A DIRECTOR'S APPROACH TO "THE MADMEN GATHERING"

Who among our contemporaries does not know the works of the Azerbaijani journalist, educator and satirical writer Calil Mammadquluzada? Even a careless schoolchild that gets low marks surely knows him, or maybe not. The interest in his dramas occurs directly in proportion to the outbursts of intellectual activity in society. As heralds of the times, directors sense this latent state of awareness and choose what may not only turn out to be topical but also interesting. Irada Gozalova has chosen Calil Mammadquluzada's play "The Madmen Gathering". Why? It would seem that the play has been staged repeatedly, and it has always remained an example of a work on a topical, satirical subject. 

Plot

Dr Lalbyuz comes to one of the towns in our area from America. He comes there for an exclusively noble purpose, to build a home where mad people can live. According to the data there are many of them in the town, and they present a danger to society. Devout people live there too. The doctor has to find out who is who. But the local residents are at a loss to understand how he can cope with this task without knowing the language. The doctor is calculating on using a dictionary. But soon he realises that he has ultimately ceased to understand where there are madmen and where there are not, coming to the conclusion that all the people are "the madmen gathering". The pious people are indignant, but they are not madmen or those who are called madmen are in fact devout people…

On the director's concept

Irada Gozalova is the youngest chief director in our country. She heads the State Drama Theatre in Ganca. This is not her first practical experience in staging a play. She has had occasion to work in Russia and in her home towns - in Baku and Ganja. She is confidently taking the first steps in her profession. In our country, in keeping with the copyright law, the director is the author of the production. The production "The Madmen Gathering", as staged by the Ganja actors at the Azerbaijan State Russian Drama Theatre, is confirmation of this. How does the director arrange her dialogue with the audience? She resorts to the comedy of the street theatre, successfully bringing together its elements with the theatre of psychological action. And it develops rapidly, situations replacing one another with the speed of a kaleidoscope, not allowing the spectator to get bored for even a moment. It is quite obvious that the author of the production is enamoured with her own main characters, irrespective of who they are - whether they are positive or negative. She finds each of them interesting and she enthusiastically studies each type of man or woman. So, why did the director find the play interesting, which the author has defined as a comedy, but which is described in Azerbaijani literary studies as a tragi-comedy?

It would seem that the problem is that the mindless existence of the main characters living day by day turns their lives into a game. They play the game to amuse themselves. It gets rid of common sense, takes them away from real life, and deprives them of higher thoughts, replacing the truth with lies, and distracting them from genuine values. Therefore they tell lies easily and deceive one another, trying to earn money from their near ones in any way they can; they speculate on the misfortunes of others, only to "rip off a large sum" in the situation obtaining and so forth. It is just about a groundswell of superficial activity and languor of the spirit! This is why it is easy for lies to enter their lives - vices like swindling, making a fortune and the dumbing down of people. People trample over the golden deposits of wisdom of our own ancestors without noticing it.

In order to focus attention on that, the director needed a "Messiah" in the form of Dr. Lalbyuz who has returned the genuine values of the holy scriptures "to the madmen" instead of paganism with its idol-worshipping the real values of the holy book. They fly to Earth, ribbons torn away from the tree of desires. In place of this the forgotten book, the Quran, enters the lives of the "madmen": a philosophical tract for mankind, explaining "what is good and what is bad". There is nothing newer than well forgotten things revived! The idea itself is very positive, even humane. Irada Gozalova has tried to adapt the old play to the perception of the contemporary audience. She has almost managed to do this. True, it did not happen without slight roughness at the edges, but we will put that down to youth and little practical experience. She has staged 10 plays in three years. This is not so little for a would-be director, but directing is a practical skill. The more you stage, the better you get at it. The production genre is not defined in the programme, so this also liberates the producer from a certain degree of responsibility for what may happen on the stage. Moreover there is no genre eclecticism in this production. Everything is kept in the single key of the street theatre comedy!

On the acting

However, in spite of the director's staging errors, the production turned out to be lively and entertaining. The actors gave professional performances of the characters to such an extent that it was hard to distinguish one from another, as this would not be fair to the rest. There was the cunning scoundrel Fazil Mahammad (Elxan Abbasov) who has a passion for Sona (Parvana Qurbanova), the wife of his brother Abass. In order to possess her he thinks up a scheme: the wives of the madmen should make a pact with their husband's pious brothers and, to confirm their consent, they should get into a kedzhava (a special litter used for carrying the dead). It is precisely Fazil who is the head of the so-called "normal people". The actor creates the image of a crafty person, but convincingly sincere in all his manifestations as a person.

There is Lalbyuz (Ilham Husey-nov), an American of the dodger type who knows how to "make money" out of the stupidity of people from "the third world"; every minute he spends among these people makes him feel how superior he is to them. The excellent speeches and plastic characteristics of the image are readily created by the actor, in a relaxed manner and only in moments of the "rebirth" of the main character is there a certain erosion of it in the acts. Then there is Pirpiz Sona (Parvana Qurbanova), who is naive and trusting like a child; all the same she is the embodiment of the collective soul or conscience, which was once lost by the people in her settlement!

She is an actress with a splendid organic manner of performance, who creates without any particular effort the fairly sophisticated personality of a woman whose mental development was halted back in her youth. Then there is Abass (Salam Ismayil), who pretends to be mad in order to be with his wife the whole time, to appear to everyone as being like her, which means he has the right to take care of her, as circumstances require. The actor plays Abass as a person who sees the difference between white and black, but does not know how to withstand the force of evil. The only thing that he can do is to set his devoted love for his wife off against all this madness. Like everyone around them, he and she are in a world consisting of two halves, the good and the bad, the white and the black, the male and the female.

On the resistance to the play

In spite of the playwright's version, the author of the production turns Dr. Lalbyuz into a Messiah who brings the light of truth to the ultimately confused residents of either a town or a settlement. The idea is of course is a noble one. May our people get something from across the ocean! Not all of us are looking that way in the hope of learning something! Separate from the play, this is simply remarkable. But the play was written, so all this is a marvellous transformation proposed by the director - an insight, an illumination, grace descended and so forth. There are no prerequisites or motives spurring the main character on to undergo such a rebirth!

The books (Quran) which he gets out of a plaster cast of a doll (representing the child Sona) are not sufficient for such a marvellous rebirth. Moreover, it is so wonderful that the American receives the gift of healing! Then he cures a poor disabled person, whose relatives had so cynically earned money from his illness! Associated memory obligingly threw up the memories of the biblical raising of Lazarus, of the bread and fishes with which the Messiah fed the suffering and the starving. The parallel that arises appears blasphemous. For a moment it appeared that this move on the part of the director was leading up to the idea that the Messiah from across the ocean was also false.

Then it is the "madmen" who reveal the deception to us at any moment! But not so. The production's author quite seriously examines the variant of the coming of the Messiah, of Lalbyuz as the saviour of other people's moral values. The play is the opposite to the trend in the director's interpretations and therefore even in the final scene of the communal prayer with the shouts of Allahu Akbar" which are so familiar to our ears makes us think of completely different things, but does not add the act of persuasiveness"

 In the playwright's version Lalbyuz simply disappears somewhere. Either the devout people have crushed him or the madmen have taken him with them. He could have been trampled to death during a small uprising. Lalbyuz had fulfilled his function in the drama, bringing the action to its culmination, which allows Fazil to take advantage in his interests of the situation that arises. These interests are connected with Sona! It is not Lalbyuz who is important to the author in the finale, Mad Sona and her husband Abass are the important ones. To be more exact, it is their love for one another. This is the only thing that can save them, that can give them hope and the strength to live. This is because everything divine can be embodied in man and through man…

On the whole, the lively, emotional convincing performance of the actors rivets attention, focusing interest in what is happening on stage. But the theatre is alive on stage. This is a visible reminder that the theatre is alive and for the moment the spirit of creativity is alive. For the moment emotions, feelings and thoughts are alive, those of the directors, actors and artists. For the moment the idea is confirmed in practice that the theatre is a synthetic art.