The Anton Chekhov Moscow Art Theater on tour in Kyiv on November 1-2
At the National Opera of Ukraine, the public will be able to see Bertold Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, produced by one of the most prominent Russian directors Kirill Serebrennikov. The cast includes the company leading actors Konstantin Khabensky, Sergey Sosnovsky, Ksenia Lavrova-Glinka, and Aleksey Kravchenko.
Never has the space above the stage been used so efficiently. A lot of things are flying there, such as gigantic skeletons, huge balloons, singers performing their parts, and the protagonist of the play, in the most tragic moments of his life. The play was rehearsed for half a year, all the actors spent long hours in singing classes. Khabensky, who plays the main part, said he had lost count of how many hundred times he practiced the scene with the noose around his neck.
The Threepenny Opera is a cocktail mixed of both sublime and base. Anthems and taunting ditties, the Bible and the laws of the underworld. The power of true feelings, and the sweet joy of trampling their buds in your own soul. The flavor of the 80-year-old legend, and the flashy, showbiz style methods. The producers warn that the play is not recommended for teens under 16. However, at the beginning of the third act, the spectators will have to squirm uneasily in their seats, as the aisles and passages will be occupied by the begging public: Afghan war veterans, pregnant gypsies, loud barefooted beggars, epileptics, and the like.
“Any performance is a game, and I think it has to have something that can be easily recognized,” says Konstantin SEREBRENNIKOV. Nevertheless, the director did not modernize the play. Firstly, due to the vigilant eye of Brecht’s and the composer Kurt Weil’s heirs. Secondly, it turned out there was nothing to modernize. At a certain point Mack the Knife (Khabensky) declares he gives up robbery and takes up banking. One might think the cue was written in our time and day, but this is Brecht’s original text. The only thing the director allowed himself was to have the dialogs translated anew and include the artists of the Moscow Contemporary Music Band among the characters. The dialogs were translated by Sviatoslav Gorodetsky, and the songs by Aleksey Prokopiev.
“For me, The Threepenny Opera is a story of how a guy called Mack the Knife was taken in by women,” says Serebrennikov. “The feminine element is very strong in the play: all types of feminine characters are presented there.”
The director’s weird combination of glamor and trash goes well with Brecht’s play. The author of The Threepenny Opera argues that the difference between glamorous life and misery is but three pence. Rats like Mack the Knife wear kid gloves and wait for a chance to seep into the high society. After all, as Brecht himself said, “What is a bank robbery compared to running a bank?”
At a certain point in time Brecht declared a war on the so-called theater sensitivity, a commonplace habit of “enjoying art,” as well as on the 1930s spectator who would come to the theater in search of “escape from reality.” Serebrennikov is working in the time of post-sensitivity. The masses always want a funny show, and any attempt at speaking in earnest will inevitably degrade into such a show, no matter how well you might disguise it as avant-garde, scandal, or the most burning issue of today.
The tour is organized by Premiere Agency.
