Moscow theaters prepare interesting premieres for the public.
Photo: Mikhail FROLOV
Almost all Moscow theaters opened a new season, held company meetings and announced their plans. As usual, there are a lot of them, moving on to the next season. We will not feed on distant perspectives. We will offer a review of the upcoming releases. Some performances already premiered the other day and others are on the way.
Satire Theater
The Satire Theater will inaugurate its hundredth season with the premiere of the play “Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession.” This is a very old production history. In 1935, the Satire Theater began work on the play “Ivan Vasilyevich” based on the play by Mikhail Bulgakov. However, after a dress rehearsal, which took place in the presence of the country’s party leaders, the production was shut down and the play was banned. During the author’s lifetime, the work was never published. It was first published in 1965. On its basis, Leonid Gaidai directed the film “Ivan Vasilyevich changes his profession”, in which the action moved to the 1970s.
Director Sergei Gazarov returned the plot to its original time frame. In his work, as in Bulgakov’s, two eras will collide on stage: the New Economic Policy and the Russian Middle Ages, where the characters of the play move with the help of a time machine created by the engineer Timofeev . We will not retell the plot, everyone knows it thanks to Gaidai’s comedy.
The time machine itself will become an independent hero of the work. In the end he has a special “role” prepared.
The steward of the house Bunshu and Tsar Ivan the Terrible are played by Russian people’s artist Yuri Vasiliev. Georges Miloslavsky – Artyom Minin / Fyodor Lavrov.
When: September 29 and 30
Ticket price: 3000 – 20000 rubles.
Oleg Tabakov Theater
“The Deadly Number” premiered at the Oleg Tabakov Theater. Almost thirty years ago it was performed in Vladimir Mashkov’s “Snuffbox” based on the play by playwright Oleg Antonov. The performance was successful, recognized and awarded.
And here on the stage is THAT take two, with young actors: Vladislav Naumov, Artur Kasimov, Sevastyan Smyshnikov, Vladislav Miller, Yegor Khokhlov. The boys play lightly, almost without weight, while the director Vladimir Mashkov imposes difficult tasks on the artists: singing, dancing, doing tricks… Night. In the tent of a traveling circus, the Clown rehearses a deadly number to surprise tomorrow’s audience. And suddenly it crumbles and falls to the sand. His soul flies away and from a cloud of dust four clowns appear: Red, White, Black and Long, who lean over the body of his colleague. Each viewer will decide in their own way who these clowns are and why they are here. While the spectator reflects on this, a spectacular spectacle is performed in the arena of a traveling circus with pyrotechnic tricks, illusion acts, clown repetitions and magical music by Michael Nyman. Despite the apparent ease of interpretation, this is a serious philosophical parable.
When: September 12, 20, 21, 30.
Ticket price: 3000 – 10000 rubles.
“Lenkom”
The official premiere of the play “Mayakovsky” took place at the Lenkom Theater in Moscow.
This is the debut on the Lenkom stage of director Alexei Frandetti, who was appointed chief director of the theater a year ago. On the occasion of Mayakovsky’s 130th birthday, he organized a hip-hop style performance.
Rapper Basta and his team Gazgolder provided the music and lyrics. The play was written by playwright Nika Simonova. According to Alexey Frandetti, Basta’s music and energy rhyme with Mayakovsky’s poems like nothing else. The author of the scenery in the style of avant-garde artists is the stage designer Vyacheslav Okunev.
Mayakovsky is occupied by a team of young, flexible Lenkom artists who sing and dance elegantly. The artists of the ensemble (as written in the program) rap, sing and perform hip-hop. The performance is very spectacular, as an expensive performance should be.
Vladimir Mayakovsky appears in different compositions by Stanislav Tikunov and Igor Konyakhin. Lenkom stars also participate in the production: Ivan Agapov, Lyubov Matyushina, Viktor Rakov, Elena Shanina, Stanislav Belyaev, Sergei Piotrovsky…
When: September 22, 23, October 6.
Entrance price: 2000 – 18000 rubles.
Theater named after Gogol
The Gogol Theater began the season with the premiere of the play “Uncle’s Dream” based on Dostoevsky’s story, directed by Alexander Marin. Actress Alena Yakovleva plays the role of entrepreneur Marya Alexandrovna Moskaleva, who lives in the provincial town of Mordasov and dreams of marrying her twenty-three-year-old daughter Zina well. The eccentric prince K., whom poor Zina plans to marry, Alexander Semchev. The young heroes are played by Varvara Komarova and Kirill Kovbas.
When: September 29, October 8, 15 and 27
Ticket price: 500 – 5000 rubles.
Theater named after Mayakovsky
The first premiere of the season will be the play “Measure for Measure”, based on Shakespeare’s play, directed by Sasha Zolotovitsky.
The genre of the work is “anti-comedy.” However, there will be plenty of live music and street humour, bringing Shakespeare closer to today’s newspaper headlines.
“Shakespeare has the intonations of our time: humor, heroes, current concepts of bullying, body shaming, the Me Too movement…” says director Sasha Zolotovitsky. The performance will take place on the theater’s Small Stage.
When: September 16, 17, 30, October 5 and 12.
Ticket price: 1200 – 2500 rubles.
RAMT
The first premiere of the season at the Russian Youth Theater is “The House Stood Here,” directed by Marina Brusnikina. The performance is based on the theater’s former inhabitants’ memories of home, life and their favorite things. As in Ivan Elagin’s poem “Here was the house. And there was a poplar. No house, no poplar, but suddenly above my head I felt the presence of a volume called the corner room…”
The Small Stage space will become a large multi-room apartment, where actors Larisa Grebenshchikova, Alexey Blokhin, Tatyana Shatilova, Yuri Grigoriev, Vladimir Vasilenko, Tatyana Kuryanova, Andrey Bazhin, Andrey Sorokin, Olga Grishova and others “live”.
When: September 12, 14, 21, 25
Ticket price: 2000 – 2200 rubles.
Theater on Malaya Bronnaya
A play with a funny name premiered in the theater on Bronnaya – the bitter play “Summer Residents in Bali or “Assa” 30 Years Later.” The author of the stage fantasy on the theme of Maxim Gorky’s work “Summer Residents”, as can be easily guessed from the title of the work, is Konstantin Bogomolov. He is an entertainer and a skilled adapter of the classics. The performance features artists from the Bronnaya Theater and guest stars: Alexandra Rebenok and Igor Mirkurbanov.
When: September 12, 19 and 25.
Ticket price: 4000 – 16000 rubles.