Some features of the construction of theatrical artistic reality (analysis of the production of "Eugene Onegin" by Rimas Tuminas)

The production is legendary, but perhaps at least half of the audience's reviews are negative. Here is one characteristic.

"The play "Eugene Onegin" ? E. Vakhtangov Theater (Russia, Moscow) - The director and actors overreached. The impression is negative…

I was glad that a lot of Pushkin's imperishable work remained in my head ? I remember almost the entire text perfectly, and due to poor visibility and an inconvenient landing place, I mainly perceived the sound series ? that is, reading a novel in verse, my husband, as an artist, watched the visual series ? he liked the design of the scene. The son (12 years old turned out to be very small, he was not interested and boring, he kept waiting for when to laugh, for some reason perceives going to the theater as something funny and funny)…

Some characters raise doubts about their authenticity. For example, Olga Larina. Reading the work, I could not imagine Olga running around the stage all evening with an accordion in her arms. It looked kind of silly.

The character “bunny” ? I don't remember this from Pushkin at all, I need to reread it. An aunt runs out on stage, in white tights, in a white tutu, in a large white cap with long bunny ears (do you remember how we dressed up three-year-old children in kindergarten?). So, here such an overgrown hare ran onto the stage with some secret mission.

Everyone was laughing. My son is also lucky here.

And I didn't understand at all ? what kind of hare and why the fuck is he needed here...

And so on ? a lot of things are unclear and it was unpleasant for me to watch. And anyway, IT's BORING!!!

I wanted to leave in the middle of the second act. But I'm with my son ? it's not logical to leave the theater with “Eugene Onegin”…

We sat out! We have won!" ^{[9; 10]}.

The general place of reviews is unclear, some kind of circus, where are the real Pushkin and "Eugene Onegin"? And I would like to ask, where are the critics and art critics, because it is their direct duty to make a new work understandable to a wide audience. Or was Tuminas counting only on a subtle connoisseur of the theater?

Yes, but subtle experts believe that it is impossible to put Pushkin in the theater. Alexander Minkin is clearly from this category, and this is what he writes.

"... After a newspaper article about "why Eugene", they called from the Vakhtangov Theater. Like, Rimas Tuminas is going to put on “Onegin", read the article, wants to talk to you.

We met. He told me that he wanted to show what a bad, unfeeling, cruel cold cynic Onegin was, destroying everything… I said that the play about Onegin is unlikely to work.

— Why?!

— Because there is no plot. There's nothing to play. Yes, and Onegin is empty. How long can you stare at a dummy with enthusiasm?

— Why is everyone so fond of?

— Not all of them. Only Russians, Russian-speaking people, like it. And most importantly: people think they are reading "about Onegin", but in fact they are reading Pushkin, and that's what they like…

...Pushkin wrote several plays. "Boris Godunov", “Mozart and Salieri" are real masterpieces, but...“Not scenic,” the directors say. We dare to object: Pushkin's dramas are scenic, but incredibly difficult (“Boris Godunov” staged by Pyotr Fomenko is the only exception we know; the performance was brilliant, disappeared without a trace)... The performance is the same conversations, dialogues.

There are very few of them in Onegin. Lensky with Onegin (“Let's go to the Larins!” ? “Okay"); Onegin with Tatiana (“Learn to control yourself”); Tatiana with the nanny (“How stupid you are, nanny!”)... ? where are Pushkin's thoughts here? No.

There are descriptions of events (“The poet drops the gun in silence”); pictures of nature (“Winter! The peasant, triumphant”); genre (“The joyful people of the boys cut the ice with their skates loudly”); portraits (“Ah, legs, legs, where are you now”). All this can be played: a horse, boys can be released on the stage, you can even wave your legs ... but where are Pushkin's thoughts here? No…

where is the real Pushkin? In his poems. If you play them, then Alexander Sergeevich will come out.

How to do it? — that's the main question. A novel (even if in verse) ? not a play. In the play, people only talk, and in the novel they also think…

Or maybe Pushkin's thoughts should be distributed to the characters? ? But he's a genius; he's smarter than them so much that his thoughts are not up to their height. Or they should sharply become wiser at the time of pronouncing Pushkin's wisdom, and then (returning to "their" words) become stupid again. Or Pushkin should be reduced and shortened." ^{[4; 5]}

       The problem is that in "Eugene Onegin" Pushkin has two hypostases. He is the author and in this sense he is not in the novel as an actor, he is, so to speak, in the space of the reader's consciousness, visually he is a phantom, not visible. And at the same time Pushkin is one of the main narrators of the poem, the story of Onegin and Tatiana is told on his behalf, and the duel, he shares with readers a variety of thoughts and impressions. However, as a narrator, Pushkin is not derived by Pushkin, the author of the actor. However, as I show, Pushkin, the narrator, transmits his thoughts and impressions to the heroes of the poem (Onegin, Tatiana) (and they really get smarter, are filled with genius, but for some reason they often forget to be stupid; but we will not make claims to Alexander Sergeevich) ^[6]. So, the question is, how to bring the invisible Pushkin-author, Pushkin-narrator, acting only verbally (but monologues on stage look bad and tire), Pushkin-Onegin and Pushkin-Tatiana, who also exist only in our consciousness and imagination, to the stage and make them act visually? It is quite possible to agree with Minkin when he says that "a performance about Onegin is unlikely to work out."

        Nevertheless, Minkin has to admit: yes, Tuminas somehow managed to solve all the problems: "Another year has passed ? the premiere at the Vakhtangov Theater on February 13, 2013. An incredible masterpiece! An ingenious production. Amazing music. Grandiose scenography" ^[5]. From Minkin's point of view, it was possible to solve it through a number of techniques. Firstly, in order to separate Onegin at the beginning of the poem and at the end (let's not forget that the poem was written by Pushkin for more than eight years, and Onegin's life in the poem lasts even a couple of decades), and also so that the enthusiastic and naive Lensky is not confused with Lensky, who has known the price of betrayal of Olga and Onegin, Tuminas, according to Minkin, he introduces two Onegins and two Lenskys in the production.

Old Onegin (artist Makovetsky) and young (Dobronravov)

"There are two Onegins on stage: young and old. The young man hardly speaks. The old one talks a lot. Old Onegin has become wiser (everyone is strong in hindsight), softened (the steep slides rolled away) and remembers his outrages (they once seemed to him witty fun): “How wrong I was! How punished!” His serpent of memories, his remorse is gnawing…

To old Onegin, these thoughts of the 23-year-old Pushkin are just right.

And Lensky has aged. Smiling, he looks at himself young (there are also two Lenskys) and remembers himself sympathetically, but also with irony:

A fan of Kant and a poet!

Yes, he died young; Onegin killed him, so it happened. But, I'm sorry, the soul is immortal, and what prevents it from going on stage in the XXI century and remembering its youth (think about it ? only 200 years have passed)" ^[5].

All this is fine from a literary point of view, but it does not explain why Tuminas split Onegin and Lensky after all. Besides, did they stay by themselves? Let's take a closer look, for example, at the old Onegin. Not only did he get smarter (by the way, Pushkin's Onegin didn't get much smarter, judging by the way he was trying to get Tatiana), Onegin was fed up with Pushkin's own thoughts.

Who has lived and thought, he cannot

Don't despise people in your heart;

Who felt, that worries

The Ghost of Irrevocable Days:

There are no charms for that,

That serpent of memories,

That remorse is gnawing…

Such an old Onegin of Tuminas, in my opinion, has nothing in common with Pushkin's Onegin, even at the very end of the poem. I think that the wiser Lensky is not much like Alexander Sergeyevich Lensky.

Another technique, according to Minkin, is the "modernization" of historical events. For example, Lensky becomes a modern way of giving Olga an accordion. 

"Accordion! He's so beautiful. Olga is happy, and Lensky is happy. A witty and brilliant theatrical (exactly in the style of Pushkin) solution! It is said:

He's from Germany foggy

Brought the fruits of learning

Here it is ? a magnificent sparkling mother-of-pearl fruit of foreign scholarship. It doesn't occur to the public that this is an anachronism. Lensky brought something that did not exist at the beginning of the XIX century. The favorite trophy fruit of German scholarship among Soviet soldiers in 1945. Encyclopedia of Russian Life" ^[5].

Modernization is only one of the types of a more general technique ? the "reinterpretation" of the events and contents of "Eugene Onegin". Minkin illustrates this technique most vividly with two examples: a scene perceived by Lensky as a betrayal of Onegin and Olga, and a duel that turns into a real murder. 

"The scandal with Olga is a scandal that will lead to a duel, ? Onegin also arranged it coolly, prudently, professionally. But Lensky is to blame himself: he dragged a friend into a provincial gathering of rabble (Akhmadulin), and he could not stand a vulgar crowd…

Now Onegin in front of the groom, in front of everyone, will disgrace Olga. He invites her to dance, and she rejoices ? she takes the flattering attention of the metropolitan gentleman at face value. And this is a dirty trap. Olga is just a tool for him…

A silent scene. The calculating cold bastard approaches Olga from behind, puts his hands under her armpits and puts his palms on the accordion. And strokes the keyboard. The audience involuntarily has the Russian word “paws" in their ears.

Everyone stares at first, and then hides their eyes ? they can't look at this shamelessness. And poor Lensky sees what a dear friend is doing to his fiancee.

For the accordion ? but it is clear: for the chest. For the soul. For the music. Pawing the muse of Lensky. He plays on someone else's pure feelings."

"The duel is staged as a terrible dream. It starts realistically, according to all the rules. Onegin and Lensky take pistols, disperse... the command “Now converge!”, and immediately realism stops, the nightmare begins. Lensky, confused, climbs on some benches, the seconds climb in there and tear off his shirt, submissive; and then across the stage, with a clear, icy officer's gait, a dear friend goes to Lensky, naked to the waist, comes close, hugs him by the neck with his left hand, presses him to himself ? and Lensky who does not understand what is happening, it seems as if this is friendship, reconciliation ? but Onegin has a gun in his right hand, the barrel rests against his bare stomach. ? Shot, Lensky begins to settle.

The duel turned into some kind of gangster Hollywood murder with a slow-motion fall, because Lensky, swaying, falls for a long, very long time.

Such a shot (in the stomach, at point blank range) we have seen not only in the “Godfathers”, not only in the “White Sun of the Desert” (where Black Abdullah, clearly thinking about something of his own, indifferently shoots an old museum curator in the stomach). Such hugs are for all time" ^[5].

We will now give a voice to Pushkin (I have used this technique before, analyzing the evolution of our poet's personality ^{[7, p. 129]}). Let's imagine that Alexander Sergeevich watched the performance of Tuminas and shares his impressions with us.

"It's strange, if it weren't for my poems, I wouldn't have recognized either Onegin or Lensky. The comedian Tuminas, like Zeus, for some reason divided everyone into two persons, but each half not only does not strive for each other to form an androgynous whole, but on the contrary behaves independently and oppositely. I tried to show that, despite the past time and circumstances, Onegin and Lensky remained themselves, personalities. They changed and developed, not split. Then, unless a duel is murder, well, yes, ladies often asked me why I killed Lensky. But, firstly, not me, but Onegin, besides, he later regretted it very much, and secondly, he did not kill, but allowed the duel to determine the player who was retiring from life. The conventionality of light is a terrible force, remember, I wrote:

Enemies! How long has their thirst for blood taken them away from each other? Have they been sharing leisure hours, meals, thoughts and deeds amicably for a long time? Now maliciously, Hereditary enemies are like in a terrible, incomprehensible dream, They are preparing death for each other in silence in cold blood... Should they not laugh until their hand is stained, Should they not part amicably?.. But wildly secular enmity Is Afraid of false shame.

   The duel is faceless, it is an action of nature, albeit social. And the comedian Tuminas has everything very personal, and a real murder without meaning. Then he depicted some kind of world unfamiliar to me. Everything in it boils, rushes, sparkles, collapses, and like shadows, but the loud-voiced heroes of my poem. I involuntarily perceive them as demons, and the story of Onegin and Tatiana has turned into a farce. This reality is unfamiliar to me."

   But I will try to help Alexander Sergeevich by explaining what Tuminas did with his poem. On the one hand, both Tuminas and Pushkin remain in the space (sphere) of art. As I show, this means working to create an artistic reality, a special convention and aesthetics of the events of this reality, the author's orientation towards artistic communication and helping viewers trying to understand the created work (to enter into artistic reality and experience its events). At the same time, both the artist (author) and the viewer fully live: they solve the problems facing them, express their attitude to life, communicate with each other ^{[7; 8]}.   

   On the other hand, the artistic tasks of Pushkin and Tuminas do not coincide. Alexander Sergeevich talks about Russian life at the beginning of the XIX century, he thought over his life, how it could have developed if, yes, he had shared his thoughts and impressions with an educated public about almost everything that worried him. He did all this as a brilliant artist, using words and poetry. Poetry sets limits to imagination and imagination. Yes, for example, we can almost see the early morning of the capital and hear the crunch of snow:

What about my Onegin? Half asleep In bed from the ball he goes: And restless Petersburg is already awakened by the drum. A merchant gets up, a peddler goes, A cabman stretches to the stock exchange, Okhtenka hurries With a jug, The morning snow crunches under her. Woke up in the morning the noise is pleasant. The shutters are open; the pipe smoke rises in a column of blue, And the bread-maker, a neat German, In a paper cap, has opened his vasisdas more than once  

But we see, so to speak, with the inner, third eye, we hear, imagining.  

   Tuminas is more concerned with the task of building a theatrical reality, and the reality of the modern, not the nineteenth century. Naturally, at the same time, he also does not hide his attitude to life, but still the main thing for Tuminas is to develop and conduct an attitude to Pushkin's poem, its events and heroes, and only secondarily solve his own problems. On this path, a very difficult problem really arose for Tuminas: how to express the verbal content, albeit ingenious, but not visual, visually, theatrically? In art criticism reflection it sounds like this: how can we create a "theatrical action" on the basis of Pushkin's images that involve imagination, show what Pushkin is talking about with the help of artists' games, infect the audience, engage in communication with them? ^[2] To solve this most difficult task, the techniques that Minkin writes about were required, but they only need to be understood correctly.  

Why, for example, two Onegins? And the fact is that at the end of the poem Onegin has changed so much that, from the point of view of theatrical action, he is a different person. Of course, if Tuminas, like Pushkin, believed that a person develops and therefore changes, then he would have to think about how to express the "development" of the hero on stage. He went the other way: he depicted only the beginning and the end, besides, this decision gave a lot in visual terms, as well as images of character. True, it is unlikely that a person's character can change so much, but if Onegin is only the material for Tuminas' creativity, and not a real person, then why not?

This shift (from a real person to a creative material) is especially noticeable in other techniques and images. For example, Tatiana's confession in a conversation with the nanny.

"Oh, nanny, nanny, I'm longing, I'm sick, my dear: I'm ready to cry, I'm ready to cry!.."? My child, you're not well; God have mercy and save! What do you want, ask... Let me sprinkle with holy water, You're all on fire... ? "I'm not sick: I'm... you know, a nanny... in love." ? My child, the Lord is with you! ? And the nurse baptized the girl with an old hand with supplication.

            Only the text remained of Pushkin. Everything else is from Tuminas: the bed on which Tatiana rushes and performs acrobatic steps, her own bed (bench), Tatiana lifts and drags along the stage; Tanya's enthusiastic emotional state ? in short, a magnificent theatrical action brilliantly performed by actresses Olga Lerman and Evgenia Kregzhde.

   Here you can no longer say that imagination alone: you see, you worry, you get infected emotionally, and the text is just the background, besides, most viewers remember it by heart, that is, they no longer worry.

Of course, this question also begs: are these decisions of Tuminas (for example, the above-discussed outrageous Lensky and duel?murders) Pushkin's ideas, only modernized, or are they Tuminas' contents that have nothing in common with Pushkin's? It seems to me the second, but maybe I'm wrong.

However, in the production of Tuminas there are also such solutions that do not fit into the logic of reworking Pushkin's content in a modern way. They are clearly solving some other problem. I will give two examples. Almost no one understands the scene with the bunny: at first the hunter aims at him and wants to kill him, but then after a strange dance performed by the bunny, which ends with a kiss (the bunny kisses the hunter, who forgets about the gun and stands like a drunk), the bunny quietly disappears.

 The second example is the wanderer, who resembles a medieval wandering artist; she often accompanies the heroes of the production. 

Onegin (Guskov), the wanderer with domra (Ekaterina Kramzina),

photo by Valery Myasnikov

The plot with the bunny is placed by Tuminas in the event of Tatiana moving from the village to Moscow. The move divides the events of the poem into two parts (stories): in the first, Onegin rejects Tatiana's love, the second ends with Tatiana rejecting Onegin's love. But then a natural interpretation suggests itself: the plot with the bunny is a caricature of the development of Onegin's relationship with Tatiana (the hunter is young Onegin at first, and old at the end). Why is it caricatured, why, by the way, is the accordion or why is Tatiana tossing on the bed and dragging her around the stage, why is the village hospitality at Tatiana's name day mocked, so Onegin is forced against his will to drink one cup of milk (cranberry water?) the other one? Probably because Tuminas is a postmodernist (hence, irony, deconstruction, humor, detection of simulacra) ^{[1; 3]}.

But the plot with the bunny makes it possible to understand a very important thing: this narrative is "reflexive" (the analysis of "Eugene Onegin" suggests), but Tuminas inserts it into artistic reality as one of the events. How to understand, in the unfolding relationship between Onegin and Tatiana, which has not yet been completed (completion is still ahead, at the end of the poem), a reflexive description of these relations, as already completed, is inserted. The whole is inside its part! But isn't it so often that a piece of music is built: some motive, melody or theme is just being outlined, they begin to be developed, but suddenly they are interrupted by a fragment in which the whole is viewed, up to the code.   

And the story with the wanderer is reflexive. To understand its meaning, let us recall that in "Eugene  Onegine" Pushkin is the most important narrator, and he addresses his reader ^[6]. But in poetry, as we have said, this author-narrator relationship is not visually represented, it is implied, read by an enlightened reader. You can't do that on stage: go guess what old Onegin says not just like that, into space, but to someone, and to whom, I ask? So Tuminas introduces the wanderer into artistic reality. She not only closes the characters' monologues on herself, but also makes the viewer think, "who is this", is he himself, "what is this", perhaps an indication of the nature of communication.

The plot with the murder of Lensky, of course, is not reflexive. He reveals one of the problems of the author of the production: he probably reflected more than once on the modern war and senseless murders of our time. The duel scene in the theatrical interpretation of Tuminas allows the reader to think about these questions, to experience them in a specific duel scene that has shifted into a real murder.  

However, what did we get? Firstly, Tuminas is not trying to present Pushkin's brilliant work in a new, modern way, but creates a new work, his own. Secondly, the artistic reality of this new work is made up of very different events, including reflexive ones. The sacramental question arises: how do these heterogeneous events create a whole (as Aristotle wrote in Poetics, so that "it is impossible to add or subtract"). After all, if this whole is not set, then it is not clear what is happening on the stage. For example, why an accordion, what does a bunny kiss mean, why is Tatiana rushing around like crazy, is this a duel?    

Again, it is possible that Tuminas, like Pushkin, counts only on an enlightened viewer, who himself will collect individual events and vicissitudes into integrity and real life. I think not, he means the average viewer. But it only assumes that he has already left the traditional aesthetics and conventions and has learned new ones.  In traditional aesthetics, the artist depicts the world and life existing outside of a person (or inside him), which are considered as universally significant, common to all. In the new aesthetics and conventions, the world and events of the consciousness of the individual (artist, viewer) are described and constituted ^[8]. Since each person is a "microcosm" and is unique, in order to understand a modern work, it is necessary to make efforts, to collect different contents of consciousness into a unity and a whole. Here is a special task of the director and the director, but also the artist ? to help the viewer to do this work. Music, scenery, and the performance of artists play an important role in this help.

Perhaps if the author of the review, with whom we started the article, had joined the new aesthetics and conventions, her review would have looked somewhat different.

"The play "Eugene Onegin" ? E. Vakhtangov Theater (Russia, Moscow) - The director and the actors made me do a lot of work. The impression is complex, but not negative…

I was glad that much of Pushkin's imperishable work remained in my head ? I remember almost the entire text perfectly. Knowing the text helps, although it's strange, it seems Pushkin's poems are just the background. And the main content of Tuminas. But the name is the same "Eugene Onegin", and what was Tuminas to do? The son (12 years old turned out to be very small, he was not interested and boring, he kept waiting for when to laugh, for some reason perceives going to the theater as something funny and funny. When he grows up, he looks like different performances and directors, then he will laugh about the case. Tuminas has something to laugh and cry about. You can't deny him humor and irony.

Some characters are questionable. For example, Olga Larina. Reading Pushkin, I couldn't imagine Olga running around the stage all evening with an accordion in her arms. It looked funny somehow. And on the other hand, how to portray Olga's naivety and at the same time her purity for a modern viewer, if not through music?

The character “bunny” ? I don't remember this from Pushkin at all, I need to reread it. An aunt runs out on stage, in white tights, in a white tutu, in a large white cap with long bunny ears (do you remember how we dressed up three-year-old children in kindergarten?). So, here such an overgrown hare ran onto the stage with some secret mission.

Everyone was laughing. My son is also lucky here.

And I didn't understand at all ? what a hare, you need to think... Although wait, because the roles change there: then the hunter aims at the bunny, then the bunny kisses the hunter and he becomes like a drunk, this is from the hare. However, somewhere I remember, Pushkin compares Tatiana with a bunny. Maybe it's Tatiana, then in the role of a victim of love, then Onegin in the same role? Then it's clear.

But many things are still unclear. However, I read somewhere that it is impossible to skip the incomprehensible, the thought begins with it. It is necessary to instill this in the son imperceptibly. At first I wanted to leave in the middle of the second act, but then I got carried away ? it's not often that I have to solve interesting riddles and worry at the same time. Moreover, I am with my son ? it is not logical to leave the theater with “Eugene Onegin”. Well, it's not Pushkin, but what a material for thoughts and impressions. I will definitely talk to my son and husband about this production tomorrow."