So here we are, on
the train to St. Petersburg. I’m
thinking back on our time in Moscow, and the only thing I can say is WOW. This city blew my mind completely and
fully. The theatre we saw here was so inventive,
amazing, and powerful. We saw so many amazing
plays that completely changed the way I think about the art, as well as some
sub-par stuff, and I want to talk about it ALL.
Obviously, that post would take like a month to read. So here’s a middle ground: short reviews of two plays - one of my least favorite play
from Moscow, and one of my favorite.
Starting at the
bottom, my least favorite play was Hedda
Gabler. Grab your popcorn, because this is gonna be a ride.
First of all, Good
GOD, this play was boring, and in an environment rife with absurdism and experimentation,
that’s its biggest sin- Everything we’ve been seeing has been pushing the
boundaries of what theatre can be. Everything,
regardless of the quality of the show, has been trying something new. And walking into the theater, seeing the exaggerated
(though admittedly cheap-looking) set made of two very different-looking halves
of a room with a back wall made of suitcases, I think we all expected this one
to try something as well. But, no, they
had all this potential for interesting ideas and they chose to do nothing with
any of it.
Unlike anything
else we’ve seen, Hedda Gabler was
just a straightforward production of the script, and not even an especially
good one at that. The acting was mediocre
at best, with the exception of the woman playing Hedda, and from what Marc told
us, she’s capable of so much more and the director was really reigning her in,
and it showed- even her acting couldn’t save the weak, passive Hedda this show had
(which I assume was the director’s doing).
Everyone else was either bizarrely over-the-top, such as Tesman’s
strange screaming fits as he seemed to move in fast-motion across the set, or
wooden and boring to watch, i.e. Judge Brack’s incredibly monotone delivery of
every line which put me to sleep. I should
also note that Brack seemed incapable of keeping his feet grounded, which caused
the actor in me to scream internally.
Strangely, they
finally started to make some interesting choices in the last scene of the play-
ash began to rain from the sky, signifying the burning of Lovborg’s manuscript,
and they had everyone offstage sit in the back facing away from the audience,
bathed in blue light, with the now-dead Lovborg sitting on the sides watching. This could
have been cool, if this sort of style had been consistent throughout the
show. But just having it in the last
scene put it so out of place, not fitting with the rest of the play, and made it completely meaningless.
The icing on the
cake for all of this? Being 6-foot-5 and
having to watch it while smushed into a seat with absolutely zero legroom.
And now for a
lighter note- My favorite play we saw in Moscow, entitled Mitya’s Love.
To start, I just
want to say that the Gogol Center (the theater that staged this play) is now my Mecca; This amazing place is my biggest motivation for wanting to come back to Russia. They are doing some FANTASTIC work. We
saw three plays here, and all three of them made my Moscow top 5, and honestly
I expect at least 2 of them to be top 5 overall. They’re THAT good. And the best of the three, in my opinion (by
a very close margin, mind you), was Mitya’s
Love. This play is one of the most
inventive, interesting, entertaining, powerful pieces of theatre I have ever
seen in my life.
The play was set
entirely on a wall, with the actors standing on removable pegs and moving up
and down, playing with the vertical as well as the horizontal. Right off the bat, what an insanely creative
idea! What a way to visualize power
dynamics and thought processes, and play with the way you can restrict movement
by taking out pegs, removing its only means. I would love
to pick the brain of the design team and learn where this idea came from,
because it’s so out there but it works SO dang well!
The actors, as
well, were absolutely PHENOMENAL. The
play consisted of a two-person cast: the first actor, playing Mitya, was so timid,
and portrayed so much through his face and eyes- speaking, for the most part,
ended up being very secondary for him, making it very easy to follow along for
someone who didn’t speak the language. His stage partner played everyone else, and boy, if she didn’t give it
147%! The actress (whose name escapes
me) was such a dynamic shapeshifter; one minute she was Katya, the gentle but secretly
manipulative love interest, the next she was Mitya’s louder, brash, middle-aged
mother, the next she was a loud, bombastic, womanizing man (for whom she hilariously
tucked her skirt into her tights underneath to create a bulge). I did speech and debate in high school, and watching her
performance, jumping from character to character, really brought me back to my interp days. And all
of this amazing acting would have been completely impossible if the actors were not in the most peak shape they could
be in. the intricate movement up and
down on those pegs and the complex positions they had to hold must have been exhausting,
and most people would have given out after about 3 minutes. Performing a 90-minute play of this style is mind-blowing.
This play shattered
the limits of my knowledge of what can be done onstage. It was not only my favorite play in Moscow,
but one of my favorite plays ever. I can’t
wait to see what St. Petersburg has to offer.
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