GUARDIANS OF TRADITION

The members of the Samad Vurgun Russian-Language State Theatre of Drama re-ceived a unique gift on the theatre's birthday: a performance of Uncle's Dream by the Tovstonogov Academy Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT). The staging was put on by Teymur Chkheidze, successor to Georgy Alek-sandrovich, whose hundred-year birthday the theatre celebrated this year. It was a grand project that was made possibly thanks to the Centre for Touring at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Russian Federation. For two days the residents and guests of Baku could enjoy the artistry of actors from St. Petersburg. BDT in particular is the guardian of the tradition of the Russian theatrical school of psychologism, and a good example of how a theatre-goer needs this kind of theatre: live, emotional, realistic. This was exactly what theatre-goers talked about during the play's intermission while walking about the foyer of the Russian-language Theatre of Drama. 

Artistic conception

Within the exhausted space of the stage, quaintly adorned with sky-blue wings resembling lifeless sails, life - provincial, monotonous, boring - drags slowly on. Even the enormous grandfather clock at the home of Madame Moskaleva (People's Artist of the USSR, Russian State Prize Laureate Alisa Freyndlikh), with its hanging pendulum led its own life, estranged from people. The swinging of the pendulum was strange: viscous and slow. Time in this house takes its own account of what happens, as if not at all noticing the house's inhabitants and their passions. Time in Chkheidze's staging (art director Emil Kapelyush) is taciturn, an objective observer. Madam Moskaleva; her husband Afanasiy (Distinguished Artist of Russia Evgeniy Chudakov); their beautiful daughter Zinaida (Polina Tolstun); the ladies of the town of Mordasovo; Prince K. (People's Artist of the USSR, Laureate of the Russian State Prize Oleg Basilashvili); Pavel Mozglyakov, the man impersonating the Prince's nephew (Kirill Zhandarov) - they all rush and bustle about, worrying themselves about trifles, and everything they do seems important to them. And time unhurriedly moves into tomorrow. Only in the play's finale does the enormous grandfather clock slowly lift upwards, leaving behind the train of a wedding veil: Zina, having lost her first ardent love, will finally get married! But time stops for her forever. We do not see her husband, who Dostoevsky says was a "stern general, battle-scarred, with two stars and a white cross around his neck." Nor do we see Zina "proud and haughty, in diamonds and a magnificent white dress", dancing "only with generals" at balls. Teymur Chkheidze embodies these pages in an understated but expressive mise-en-scene. Polina Tolstun's Zina, having passed happiness by and carrying Vasya's mother's curses into a loveless future, walks away from her dying lover along a dark roadway and freezes at its edge, as if it were the boundary between past and future. But as soon as the grandfather clock swims up, leaving behind a Milky Way created by the veil, and the billowing sails/wings fall at the feet of Madam Moskaleva, Zina, pausing briefly, throws up her nimble hands and resembles a small dancing ballerina in a music box. From now on her face will become a mask expressing nothing besides a cold beauty. She will live long, enchanted by her own cold beauty, but warming no one with her love: a beautiful mechanical doll. 

The play

So what is Teymur Chkheizde's staging of Uncle's Dream about? Is it about Prince K. or the beautiful young Zina? And what is the uncle's dream about? It is about that which cannot be regained. About what was and will never be again. This is that very same boundary between the past and future. A thin line, which cannot be the present. In the Prince's case, because nothing can be regained now - not his memory, his youth, his feeling of happiness, his joy or harmony. In Zina's case, because you cannot regain lost love. There will be no more love. In its place is an empty glamorous space filled with people she does not need. 

During the intermission people spoke in raptured tones as they exchanged their impressions of the play. Baku theatre-goers shared this artistic event with the performers of the Russian-language Drama Theatre sitting in the audience and the BDT performers acting in the play.

Alisa Freyndlich

Marya Aleksandrovna Moskaleva is one of many characters portrayed by this unique actress. What is her heroine's problem? After all, this provincial lady has the reputation of the "first lady" of the gubernatorial city of Mordasovo. She has an unsurpassed talent to show off, to "murder" a rival with a bon mot, a caustic remark, or a carefully placed rumour! She is hated, but they have to take her into account! But why is she making such a fuss over her only daughter, trying to marry her off to an elderly prince who is losing his memory? To get rich? To live the rest of her life in comfort and leisure? It's not that simple. For a very long time it seems that Alisa Freyndlich's Mos-kaleva is simply a materialistic provincial lady who desperately wants to move up in the world. She gripes with and endlessly terrorizes everyone: the maid, the hanger-on who lives with them, her husband, her daughter. And only near the play's end do we understand why she became the way she is. When Zina goes to the boundary at which time splits and is entranced there, the actress delivers a monologue. It has neither the emotion nor the pain of a woman who is doomed to a long life with a man she does not love, but it does have a clear understanding of hopelessness which can only be suppressed by fighting the world and oneself at the same time. It brings to mind Masha from Chekhov's Three Sisters, who remorsefully explains the reason for cheating on her husband. Freyndlich's heroine does not feel sorry for anything. The opposite - she be-lieves her life is a great feat, because living with someone you do not love is the same as daily volunteering to be tortured and survive it. 

Oleg Basilashvili

Prince K. in the actor's interpretation is an old gullible child who has lost all feeling for time. This causes him to confuse the present with the past. He lives as if he is constantly trying to remember something very, very important. The people of the city take him for a gentleman suffering from severe dementia, one who resembles a "dead man on springs." But when Polina Tolstun's Zina sings a strange romance, as if accompanying herself with whimsical crystalline sounds, the prince suddenly remembers the marvellous days of his childhood and youth, when he was loved and in love. Then everything seemed harmonious! And as the young woman sang, the prince remembered everything and regained himself in the present. The category of time ceased to be his enemy.

Polina Tolstun

This young actress confidently took a leading position among the young actress of the BDT troupe; her work enchanted the audience with its sincerity and professionalism. Polina Tolstun's Zina is not your average girl. She has her own opinion and viewpoint about everything, meaning that Madam Moskaleva must bring considerable mental effort to bear in order to sound convincing and authoritative to her daughter. The situation is far from simple: in a fit of jealousy the poor young teacher Vasya (Sergey Galich) has compromised the young woman in high society by revealing the contents of a love letter she sent him. Zina understands what drove her lover and even wishes to save him - Vasya is dying of galloping consumption. She believes her dear mother, who says that by marrying the elderly but rich prince, she can send her Vasya abroad for treatment! The actress plays Zina as a woman who has fallen into her dear mother's carefully placed trap. She understands that it's a trick, but part of her heart is nevertheless willing to believe that it's possible. The compromise is short-lived. She confesses to the prince, asking forgiveness for herself and her mother. And only later, when Vasya dies, does she turn into an unfeeling beautiful doll.

Kirill Zhandarov

His character is provincial bureaucrat Pavel Mozglyakov, who has accidentally stumbled upon Prince K., who has fallen into a difficult situation. Mozglyakov decides to impersonate the Prince's nephew among the high society of the town of Mordasovo. Kirill portrays his character as a rather unprincipled person, in step with the times: he, as was accepted in society, "acted like a playboy and man about town", showed off and seemed very respectable to himself. He seems intellectually worthless, good for nothing, a useless person. Even love for the provincial beauty Zina does not transform him. His feelings do not ennoble him. The opposite: it drives him to acts that are even more off-putting and petty. After eavesdropping on a conversation in which Madam Moskaleva talks her daughter into compromising with the prince, Mozglyakov goes and tells all the district's gossip-mongers about it! 

Maria Lavrova

Lavrova is a Distinguished Artist of Russia and a Russian State Prize laureate. She plays a hanger-on and distant relative of Moskaleva. She acts, carefully emphasizing her heroine's priorities: each service has its price. Her Nastasya Petrovna takes even a bribe as if it were a well-deserved reward, and gives out information without pangs of conscience - everything in life has its price! The actress explains the blatant cynicism of her character's actions by having the hanger-on be taken by the dim dream of a comfortable old-age: the opportunity to arrange a marriage with Prince K.! And now everything she does is a petty act of revenge against Madam Moskaleva for her taking away the chance to no longer bear the "title" of hanger-on!

Evgeniy Chudakov

Chudakov is a Distinguished Artist of Russia. He plays Marya Aleksan-drovna Moskaleva's husband, Afanasiy Matveevich. In Chudakov's interpretation, Afanasiy becomes his wife's puppet - a puppet with a long history as such. However, this puppet still has a sense of his own dignity. The actor justifies Afanasiy's behaviour by implying that the best way to avoid scandal is to keep quiet. Afanasiy Matveevich does not make a big deal out of things. He tries to rise above her, making ironic remarks about his wife's indelicate and dictatorial behaviour, as if making fun of an amusing misunderstanding.

Yelena Popova

Popova is a Distinguished Artist of Russia. She plays Sofia Petrovna, the widow of a colonel. Lonely, bereft of attention or friends, the widow drinks a little too much. She makes visits only with the goal of having a spot of something - and not of tea. "I've already had tea!" she says defiantly, outraged. After four glasses of liqueur she tells Madam Moskaleva, who has adroitly elicited all the necessary information, all the latest about the prince staying at Natalya Petrovna's! After the colonel's death, her entire life, its very meaning, is focused on getting and retelling the "news" of the district capital town of Mordasovo. That is the only way she can be useful. Her loneliness and hurt are drowned in liqueur, but even this cannot alleviate the pain caused by losing her life's meaning.

The play has many quotations that refer to works of classic Russian literature, and Dostoevsky's characters have similarities to many classic Russian literary characters. These are Chekhov's Three Sisters, Pushkin's Evgeniy Onegin, Gogol's The Govern-ment Inspector and Marriage, and Ostrovsky's Without a Dowry. This literary stratification, the motifs and allusions only strengthen Dostoevsky's theme of the people of his time. The St. Petersburg actors brilliantly depict their characters, turning a story from the middle of the nineteenth century into a very contemporary and timely problem brought to the stage. Teymur Chkheidze staged this play in 2008, but it has not lost its freshness or relevance today, seven years later. After all, for a theatre like the BDT, seven years is not all that long a period. The history of the collective includes strong, masterful, professionally-staged productions with even longer lifespans. For example, Tovstonogov's production of The Philistines was performed for 25 years and did not age. Actors changed as they aged, but the production lived! This is the secret of the Russian school of psychological theatre. This, and the ability to preserve the traditions of classical theatre - eternal and unending, just like life and love!