Why did Gorky call the play Children of the Sun? Children of the Sun

UDC 882.09

Yu.A. Kozlova*

MYTHOLOGEM “THE SUN” IN M. GORKY’S PLAY “CHILDREN OF THE SUN”

The article is based on an examination of the functioning of the mythologeme “Sun” in M. Gorky’s play “Children of the Sun”. It is established that the cultural and symbolic image of the sun plays a significant role in the dramaturgy of Maxim Gorky. The writer actively uses the “Sun” mythologeme, emphasizes it, and forces us to pay attention to it. The image of the sun organizes the chronotopic system, interacts with the animal motif, builds the vertical distribution of personalities, “draws” the system of images more clearly, and helps to understand and analyze Maxim Gorky’s play on a completely new level.

Key words: mythologem, symbol, cultural-symbolic image, archetype, solar symbolism.

Mythopoetic analysis helps to reveal complex ontological meanings that are not obvious with other methods of viewing a work of art. That is why it seemed important to us to discover some meaning-generating images in the dramaturgy of M. Gorky. One of the “favorite” archetypes of artistic consciousness at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. was the archetype of the sun. Many poets used solar symbolism in their works. Silver Age: for example, K. Balmont in his collection of poems “We will be like the Sun”, A. Bely in “The Sun”, “Bright Death”, “Ancient Contour of the Sun”, “Golden Fleece”, M.I. Tsvetaeva “The sun of the evening is kinder”, “In the sun, in the wind, in the free space”, “Both rays”, D.S. Merezhkovsky “The Sun, a Mexican Legend” and others. “Solar” imagery can also be found in the dramaturgy of the turn of the century: V. Bryusov “Earth”, G. Hauptmann “The Sunken Bell” and “Before Sunset”, G. Ibsen “The Builder Solnes”.

The mythologeme “sun” literally permeated the entire work of Maxim Gorky. Already in early romantic stories, such as “Old Woman Izergil”, “Makar Chudra”, etc., “sunny” heroes, motives and ideas appear. Already in Gorky’s prose, solar symbolism contributes to the creation of a vertical image of the world, the desire for cosmization, harmonization of the world, to realize oneself as “children of the sun”, creators of new life. These meanings emerge in the art of the early twentieth century, not without the influence of the book “Astronomical Evenings” by the German astronomer Hermann Klein, which was very popular in its time. In it, the astronomer almost deified the sun, and his pantheism turned out to be very close to both Gorky himself and other artists of the border era.

* © Kozlova Yu.A., 2017

Kozlova Yulia Anatolyevna ( [email protected]), Department of Journalism, Samara State Social and Pedagogical University, 443099, Russian Federation, Samara, st. M. Gorky, 65/67.

Beginning with the play “The Bourgeois” of 1901, the image of the sun in Gorky’s dramaturgy takes on a new sacred meaning, or, to put it another way, it is mythologized. In the fourth act, Teterev talks about himself as a tramp:

He went to seek the sun and happiness... Naked and barefoot, he returned back, And wore out his linen and hopes in his wanderings.

Here the sun acts as a landmark of path and movement. Walking towards the sun means paving the way to happiness.

In the play “At the Lower Depths,” before the meaningful climax of the 4th act, the sun is mentioned in the famous prison song: “Evening, the sun is setting...”. It is important that in the play “Summer Residents” there is a mention of solar symbolism - all four actions take place at sunset. In the 1910s play “Eccentrics,” the main character, the writer Mastakov, also to some extent states that he belongs to the “children of the sun,” in particular, he talks about sun worship as a way to overcome the fear of death: “Do you know that the sun new every day? Have you read anything about Khorsa, the sun god, and his daughters the Khorsalkas...”

Of course, this image finds its most complete embodiment in the play “Children of the Sun.” M. Gorky writes “Children of the Sun” in the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1905 during his arrest for participating in protests against the events of “Bloody Sunday”. Gorky paints a picture of the disunity of Russian society, its fragmentation into the world of culture and the world of savagery. Societies in which some strive for harmonization of the world, its cosmization, strive for the sun, others, the popular element, do not support this desire.

For further analysis, it is important to note the distribution of characters in the play according to the top/bottom system. Top, or actually “children of the sun” - Pavel Fedorovich Protasov - chemist scientist; Elena Nikolaevna - his wife; Dmitry Sergeevich Vagin is an individualist and artist. The bottom consists of people who are outside the Protasovs’ house: this is the reasonable skeptic and veterinarian Chepurnoy; his sister Melania; Nazar Avdeevich is the owner of the house in which the Protasovs live; son of Nazar Avdeevich, Egor - mechanic; Fima and Lusha are maids, etc. Protasov's sister Lisa occupies an intermediate position between top and bottom. Throughout the development of the plot, the feeling of tragedy, of the impending catastrophe, grows most acutely in her. Here are just a few of her statements:

Lisa (anxious, painful). You are all blind! Open your eyes; what you live by, your thoughts, your feelings, they are like flowers in a forest full of darkness and decay... full of horror... You are few, you are invisible on earth...

Lisa (jumping up). Pavel, this is good! Children of the sun... After all, so am I?.. After all, so am I? More like Pavel, right? And me too?

Protasov. Yes, yes! And you... all people! Yes of course!

Lisa. Yes? Oh, this is good... I can't say... how good this is! Children of the sun... right? But - my soul is split, my soul is torn... here, listen! (Reads, first with eyes closed.)

But - I know dark holes, Blind moles live in them; Beautiful thoughts are alien to them, And their souls are not happy with the sun, They are oppressed by dire needs,

They need love and attention!

They are between me and you

They stand like a silent wall...

Tell me - in what words

Can I get them to follow me?

Lisa’s intermediate position between “top” and “bottom” is indicated by her phrase: “They are between me and you.” She does not understand why some bathe in the light of their sun, but do not bring it to others. Her brother’s romantic calls no longer satisfy her, and the impending sense of fatality of the future and Chepurnov’s real suicide lead to the fact that final scene Lisa goes completely crazy.

Liza and Protasov form a pair of related and at the same time opposed to each other cultural heroes, Thus, we're talking about about the most archaic form of solar myths, represented by twin myths, i.e., the sun and the moon. It is important that Protasov often utters the phrase: “We are the children of the sun.”

Protasov. We are children of the sun! It is it that burns in our blood, it is it that gives birth to proud, fiery thoughts, illuminating the darkness of our bewilderment, it is the ocean of energy, beauty and soul-intoxicating joy!

In solar symbolism, the sun - the master of light and shadow - usually has assistants, most often children, who turn on the light. Such children of the sun, as we said above, are Elena, Vagin and Protasov. Melania also points to Protasov’s lordship and sublimity.

Melania. My joy, how bright he is... how wonderful!

Melania (sincerely). How I would like to do something for you if you knew! I admire you so much... you are so unearthly, so sublime...

Conversations about “bright”, “sunny” principles reach their climax in the second act, in dialogues between the “children of the sun”.

Elena. Beautiful is rare, but when it is truly beautiful, it warms my soul, like the sun suddenly shining on a cloudy day...

Elena. It is necessary that art should reflect man’s eternal desire for distance, for heights... When this desire is in the artist and when he believes in the solar power of beauty, his painting, book, his sonata will be understandable to me...

Vagin. Yes, to the source of life!.. There, in the distance, among the clouds, a woman’s face, bright as the sun...

Protasov. No need for a storm, gentlemen! Or - no! - let there be a storm, but ahead, on the ship’s path, the sun is burning! Name your painting “To the Sun!”, the source of life!

Protasov, Elena and Vagin strive for harmony both within themselves and externally, hence the desire for height, distance, the sun, because in pantheistic ideas about the sun it organizes a certain universe, harmony around itself. The concept of the sun has many meanings, but we are interested in the mythosymbolic logos. Speaking about the mythologem “sun”, it is important to note that different peoples have their own solar myths and their own idea of ​​the sun, but one thing remains almost unchanged, that people have always felt their dependence and connection with the sun, they guessed that the fate of the earth is closely connected with the fate of the sun. Therefore, it is not surprising that from ancient times man recognized the source of light, heat and life as his main god and represented him in anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images.

The image of the sun in the play is opposed to the image of atrocity; both images are in full interaction and complementarity, helping to reveal the existing system of characters. Atrocity is mainly realized in the remarks of the inhabitants of the “bottom,” that is, those who are outside the manor’s house. In the verbal plot of the play, a special place is occupied by conversations about man and beast, or more precisely, about the opposition of man to beast. Such animal people are incomprehensible to the “children of the sun”; they make movement difficult. Indicative in this regard is the monologue between Protasov, an inhabitant of the “top,” and Yegor, an inhabitant of the “bottom.”

Protasov. You understand? So why are you fighting? This is an atrocity, Yegor... this should be left to you... You are a human being, you are a rational being, you are the brightest, most beautiful phenomenon on earth...

Egor (grinning). I?

Protasov. Well, yes!

Egor. Master! Would you first ask why I beat her?

Protasov. But understand: you can’t hit! A man should not, cannot, beat a man... it’s so clear, Yegor!

Egor (with a grin). And they beat me... and a lot... If we talk about my wife... maybe she’s not a person, but a devil...

Protasov hints at the great purpose of man in this world, speaks of his uniqueness and brightness. Egor, “being on earth,” doubts whether he is a man and whether his wife is a man.

Chepurnoy himself, being an inhabitant of the lower classes and, importantly, a veterinarian by profession, speaks of a person as an unnecessary, unpleasant and useless thing.

Chepurnaya. Don't you say that people are beasts, that they are rude, dirty and that you are afraid of them? I also know this and believe you... But when you say you have to love people, I don’t believe it.

Chepurnaya. Maybe... But I understand that you can love something useful or pleasant: a pig, because it gives you ham and lard, music, crayfish, a picture... But a person is useless and unpleasant...

It is also important to note how Helen, as one of the “children of the sun,” functions between these worlds: the world of humans, the “children of the sun,” and the world of brutality, the “children of the earth.”

Despite the fact that Elena is an inhabitant of the top, she can also be considered a kind of mediator who easily moves from “top” to “bottom”. Let us remember the moment when she goes to help Yegor’s wife; her objections to Vagin about the purpose of art for people are also indicative. Another interesting fact is that the name Elena itself correlates with the concepts of “sunbeam” and “ sunlight" Elena, descending to the “below,” brings with her sunlight, and the use of light / fire in life is the most obvious and universal sign of man’s removal from the animal kingdom.

The image of the “sun” can rightfully be called the most common symbol in the entire world culture of mankind, be it literature, art, arts and crafts, music, theater, it can even be found in architecture. IN ancient mythology The “sun” archetype is associated primarily with the hearth, comfort, and is a symbol of life and warmth. Various religions and philosophical schools gave a different interpretation to this symbol - as an ability for both purification and rebirth. This mythology was perceived differently by the Symbolists, for whom the “frontier” mood, the feeling of accomplishing something new, was associated with cosmism, the desire for universality and harmonization of the world.

The cultural and symbolic meaning of the image of the sun plays a significant role in the dramaturgy of Maxim Gorky. This image organizes the chronotopic system of the play in such a way as to enable the characters to overcome the existential conflict and strive for the ideal, for a spiritual breakthrough. Interacting with the image of atrocity, the image of the sun ultimately reveals the destruction of the romantic illusions of early Gorky.

Bibliography

1. Gorky M. Plays “Bourgeois”, “At the Demise”, “Children of the Sun” // Gorky M. Collection. cit.: 30 volumes. T. 6. M., 1950.

1. Gorky M. P "esy “Meshchane”, “Na dne”, “Deti solntsa”. In: Gorky M. . M., 1950.

2. Zhurcheva O.V. Avtor v drame: formy vyrazheniia avtorskogo soznaniia v russkoi drame XX century. Samara: Izd-vo SPGU, 2007.

MYTHOLOGEME "SUN" IN M. GORKY"S PLAY "CHILDREN OF THE SUN"

At the core of the article is the review of the functioning of mytho-logeme “the Sun” in the play by M. Gorky “Children of the Sun”. It is established that cultural and symbolic image of the sun plays a significant role in the drama of Maxim Gorky. Writer actively uses the mythologeme of the “sun”, stresses, forces us to pay attention to it. The image of the sun organizes chronotopic system, interacts with the animal motive, organizes vertical distribution of personalities, brighter “draws” the system of images, helps us to understand and analyze a play by Maxim Gorky on a completely new level.

Key words: mythologeme, symbol, cultural and symbolic image, archetype, solar symbolism.

The article was received by the editor on December 14, 2016. The article received 14/XII/2016.

* Kozlova Juliya Anatolievna ( [email protected]), Department of Journalism, Samara University of Social Sciences and Education, 65/67, Maxim Gorky St., Samara, 443099, Russian Federation.

Pavel Fedorovich Protasov.

Lisa, his sister.

Elena Nikolaevna, his wife.

Dmitry Sergeevich Vagin.

Boris Nikolaevich Chepurnoy.

Melania, his sister.

Nazar Avdeevich.

Misha, his son.

Egor, locksmith.

Avdotya, his wife.

Yakov Troshin.

Antonovna, nanny.

Fima, housemaid.

Lusha, housemaid.

Novel.

Doctor.

Old manor house. Large, dimly lit room; in its left wall there is a window and a door opening onto the terrace; in the corner there is a staircase to the top, where Lisa lives; in the back of the room there is an arch, behind it there is a dining room; in the right corner there are doors to Elena. Bookcases, heavy, antique furniture, expensive publications on the tables, portraits of learned naturalists on the walls. Someone's bust is white on the closet. By the window to the left there is a large round table; sitting in front of him Protasov, he leafs through some brochure and watches how the sausage is heated with some liquid on an alcohol lamp. He's fiddling around on the terrace under the window Roman and dully, sadly sings a song. This singing worries Protasov.

Protasov. Listen, janitor!

Novel (in the window.) What?

Protasov. You would leave... huh?

Novel. Where?

Protasov. Actually... you're bothering me a little...

Novel. And the owner ordered... fix it, he says...

Antonovna (enters from the dining room.) Look, the dirty guy... he came here...

Protasov. Shut up, old woman...

Antonovna. There is not enough space for you in your rooms...

Protasov. You, please don't go there... I smoked there...

Antonovna. And now you’re going to start a frenzy here... Let me at least open the door...

Protasov (hurriedly.) No, no, no! Oh, you... old woman!.. After all, I’m not asking you... Just persuade the janitor to leave... otherwise he’ll bellow...

Antonovna (out the window.) Well, why are you bothering here? Leave!

Novel. But what... the owner ordered...

Antonovna. Go, go! Afterwards you will do...

Novel. OK… (He leaves with a roar.)

Antonovna (grumpily.) Someday you will suffocate... Look, they say cholera is coming. The general’s son too... but he’s doing who knows what, he’s just releasing unpleasant odors...

Protasov. Wait, old woman... I will also be a general...

Antonovna. You will walk around the world. I burned down the house because of my chemistry with physics.

Protasov. Physics, old woman, not physics... And please leave me alone...

Antonovna. There this one came... Egorka...

Protasov. Call him here...

Antonovna. Pashenka! Tell him, the villain, what is he doing? Well, yesterday I beat my wife to death again.

Protasov. Alright I will say…

(Lisa silently descends the stairs, – stops in front of the closet and quietly opens it.)

Antonovna. Yes, you threaten... I, they say, will give it to you!

Protasov. I'll scare him! Don't worry, old woman, go...

Antonovna. It must be strictly. Otherwise, you’re talking to all the people as if you’re talking to gentlemen...

Protasov. Well, it will be, old woman! Elena - at home?

Antonovna. Not yet. Just as she left after breakfast for Vagin’s, she hasn’t been there since then... Look, you’re missing your wife...

Protasov. Old woman, don't be stupid! I'll be angry.

Lisa. Nanny! You're stopping Pavel from studying...

Protasov. Yeah... are you here? Well?

Lisa. Nothing…

Antonovna. It’s time for you, Lizonka, to drink milk.

Lisa. I know…

Antonovna. But I will still say about Elena Nikolaevna: if I were her, I would deliberately have an affair with someone... There is no attention to the woman... Apparently, he ate the porridge, the cup hit the floor... And there are no children... what pleasure is there for a woman? Well, she and...

Protasov. Old woman! I'm starting to get angry... go away! What... resin!

Antonovna. Well, well... fierce! Don't forget about Yegorka... (Goes.) There’s milk in the dining room, Lizonka... Did you drink the drops?

Lisa. Yes Yes!

Antonovna. That's it... (He goes into the dining room.)

Protasov (looking around.) Amazing old woman! Immortal as stupidity... and just as annoying... How are you, Lisa?

Lisa. Fine.

Protasov. It is wonderful! (Humming.) This is wonderful... this is wonderful...

Lisa. And the nanny is right, you know?

Protasov. I doubt. Old people are rarely right... The truth is always with a newborn. Lisa, look, I have simple yeast here.

Lisa. The nanny is right when she says that you pay little attention to Elena...

Protasov (with sadness, but gently.) How you bother me, you and the nanny! Is Lena dumb? After all, she herself could have told me... if I did something... somehow not as it should be, and... in general... But she is silent! What's the matter? (Egor comes out of the dining room, a little drunk.) Aha - here is Egor! Hello, Egor!

Egor. Good health.

Protasov. You see, what’s the matter, Egor: you need to make a small brazier... with a lid... such a cone-shaped lid, and at the top there is a round hole coming out with a pipe... do you understand?

Egor. Understand. Can.

Protasov. I have a drawing... where is it? Come here…

(He leads Yegor into the dining room. Chepurnoy knocks on the door from the terrace, Liza opens it for him.)

Chepurnaya. Hey, at home? Good afternoon

Lisa. Hello…

Chepurnaya (tugs his nose.) And a colleague is at home, as you can hear from the smell...

Lisa. Where are you from?

Chepurnaya. And from practice. The maid crushed the dog’s tail with the door of the wife of the manager of the state house, so I treated that dog’s tail, and they gave me three karbovanets for this, here they are! I wanted to buy you candy, but I thought: it might be awkward to treat you with a lot of money, and I didn’t buy it.

Lisa. And they did well... sit down...

Chepurnaya. However, the smell from this brew is of dubious pleasantness. Colleague, it’s already boiling!

Protasov (running out.) No need for it to boil! Well, what is this?! What didn't you say, gentlemen?

Chepurnaya. Yes, I said that it’s boiling...

Protasov (upset.) But - understand: I don’t need it to boil at all!

(Egor leaves.)

Lisa. Who knew this, Pavel?..

Protasov (grumbles.) Mm... damn!.. Now I have to do it again...

Egor. Pavel Fedorovich, give me a ruble...

Protasov. Rublevka? Yeah... now! (Looks in all pockets.) Lisa, don't you have one?

Lisa. No. The nanny has...

Chepurnaya. And I have too... here are three!

Protasov. Three? Give me, please... Here, Egor, three, is it all the same?

Egor. Okay... let's count... Thank you! Farewell…

Lisa. Pavel, the nanny asked you to tell him... have you forgotten?

Protasov. What to say? Oh yes! Um... yes! Egor, you... please sit down! Here... Maybe you can tell me yourself, Lisa?.. (Lisa shakes her head negatively.) You see, Egor... I need to tell you... that is, it was the nanny who asked... the thing is that you... seem to be beating your wife? Sorry, Egor...

Egor (gets up from the chair.) I beat...

Protasov. Yes? But, you know, this is not good... I assure you!

Egor (sullenly.) What good…

Protasov. You understand? So why are you fighting? This is an atrocity, Yegor... this should be left to you... You are a human being, you are a rational being, you are the brightest, most beautiful phenomenon on earth...

Egor (grinning.) I?

Protasov. Well, yes!

Egor. Master! Would you first ask why I beat her?

Protasov. But, understand, you can’t beat a man. A man shouldn’t, can’t beat a man... it’s so clear, Yegor!

Children of the Sun. Maly Theater. Press about the performance

Kommersant, October 18, 2008

Gorky's dots were staged at the Maly Theater

"Children of the Sun" by Adolf Shapiro

The Maly Theater showed its first premiere of the new season - "Children of the Sun" by Maxim Gorky, staged by the artist who debuted on the stage of the main Moscow Theater Academy famous director Adolf Shapiro. Narrated by ROMAN DOLZHANSKY.

The Maly Theater is always on its own; it doesn’t hurt to look back at other theatres, at the calendar and at related arts. Some people revere it for this very reason, while others never visit it for this very reason. If they invite an outside director to the ancient academic stage, they place him in a specific coordinate system: the past works of this director do not seem to matter, and probably no one at Maly will be interested in what he will do next. But in the case of Adolf Shapiro, it is impossible to consider the performance separately - firstly, the director is too serious and respected, and secondly, the choice of the play is too interesting and unusual.

It is curious that Mr. Shapiro’s previous work was Ray Bradbury’s dystopia “Fahrenheit 451” at the Et cetera theater. Gorky's "Children of the Sun" was written, of course, differently and in a different era, but by and large it is about the same thing: about the loneliness of the intelligentsia and its conflict with the people. If Adolph Shapiro found it possible to extend a single theme from an unprincipled bourgeois theater to a buttoned-up theater, then he is sure: the theme is vital.

No less interesting is the fact that several years ago he staged “The Cherry Orchard” at the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater. And in “Children of the Sun” it is easy to read the internal polemic (but, by the way, also continuity) with Chekhov’s last play - Gorky wrote “Children of the Sun” literally six months after Chekhov’s death. The circumstances of the work, as they say, explain a lot in Gorky’s work - and excuse it: Gorky wrote “Children” in the Trubetskoy cell of the Peter and Paul Fortress bastion, where he was imprisoned after his arrest in the Bloody Sunday case. It was behind bars that the writer came up with a story about the chemist Pavel Protasov, who lives in the world of science and is captivated by lofty ideas about the purpose of the intelligentsia. The wife, whom the hero does not pay attention to, is infatuated with his artist friend. Protasov himself is loved by a wealthy merchant widow, and her brother, a veterinarian, is in love with Pavel’s mentally ill sister. Around these people live the plebs - a mechanic who beats his wife, maids and enterprising nouveau riche who are gradually taking over the Protasovs’ property. Moreover, a cholera epidemic begins - you can consider it as an everyday circumstance, or as a symbolic one.

The metal bars on the sides of the Maly Theater’s new production are reminiscent of a prison. playground. The only thing that can remind you of the sun, the source of life, is the light of a theater spotlight shining through the glass of the distant doors and the blinding light of a theater spotlight when they are opened. The stage of the Maly Theater is stripped down to the brick negligee of the back wall, onto which the names of individual scenes taken by the director from the play's replicas are projected. The space of the performance seems to be discharged, there is a lot of air in it, little tension - the action develops consistently and slowly. And Gorky’s main characters give the impression of people being fed up with life rather than striving to understand and find its meaning. So the men - the artist Vagin (Gleb Podgorodinsky) and the veterinarian Chepurnoy (Viktor Nizovoy) - turn out to be noticeably younger than the women to whom they are drawn, Elena (Svetlana Amanova) and Liza (Lyudmila Titova). The first of the young people turns out to be completely insignificant, and the second commits suicide - two characters in different ways, but still gain completeness. Both heroines, alas, remain rather vague. In contrast to the merchant Melania: Evgenia Glushenko “presents” her to the viewer in a rich, assertive, albeit somewhat monotonous way.

The most interesting of all, of course, is Vasily Bochkarev - one of today's best actors of his generation - in the role of Protasov. First of all, because the role of an intellectual, divorced from reality, poorly adapted to society (in the last significant version of “Children of the Sun”, on Soviet television, the scientist was played by Innokenty Smoktunovsky) does not seem like Bochkarev’s. Although Mr. Bochkarev allows the viewer to openly laugh at his hero several times, he avoids satirical colors - they are not in his palette. Vasily Bochkarev does not judge Protasov’s worthlessness, and it is most interesting to look at him in those moments when Gorky puts ellipses in the hero’s remarks - the absence of words entails a momentary confusion of emotions and gestures.

Today one can find more meaning and depth in these acting seconds than in the entire vague philosophy of the play. The play "Children of the Sun" says nothing about today's intelligentsia. The fact is that today the intelligentsia (no matter what this word means) is not calling anywhere, it is not inspired by any ideas about its special purpose. This does not mean that Gorky’s gloomy “prophecies” - that if anything happens, the educated will be beaten - have lost their relevance in Russia. But the balance of power is completely different. One of the most teachable moments Russian theatrical history: at the end of the first performance, intelligent spectators rushed onto the stage to save the actors: they mistook the cholera riot written by Gorky in the fourth act for a real invasion of the Black Hundred pogromists into the theater. Today they won’t rush, there’s no doubt about it.

Izvestia, October 16, 2008

Marina Davydova

Tired of Gorky

The famous director Adolf Shapiro staged "Children of the Sun" at the Maly Theater. The once relevant play, even on the oldest stage of Moscow, which is prone to archaism, now seems like a dense anachronism.

You always come to the Maly Theater with a calm soul. And you also leave calm. It is in other places that you may encounter stage rudeness, acting antics, outright obscenity and all sorts of bad excesses. With a home-grown avant-garde. With painted prima donnas. With a classic turned into a soap opera. The Maly Theater is predictable, like a permanent exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery. What I expected to see is what I saw. Museums, by the way, are also different. The Maly Theater is a neat museum. It does not add mustaches to the classics, and, as a rule, they do not forget to brush away the dust from the paintings. It's good quality and not spoiled by TV series. cast. It preserved the traditions of past years, but did not hide it at all and did not pass off old truths as today’s revelations. I personally don’t really like canned food, but I still prefer them to third-fresh products, which stink unbearably in some other nooks and crannies of our stage space.

We are talking now, however, not about the Maly Theater, but about the play “Children of the Sun,” which was staged there by Adolf Shapiro. Shapiro is, in essence, a director whose style is akin to Maly's healthy conservatism. He knows how to dissolve in the artists, knows how to convey his innermost thoughts through them, does not push with concepts, does not fall into formalism. And here it was quite possible to count on a blessed alliance, which once happened at the citadel of tradition with Sergei Zhenovach. But it didn’t work out.

Zhenovach came to the Ostrovsky House with Ostrovsky. Not with the great plays "Forest" or "Thunderstorm", but with the charming comedy "Truth is good, but happiness is better." Her striking theatricality happily coincided with the acting skills and desires of Maly’s luminaries. In this charming performance, everything was effortless, unpretentious, unpretentious. Adolf Shapiro brought Gorky's play to the theater and staged it not just as a text with a scattering of winning roles, but as a kind of manifesto. In Shapiro’s interpretation, the drama, written in 1905, clearly turned out to be rhymed with the seemingly infinitely distant novel by Ray Bradbury “Fahrenheit 451,” staged at the Et Cetera Theater last season. Both here and there, Shapiro told the public about a narrow circle of intellectuals living in the middle of a hostile world and trying to preserve the honor and dignity of their circle. Do not lose its traditions, do not forget the commandments.

It is clear that this is a sore subject for the director now and it is difficult not to share his pain. But how unfortunate, how incongruously he chose literary basis two of their own stage works. Gorky, like Bradbury, the world ready to crush and crush beautiful-hearted idealists. The main character of "Children of the Sun" Pavel Protasov is busy with his chemical formulas, his wife is concerned about her husband’s indifference, his friend Vagin is concerned about love suffering (he is in love with Protasov’s wife). They live on the eve of social explosions, but, absorbed in their intellectual problems, they can neither prevent the coming cataclysms nor comprehend them real reasons. And the deeper their conflict with reality becomes, the more clearly you understand that “Children of the Sun” describes those problems and those misconceptions that were erased from reality by the very course of inexorable history. Because the trend modern life, its nerve lies not in the fenced off of the educated class from the people, but in the blurring of all and every social boundaries, in mimicry, to which this very class has long agreed. If it disappears, it will not be because it will be swept away by the hurricane of revolution, but because it will voluntarily, without saying a bad word, agree to serve the tastes and needs of the aggressive and omnipresent plebs. Yes, I already agreed - that’s the trouble! The performance and life seem to exist in parallel realities that do not touch in any way. The theater speaks, even cries out, about imaginary dangers, as if not seeing the real ones. And this blindness of his turns out to be disastrous for the sometimes charming stylistic archaism.

The performance is good where and when the actors playing in it are good (after all, Maly’s acting potential, no matter how hard you try, cannot be hidden in your pocket), but it is characteristic that Shapiro’s good performers are mainly the performers of supporting roles. Alexander Korshunov plays the mechanic Egor wonderfully, Evgenia Glushenko is beautiful in the role of the provincial vamp Melania - a perhydrol wig and a cloak with rhinestones successfully complement her dashing stage grotesquerie. Viktor Nizovoy, the veterinarian Chepurny, plays the role of the veterinarian. But the company of beautiful-minded intellectuals here looks sluggish and unconvincing. Gleb Podgorodinsky (Vagin) suffers so fussily that you don’t believe his suffering even a penny. The subject of his sighs, Elena Nikolaevna and Chepurny’s sweetheart Liza, played by People’s Artists of Russia Svetlana Amanova and Lyudmila Titova, are thirty years older than their heroines and are clearly fit to be a mother to their admirers. Even my endlessly beloved Vasily Bochkarev (Protasov) tries in vain to actualize what cannot be actualized. And the further you go, the more hopeless the attempts become. When, in the second act, the amusing bustle of everyday life is replaced by the social pathos of yesterday, the solid archaism of the Maly Theater begins to clearly resemble wampuku, whose participants just happened to wander into a museum justly proud of its traditions.

Vremya Novostei, October 17, 2008

Anna Gordeeva

Direct and present threat

Maxim Gorky was staged at the Maly Theater

“Children of the Sun” is not the most famous of the plays of the proletarian classic, and in post-Soviet times it is rarely staged: now in Moscow it can only be seen at the Maly Theater. Gorky wrote “Children of the Sun” in 1905 in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he ended up after January 9. Obviously, the picture of a naive, trampled, suffering and terrible crowd influenced the atmosphere of this play; Probably, with the help of “Children of the Sun,” Gorky understood both the surrounding reality and himself, what was happening on the street and how to relate to it.

At the same time, the “street” is, as it should be, outside the gate: the action takes place in a poor manor’s house. The owner, Pavel Fedorovich Protasov (Vasily Bochkarev), is so passionate about his scientific experiments that he does not notice his bored wife (Svetlana Amanova). She is being looked after by the owner's longtime friend, the artist Dmitry Sergeevich Vagin (Gleb Podgorodinsky). At the same time, the monstrously uneducated, but touching in her admiration for learned man merchant Melania (Evgenia Glushenko). The owner's sister Lisa, an older girl (Lyudmila Titova), is being looked after by the local veterinarian Chepurnoy (the role went to Viktor Nizovoy). And it seems like the play could run along an almost vaudeville rut. It features an amusing gentleman, not paying attention to his wife’s affair twisting under his nose and unable to reason with the drunken mechanic who works for him (an attempt to moralize that beating one’s wife is wrong ends in complete embarrassment for the moralist; he also begins to apologize for unsolicited advice ). There is a nanny, brilliantly played by Lyudmila Polyakova - a kind of elderly, good-natured colossus who can drive you into hysterics with her every second care and is seriously offended when she is asked to stop this care even for a minute. There is a womanizer lover who picturesquely kneels before his married lady and persuades her to “live freely.” A maid (Olga Zhevakina), who claims that she is an honest girl, and therefore demands seventy-five, not twenty-five, rubles from her future landlord. Everything is there - and laughter periodically arises in the hall (it’s funny to remember that Gorky in prison asked his superiors for permission to write a “comedy”). But this is definitely not vaudeville. This is a play about what the Russian intelligentsia should do with the Russian people.

The answer is to be afraid. And a play was written and staged about this fear.

From the first scenes, Lisa talks about her fear. But Lisa is not well, we learn that she spent some time in a hospital (obviously a psychiatric one). Lisa talks about how she saw a guy trampled in the crowd with a broken head, and she cannot forget this guy. Lyudmila Titova reproduces the symptoms of mental illness with fantastic accuracy - from an overly attentive tilt of the head to anxious hand movements; you believe her one hundred percent even when her heroine begins to portray Ophelia in a wreath and a white chlamys (aka a straitjacket). Liza's repeated appearances are bells of fear present in everyday life: Liza is the most sensitive of the inhabitants of the house, it is she who recognizes the future pogromist in the trivial drunkard Yegor. But no one listens to her.

The owner is trying to talk to Yegor in the language of morality and logic - he could just as easily speak Chinese. Chepurnoy, a person better versed in the environment (since he is a practitioner, not a theorist), is ready to simply punch the presumptuous bastard, but, of course, his fellow scientist stops him. (As before and after that, many times in the history of Russia, intelligent people stopped people doing business, because it’s not good to hit people in the face, even if these people fully deserve it.) And an adequate response to the mechanic’s periodically flaring aggression, which in the end almost led to catastrophe is ultimately ensured not by educated men (the husband, the failed lover, and the familiar doctor who came running to the house to escape are not able to resist the rushing crowd), but by the mistress of the house who flew out onto the porch with a pistol in her hands and the dull janitor who remained faithful to the owners (Evgeniy Kurshinsky).

The artists of the Maly Theater in this play do very well exactly what they do best: they play characters and biographies. Each role is a carefully written portrait, recognizably earthly and brightly theatrical at the same time. Vasily Bochkarev in the role of the owner of the house - moving around the rooms at a fast pace (now he won’t have time to run, and something in the test tubes will explode!), perfectly denoting this scientist’s fixation on himself and absolute blindness - the woman explains her love to the hero in plain text, and he keeps asking to clarify what she means. Evgenia Glushenko, who endowed her Melania with the recognizable habits of new Russian ladies - the first generation, who have just emerged from the stalls. (And she didn’t go overboard anywhere!) Viktor Nizovoy, who gave the loving veterinarian both the thoroughness of a doctor, and a carefully hidden nervous instability, and a Ukrainian childhood spelled out in his speech (when the hero is worried, the accent sounds stronger). And, of course, Alexander Korshunov in the role of mechanic Egor - drunken (more precisely, never drying out) courage, condescension towards gentlemen who do not understand life and the threat that is heard by Lisa and for the time being to no one else.

But while the actors do their work well, there is almost no director in the play. It's hard to believe that this is a performance by Adolf Shapiro, a man who has never before been shy with either texts or interpretations. Perhaps he was warned that it was better not to “disperse” at the Maly Theater? He carefully arranges the mise-en-scène, some of the artists stand closer to the ramp, some further away, but no volitional efforts are made to the play. There are small moves, minimal “things”, and very appropriately invented things: for example, when the hero suggests to the merchant’s wife “Let’s have some tea,” a pause unplanned by Gorky is inserted before the “tea”, and the heroine agrees before this “tea” sounds, after same definition of drink is slightly disappointed. This is not just a game with a trivial phrase, the merchant’s wife is nervous, and it is clear how she is used to relieving stress. It's done right. And a more subtle thing: Lisa (in the text) is afraid Red, he clearly reminds of the guy who died before her eyes. In the play, the janitor is wearing a red shirt, and Lisa twitches because of it; in the play, the janitor’s light shirt has only a narrow red belt, almost invisible: the line “why is he in red?” emphasizes mental illness.

But these small details are not enough. “Children of the Sun” is still not the best of Gorky’s plays; it is verbose, the action in it sags, and even when everything is already clear about the relationships of the characters, the dialogues continue to stagnate. This is exactly the case when the director’s strong-willed gesture is necessary to emphasize what he considers important, and to throw out the unimportant altogether. But, it seems, the last phrase of the hero, sounding on the proscenium after repelling the attack of the bad crowd, “Why am I doing this?” remains a question for the director. Despite the fact that the 20th century offered several solutions - for what? However, it would be interesting to hear new versions. Did not happen.

Newspaper .Ru, October 17, 2008

Maya Odin

Gorky with fireworks

The Maly Theater hosted the premiere of Gorky’s play “Children of the Sun.” Director Adolf Shapiro became interested in the hundred-year-old plot. Maly's first collaboration with famous director it benefited the theater, but not so much for the director.

Bending over the test tube, the professor makes an awkward gesture with his hand, and - fuck! -explosion! The nanny, shuffling her feet, touches the candelabra, and - pshh! – the sparklers flashed. The worker tripped on the floorboard and boom! Smoke! Noise! The audience grabs their hearts. Another explosion! Both in the hall and on stage they scream. It is immediately clear: a chemist lives in the house with all the ensuing consequences - he is nothing but discomfort, he disturbs everyone, and everyone distracts him from his work. Well thought out. The only pity is that the brilliant idea with pyrotechnics turned out to be illustrative - it lived through the first ten minutes of the performance and faded away, as if it had never existed. It was none other than the fire department of the Maly Theater who prevented us from turning around.

But the director's second idea - repeating some lines with light painting on the wall - extended throughout the entire performance, but did not particularly bring additional meaning to what was happening on stage; on the contrary, it looked like an outdated didactic device. And really, what’s because everyone read: “I’ll be a general too,” “Egor again,” “the subject of conversation is indelicate,” “yeah, chemist, gotcha,” and so on.

And in general, it’s a shame that “Children of the Sun” somehow didn’t work out in Maly.

It is all the more a pity that the play was staged by Adolf Shapiro, a director who has a good feeling and knowledge of Gorky; his “At the Lower Depths” and “The Last” were and are still running with great success in the “Snuffbox”. True, the space there was intimate. In Maly, it seemed that the stage was too wide for both the actors and the director. However, it must be not the scene, but the play.

About a hundred years ago, Maly ignored “Children of the Sun.” And at the beginning of the century, when it was trendy, the story of its writing (in 1905 in the Peter and Paul Fortress) already excited the imagination of theatergoers. They were not inspired by it even in Soviet times, when its proletarian meaning was turned upside down. And now for some reason they are interested, although no contact with reality is felt in the play. However, the director was clearly not interested in it as a purely historical plot either.

What then?

Why the play appeared in the repertoire right now is a mystery that has not been revealed in 3 hours of a scrupulous, conscientious, but, frankly speaking, tediously boring performance. The Maly Theater waited for almost a century and, alas, was in a hurry. In five years, contacts between the “Children of the Sun” and reality may very well arise – as soon as a class society takes shape. Then Gorky’s story will become quite relevant for our days.

The plot of “Children of the Sun” is the most topical for the beginning of the twentieth century: complete rejection of each other by masters and artisans, an attempt to establish human relations without getting rid of mutual contempt and fear.

The main character - the general's son Protasov - is all about chemistry, it seems like he is creating some kind of homunculus. (True, in Adolf Shapiro this theme is somewhat muted; his Protasov is simply doing experiments.) The beautiful wife (S. Amanova) is bored by her husband’s inattention and accepts the artist’s advances. A veterinarian is hopelessly in love with his sister. And the chemist himself is the butcher’s widow (Evgenia Glushenko). Everyone, except the scientist, suffers from idleness and vague melancholy. A nanny (L. Polyakova) wanders around the house, suffering that everything is going wrong and that the bar has forgotten how to give orders to the servants. And there are also tipsy craftsmen wandering around, whom no one really knows how to rein in, but no one can do without them either.

Everyone is terribly far from each other - masters and servants, husbands and wives, bridegrooms and brides, and brothers and sisters. Fragmentation and misunderstanding are fatal. This theme should have become dominant, it seems to be stated in the decorations: wicker tables and rocking chairs, Viennese chairs against the backdrop of a rough brick wall, and this can be felt in every mise-en-scène.

But it doesn't add up.

The only one who looks more or less harmonious is Vasily Bochkarev in the role of chemist Protasov. Despite the general vagueness of the performance, the leading actor cannot be ignored. Helpless in everyday life, constantly calling on either his wife or his nanny to solve any problem, a delicate egoist, Protasov is so immersed in his experiments that, sitting in the hall, you involuntarily get annoyed at everyone who tears him away from them. IN Soviet years It was along Protasov that the line of criticism of decaying capitalism ran. Adolf Shapiro has obvious sympathy for the main character. Vasily Bochkarev does the same.

By the end, from a person inspired by an idea, he turns into a confused person. Talkative, easily delivering passionate speeches, by the end he does not know what to say or how to behave. And so his attempt to call the stupefied proletariat to conscience is cut short mid-sentence. Only if the performance lasts in the repertoire, as happens in the Maly, for several years, perhaps then this silence and helplessness will be heard in reality. But not yet.

NG, October 20, 2008

Grigory Zaslavsky

Special proud people

Adolf Shapiro staged Maxim Gorky's play "Children of the Sun" at the Maly Theater

On Wednesday and Thursday last week, the premiere of Maxim Gorky’s play “Children of the Sun” was played at the Maly Theater. It cannot be said that the Maly Theater somehow ignored Gorky: in the 80s, for example, the plays “Foma Gordeev” and “The Zykovs” were staged. In the mid-90s, “Eccentrics” was directed by Alexander Korshunov, who, by the way, plays mechanic Egor in the current premiere. And yet, the current choice of the play’s director, Adolf Shapiro, probably surprised many.

It is known that “Children of the Sun” is not the first title on which the director and theater agreed. The choice was long and that is why the play seemed even more unexpected; it was successful, that is, it seemed equally interesting to both the famous director and the theater, far from any fuss. Well, Shapiro is also not one of those who works in the journalistic genre. It turns out that both sides were thinking about the eternal. And the performance turned out to be thorough, unhurried and at the same time very timely. Not the same, of course, as more than a hundred years ago, when, with a difference of ten days, the premieres came out at the V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Theater and at the Moscow Art Theater (Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko staged it together, and Stanislavsky at first was also going to play main role, which he later entrusted to Vasily Ivanovich Kachalov): then, as you know, at the Moscow Art Theater at the premiere, the scene of the cholera riot in the hall was mistaken for a visit from the Black Hundreds, they even had to give a curtain. And yet: Gorky wrote his play, so to speak, without loving the Russian intelligentsia. Chekhov wrote about throwing, but without generalizing. And in “Children of the Sun” it turns out that these scientists and artists, and all their relatives, are senseless, aimless, cowardly people. The people are drinking themselves to death, rotting, but the gentlemen don’t seem to see this; they are interested in people’s faces in their grimaces, since these faces are suitable for a sketch, for a future large-scale canvas. They are eunuchs, sterile in a philosophical, ontological, if you like, sense. To blow up your flasks in vain, to be sad that something has gone sour, when the wife of that person is about to leave for an artist - this, as they say, is welcome. And to help in production - when he is offered a real, industrial job - this, you know, excuse me. Applied science is not for Protasov (Vasily Bochkarev).

Lenin called the intelligentsia the g...m of the nation - this is what the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky wrote about, so to speak, in his play “Children of the Sun”.

It’s unpleasant, of course, but – what can you do?! – right. It's bad again. And the intelligentsia is silent again. And the mechanics who are still left are drunk again...

“Children of the Sun” in Maly is a rare performance in modern times, but in spirit, even in mood, it is close the best performances Little of recent years. Three hours and a quarter is a lot in these days, but when the performance ends for another seven minutes the audience applauds, many of them standing. The audience listens to kilometers of text with sincere interest, and the applause, its quality (which is important in the theater!) allows us to talk about the success and success of the performance, not only of individual roles - here the audience does not hide its sympathy for the second act and seeing off, for example, and even greeting with applause Evgenia Glushenko, who plays Melania, who is in love with the main character, a chemist.

Yes, almost everyone here is good, simply wonderful: Vasily Bochkarev - Protasov, his sister, crazy Liza - Lyudmila Titova, his wife Elena - Svetlana Amanova, artist Vagin - Gleb Podgorodinsky, Boris Chepurnoy, Melania's brother - Viktor Nizovoy, Egor, mechanic - Alexander Korshunov, nanny Antonovna - Lyudmila Polyakova, janitor Roman - Evgeny Kurshinsky... You can talk about each of them separately, talk about characters, difficult relationships with others, about the history of each.

This is the world. When they sometimes say that in the theater on stage a whole world or another life is born and dies, no one believes these words for a long time, since this is nowhere or almost nowhere, but in “Children of the Sun” this idea takes on meaning.

It is interesting to tell, for example, how Bochkarev plays here, for whom the role of Protasov unexpectedly and curiously continues the theme taken in “The Imaginary Invalid”: in both cases, the heroes invent a mortally dangerous world that is very remote from reality, but, of course, they come into contact with the world in different ways. life flowing around.

How surprised he is by Melania’s confession: “This... I don’t need this…” How sincerely he hides behind home-grown escapism: “It’s not my business to go around and tell everyone what’s good and what’s bad...” How the director is not afraid to direct the actors’ monologues directly to the audience - first Protasov, then Melania he pushes to the edge of the stage, “removing” the lighting of the previously flooded bright sun platforms so that they direct their bewilderments and confessions straight into the hall. And how sincere is Melania - Evgenia Glushenko, when she is ready to give herself up to the slaughter, to build Protasov’s laboratory, plus a tower (how the intelligentsia loved these towers in those years!), to get rid of all worries, just to live next to him, to see him, even if from afar... He shares these plans with Protasov’s wife. How funny she is. How sad. And her love and her whole life are both deadly and, again, fruitless. He doesn't need "this" and neither does anyone else.

Brother hangs himself, sister Protasova completely goes crazy. The mechanic Egor sets the rebellious artisans against the “chemist”.

There really is a lot of text. But a lot is memorable.

“What started this? It was so good..."

How good book, Shapiro’s performance simultaneously captivates with its own plot and, excuse me, makes you think about life. We are living wrong. And nothing good will come from our current life. You can, of course, console yourself with the fact that it is Gorky who is pushing into these pessimistic dead ends... But there is something that cannot be consoled.

New news, October 21, 2008

Evgenia Shmeleva

At the Maly Theater they dared to experiment: they allowed an outside director, Adolf Shapiro, to stage the production. For his first collaboration, he chose Maxim Gorky’s play “Children of the Sun,” written more than a hundred years ago, at the height of the 1905 revolution. The interpretation of Soviet classics came out unexpectedly Chekhovian.

Once Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko very aptly noticed the difference between Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Chekhov, he wrote, is “the sweet melancholy of the sunset, the groaning dream of breaking out of these everyday life...” Gorky “is also breaking out of the dull “today,” but how? With a battle cry, with tense muscles, with a cheerful, joyful belief in “tomorrow”, and not in “two hundred or three hundred” years.”

However, Adolf Shapiro, who had already staged Gorky twice and very successfully on the Moscow stage (“The Last” and “At the Lower Depths” in “Snuffbox”), for some reason thought differently. He re-read the classic again, looked at it from the front and in profile and unexpectedly saw in it... Chekhov. Of course, there were reasons for such an interpretation. Gorky admired Chekhov and adored “The Seagull” and “Uncle Vanya.” It was Chekhov who once inspired the self-doubting Gorky to try his hand at drama. "Children of the Sun" was written two years after "The Cherry Orchard", six months after Chekhov's death. The motives are largely similar: the beginning of the century, a dying estate, decadence and the eternal Russian longing for a new beautiful life, people like the sun, and the distant future, when humanity will turn into a “majestic, slender organism.” True, there are also many differences: Gorky wrote not in Yalta, but in the Peter and Paul Fortress in 1905, immediately after Bloody Sunday.

In Soviet times, “Children of the Sun” was staged as an acutely social, class play. On the stage of the Maly Theater everything is different. This is a quiet, gentle and lyrical performance about “Chekhov’s people” and a ruined, meaningless life. Natural "Cherry Orchard". The bright, spacious set design, invented by Vladimir Kovalchuk, recreates the ruins of a noble nest against the backdrop of a naked stage box. There is no garden here anymore, just shifting sand. Instead of air - steam from chemical experiments"Uncle Vanya" Protasov. Cholera is approaching, but cute and funny summer residents in summer suits are busy with themselves. All of them, except for the active chemist-biologist Protasov, are pathologically lonely, unhappy and in love: hopelessly, even to the point of suicide. And, of course, they all don’t hear or understand each other.

Chekhov's trademark deafness is felt in everyone, including the nanny, the maid and drunken village men, but in Protasov, played by Vasily Bochkarev, it looks completely anecdotal. A would-be scientist is toying with the idea of ​​creating a homunculus and learning the secrets of life. At the same time, he is much more interested in the algae under the microscope than in his own wife. Around him, completely autonomously, the classic “five pounds of love” are happening: his wife Elena, out of resentment, has an affair with family friend Vagin, his sister Lisa plays a painful game of cat and mouse with the veterinarian Chepurny, and the butcher’s widow Melania approaches Protasov himself, dreaming of buying herself a new one. - such a pure and smart husband.

As expected Chekhov's heroes, at times the “children of the sun” anxiously peer into the distance and, standing on the proscenium, pronounce long monologues about the future. “Man will be the ruler of everything...” and so on. Once upon a time, Gorky’s maxims inspired me. Today it is simply impossible to listen to them without smiling. Here, if you don’t want to, you will remember the words of Chekhov: “I don’t like it when Gorky, like a priest, comes out to the pulpit and begins to read a sermon to his flock, with a churchly “oak.” The optimistic forecasts of Elena and Protasov produce the same impression: at these moments, even a sinful thing, it seems that the play is hopelessly outdated. About a hundred years.

The reasoner in the play is Lisa, gloomy, like a “child of the dungeon”. She is the only one who feels the catastrophe and knows what is not news for a long time: life is full of dirt, hatred and horror, people are animals, and intellectuals - ah! - how terribly far they are from the people. Apparently, this simple idea can be considered the main one in Adolf Shapiro’s production. He spoke about the same thing, but in different words, in his previous work: the fantastic parable “Fahrenheit 451” based on the story by Ray Bradbury at the Et Cetera Theater. In terms of style, these are completely different works, but in essence they are the same thing: an attempt to reach out to the deaf-blind intelligentsia (in the finale, Protasov’s monologue is cut off mid-sentence: “people should be...”) But, alas, the attempt failed completely. Bell ringing in the performance it is heard worse than the ringing of mobile phones in the audience. And the phrases illuminated by a laser on the far wall look like a cunning maneuver, distracting from semantic voids. As a result, the audience is left with only one thing: to admire the actors.

The acting ensemble of the Maly Theater is incorrigibly good. Vasily Bochkarev is simple-minded and funny as the Russian Faust Protasov. True, there are awkward moments when it seems that the director has zombied people's artist for the sake of a super task unknown to us. These are two monologues on the proscenium, performed in all seriousness, with the sparkle of blue eyes. The women in the play are charming, but somewhat monotonous. Lyudmila Titova (Liza) diligently plays manic depression. And Svetlana Amanova (Elena) paints an ideal Russian woman: the embodiment of patience, beauty and wisdom, which is actually very boring. Against the backdrop of boring intellectuals, the bourgeoisie look festively bright: the “mean woman” Melania, shining with rhinestones, performed by Evgenia Glushenko, and her brother, the rude cynic with a tender heart, Chepurna Viktor Nizovoy. All of Gorky’s irony about the “children of the sun” and a bright future can be appreciated by studying the characters from the people: densely wild women and eternally drunken men, led by the mechanic-robber Yegor, brilliantly played by Alexander Korshunov.

In addition to conceptual shortcomings, “Children of the Sun” has others: the scenography, innovative for the Maly Theatre, with a naked stage box, greatly damaged the acoustics. Sometimes the actors simply cannot be heard, which is very unfortunate, considering that the main addressee of the performance is deaf-blind intellectuals.

Culture, October 23, 2008

Natalia Kaminskaya

New payment on old bills

"Children of the Sun". Maly Theater

In this play, written, as we know, by M. Gorky during his imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress, the theme of the terrible unpredictability of a simple uncouth person is very strong. The story of “Bloody Sunday” of 1905, with Gaponovism and massacres in the streets, stuck like a nail in the writer’s mind, and the play is a direct echo of it. IN last scene worker Yegor and his comrades break into the house of the intellectual Protasov and organize something like a drunken pogrom there. But even before that, throughout the entire play, this Yegor, even though he had golden hands, was rude, inadequate, beat his wife to death, swaggered, provoked, and the beautiful owner of the house made peace with him and practically condoned open rudeness.

Protasov is a scientist, absorbed only in his experiments, and does not notice that, under his nose, a friend at home is starting an affair with his his own wife that another woman is in love with him, etc. The vicissitudes of love, the classic blindness of the owner and the curious situations associated with this - all this could make up a good vaudeville if its author was not Alexei Maksimovich, an extremely restless writer, with a frenzied civic temperament and wolfish social vigilance. But "Children of the Sun" is a story about how the propertied class has no idea about the essence of its own people. Or more precisely, that the intelligentsia lives like an ostrich, with its head in the sand, and does not sense the approaching bloody storm. The intelligentsia, which has ruined the country, the people, and itself... It’s a good topic, however! I immediately want to argue with those who declare it irrelevant today. Is it really irrelevant if the entire history of the Russian intelligentsia can be viewed both as a series of dazzling breakthroughs of the spirit and, with the same success, as a consistent chain of social and spiritual bankruptcies? So at the moment there is a plot - call it, according to your temperament, whatever you like: transformation, surrender, annihilation, etc., but one way or another the question still stands.

Who would doubt that director Adolf Shapiro decided to speak out on this issue, and this is precisely why he needed the play “Children of the Sun”. Last season, he dedicated his play “Fahrenheit 451” at the Et Cetera Theater to him, where Bradbury’s dystopia about a technocratic society that fools the individual turned into a story about how totalitarian power persecutes people with free thinking and spiritual requests. He examines the topic of the death of culture through the prism of political power. The relationship between the intelligentsia and the outside world interests him precisely in this plane. And although Gorky’s “Children of the Sun” is a completely different material than Bradbury’s story, the director’s favorite idea is the same, which cannot but inspire respect. His very insistence on reflecting on that portion of the population which, for seventy years, Soviet power they called it the confectionery word “layer”, but now “there’s no way to call it”, it looks like an act. Especially in the general context Russian theater, who has clearly lost social guidelines. But if in the previous performance the system of causes and consequences built by the director was located across the author’s, then in the current one it seems to obediently follow Gorky’s.

The inhabitants of the Protasov house live by their human desires and weaknesses, not knowing that outside the walls a hurricane of change is already howling with might and main. Only the protagonist’s sister Lisa has a presentiment of trouble, but she is sick with some kind of mental illness, and her premonitions smack of decadent obsessions, very fashionable at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lyudmila Titova perfectly conveys this ill health - she has a strange tense plasticity, a concentrated “unseeing” gaze.

At all main holiday This performance took place, and it is called "acting ensemble". Here they play meaningfully, deeply and confidently, with the most precise details, with delicious details. In conjunction with professional, clear direction, Maly artists are able to bring real pleasure to the viewer. Evgenia Glushenko - Melania Chepurnaya, the one who is in love with the scientist, wonderfully plays the naive ardor and sincere admiration of the nouveau riche for people of intellectual labor. She is drawn to this house, where it is warm, beautiful and carefree. Melania is funny, vulgar, but also terribly lonely, and this human intelligibility arouses sympathy for her.

Lyudmila Polyakova works luxuriously as a nanny. This is who also senses trouble, but at his own, troublesome, common people level, which is absolutely not considered by anyone in this house. Viktor Nizovoy plays the veterinarian Chepurny, who is unhappily in love with Lisa, and before us is the drama of a strong, completely earthly man, but torn by an unbearable burden of feelings. And Gleb Podgorodinsky (artist Vagin) plays a representative of bohemia with inimitable grace. Gorky put into his mouth clearly mocking texts, endless declarations of love, full of beauties and literary archaisms. But for the actor, this is also humanized, colored with understandable confusion and loneliness. But the worker Yegor is truly scary, Alexander Korshunov from the very first scene makes you feel both the drunken stupidity and the explosive senseless energy of this representative of the proletariat, so dear to Protasov’s heart. A good scene is when, with Jesuitical stupid persistence, he sends the beautiful and noble Elena Protasova (Svetlana Amanova) to his wife, who has contracted cholera.

Premonitions of a grandiose cataclysm are generously poured out by Gorky in almost every scene of the play: here are the excesses of the worker, and the corruption of the maid (Olga Zhevakina), and Lisa’s illness, and the nanny’s concern, and the cholera epidemic. And finally, the ending, for which, it seems, the director started everything. In the play, it resembles all types of uncontrollable explosion of representatives of the people, including Jewish pogroms. So, a doctor and a little girl with a violin run into the Protasovs, asking for asylum. The episode was well done - explosive pace, disturbing music by Grigory Gobernik, proletarians cross the stage, angry, it seems, from birth, and the main character, beaten for unknown reasons, throws helpless words into the audience: “People should be...” In the role of Protasov - a wonderful artist Vasily Bochkarev, he plays subtly, watercolorly and very convincingly. Before us is an eternal child, charming even in his selfishness, funny in his blindness and in his dreams of solar energy.

The director obviously loves his intelligent characters much more than the author of the play. Gorky, as is known, presented exorbitant bills to the intelligentsia for everything: for beauty and cowardice, for cleanliness and lack of will, for childish egoism and social deafness. It is even generally accepted that he simply hated this part of the population, although it would be more accurate to say that he exacted merciless punishment from them.

One way or another, Adolf Shapiro staged a performance at the Maly Theater where human cantilenas are poured. But by and large it is about how the lonely voice of the violin (read - culture) stalls under the onslaught of cattle. It’s not for nothing that in the finale the girl plays the violin against the backdrop of general robbery. Meanwhile, Gorky’s collision, if it gives rise to extrapolation into our present day, is still on a different plane. Both the drunken proletarian and the useless intellectual fossil today can easily be placed in the same carriage labeled “loser,” because in a self-satisfied consumer society, both are relegated to wordless roles. If a new Alexei Maksimovich were born today, his scientists, doctors and artists would talk from the stage, say, about the economic crisis and its impending impact on the family budget, and not at all about scientific discoveries for the benefit of humanity. The newly minted Gorky would write not about the storm outside the walls of the house, but about the viscous swamp of the so-called stable existence. As a result, both the misfortune and the guilt of the intelligentsia would take on completely different semantic parameters.

What Gorky’s heroes screwed up and what is disappearing with depressing speed in our current society are two big differences in Odessa. Although, if the theater still presents a certain strict account to its proletarians of mental labor, it means that these same proletarians still exist. Which is somewhat encouraging.

Planet Beauty, No. 11-12, 2008

Natalia Kazmina

About simple and complex people

Adolf Shapiro staged the play “Children of the Sun” at the Maly Gorky Theater. Everyone has heard the title, but according to recollections, the contents are confusing and verbose, and no one can clearly retell it. Already an event. An experienced psychological director made his debut in the citadel of Russian acting, great actors met with strong conceptual direction, Gorky - not the closest author to the Maly Theater (although “The Counterfeit Coin” and “Summer Residents” by B. Babochkin are remembered here) - were played in the Ostrovsky House. A spark was struck from all this, a sense came out.

The performance does not look quite typical for the Maly Theater, which is not bad at all. On the contrary, it is curious. In terms of sensations - rhythm, sound, “picture”, spiritual currents coming from the stage - this is, rather, a Moscow Art Theater performance of its best times (they don’t play like that at the Moscow Art Theater now). The actors of Maly look drier, stricter, more self-absorbed than usual - they play “as in life”, they paint not in oils, but in pastels, extracting relevant meanings from the game. No wonder, because Shapiro has a long and happy relationship with Gorky. His performances “At the Lower Depths” and “The Last” in “Tabakerka” were successful. They're still going. Luck - and “Children of the Sun”. At Shapiro’s Gorky performances, you always remember that before you is not only a “great proletarian writer,” but also the author of “untimely thoughts.” In “Children of the Sun” you also discover that the author is again timely, and you should look into Gorky’s texts more often. “Children of the Sun” is also not similar to Shapiro’s previous performance “Fahrenheit 451.” An important statement for Shapiro within the walls of the Kalyagin theater “Et cetera” still suffered from tendentiousness. It was played outwardly, and was, as they say, intended for fools; they were supposed to be awakened by the anxiety that the director experiences in relation to the modern world. This calculation for everyone at once was clearly Shapiro’s choice of principle.

In “Children of the Sun,” especially at first, you don’t feel any “messages.” Calm contemplation is diffused throughout. The director's gaze, as happens in films, slowly pans, looking at the characters: what kind of children are they? what kind of sun? There is a slight historical hint in their costumes, but despite the active use of modern “jeans” in them, there is no feeling that the plot is modernized and generally needs modernization. Rather, we observe the life that once passed through the notorious “fourth wall”, we look at the heroes like strange fish in an aquarium... The same sad, sunny, but not warming autumn light (artist D. Ismagilov) was poured into the space of David Borovsky, made for Efremov's "Uncle Vanya". For some reason I remembered.

The space of “Children of the Sun” is indeed unusual for the Maly Theater. It's practically empty. There is no pavilion, no “magic box”, instead there are two conditional walls along the backstage. During the action, on the mossy (or sooty?) bricks of the backdrop, high on the left, unpredictably and unrhythmically, or even illogically, the words and remarks of one of the characters in the play or Gorky's remarks appear. It was as if someone was slowly reading the play, then returned to what they had tripped over, thought about the page and crossed out a line. And there are plenty of phrases and aphorisms here. Well, for example, the statement of a certain Nazar Avdeevich (V. Konyaev), a homeowner and future capitalist: “The loan office is for the soul.” Five words, but you can see right through the person.

The space of the stage is not just wide open, stripped - to the grate, from which nanny Antonovna drives away the noisy janitor (E. Kurshinsky), to the back brick wall, into which the cozy empire-style porch of the Protasovsky house has literally grown. This is all that remains from the “nest” sold to Nazar Avdeevich, from the “general’s house”, the loss of which L. Polyakova’s nanny mourns in her soul every second. Her phrase “The house is abandoned” sounds both like a reproach and a threat of future misfortunes, even when she talks about the mundane: warmed milk for Liza Protasova, the outrages of a drunken locksmith or the soft-heartedness of her owner, Pavel Protasov.

In 2004, in the play “The Cherry Orchard” at the Moscow Art Theater, Shapiro and D. Borovsky opened the curtain not along the ramp, but along the backstage, like a giant gate, behind which a gaping void was revealed. This stunned the audience, but seemed frighteningly significant. In “Children of the Sun”, Vladimir Kovalchuk, having exposed the stage, not only surprised the viewer with its volume, deafened it with ordinariness and orphanhood, but increased in it the content of anxiety and loneliness, which constantly oppresses the heroes of the play. Here everyone needs an interlocutor, affection, support, but no one can really listen to anyone. Shapiro builds all the movement of the plot, all the impulses of the characters to explain themselves, this common eternal movement not parallel to the ramp, but perpendicular to the auditorium, which is why each of Gorky’s “children of the sun” will be respected “ close-up", everyone will be given their own lyrical monologue or at least a phrase. Even two maids, Fima (O. Zhevakina) and Lusha (I. Zheryakova), will be allowed to do this. One, impudent, urban, will boldly assert: “I’m an honest girl,” and then greedily ask: “How much?” Another, a village woman, looking like a frightened nun, will begin to repeat the words “black sickness” with such horror as if she saw not her strange masters, but the devil himself.

Of all Gorky’s plays, especially those that feel like “Chekhov’s” (not “stolen” from Chekhov, as some joke or get angry, but developing the mood of the eve era or arguing with Chekhov’s worldview), “Children of the Sun” is not the most winning. It seems absolutely eventless, there is no clearly defined main character. And this absence seems important to Shapiro. It is this eventless life that he makes the main event of his performance; he gives each character the right to speak out, but does not allow anyone to be right, to receive consolation or advice.

Shapiro seems to be looking at the old play through our present day, is surprised at the number of coincidences and rhymes and is not lazy (and many modern directors, taking on such realistic plays, are, after all, lazy) - he is not lazy to delve into the life of Gorky’s characters in detail, carefully and with terribly interest. characters, to understand what worries them and why they care so much. Together with the actors of the Maly Theater, who are in good shape, clearly disciplined and capable of fulfilling complex directorial tasks (this is always evident in the performance), he presents the life of the Russian outback as a dense stream, a deep river with a strong current. Sometimes you want to look at such a river and look at it, and sometimes it doesn’t hurt to dive into it. Like Protasov, whom V. Bochkarev plays as a smart, delicate and at the same time funny and tragically useless man today, Shapiro refuses to “walk around all day and tell everyone what is good and what is bad.” He doesn’t take anyone’s side, doesn’t fume, doesn’t suffer, doesn’t teach anyone (as he tried in Fahrenheit), but thoughtfully and grinningly explores Russian life at the beginning of the century. He notices how absurd, bitter, and aimless she is. How little has changed in a hundred years. The types are still the same, and everyone is the flesh of this “inflatable land,” as Gogol would say: sometimes “natural gentlemen,” and sometimes “habits like a creature.” The figure of the locksmith Yegor, a jack of all trades and an eternally drunk man who beats his wife only because he himself “lived his whole life in resentment” is typical in this sense. He was played by A. Korshunov powerfully and scary: here he is in reality, Russian revolt, senseless and merciless. “If a person is reasonable, then he is kind,” argues the chemist Protasov. “The person is useless and unpleasant,” counters veterinarian Chepurnaya. And both are right. This is how this encyclopedia of Russian life is built, compiled by Gorky without pathos and without hope. If you penetrate deeply into this life, like the nervous, eccentric Liza (L. Titova), who does not want to hear rude words and see the color red, you can end up in the hospital. If you listen to premonitions all the time, like she does, and are afraid of change, you can kill and push away your loved one. If you remain silent all the time, like Elena (S. Amanova), “hating drama,” i.e. Without stooping to sort things out, you can lose love. If you steal someone else's love and paint portraits out of frustration, like the neurasthenic artist Vagin (G. Podgorodinsky), you can also waste your talent. Here even the lively Misha (S. Potapov), this obvious predecessor of modern “crisis managers,” has his own drama: he is already a big boy, but no one takes him seriously, he is open-hearted to everyone, and Chepurna doesn’t give him a hand serves, disdains. Even in the assertive and narrow-minded Melania (brilliantly played by E. Glushenko) there is pain, there is both this and that, both “nature” and “creature”: thick skin and a kind heart, acumen and dreaminess, roughness and sober self-esteem, there is only no pride , which may harm the Russian person more than anything else in the world at all times.

This whole company of diversified, variegated people, both simple and complex, living side by side and in no way able to organize their lives, is reminiscent of an orchestra tuning in: you can distinguish all the instruments, fragments of different melodies, but a coherent musical phrase will not come together. There is no conductor. Is it possible that death will force them to gather their thoughts? In Shapiro, it is not the drunken Yegor’s rebellion against his benefactor Protasov that becomes the culmination of the play, but the suicide of Chepurny (V. Nizova), in which one could not even imagine a subtle nervous organization. When a healthy-looking and even cynical young man hangs himself, it stuns everyone, after this you remember him differently funny story about a red pig who was rescued, but no one needed him, otherwise the main phrase of the role sounds: “I want to do something... kind of, you know, heroic... What? I can’t guess.” Those who survived cannot guess.

Having very soberly analyzed the morals of Gorky’s “children of the sun” and following this logic further, Shapiro also tightens the ending of the play, shortening it by exactly half famous phrase Protasova: “People should be light and bright... like the sun.” V. Bochkarev pronounces his “People must be...” confused, wounded, bewildered, but also with some barely perceptible demand.

...A year ago, just about to stage “Children of the Sun,” Shapiro told me about the long-standing impression that the Maly Theater once made on him, a young and intolerant formalist. He wandered there by accident, but received one of the most powerful impressions of his life. “Turchaninova and Ryzhova came out on stage, sat down at the table, started talking, and all my leftism disappeared. I have some kind of split personality. I forgot all my coolness." When a performance is done well and is exciting, it becomes completely unimportant which “party” those involved in it belong to.

During these days, Stanislavsky could not help but take to heart everything that was happening in the country, and therefore felt an urgent need to “respond to public sentiment.” But his civic and artistic position still differed significantly from Gorky’s position. This was immediately reflected in the work on Gorky’s new play.

Stanislavsky worked on the score for “Children of the Sun” in parallel with “The Drama of Life” by K. Hamsun. Thematically and ideologically, these productions turn out to be closely connected for him. The fact is that, using both Gorky and Hamsunov material, Stanislavsky again touched upon the “Shtokman” theme of his work that was dear to him. Protasov and Kareno appeared before him as different variations of the same noble, intelligent, spiritualized personality, features of which, close to Stanislavsky himself, appeared earlier in his Shtokman, and in Astrov, and in Vershinin. Now Shtokman’s loneliness (which was “Stanislavsky’s loneliness*”) is torn apart by life, by the elements of a popular uprising.

* ("...Shtokman's loneliness was Stanislavsky's loneliness. At that time he was alone in art. He saw little sympathy and support and a lot of bullying, but he did not give in and boldly, like Dr. Shtokman, broke the old theatrical foundations, fought against theatrical cliches." . From the memoirs of L. M. Leonidov. - On Sat. "About Stanislavsky". M., WTO, 1948, p. 272.)

This is how Stanislavsky faces the problem of the intelligentsia and the people, the intelligentsia and the revolution, which is painful for all contemporary artists. And it turns out to be a deeply personal problem. It was no coincidence that Gorky wrote “Children of the Sun” shortly after “Summer Residents,” which was rejected by the Art Theater. “Children of the Sun” to some extent reflects the writer’s internal dispute with the theater, and it can be assumed that the image of Protasov was born in Gorky under some influence of Stanislavsky’s personality. The motives of the play were autobiographical for the director no less, and perhaps even more, than for the writer. And it is no coincidence that each of them felt and solved its central problem so acutely and differently.

It is known that back in 1903, Gorky decided to write, together with L. Andreev, a play called “The Astronomer” about “a man living the life of the entire universe among the beggarly gray everyday life. For this,” Gorky said, “he will be cracked in the 4th act with a telescope on the head *". But from a common plan two opposing plays were born, polemicizing with each other - “Children of the Sun” and “To the Stars”. For Gorky, the “alarming feeling” of a break between the intelligentsia and the people at the time of writing the play was illuminated by a premonition of disaster. That is why he ridiculed the beautiful scientist Protasov, who turned his face “to the sun” and did not notice the “hard, inhuman life” of the people. L. Andreev, on the contrary, defended the right of the great scientist Ternovsky, aspiring “to the stars”, busy with cosmic problems, to soar above the “low-lying earth”, to despise the “vanity” of political topicality. He was never able to hit his astronomer “on the head with a telescope**.”

* (M. Gorky. Collection op. in 30 volumes, vol. 28, pp. 292-293.)

** (See about this in the book: Yu. Yuzovsky. Maxim Gorky and his dramaturgy. M. 1959 pp. 370-373.)

Stanislavsky also did not condemn the beautiful, apolitical scientist. Although he was no stranger to the anxieties of modern times, the right of a person like Protasov to deal with “higher matters”, surrounding himself glass cover science, for him there was no doubt. At best, the director could only smile sympathetically, observing the eccentricities of this big child, pure and touching in his quixoticism. After all, such a person not of this world, an eccentric and Don Quixote, was close to him. In Gorky's play he appears to him as a prophet, preacher, almost a messiah.

Protasov's monologue about the power of science, which reveals the wonderful secrets of life, about a man who “will be the ruler of everything,” seems extremely important to Stanislavsky. “One of the strongest parts of the role,” he writes in his director’s copy. “Suddenly a big and interesting figure. Now his work with protein seems necessary and important... Protasov now seems to be a prophet who has ascended to the pulpit and from the heights of it preaching to his students * ". And Protasov’s enthusiastic words about people - “children of the sun” who “will conquer dark fear death" and learn the meaning of existence, causing "general ecstasy."

As we see, Stanislavsky agrees more with L. Andreev than with Gorky. However, one rather significant circumstance distinguishes his position from that of the author of To the Stars. L. Andreev, affirming the principle of non-interference of a scientist in political life (even when his son is thrown into prison), solves this problem in a speculative, abstract, theoretical, philosophical sense. Dry rationalism is contraindicated for Stanislavsky. As always, he cannot tear himself away from that real life, where it rains and then the sun peeks through, he wants to hear cutlets being chopped in the kitchen, and from the street - the cry of a peddler selling cabbage.

Here, in this “provincial silence,” tragic contradictions are ripening, rising, in Chekhovian fashion, from everyday life to symbol. And Stanislavsky does not bypass them, does not soften them. On the contrary, now that the revolution has begun in Russia, the social severity of these contradictions resonates with personal pain for him. Anticipating the catastrophe that threatens the intelligentsia for being separated from the people, Stanislavsky does not yet feel the justice of this “retribution,” unlike Blok and Bryusov, he is not yet able to “greet with a welcoming hymn” the “coming Huns.” He stops, helpless and confused, waving away the disaster with a “handkerchief.”

Stanislavsky clearly and intensely reveals the tragic contradiction between “a person living the life of the entire universe” and “beggarly gray everyday life” on the pages of the director’s copy. To more noticeably emphasize this contrast, he immerses the entire play in dense, almost naturalistic life. Quite in the spirit of his previous productions, he paints the atmosphere around the old “manor’s house that fell into the hands of a kulak.” The original Chekhov motif appears again, but in a slightly different key.

The director sharply (much sharper than in “Three Sisters” and “The Cherry Orchard”) contrasts everyday, rough, animal life outside the home with the sad, lyrically refined life there, inside. Again we have before us that gap between material and spiritual origin, which troubled Stanislavsky’s mind during these years. At the end of the first act, in the darkened living room, one can hear “the quiet, muffled cry of Elena, buried in the corner of the sofa,” and the helpless voice of Protasov, not noticing anything around him except his test tube with acid. - “Why did she become sour?” And at this time, “there is a harmonica in the yard, the drunken voice of Yegor or Troshin sings along. Rom[an’s] voice roars wildly and laughs, and some woman joins him and also bursts into her wild animal laughter.” Sounds from the courtyard are still barely heard, but, as if foreshadowing the future scene of a cholera riot, “summer lightning flashes in the windows of the hallway and winter garden.”

In the second act, the “animal” life around the house grows, as if swelling. Stanislavsky introduces here a lot of everyday details, sounds, passages, scenes, developing each one lovingly, tastefully, and willingly. Morning cooking and cleaning are in full swing: "Morning. Sun. Time before breakfast. In the distance, in the kitchen, cutlets are being chopped, lunch or breakfast is being prepared... Roman and a boy are washing a droshky with raised shafts." They beat out carpets, beat out feather beds, clean coats, etc. “There is a line with laundry stretched out near the barn. At the gate, a dog guard and a live dog on a chain are rattling with a chain. In the back yard there is a nag, which Chepurnoy and Nazar are inspecting... [Pass] a cook with slop ...near the balcony there is a brazier for cooking... Antonovna is making jam. Those passing by taste the jam with their fingers."

Stanislavsky describes in detail how Yegor works as a mechanic, Roman works as a carpenter, and seems to paint a completely peaceful, everyday picture. But if we imagine that their “bearish, clumsy work” will serve as a contrasting background for the quiet, “lyrical,” “sad,” “full of meaning” scene of Liza and Chepurny, when “every word implies their hidden hidden thoughts” and when “all sorts of his harsh word makes [her] despair and worries,” then the director’s intention becomes clear. Already here Liza’s mood is preparing for an explosion, when she screams: “You are all blind!.. Hatred is growing among millions... One day their anger will fall on you...” And although Protasov calms his sister, encouraging himself and everyone with lofty speeches about "children of the sun", the cook Avdotya suddenly bursts into the room, running from her drunken husband - "Kills!" And this sharp dissonance seems to confirm that Lisa is right. “Avd[otya] is tormented,” notes Stanislavsky. “The appearance is terrible - like that of an animal.” - “You lied, Pavel!” Lisa is hysterical. “Nothing will happen... Life is full of animals!..”

This creates an explosive atmosphere and prepares the final, “popular scene” of the cholera riot. Stanislavsky develops it in extremely detail. He allows the viewer to hear at first only the “distant grumbling of thunder”, which is getting closer and closer, distant screams and then “suddenly, quite close, shouts immediately begin: “hold”, “aha”, “stop”, “ you won’t leave" (this is a brutal crowd pursuing the doctor as the “culprit” of the cholera infection. - M. S.) The doctor’s cry: “Help.” A sharp and repeated bell and a desperate knock on the iron ring at the gate ... The crowd's steps are closer. Whistles are heard (in fists). Individual screams are heard. A pale doctor appears on the fence. Stones are flying over the fence. The doctor is bloodied, pale, in a tattered white doctor's coat."

Then the director shows in detail how the gate is broken through with logs and bricks, glass is broken, “stones, pieces of wood, someone’s cap are flying,” how “jokers” burst into the yard, mocking Protasov (“-Chemist! He’s also poisoning people!” ), and he helplessly waves them away with a handkerchief. The scene, as we know, ends with Protasov’s wife Elena shooting at the “rebels” with a revolver, and the janitor Roman methodically hitting everyone on the head with a board. And although throughout the director calls the rioters “jokers,” this scene does not sound like a joke to him.

According to Stanislavsky's exposition, in August 1905, rehearsals were first conducted by both directors together, then in September Nemirovich-Danchenko worked alone for some time. Gorky was also present at some rehearsals. Certain details proposed by Stanislavsky changed: Gorky objected to the excessive burden of everyday details (against, for example, Protasov, as Stanislavsky proposed, spraying Elena, who had visited cholera patients, with a spray bottle). But the main thing that was achieved at the last rehearsals (again with the participation of Stanislavsky) was the brightly comedic sound of the “revolt” scene.

Nemirovich-Danchenko testifies that at the dress rehearsal this scene “was performed to the continuous laughter of the audience *,” that is, in the spirit in which it was conceived by Gorky. However, at the premiere, held on October 24, something unexpected happened. The tense atmosphere of a general strike in the country, alarming rumors that the Black Hundreds were going to attack the “enemy of the fatherland” - Gorky and the Moscow Art Theater at the performance for his “leftism”, electrified the auditorium. And when in the finale a crowd of “jokers” burst onto the stage, they were mistaken for Black Hundreds who had broken into the theater. There was panic in the hall and the curtain had to be closed. So suddenly political events mixed with stage events, life burst into the theater.

* (M. Rogachevsky. Art theater in the era of the first Russian revolution. - On Sat. "The First Russian Revolution and Theater". M., "Iskusstvo", 1956, p. 120)

Of course, the case was tragicomic. Nevertheless, Nemirovich-Danchenko considered it necessary the day after the premiere to specially rehearse the “rebellion” scene “in order to soften it *”. The theater did not want to get involved in “politics”. The incident with "Children of the Sun" only reinforced the theater's decision to leave Russia now - when the reaction had gone on the offensive - for a long tour abroad.

* (From Vl.'s notebook. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. 1905-1906 Quote Based on the book: L. Freidkina. Days and years of Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. M., "Iskusstvo", 1968, p. 216.)

Stanislavsky had to refuse the role of Protasov, which was internally close to him - he was too busy with the production - and regretted it. However, having transferred the role to V. Kachalov, he did not part with his hero. He continued to study the “Protasov” topic using other material. First, in parallel with “Children of the Sun” for a long year and a half, he enthusiastically worked on “The Drama of Life” by K. Hamsun *, considering both then and many years later this work of his to be landmark and innovative. “This is a revolution in art,” he wrote to A. M. Gorky in July 1905, conceiving the production. “Even if it is not accepted by the public, it will make a lot of people talk about itself and will allow the theater to feel its new steps forward**.”

** (K. S. Stanislavsky. Collection soch., vol. 7, p. 323.)

"Children of the Sun" (1905), page from the director's copy of K. S. Stanislavsky

Children of the Sun

In a nutshell: In an era of change, it is so difficult to catch fleeting happiness... The beginning of the 20th century is a period of heyday of science and art and at the same time a harbinger of a great catastrophe. In his play “Children of the Sun,” Maxim Gorky raises the eternal themes of love, loneliness, alienation and hope against the backdrop of that amazing time.

The play tells the story of an intelligent family during a period of rapid social change. Chemical scientist Pavel Fedorovich Protasov is far from life and people. He lives by his experiments, believing that it is science that will bring happiness to people. He does not delve into politics or domestic affairs. Such a stranger in the world of passions and everyday life. His wife Elena Nikolaevna suffers from the fact that her husband does not pay attention to her at all. In order to somehow have fun and escape from her problems, she arranges meetings with the talent of a director different people, and then watches what comes of it. Along the way, the woman brings the Vagina to a passionate frenzy. This artist-reasoner needs it (like fame) in order to satisfy his ambitions.

In a conversation with the mechanic Egor, this proletarian who constantly beats his wife on business and without, Protasov looks like a complete idiot. Protasov will not be able to understand why he is embittered talented master then he will choke him. Protasov also wants to persuade the drunkard Yakov Troshin to live correctly.

The common people veterinarian Chepurnoy and his sister Melania Kirpicheva, who buried her old rich husband, are comic characters. Moreover, both of them are passionately and desperately in love. The simple-minded fool Melania loves the owner of the house, Protasov. All her love ends in a shameful explanation with Protasov. The educated “bestial doctor” Boris Chepurnoy is in love with Protasov’s sister Liza. His skeptical view of life and loss of purpose in life lead to a tragic ending - suicide.

While dramas are brewing around them, the Protasov family frowns with disgust and waits for the moment when everything will somehow pass by itself and a serene life will begin.

The only “living” character trying to figure everything out is Lisa. She experiences fear of the future because she senses an abyss separating her environment from common people who lives in poverty and ignorance. She strives to explain that millions of people are angry and this anger will soon break out. But no one listens to her, everyone just treats her.

The emerging capitalist merchant Nazar Avdeevich and his son are constantly trying to buy land from Protasov, as well as use the knowledge of intellectuals to enrich themselves. Nazar Avdeevich actively recruits chemist Protasov to produce beer bottles.

The finale of the play is still talking about a crowd of brutal lumpen people who rose up against the “children of the sun”, who are far from the life and problems of the workers.