... "Vassa Zheleznova - First Option" appeared on the stage of the Maly Theater ( Culture, 05/14/2016).

Natalia Vitvitskaya. ... The Maly Theater staged "Vassa Zheleznova" in the first edition ( Teatral, 04/28/2016).

Vassa Zheleznova - The first option. Small theater. Press about the performance

Culture, 14 May 2016

Elena Fedorenko

Strong woman crying by the window

"Vassa Zheleznova - First Option" appeared on the stage of the Maly Theater.

Maxim Gorky wrote two dramas under the same title. The first - in 1910, the second - a quarter of a century later. They differ significantly, the late version with the theme of class struggle is popular, the revolutionary Rachel, acting as the antagonist of the owner of the steamship company Vassa Petrovna Zheleznova. On the stage of the Maly Theater, Vera Pashennaya played the title role - the performance with her participation became legendary.

The first edition found its stage embodiment in the Korsch Theater even before the revolution. A new life was given to her by the director Anatoly Vasiliev, who created one of his best performances. Gorky himself called the early version "a play about a mother." Everything is there without social rhymes, political realities, public pathos. Degeneration story. The country is not on fire, but the family is on fire. Treason, murder, forgery, etc. The barricades are not in the streets, but in the souls.

Maria Osipovna Knebel loved to analyze Gorky's plays and did it to perfection. The initial event in "Vassa" she defined the terminal illness of Zheleznov, which fades away in the room behind the scenes, next to the stage. A cross-cutting action is the fight for the inheritance. This is the key to a family tragedy. The theme of inheritance (and, by and large, the power of money) in Russian literature is also heard by Gorky himself in The Last ones, by Saltykov-Shchedrin in The Death of Pazukhin and The Golovlevs Gentlemen, by Ostrovsky, but nowhere is it revealed so mercilessly, angrily and evil, as in Vassa Zheleznova. The degree of tension is off scale and makes all household members turn inside out. There are no goodies, all are sinners, each has his own "skeleton" hidden.

Experienced director Vladimir Beilis decided to ignore the author's caustic fervor. The play naively and unhurriedly draws the characters, the actors pronounce word by word, listening to each remark - this is how they usually read in Maly Ostrovsky, with whom the theater is in a special relationship. The result is not an explosion of foundations and the collapse of a dynasty, but family gatherings. True, in a house where there is no well-being and understanding.

In the center of the spacious room there is a dining table, one by one, collecting characters. There is no development in them, the initially set state is preserved throughout the entire stage time. Wonderful actress Lyudmila Titova plays Vassu strictly and monotonously, she is declared a sufferer and truly grieves until the last scene. Son Pavel (Stanislav Soshnikov) is a cripple from birth, glows with anger and is obsessed with revenge. There is a reason - his young beautiful wife Lyudmila (Olga Abramova) openly walks with his uncle Prokhor, brother of Vassa, and the merry libertine (Alexander Vershinin) has his own views and the right to part of the inheritance.

The insignificant and frivolous Semyon, the eldest offspring of Vassa, the textured Alexei Konovalov presents in a sweeping and wide manner. The role of his wife Natalya, played by Olga Zhevakina, comes out the most lively and changeable - humility and servility grow in her with an animal nature and aggressive exactingness. The arrival of Vassa's daughter Anna, who has long lived far from her native nest and has lost touch with it, is elegant and cold with Polina Dolinskaya. Vassa is right: none of them are able to keep the family business. Young people - from the breed of consumers and freeloaders - are not suitable for the desperate struggle that Gorky wrote about. Each of them dreams of money and of the time when, having received it, it will be possible, at last, to break free from the tenacious mother's embrace.

Of course, the director has the right to read the classic text bypassing violent ups and downs and confused catastrophes, highlighting the reception of everyday verisimilitude. But psychological storytelling becomes boring, meanings and accents are drowned in details. At the third premiere, empty chairs are gaping in the auditorium.

In the play, staged with an obvious reverence for detail, inaccuracies are unacceptable. The bright costume of the son at the funeral service for his father and the large home iconostasis, made the dominant of the design (artist Eduard Kochergin), are striking. The image of the prayer room, like church chants, on stage is of bad taste. Someone thinks differently and sees this as a special touching. In any case, mistakes here are offensive. According to the Orthodox canon, three icons are strictly required: the Savior is in the center, to the right of him is the Mother of God, to the left is John the Baptist. This three-figured deesis can be complemented by saints venerated in the house. The image of the Savior, surrounded by different versions of the Mother of God, turns the home iconostasis into an exhibition of paintings.

Nevertheless, the heavy and detailed story, which does not arouse sympathy for any of the heroes, in the finale makes you sincerely feel sorry for Vassa - a man of labor, a woman with a burnt soul. She won. The inheritance is in her hands and will not be squandered. But this victory is Pyrrhic: Vassa lost her family, for the sake of which she multiplied her well-being. Distant laughter and childish babble glimpse her - from those times when she was young and believed in the power of home and business.

Teatral, 28 April 2016

Natalia Vitvitskaya

Road to god

The Maly Theater staged "Vassa Zheleznova" in the first edition

The premiere "Vassa" at the Maly Theater is staged in the academic tradition; it is not the director's fantasy that is highlighted, but the acting work. Director Vladimir Beilis chose the first version of Gorky's play - the one in which there is not a word about class conflict and Vassa as a symbol of the collapse of Russian capitalism. Before the viewer, a heartbreaking family drama, in which there are no right or wrong.

The main advantage of the new "Vassa" is its artists. Theater-goers have not seen such a level of ensemble performance for a long time. All the characters on the stage are equal, and everyone is to blame for the tragic ending. Unbending Vassa is a conventional protagonist. Lyudmila Titova plays as her sufferer.

Despite the frightening, disfiguring seamy side of the family "business", she is, first of all, an unhappy woman. A beauty with a straight back (oh, this is the trademark of the Maly Theater actresses), with a high hairstyle, in a lavender-colored lace dress, with black shadows under her eyes. She is a mother, confident that all the worst sins in the name of her children will be forgiven: "The Mother of God will understand." One of the most striking scenes: Vassa looks at the family gathered at the table from the side (the reason is the arrival of the eldest daughter Anna), and instead of the words they utter, he hears children's chirping.

Both her sons - Pavel and Semyon, by her own admission, "failed." One is an embittered freak, the other is a cork-stupid voluptuous. Artists Stanislav Soshnikov and Alexei Konovalov play both characters flawlessly. How many emotional details, acting courage.

Olga Zhevakina is also fantastically good, playing Semyon's hypocritical wife Natasha. Each of her appearances on stage is a small benefit performance. Traditionally bright is Alexander Vershinin (daring Prokhor Zheleznov). Maly's artists managed to justify Gorky's characters, to make the viewer empathize with them. The Vassa family is a ball of snakes that bite themselves. They are eerily recognizable, as is the situation of the bloody division of inheritance. Ignorant, unloved, unable to love themselves, heroes and heroines are not at all the devil. Their tragedy is that they don't know how else to do it. It's not scary for them, it's a pity for them.

Scenography by Eduard Kochergin is a full-fledged participant in the action. A wooden house with a non-existent roof (there is a hole over the heads of a large and unhappy family). Several pigeons on the beams, a flooded fireplace, Vassa's study, a table with a samovar and a tablecloth. The walls are narrowing somewhere in the back of the stage, there is also a whole iconostasis, lighted candles. During the action, no one approaches him; in the finale, the heroine near him dies. Realizing that never and nowhere will she be justified by Vassa, throwing up her hands, she runs to the icons, stumbling, falls dead. Having decided the ending in a moralizing way, Baileys, nevertheless, happily avoided pathos. His performance is not about the punishment of evil. He is about how scary it is to live life without knowing about it.

The performance "Vassa" at the Mossovet Theater was timed to coincide with the anniversary of Maxim Gorky, the 150th anniversary of his birth. Gorky's works are amazingly scenic, the problems he writes about do not lose their significance, continue to excite, remain interesting. The language of Gorky's characters, their monologues, dialogues, and phrases represent a rich gift for an actor. The play exists in two versions, the one written in 1910 tells the story of the mother, the head of the Zheleznov family clan, the second version, revised in 1935, acquires the “revolutionary” color of the “class struggle” required by the time.

Director Sergei Vinogradov staged his own, the third in a row, version of this family tragedy, slightly changing the characters, or even completely removing some. Vinogradov brought lightness, diluting the performance with musical numbers that allow those for whom the plot seems difficult to perceive it more vaudeville. But for true lovers of the classics, song and musical inserts do not interfere.
The scenography is restrained and laconic. Dark decorations with faded patterns, as if on faded chintz. But, as you know, artists use the underpainting color so that it shines through the object applied to it. So black, dark, will be filled with the essence of all, without exception, the heroes of the play.
The performance is replete with expansive psychological scenes. The spectators sitting next to me applauded at the end of these scenes, which means that they are not watching it for the first time.

A drama unfolds in front of us in the family of the early 19th century, but in the places of the heroes, one can very easily imagine characters from the current realities.

Valentina Talyzina has a very special Vassa.
Valentina Talyzina's Vassa is the backbone of the family, she is also an aspen stake.
Her Vassa sees everyone through and through - they have not yet had time to think, do, say, as she already knows, is already aware, already foresees, is already taking steps and actions.
Her Vassa is scary in that she does not look scary at all.
In Vassa Talyzina there is nothing of the beast, the predator. And she gnaws at her throats somehow casually, tired, without much pleasure. Vassa acts like a machine programmed to eliminate obstacles in its path, a kind of terminator in a modern way. She can come to an agreement with both God and the devil, and if at the Last Judgment a document is required to justify her actions, it will look almost like a letter from the musketeers: "This giver did everything for the good of the family." And Vassa interprets this notorious "good" through his own perception of the laws of survival. It is difficult to say, looking at her, what exactly motivates her and whether she is not hiding behind “mother's love” as a comfortable screen. If we imagine that the existential concept of the soul looks like a certain mechanism consisting of different screws and gears, then here Vassa Zheleznova is clearly showing some kind of obvious breakdown, missing some extremely important detail. There is no sensor responsible for such intangible substances as the concepts of sin and conscience.
In this woman there is something from the many-sided dark goddess Hecate, who judged and handed out punishments. But the human "justice" of Zheleznova does not have a divine nature and is based on material and rational reasons. Vassa is a person who stepped into someone else's territory, it is not in her power to control the fate of people, this is the prerogative of the Higher Powers. Vassa so burdens her conscience with immoral actions, picks up such heavy stones in her "karmic backpack" that she "flies in" like a boomerang during her lifetime. All three of her sons (note * this is the version of the play by Sergei Vinogradov), as they say, failed, and three daughters-in-law have their skeletons in the closet.
Family members not only do not love each other and coexist side by side in a space filled with vacuum, not only have different understandings of what love is and determine for themselves the form and measure of its presence in their lives, but above all, they long for limitless and light material goods. In her house they live like in hard labor, everyone languishes in the shackles of obligations and exhausting, devastating expectations of the long-awaited money from the inheritance.

An interesting drawing of the role of Natasha (Lilia Volkova), the wife of Semyon's second son (Andrey Mezhulis). Her Natasha, an unsatisfied carrier of ugly fantasies, is caricatured and represents a faint shadow from her mother-in-law, whom she unsuccessfully tries to imitate. The actress conveys the heavy character of her heroine through strange chopped gestures and broken body movements.
It seemed that the image of the wife of the youngest son of the crippled Pavel (Yuri Cherkasov), the walking Lyudmila (Anastasia Kosareva), contradicts the organics of the actress and is not very convincing. The husband's brother Prokhor (Alexander Bobrovsky) deliberately grotesque figure with a disheveled beard, baggy trousers, perhaps not in bast shoes, also a little embarrassed by an implicit hit in the "hero-lover".

The second act is darker and more intense. If at first Vassa was quite vital, then, approaching the finale, she leaves her dynamism, noticeably slows down, “blows away” before our eyes, but at the same time the acting power of Valentina Talyzina's talent is increasing. The actress does not shout, does not raise her voice, does not sparkle with her eyes, depicting power and tyranny, she completely leaves the stereotyped image and shows us a tired, bruised, but stubborn woman whose heart “hurts”. So what does Vassa Zheleznova's heart ache about? About the money that will go to the scum children, about the grandson, from whom she, without hesitation, took away his mother, about the servant Lipochka, whose life she ruined?

The darkness consumes people in her house. The house is filled with shadows from the past, and people also turn into shadows. We already know that soon millions of Zheleznovs will go to dust, the children will perish in the revolutionary hard times, and all efforts to preserve the accumulated capital, to prevent the built-up from collapsing, are senseless.
This means that there will be no justification for her actions.

(c) https://pamsik.livejournal.com/230957.html

I admit right away that what is the phantasmagoria, I have not figured out for myself. Was it necessary to admit the presence of a host of demons in Vassa (after all, there was a powder) and their latent influence on the relatives around her, especially manifested in the dance? However, there are other interesting things in the play, and perhaps the implicit phantasmagoric nature of what is happening does not spoil it at all, and maybe even vice versa.

I would say that on the one hand, this is a basically "academic" performance, with neatly placed landmarks and clear landmarks.
The center of the performance, its starting point is Vassa. The woman is serious, intelligent, calculating. Though heartfelt at heart. He counts five moves ahead, but where to go, if, as it regularly happens in Russia, the peasants have turned up sharply. There was one fit - and that turned into a revolutionary. And then the question - he reached it himself or dragged his wife. For his wife is just Vassa No. 2 in essence, although her name is Rachel (it is not for nothing that Vassa says that she would like such a daughter). And this role of an inspired revolutionary is at the other extreme. Here, they say, is an example of a saint, almost a woman. Which is not all for the sake of self-interest, but for ideals. Dress to the floor, posture, speech. Almost a nun. Everyone loves her, or at least respects her. But with caution.

There are a couple of Vassa's daughters: Natalya, a young lady in the role of a vulgar lady, and Lyudmila, an almost charming child (and it seems that she is eternal). This is a soft version of the holy fool (where without her) with all the appropriate attributes of the genre. Those. a person who, at the right and unnecessary moment, will broadcast the truth. Naive, but still.
There are also the maids and Vassa's secretary - people who complement the scene with their characters and enhance certain emotions. When you need to add a subtle touch.

The rest of the space is filled with men who are real and remote, but approximately equally lethargic and meaningless against the background of energetic women. Perhaps a logical decision for the play with the title "Vassa Zheleznova". Feminist approach. So men, consider the crowd. Which is essentially silent, although, of course, everyone pronounces the words and sometimes even too loudly. The performance, by the way, is generally loud. Any dialogue is conducted in a raised voice, and each time you breathe a sigh of relief that you managed to avoid violence (if possible).

The main idea of ​​the play - which, apparently, was originally in the demonstration of the complete collapse of the old merchant system (and in the sense of characters - first of all) in favor of a new wonderful person and a potentially equally brave new world - now looks a little strange. We know that everything has returned to normal, and the old world has confidently risen, here it is, if you please enjoy its updated version. Therefore, there is no such accent in the play. It has rather a regret for the ever-repeating circle of being. As it seemed to me.

But that's all, if you look detached and try to look at the trees behind the forest.

Because I still have a different impression. Which is brighter, although harder to articulate. The play looks as if Gorky has thrown out all his childhood family fears in it. The eternal horror of the return of a drunken father, who is king and god, constant tension in the family, where there is a hair's breadth from a kind word to a crack, and you never know what to expect. You know, there are such families, where all this - and constantly. It is scary and creepy, and everyone is in some kind of drunken stupor, but no one leaves and they suffer so much for years. And no Rachel with a halo in the future (I had to come up with it), and it's good if Vassa is found with the powder (which is already reality, written off from reality), and even murder seems to be an acceptable alternative against a general background.

What else. The scenery is excellent as always. Up to the "tiled stove". The theater must carry an artist in his arms and pay a double premium, this is at least.

Zelenograd 24

At the end of April, the Vedogon-Theater hosted the premiere of the play Vassa, which is so unusual and unusual for the theater, based on the first version of the play Vassa Zheleznova by Maxim Gorky.
The director of the production, Anatoly Ledukhovsky, is known for his special outlook on things: in theatrical circles he is called “the most unusual 'star' of the theatrical horizon”. According to the director, he is engaged in conventional theater and loves to experiment, therefore, according to him, the production turned out to be sharp and unusual.
The play in three acts with two intermissions begins to amaze from the very beginning - without opening the curtain, a young girl in a kokoshnik (Dunechka) appears on the stage, performing a mournful song with the words “She sang with a bird in the green garden, the bird has a nest, she has children…". Next, the main character of the play Vassa Zheleznova, performed by Natalia Timonina, appears on the stage, which opens the curtain for the viewer.
The first version of the play, written by Gorky in 1910, is completely different from the second version of the work, only the names are repeated in it. The first version of the play is a family drama about Vassa's family, family relationships that revolve around money and business.
Vassa Zheleznova is domineering and tough, which Natalia Timonina very clearly conveyed. Over the course of two acts, the viewer is tense from the difficult situation of everything that happens in the Vassa family. Everything works for a dramatic setting - light, sound, scenery, as well as pauses with music that were appropriately inserted by the director. After the second intermission, in the third act, the scenery changes completely unexpectedly, and the appearance of the actors (strict dresses and suits, dark glasses) changes, which really causes surprise and at the same time the attitude of the viewer to what is happening. In addition, the play is as close as possible to the present, it is difficult to say at what time the action takes place.
As the director had promised, the production turned out to be simple and at the same time unexpected, especially for those who are already familiar with the play. The author's text is practically preserved, however, according to the director, Gorky offers many reading options “just pull the string” - and that's what happened, the denouement turned out to be original.
After the performance, the views of the audience were divided: someone argued that the actors' play was impeccable, and the director's idea was executed at the highest level, some of the classic version are closer and like it more, and someone left in complete delight, noticing that the play “Vassa” is absolutely is not typical for "Vedogon-theater", which says only one thing, the production really surprised and remained in the memory of Zelenograd residents.
The play "Vassa" involves actors - Natalia Timonina, Yulia Bogdanovich, Anton Vasiliev, Zoya Danilovskaya, Alexey Ermakov, Olga Lvova, Svetlana Lyzlova, Sergey Nikitin, Vyacheslav Semein, Natalia Tabachkova, Dmitry Lyamochkin, Ilya Rogovusinnut, Anastasia.

• Film noir, Margarita Lyalinskaya, Maskbook,

During Maxim Gorky's travels across America in 1906, he wrote the novel "Mother", which reflected the ideas of "god-building", literary evangelism. And in the fall of 1910 he finished work on the play, it was published as a separate book with the subtitles "Mother", "Scenes" in the publishing house of I.P. Ladyzhnikov, Berlin. Later the title "Vassa Zheleznova" appeared. In 1935, Gorky wrote its "second" version, where, under party pressure, he sharpened the theme of the class struggle. The first version of the play "Vassa Zheleznova" was included in all collected works of Maxim Gorky, but the first version was not known on the stages of the Soviet theater. And the second version has become a classic of the Soviet scene. But now other times have come. Today there is a rapid reassessment of values, and, admittedly, towards simplification. Self-interest is the goal, the meaning of existence, money determines the social status of a person. And Gorky wrote about this even then - a hundred years ago. Little has changed today. All the feelings, passions and experiences of the participants in the tragedy are clear to us. The plot is based on the contradictions within one family, the struggle for the inheritance. Vassa Zheleznova acts primarily as a mother and head of the family, who, with a sick husband, must take care of her children and the distribution of an extensive inheritance. “I am the blood of everything. Children are my hands, and grandchildren are my fingers. Remember this! " ... But the children have completely different plans. The son wants to take the money, the daughter wants to leave, another one wants to withdraw the capital. And no one wants to continue the work of their parents for many years in tough competition who raised and developed it. “My business is in my hands. And no one can stop me, and nothing can be intimidated by me ”. And everyone dreams only of money and when it will be possible, at last, to break free from the tenacious mother's embrace. “You love me ... a little. I am a man ... ”Everyone who surrounds Vassa can only destroy - she is trying to do something and is fighting with all her might to save the integrity of the house. And she does all this only for the sake of them: family, children. No wonder her surname ZHELEZNOVA is an iron lady ... Vassa is ready to overcome any obstacles of fate: to forge a will, to threaten, to decide to kill (albeit with the wrong hands), to commit illegal acts, realizing that there is no other way. "In the world repertoire, there is no more complex and contradictory female role that requires mature skill and flourishing of a professional form from an actress." The actors played their roles competently and professionally. And we all in the auditorium did not feel the difference between the main and secondary roles. As you know, "there are no small roles, there are small actors." All the actors fully demonstrated their talent on stage: not only Vassa herself, and with her Anna, Pavel, Semyon, Lyudmila, Natalya, but also Prokhor, Mikhailo Vasiliev, the servant Lipa and Dunechka. It should be noted that Marina Shilova is the true prima donna of the "At the Bridge" theater; hands acquired by millions. All this tempered her character. She is like a general in charge of all the destinies under her control. “With your son, you are ready to dig the earth like a shovel, just to get money ...” - the younger son Pavel throws an accusation in her face. And Vassa is sure: everything in the world has its price. And she is ready, without a twinge of conscience, to send the unsuccessful Paul to the monastery, leaving her daughter-in-law and daughter with her: “Sons failed - I will live as grandchildren ... The garden will not be lost. Your kids, affectionate animals, are running around in it. It so happens that the actor is good, but the role seems to be not his - age, appearance, voice resonate, and all these discrepancies distract, cause conflict in the viewer, distrust happens. But this is just not the case. Here, everyone is so organically blended that you are simply surprised. You look at Semyon - Yegor Drozdov and see - yes, this is the same Semyon, conceived by Gorky and embodied by Fedotov - everything in him is exactly what is necessary, and you believe his every movement. Anna - Anastasia Perova turned out to be worthy of her mother Vassa and actress Marina Shilova and played with her in tandem very subtly, fully revealing her image, not remaining in the shadow of a domineering mother. I would like to mention Natalia - Semyon's wife, played by Alevtina Borovskaya. Her remarks, external resemblance, facial expressions became the strongest release in this drama. And, despite the fact that her hero is not the main one in the play - you always expect her appearance, and whether you are constantly afraid or indignant again. This was the last premiere in 2017. The long-awaited classic, where the actors fully revealed themselves as they once fell in love with themselves in The Idiot, in The Marriage, in Zoyka's Apartment, and in many others. A very bright chord of the outgoing year, from which the strings are almost breaking. The strong point of this theater is realism, so that this is how it was once conceived by the author, so that there is truth in embodiment - and it is worth a lot. Alexander Stabrovsky, Vitaly Prizyuk