Pushkin novel Evgeny Onegin not often used for stage productions. But the director of the Vakhtangov Theater production of the same name, Rimas Tuminas, managed to transfer the famous plot to the stage. The star takes part in the performance cast- Yulia Borisova, Sergei Makovetsky, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Lyudmila Maksakova. But even against the backdrop of their unsurpassed performance, the characters of young and unfamiliar theater actors are not lost.
Throughout the play is on like a reflection on what “Eugene Onegin” is - love story or staging with a certain philosophical meaning? Is it a novel that is understandable to everyone with already foreseen changes in events or something unknown, mysterious and unsolved? Professional acting, musical accompaniment, harshness and emotionality, spilling out into auditorium- this is how one can characterize the play “Eugene Onegin” by Remus Tuminas, which differs from other productions of the same name in its special author’s original style, when Pushkin’s romantic poetry replaced by life prose.
This production at the Vakhtangov Theater is in great demand, so tickets for the play Eugene Onegin It's worth ordering in advance.
Performance "Eugene Onegin" at the Vakhtangov Theater
Not often in drama theater we meet Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”. Reading programs and opera interpretations prevail.
At the Vakhtangov Theater, director Rimas Tuminas, Yulia Borisova, Lyudmila Maksakova, Sergei Makovetsky, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Oleg Makarov and young artists decided to embody the novel in verse in dramatic form. Carefully, improvisationally, trying to find a stage equivalent to the word, the plot, without destroying anything and trying not to miss anything. This is our knowledge of Pushkin, his heroes, their world, the space of Russia.
It seems that we know everything about Pushkin. But even volumes of serious research by literary scholars and philosophers cannot fully comprehend the phenomenon of the poet. “Eugene Onegin” – what is it? Philosophical reflection about life in poetic form? - not only, a love story - not really. This is a huge space of the world and feelings that accommodates all eras, games of the mind, insights, guesses, anger, denunciation, satire and cynicism, compassion and forgiveness. This is an attempt to penetrate into the essence of the Russian soul, to understand the Russian character that defies sober analysis. This Russian society in all its guises - the naive charm of a pagan village and the cold stiffness high society. This is Tatiana’s courageous trepidation and Olga’s playful naivety. This is “a mind of cold observations and a heart of sorrowful notes.” The performance “Eugene Onegin” by Rimas Tuminas destroys stereotypes; it, as always, is the author’s, seen and constructed polyphonically, musically, harshly and emotionally. The director is alien to the poetic flair, he breaks the rhythmic structure of the phrase, he is attracted by the prose of life, he is an enemy of pomp and false lyricism.
Award " Golden mask" in the category "Work of a lighting designer"
Director - Rimas Tuminas. He has lived in Russia for a long time, but the impression from his performance is about the same as from the productions of the opera “Eugene Onegin” by deeply foreign directors. Neither the great Yulia Borisova, nor the wonderful Lyudmila Maksakova, nor even the seasoned Makovetsky can save us. Neither others good actors, which still remain in the Vakhtangov Theater.
But in general, in my opinion, the director does not understand very well what he is directing. And why he puts it on, he also doesn’t understand. Audience success of the performance in in this case has no meaning, we immediately put it out of brackets.
Mademoiselle Kregzhde, Litvinka, Tuminas’s favorite actress, is basically good, Cressida is excellent, she couldn’t be better, but she’s not very suitable here. She's cute though. However, it’s not about her.
There are two Onegins, there are also two Lenskys - this is not a new technique, it was repeatedly used in his time by Yuri Lyubimov.
The main thing is a performance by a foreign director. A good, solid, professional director. But... That's not the point.
Rafe Funis, a completely foreign director, made a wonderful film based on Onegin, almost without flaws. And he felt much more subtly and deeply the elements, tonality and poetics of Pushkin’s novel in verse. Tuminas, alas, slipped on the surface.
The play has strong solutions to individual scenes - Onegin's duel with Lensky, for example. Or winter trip Tatiana to Moscow - very beautifully decorated.
But there is too much strange fuss and tinsel, some ballerina girls in tutus, led by a lady dance master. For some reason, Tatyana continually drags a bench or a bed across the stage, and in this way, as it were, expresses her feelings. Olga constantly walks with a button accordion (?). There are other primitive, frontal directorial moves. Thus, the matchmaking of the “fat general” (Pushkin does not have a surname) to Tatyana is expressed in the joint eating of a jar of jam (maybe this is a Lithuanian wedding custom?). There are many meaningless interludes - with a bunny, with cutting off the braids of girls in tutus (what is this? Why? What is it about and why?).
And at the very end, Tatyana screams too shrilly and hysterically that she “was given to someone else and will be faithful to him forever.” I can’t believe, forgive me, such loyalty on the verge of self-torture.
There is no main character in the play - Pushkin (although some of his poems are inserted that have nothing to do with Onegin). It turned out to be a wampuka. Beautiful, bright, interesting in places. But still a wampuka, sorry.
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A.S. Pushkin
Director: Rimas Tuminas
It seems that we know everything about Pushkin. But even volumes of serious research by literary scholars and philosophers cannot fully comprehend the phenomenon of the poet.
“Eugene Onegin” - what is it? Philosophical reflection on life in poetic form? - not only, but a love story - not really. This is a huge space of the world and feelings that accommodates all eras, games of the mind, insights, guesses, anger, denunciation, satire and cynicism, compassion and forgiveness.
This is an attempt to penetrate into the essence of the Russian soul, to understand the Russian character that defies sober analysis. This is Russian society in all its guises - the naive charm of a pagan village and the cold stiffness of high society. This is Tatiana’s courageous trepidation and Olga’s playful naivety. This is “a mind of cold observations and a heart of sorrowful notes.”
The performance of Rimas Tuminas destroys stereotypes; it is, as always, original, seen and constructed polyphonically, musically, harshly and emotionally. The director is alien to the poetic flair, he breaks the rhythmic structure of the phrase, he is attracted by the prose of life, he is an enemy of pomp and false lyricism.
With his performance he destroys the “junk of memories” of what he had previously seen and read. It brings new meaning to character and plot.
Who is the hero of this novel - Onegin? Of course, Tatyana, “Tatiana is a Russian soul...”.
Her Russianness is in an organic fusion with nature, customs, sincere sincerity, and simple-minded fearlessness. She is captivating in her natural grace, brave straightforwardness, bitter sincerity: “but I am given to another and I will be faithful to him forever.”
Tatyana writes her frank confession to the man whom her imagination created; her invention is more significant than the original, this is her gift to Onegin, which he could neither understand, nor appreciate, nor justify by its essence.
For Onegin, this is just another message; he did not give himself the trouble to comprehend and unravel it; he, in the words of Dostoevsky, “failed to distinguish completeness and perfection in the poor girl.” He did not see her either in the wilderness or in the St. Petersburg salon. He didn't want to know, to look at her. Tatyana guesses him: “Isn’t he a parody?” Although the object of adoration himself is sure: “I am young, the life in me is strong, What should I expect, melancholy, melancholy!” Read - the soul is empty.
In St. Petersburg, Onegin is captivated not by Tatyana herself; this is not a return to memories, but blinding by brilliance, position in the world. For Tatyana these are chains, for Onegin these are virtues that feed his imagination and feelings.
Their difference is so obvious that, going towards each other, they will definitely pass by, their souls are so incontiguous in the concept of love, dignity, and spirituality. Its dominant is Russia. His wandering around the world is vanity, the inability to dwell on the main thing, but rather, ignorance of what is most important - Motherland, duty, love?
In their non-meeting there is a bitter pattern of incompatibility.
First, even before the curtain is closed, the music of Faustas Latenas appears - deafening, like the flash of a stun grenade, like a meteorite explosion over Chelyabinsk. Hit sound wave- and silence. And a typical Tuminos empty stage opens (scenography by Adomas Jacovskis). Almost empty. The predominant color is black. Life immersed in the night. B death.
And a full-length mirror. It’s like a “black square” come to life. Swaying, drawing into itself, as if into a black hole, everyone who will be swept away from the stage... This swaying mirror is like an aged, blackened curtain from Lyubimov’s Hamlet. He now lives on the outskirts, but is just as scary and inexorable. And at the same time, on stage there is a set that would be ideal for Konstantin Treplev’s performance in “The Seagull”. (Chekhov’s “cherry” mood of farewell to “old” Russia is very noticeable in EO Tuminas.) It seems that Nina Zarechnaya is about to appear and say: “Like a prisoner thrown into an empty deep well, I don’t know where I am and what awaits me. Cold, cold, cold. Empty, empty, empty. Scary, scary, scary... (two red dots appear against the background of the lake) My mighty enemy, the devil, is approaching. I see his terrible, crimson eyes..."
And appears... Evgeny Onegin. Creepy, infernal and old. Vengeful evil spirit.
He who lived and thought cannot
Do not despise people in your heart;
Whoever felt it is worried
Ghost of irrevocable days:
There's no charm for that
That serpent of memories
He is gnawing at remorse.
These are the first words of the play. Its leitmotif. “All lives, all lives, all lives, having completed a sad circle, have faded away...” Sergei Makovetsky’s Onegin is a man tired of life. Who is also clearly completing his circle of life and cannot get rid of the memories gnawing at his soul. It is completely wrong to say: well, where is the textbook beginning? - “My uncle is the most fair rules, when I seriously fell ill...” Where is the stuff I learned by heart from school? - “What low deceit // To amuse a half-dead person, // To adjust his pillows, // It’s sad to offer medicine, // To sigh and think to yourself // When will the devil take you!”
Here he is, this “uncle”, in front of you! Makovetsky’s Onegin is precisely that same half-dead uncle waiting for the devil. The circle is closed. Everything is back to normal.
Tuminas EO is special. Everything here is a ghostly system of reflections and echoes. Here the second reality - the reflection in the mirror - is often more important than the first. Here shade is more important than tone. Who is real here - and who is a shadow, a vision? Who is there in the flesh, with veins and blood? Rather, we should talk about the “etherealness” of the performance - all the numerous girls of the dance class (led by the brilliant Anna Antonova) are more naiads, mermaids, fairies than real dancers. And the same applies to their mistress, called a dance master in the program, which the ebullient Lyudmila Maksakova denies in every possible way, considering this definition too narrow and everyday. She is, of course, different. Either the white, kind swan is Odette, or the black swan Odile is the messenger of death and a symbol of lost love (in the last scene). And sometimes she is either a kind old praying mantis woman or a scary black woman from “Nord-Ost”.
Therefore, I will say more: it is not the characters of Pushkin’s novel that are brought onto the stage, but their souls - disembodied souls.
And yet. We all know the “funny name Pushkin.” And you can’t blame EO itself for being particularly gloomy—an “encyclopedia” cannot be gloomy. Why does Tuminas exclude everything light and lyrical, all these “gardens of the Lyceum” and took him for walks to the “Summer Garden”, and leaves a deliberately gloomy palette? “Always frowning, silent,//Angry and coldly jealous.” This can be said not only about Onegin, but also about the entire performance.
It's time to say the most important thing. Conceptually, the performance is built around only one episode of the novel, being, in fact, a dramatization of only this small fragment of the fifth chapter. The basis of the entire performance, its semantic core is the so-called “Tatiana’s terrible dream.” And the point is not only that this dream is included in one of the culminating scenes of EO Tuminas, where a real benefit performance awaits us by the great Yulia Borisova, to whose aid Innokenty Smoktunovsky himself was sent from the highest spheres, but that the whole performance is built on this a dream that “sprouts” in almost every scene. All the threads come from this dream. After all, the gloomy, half-empty stage is not only a revived “black square” or a witchcraft set for Treplev’s play, but also a screensaver, the condensed atmosphere of those very “dreamlike” lines: “And Tatyana has a wonderful dream.//She dreams that she//Walks along a snow clearing,//Surrounded by sad darkness...” And further: “Two perches, glued together by an ice floe,//Trembling, disastrous bridge...”
Further - in the dream - “a large, disheveled bear...” “... extended his paw with sharp claws to her.” And this bear will pursue Tatyana (Olga Lerman) to the end, and no longer in a dream will take possession of her and make her his wife. This meeting will be materialized in the finale, in which Tatiana dances with a stuffed huge drilling bear. And the Prince himself, whom Larina will marry, Yuri Shlykov, corpulent, with sideburns and a ponderous, “proud”, but clubfooted gait - the spitting image of “General Toptygin” from Nekrasov’s poem - doesn’t he resemble that bear from bad dream?
Next. So Tatiana decides to peek through the door, behind which Onegin is surrounded by monsters: “And, curious, now// She opened the door a little...// Suddenly the wind blew, extinguishing // The fire of the night lamps.” But Tuminas stages the scene of Onegin’s date with Tatyana in exactly the same way - with the wind and hurricane!
And finally - the last lines of the dream: “suddenly Evgeny // Grabs a long knife, and instantly // Lensky is defeated.” But this is exactly how Tuminas deals with Lensky in the duel scene! There Onegin really didn’t kill, but stabbed Lensky!
As soon as the reviewers did not explain the two Onegin and two Lensky productions of Tuminas. One can, of course, assume (and this is also true!) that the director wanted to bring out the mature, experienced, aged Onegin in order to pit him in his memories against the young Onegin (Viktor Dobronravov). And imagine not only the “novel” Lensky (Vasily Simonov), but also Lensky (Oleg Makarov), what he could have become if that same duel had not happened.
But, in my opinion, the “split” of Onegin and Lensky is also the “consequences” of reading the novel in line with just one episode. Young heroes are from a dream. And the elderly and elderly are from the novel.
But this key dream for EO Tuminas precedes in the canonical text the scene of the Yuletide fortune-telling of Tatyana and Olga (Maria Volkova). For some reason, no one paid attention to the fact that the performance turned out to be aggressively pagan. I specifically asked many viewers: what are the actual features of the Orthodox surroundings (and even something purely Christian) that define a deeply religious Pushkin era, - icons, crosses, candles, lamps, prayers - they noticed in this performance. The answer is none. There, no one ever crossed himself - even in the scene of the wedding of Tatiana and the Prince. In general, this is an unheard of thing for a performance made according to the “encyclopedia” of the era! Just in that very betrothal scene, the lamp at the conventional altar is given to the audience only in reflection. It seems like he exists, but he doesn’t seem to exist. Before us is a churchless (non-church) world, absolutely atheistic and certainly not Orthodox. Despite the textbook “and flocks of jackdaws on crosses” (in the novel, but not in the play). So it seems - they will bring a lamp to the front of the stage, someone will cross themselves - and the spell of demons, black people, Mephistopheles' Onegin - will disappear and all the heroes, turning into monsters from Tatyana's terrible dream, will crawl away from the theater temple, as from the church in Gogol's "Vie" "
But even here Rimas Tuminas did not bend the truth. As the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin wrote, Onegin’s trouble is that he “existed in a draft between heaven and hell, and his experience was the experience of life without God, without faith. God did not serve Onegin as either a regulative or an explanatory principle.”
This motive: “Russia is the country where God was killed” arose in my head every time I thought about one or another important scene of the play. But this did not happen because Tuminas was trying to somehow illustrate the words of a modern researcher: “... in Onegin the sprout of that atheism-demonism barely hatched, which would then bloom as a bright and terrible flower in the image of Stavrogin, sparkle with ominous colors on the canvases of the half-mad Vrubel , and even later will scatter the seeds of atheistic madness almost throughout the entire Russian text and across the expanses of the entire Russian land. They will arise as wild weeds of rabid hatred of God...” (Vladislav Bachinin). But because you constantly think about the power of the director’s figurative series, who, seemingly without doing anything to modernize his performance, easily brings me out of a state of simple enthusiastic contemplation and skillfully “combs” my saddest “notches” related to the history of Russia all its post-Pushkin almost two hundred years.
Here, for example, is the first scene of Onegin’s visit to the Larins’ estate. How to betray the simplicity, but at the same time sincerity of rural customs, the special homeliness and mercy of Larinsky life? And Onegin begins to continuously drink lingonberry water. But the detail mentioned by Pushkin here turns into a whole multi-part epic: Eugene is brought one jug, another, a third - he drinks, but does not give up. Well, why, tell me, why am I remembering here a scene from Sholokhov’s “The Fate of Man” (1), relating... to a German concentration camp? Yes, and there the same check of the hero “for lice” takes place. But if Onegin is only in danger of an upset stomach (“I’m afraid: lingonberry water // Wouldn’t do me any harm”), then Sokolov is already in danger of death...
How to convey simple-minded, slightly provincial, naive family holiday– Tatiana’s name day? To make it feel warm and familiar? And Olga appears with an accordion (which, of course, Pushkin himself had never heard of) - like a mass entertainer from Nikolai Gubenko’s “The Life of Vacationers.” Remember Rolan Bykov with the accordion there?
And the concert itself at the name day was made funny and provocative - you are always waiting for Placido Domingo or Hvorostovsky, and all sorts of home-grown Kobzons and Trofims appear over and over again.
And gradually you feel that all these associations cover the entire history of Russia, all its dark and bright sides. Here, for example, is the invented “Retired Hussar” performed by Vladimir Vdovichenkov, appearing “like a lawless comet//In the circle of calculated luminaries.” “Vdovichenkov has come up with an excellent role. A retired hussar with stubble (when half-drunk), more like General Charnota at the Constantinople Grand Bazaar” (Elena Dyakova).
Even the most innocent scenes in EO Tuminas for some reason carry behind them an incomprehensible trail of absolutely murderous associations. So the girls get into the cart and go to the bride fair in Moscow. But now we look inside - and before us appears... the inside of some kind of Stolypin prison carriage. “Village girls are driven into a huge carriage, like prisoners into a heated carriage, and they are nailed into it as if into a coffin” (Roman Dolzhansky). “And it will seem that not Tatyana, but all of Russia has set off along its exiled, eternal highway in hopelessness” (Alena Karas). “The door of the “carriage” is being nailed down, like that Chekhov’s house where Firs was forgotten” (Natalia Kaminskaya).
My God - what a horror! All the girls did was go after their suitors! And so Tuminas has all three and a half hours!
And the scene of parting with the braids? In Moscow, girls have their beautiful hair cut off to give them hairstyles in the latest secular fashion. And with my perverted imagination, I imagine girls from the future women’s battalion that defended Winter in October 1917 being tonsured as soldiers...
And the technique of realized metaphors! How amazingly the death of the Larin sisters’ father is conveyed. He stands, looks around, tries to catch the glances of those around him, but everyone averts their eyes, and he realizes that... he is literally becoming a stranger, moving away from everyone. But he doesn’t want to leave, he resists a little, but still the accompanying spirits - the same Maksakova - sternly takes him by the hand and slowly leads him into the darkness, into oblivion. This is the implementation of a metaphor that replaces the wording “he died.” Larina’s father just “left”. He went to a place where you yourself understand... This is brilliant!
In general, Tuminas’ skill is amazing. Here is the scene of Onegin courting Olga to spite Lensky. Just recently, in another theater, I watched a seduction scene. In the play, a womanizer and libertine seduces a 14-year-old girl. And how terribly this scene was staged! There was an unfastened belt and almost dropped trousers and other things that were no less aesthetically unpleasant. And here in front of everyone honest people Olga was almost violated - and at the same time there was no vulgarity, vulgar details and vulgar games. And this glove hanging like a used condom (fantasy, fantasy, my sick fantasy!) from Olga’s lips will forever be remembered by me...
And what an associative trail the climactic scene of the duel has! Firstly, when the seconds begin to trample down the clearing for a duel for a long time and methodically - and this is done with some kind of eerie thoroughness and gloomy force - well, it is impossible not to imagine horrors - from trampling a ditch, with people still alive thrown there, to the simplest metaphor , symbolizing trampled Russia... Secondly, as I have already said, Onegin does not kill here, but stabs Lensky. One might say - he raises him to the pitchfork (oh, there are all the peasant riots here - from Pugachev to the post-revolutionary Tambov Antonov). Thirdly, the deceased Lensky remains in the pose of not being killed, but rather being hanged (well, it’s even scary to list the options here - here are Decembrists who were hanged and a Russian officer tortured somewhere in the Crimean Cheka). And finally, the last thing. Lensky, naked to the waist, is taken away almost on a children's sled - almost like a Leningrader who died during the siege and is taken to the Volkovo cemetery or Piskarevka...
This scene is the climax. The highest strength and energy. And then... The performance, as if by magic, begins to stall, and then simply freezes. It’s as if some important spring jumps out of it and the action stops. And the remaining scenes, of course, are interesting and meaningful in their own way, but they were done rather only because it was necessary to somehow bring the story to the end. Hence the empty, unsupported beauty - the swings and insert numbers - cute, but empty (bunny). And final explanation Onegin and Tatiana generally looks like a tragic failure of the play - the unrecognizable Makovetsky and Lerman play it so academically, with pressure...
Whatever you say, it turned out to be a play about demons. No, not about demons. About black people. Which come to everyone, and we chase them, but it turns out that we are chasing our reflection in the mirror. The result is a performance about human suffering and misfortune, only occasionally brightened up by something good, about the Way of the Cross in Russia, about Russia without God - no, not like that - about Russia without God. The performance by Rimas Tuminas turned out to be a terrible encyclopedia of the Russian future - with all its horrors and nightmares.
(1) “He stood up and said: “I will do you great honor, now personally
I will shoot you for these words. It's uncomfortable here, let's go into the yard, there you are
you will sign." “It’s your will,” I tell him. He stood there, thought, and then
threw the gun on the table and poured a full glass of schnapps, took a piece of bread,
put a slice of lard on it and gives it all to me and says: “Before I die
drink, Russian Ivan, to victory German weapons".
I took the glass and the snack from his hands, but as soon as I heard these
words - it was like I was burned by fire! I think to myself: “So that I, a Russian soldier,
Yes, he began to drink to the victory of German weapons?! There's something you don't want, Herr.
Commandant? Damn it, I have to die, so you're lost with your
vodka!"
I put the glass on the table, put the snack and say: “Thank you for
a treat, but I don't drink." He smiles: "Would you like to drink to our victory? IN
In that case, drink to your destruction." What did I have to lose? "To my
I will drink death and deliverance from torment,” I tell him. With that, I took the glass and
I poured it into myself two sips, but didn’t touch the snack, politely wiping my lips
palm and say: “Thank you for the treat. I’m ready, Herr Commandant,
come on, sign me up."
But he looks attentively and says: “At least have a bite before
death." I answer him: “I don’t have a snack after the first glass.”
He pours a second one and gives it to me. I drank the second one and again I didn’t have a snack
I touch it, I beat it with courage, I think: “At least I’ll get drunk before I go into the yard, with
to part with our lives." The commandant raised his white eyebrows high and asked:
“Why don’t you have a snack, Russian Ivan? Don’t be shy!” And I told him: “Sorry,
Herr Commandant, I’m not used to having a snack even after the second glass.” He cheated
cheeks, snorted, and then burst out laughing and said something quickly through the laughter
in German: apparently he is translating my words to his friends. They laughed too
moved their chairs, turned their faces towards me and already, I noticed, somehow
otherwise they look at me, seemingly softer.
The commandant pours me a third glass, and his hands are shaking from
laughter. I drank this glass, took a small bite of bread,
I put the rest on the table. I wanted to show them, damned, that although I
and I’m dying of hunger, but I’m not going to choke on their handout, what I have
I have my own Russian dignity and pride and that they don’t treat me like a beast
turned, no matter how hard they tried.
After this, the commandant became serious in appearance and adjusted the
two iron crosses, came out from the table unarmed and said: “That’s what,
Sokolov, you are a real Russian soldier. You are a brave soldier. I am also a soldier and
I respect worthy opponents. I won't shoot you. Besides today
our valiant troops reached the Volga and completely captured Stalingrad. This
It is a great joy for us, and therefore I generously give you life. Go to
your block, and this is for your courage,” and hands me a small
a loaf of bread and a piece of bacon.
I pressed the bread to me with all my strength, I hold the lard in my left hand and even before
I was confused by such an unexpected turn that I didn’t even say thank you, I did
around to the left, I’m going to the exit, and I’m thinking: “He’s going to shine between me now.”
shovels, and I won’t bring this grub to the guys." No, it worked out. And this time
death passed me by, only a chill came from it...”
Mikhail Sholokhov, “The Fate of Man.”
First Winner theater award"Crystal Turandot" (For best performance season 2012 - 2013)
Winner of the MK Theater Prize" (For the best performance of the season 2012 - 2013)
Winner of the Prize of the Directorate of the festival "Baltic House", 2013
Winner of the STD "Highlight of the Season" Award, 2014
Winner of the national theater award "Golden Mask", 2014
Winner of a special prize at the Spoleto festival (Italy), 2016
It’s not often in the drama theater that we encounter Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin.” Reading programs and opera interpretations prevail.
At the Vakhtangov Theater, director Rimas Tuminas, Yulia Borisova, Lyudmila Maksakova, Sergei Makovetsky, Vladimir Vdovichenkov, Oleg Makarov and young artists decided to bring the novel into verse in dramatic form. Carefully, improvisationally, trying to find a stage equivalent to the word, the plot, without destroying anything and trying not to miss anything. This is our knowledge of Pushkin, his heroes, their world, the space of Russia.
“Whom to love? Who to believe?"
It seems that we know everything about Pushkin. But even volumes of serious research by literary scholars and philosophers cannot fully comprehend the phenomenon of the poet.
Alexander Sergeevich - “our everything” - unknown, mysterious. And every time you turn to it, you are afraid of repeating yourself in perception, you strive to avoid cliches, knowledge that the poet resists, because it is always bigger and more mysterious. It is not limited to the plot.
“Eugene Onegin” - what is it? Philosophical reflection on life in poetic form? - not only, a love story - not really. This is a huge space of the world and feelings that accommodates all eras, games of the mind, insights, guesses, anger, denunciation, satire and cynicism, compassion and forgiveness.
"Eugene Onegin" - "encyclopedia of Russian life" and to the highest degree folk piece, a novel in verse written during the Romantic era, where " modern world appeared with all its coldness, prose and vulgarity.”
And, at the same time, according to Belinsky, “Onegin is Pushkin’s most sincere work, the most beloved child of his fantasy, in which the poet’s personality was reflected so completely, lightly and clearly. Here is all his life, all his soul, all his love, here are his feelings, concepts, ideals.”
“Eugene Onegin” is the expanse of Russia, the fate of its heroes, customs, foundations, culture, nature.
This is an attempt to penetrate into the essence of the Russian soul, to understand the Russian character that defies sober analysis. This is Russian society in all its guises - the naive charm of a pagan village and the cold stiffness of high society. This is Tatiana’s courageous trepidation and Olga’s playful naivety. This is “a mind of cold observations and a heart of sorrowful notes.”
The performance of Rimas Tuminas destroys stereotypes; it is, as always, original, seen and constructed polyphonically, musically, harshly and emotionally. The director is alien to the poetic flair, he breaks the rhythmic structure of the phrase, he is attracted by the prose of life, he is an enemy of pomp and false lyricism.
With his performance he destroys the “junk of memories” of what he had previously seen and read. It brings new meaning to character and plot.
Who is the hero of this novel - Onegin? Of course, Tatiana, “Tatiana is a Russian soul...”.
Her Russianness is in an organic fusion with nature, customs, sincere sincerity, and simple-minded fearlessness. She is captivating in her natural grace, brave straightforwardness, bitter sincerity: “but I am given to another and I will be faithful to him forever.”
Tatyana writes her frank confession to the man whom her imagination created, her fiction is more significant than the original, this her a gift to Onegin, which he could neither understand, nor appreciate, nor justify by its essence.
For Onegin this another message, he did not give himself the trouble to comprehend and unravel it; he, in the words of Dostoevsky, “failed to distinguish completeness and perfection in the poor girl.” He doesn't saw her neither in the wilderness of the village, nor in the St. Petersburg salon. He didn't want to know, to look at her. Tatyana guesses him: “Isn’t he a parody?” Although the object of adoration himself is sure: “I am young, the life in me is strong, What should I expect, melancholy, melancholy!” Read - the soul is empty.
In St. Petersburg, Onegin is captivated not by Tatyana herself; this is not a return to memories, but blinding by brilliance, position in the world. For Tatyana these are chains, for Onegin these are virtues that feed his imagination and feelings.
Their difference is so obvious that, going towards each other, they will definitely pass by, their souls are so incontiguous in the concept of love, dignity, and spirituality. Its dominant is Russia. His wandering around the world is vanity, the inability to dwell on the main thing, but rather, ignorance of what is most important - Motherland, duty, love?
In their non-meeting there is a bitter pattern of incompatibility.
The duration of the performance is 3 hours 30 minutes with one intermission. The performance is recommended for spectators over 16 years of age (16+). A VIEW FROM INSIDE / BACKSTAGE behind the scenes of the play “Eugene Onegin”:
