, who beat and raped the girl, and she gave birth to a daughter could not survive this horror and committed suicide.
This misfortune is written in the diary, which is also the protagonist of the play, telling about the past in the words of Marika.
O family secret after reading the diary, although it is hidden in the attic, they still recognize first Tomas's mother (who considered her grandparents as parents), then Tomas himself was shocked by such a truth, and now the diary was found and reads by Isabella, the daughter of a police officer who wants to be a singer and dreams of singing in a huge hall like in Germany.
Time of action - today, or yesterday, or several years ago, in general, almost our days.

A very difficult story, which, with the help of a diary, intertwined the present with the past. And it is all the more surprising that it is so capaciously laid in just 45 minutes - just that much there is a performance.
Ascetic decorations - a dark room and three structures with doors - but nothing else is needed.

This performance was staged by the young director Tatiana Mikhailyuk at the Teatrium and, as Teresa Durova said, will soon be in the repertoire.
Recently, on the OSD forum, there was a discussion where to watch performances, on a native or non-native stage. So it seems to me that this performance will be appropriate for any small venue, the main thing here is the atmosphere.

The actors are all great! but I want to celebrate the youth
Such a gentle and dreamy Daria Lukyanchenko as Isabella and Marika.
And sharp, with anguish, Thomas, played by Yegor Dyatlov (the son of Yevgeny Dyatlov, they are not alike at all, it was interesting to watch).

After the performance, a discussion was supposed, but the topic was so heavy that the whole audience fell into thought. The only one important question sounded - why in the title "black milk ..." And it turns out the play ends with Paul Celan's poem "The Fugue of Death" - "The black milk of the dawn, we drink it at night ..."
But then maybe at the end of the performance the artists or the voice "off-screen" would have read at least a quatrain?
It was also interesting to read the play later, which Teresa Durova offered to send by mail to everyone.

The amazing performance Black Milk, or Excursion to Auschwitz becomes a real fascinating history textbook for the audience. The production was based on a play by the famous European playwright Holger Schober, which was translated into Russian by Alexander Filippov-Chekhov. The director of the project, Tatyana Mikhailyuk, noted that, first of all, her performance is aimed at a teenage audience, schoolchildren of the present time. All of them in history lessons get to know important dates, events, facts of bloody wars. But for adolescents, due to their inexperience, a completely different mindset, the speech about the terrible hostilities, the realities of the Second World War remains in the form of dry numbers, does not find an emotional response.

This is how the main character of the dramatic story, the schoolboy Thomas, is depicted at the beginning of the action. Just like his peers all over the world, he gets acquainted with the information about the war in the textbook, and it leaves him practically indifferent. But everything changes when a teenager gets on an excursion to Auschwitz, one of the most terrible death camps, a place that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims. The terrifying atmosphere of the place, the special energy make visible for the young hero all those stories that he met on the pages of the textbook.

Acquaintance with the Pole Tomasz, a security guard working in the current museum, created on the site of Auschwitz, reinforces his impressions. The teenager learns from the stories of the guard that the history of the Tomas family is directly related to the activities of the camp. So gradually the boy opens before him real story a country that is not expressed in numbers and dates, but scary stories people who survived the horrors of war. To appreciate the original work of the director and the creative team, you must definitely buy tickets for the Black Milk performance, or the Excursion to Auschwitz.

Vasily Sigarev

Black milk

A play in two acts.

Characters

« Small", She Shura, 25 years

Levchik- 28 years

Cashier- 45 years

Mishan- 35 years

Aunt Pasha Lavreneva- 50 years

Petrovna- 70 years

Drunk man

People with toasters

Where to start something? I do not even know. From the name of the city, maybe? So this is not a city at all. And not even an urban-type settlement. And not a village. And in general it is not a settlement. The station is. Just a station. The station is somewhere in the middle of My Vast Motherland. Just in the middle does not mean in the heart. After all, My Immense Motherland is a strange creature and her heart, as you know, is in her head. Well, God bless her. With a head, in a sense. We would like to decide where we are. According to my calculations, this is the area of ​​the lumbar, sacrum, or even. ... No, not even or, but that's the way it is. This is where we are. Right in the middle of it. At the epicenter. It’s too painful here, everything is somehow different ... Even very different. This is not such that you want to scream, yell, yell, so that you only hear: “What a mess. ... Well, you are an unscrupulous young lady, My Immense Motherland! " Will he hear? Will he understand?

Thinking?

Do not know…

And this station is called "Mokhovoe". How correctly is not indicated on the plate. And why? And the trains don't even stop here. Passenger and cargo only. And "ambulances", "branded" and all sorts of others there sweep, without slowing down. Or even adding that he would not inadvertently see something like that. Not like that, in the sense. Trains here and even then not all stop. Only at 6. 37 and 22. 41 in the east direction and 9. 13 in the west. And that's all.

And that's all ...

Action one

The station is a wooden house with a slate roof near the railway track. November. Coldly. There is snow already on the platform. And in the snow there is a trail night right to the station doors. It's not so cold there. You could even say warmth.

Well let's go in? Let's get warm?

We go in. Nothing like that. It's not shameful. The walls are completely painted recently. Three years, maybe not more. Dark green paint, true, but, as they say, taste and color. ... Well, God bless them, with the walls. What do we have here? Is there where to sit? There is. Two sections of station seats right in the middle. A peasant sleeps in one of the chairs, which is closer to the iron stove resembling a column embedded in the wall. His head is thrown back, his mouth is wide open. Such a small peasant, frail, but well drunk on the other hand. Asleep. And let him sleep. Let's leave it for now. Let's look around for a start. So. There is a woodpile near the stove, a pile of rubbish, some papers. Further, the word is scrawled on the wall. Thank God it's decent. Then a plywood tablet with a prescription schedule. Arrival, departure, parking time. In the column where the parking time is, the numbers are the same everywhere. It is logical. Those who did not have time were late. Anyway. What's next? O! Automatic storage room. As many as six cells. They do not function and are creepyly filthy. It's a pity. Otherwise. ... Further, the door is made of iron. Fresh. Unpainted. A meter from the door is a barred window. This is the box office. A piece of paper is glued to the glass. And on the piece of paper the inscription: "ENDED." What ended, why, and when is not specified. However, this is not our business. A woman is sitting outside the window. Cashier. She is of the same age when the woman is a berry again. She has a lining from a Chinese leather coat and felt boots. The face is smeared with a French cosmetic face mask made in Poland. In the hands of knitting, in the eyes - boredom.

Only the peasant occasionally makes inarticulate sounds, and the knitting needles in the hands of the cashier click. And nothing else. As if all this is drawn, not alive.

Who else is this?

Let's see…

The door opens. A man and a woman appear. Both are young, well-dressed, well-dressed. In their hands are armfuls of checkered "shuttle" bags. Three pieces in each hand. With all this, the woman is also pregnant.

FEMALE ("A" - kayet, "g" - kayet, "and" - kayet). Well, the Hermitage in general. I almost gave birth all over. The fig in this hole in general just got out.

MAN ("A" - tosses, "g" - tosses, "and" - tosses) ... It's okay. The path was mowed down.

FEMALE (puts bags on the floor) ... How do they only live here at all? All fucked up. Ugh! Have you seen their nails?

MAN (puts bags on the floor) ... What?

FEMALE. They have nails in general. ... You will not see this in the Hermitage. Like those blacks have those nails. Have you seen your nails?

MAN. Well damn. Did not see…

FEMALE (looks at the seats) ... Do you think you can sit here?

MAN. What?

FEMALE. Contagion, maybe. Sticks. Gangrene. Tuberculosis. (Patted herself on the belly) ... I was told not recommended. Vaccinations and antibiotics are not allowed.

MAN. Lay the newspapers and sit as long as you like.

FEMALE. O! Exactly. In which?

MAN. In extreme.

The woman reached into her bag, took out a pile of newspapers, and covered the seat next to the man with them. She sat down. Sniffs.

FEMALE. It feels like it smells like armpits. Grandfather was there, remember, was one?

MAN (examines the schedule, doesn't care) ... Well. …Which?

FEMALE. With a beard, it seems. I don’t remember, in short.

MAN. Well. And what?

FEMALE. From him so perlo, you have no idea how.

MAN. How?

FEMALE. I was fucking sniffing. Breathing, damn it, every other time. Damn every other time. I’m going to die, I thought. Gas chamber. What kind of "x" did they get out of this hole in general, one wonders ... You're all ...

MAN. Well done, what are you doing.

FEMALE. How much, okay?

MAN. Fine.

FEMALE. What's the secret, or what, damn it?

MAN. Five bags, let's say, shake off, okay?

FEMALE. Not a fig! Powerful.

MAN. Well, duck ...

SILENCE

FEMALE. Fu, damn it! In fact, the armpits are pulling from somewhere. Hemorrhoids somehow. Fu, fig! (She took out a bottle of perfume, without looking, sprinkles it around herself. Her hand hits the man's open mouth. Looks. (Eyes go out of their way) ... Squeals. Jumps up. Runs out into the street.)

MAN. Small, what are you? (Looks at the guy) ... No fa. ... What are you doing here? (Fits.) Hey ... Grandfather ... Alive though? (He poked the man with his foot.) Why are you scaring people? Hey ... Do you need a toaster ?. Is free. Hey. ... Grunt, or what? Hey ... Will you take the toaster or not?