Theatrical poster - reviews of the play. "The Good Man of Sezuan"

I made a post from pieces, excerpts from books and articles. When you put together the puzzles of text and video, I hope that you will feel the atmosphere of the theater, or rather one very interesting performance, that's what I wanted to express in my post:

During Brecht's lifetime, his relationship with Soviet theater formed, to put it mildly, not particularly well. The main reasons were ideological rejection official theater Brecht's artistic searches, as well as the paradoxical figure of Brecht, who pretty much irritated the authorities. Mutual hostility was mutual. On the one hand, in the 1920s and 1950s, Brecht's plays were almost never staged by domestic theaters. On the other hand, the acquaintance of the German playwright himself with Soviet theatrical practice more than once plunged him into despondency.

Brecht ended up in the Soviet chalk circle. It was only at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, after his death, that rare productions of his plays appeared. Among the first and most significant should be mentioned: "Dreams of Simone Machar" in the Moscow Theater. M. Yermolova directed by Anatoly Efros (1959); "Mother Courage and her children" in the Moscow academic theater them. Vl. Mayakovsky (staged by Maxim Strauch) (1960); “The Good Man from Sezuan” at the Leningrad Academic Theater. Pushkin (1962, director - Rafail Suslovich); “Career of Arturo Ui” at the Leningrad Bolshoi drama theater them. Gorky (1963, directed by Erwin Axer).

However, these and some other productions of the thaw by Brecht pale before the significance of one educational student performance. In 1963, young Vakhtangov students, students of the third (!) Course Theater School named after B.V. Shchukin, presented the fruit of their six-month work - the play "The Good Man from Sezuan" staged by the course teacher Yuri Lyubimov.

His success was stunning. In the last year of the thaw, in a small hall of the Shchukin school on Stary Arbat (later it was played on other stages in Moscow), the performance was watched by I. Ehrenburg, K. Simonov, A. Voznesensky, E. Yevtushenko, B. Okudzhava, B. Akhmadulina, V. Aksenov, Yu. Trifonov, A. Galich, O. Efremov, M. Plisetskaya, R. Shchedrin... It would seem that the next student production was perceived by the Moscow public not only as a theatrical breakthrough, but also as a kind of public manifesto , a banner that promised a change of time. It is very symptomatic that a year later, on April 23, 1964, Liubovskiy's "The Good Man from Sezuan" will open a new theater - the Taganka Theater, in which it is still being performed.
(Excerpt from an article on Brecht's work.)

Moscow - amazing city- there everyone will know everything by rumors. Rumor has it that some interesting performance is being prepared. And since everyone is bored, and diplomats too, if something interesting, then there will be a scandal. As my late friend Erdman said, “if there is no scandal around the theater, then this is not a theater.” So in that sense he was a prophet to me. And so it was. Well, it's boring, and everyone wants to come, see, and they know that if it's interesting, then it will be closed. Therefore, the performance could not start for a long time, the audience burst into the hall. These diplomats sat on the floor in the aisle, a fireman ran in, a pale director, rector of the school, said that "he will not allow it, because the hall may collapse." In the hall, where there are two hundred and forty people, about four hundred are sitting - in general, there were full scandal. I stood with a lantern - the electrics there were very bad, and I myself stood and led the lantern. Brecht's portrait was highlighted in the right places. And I kept driving this lantern and shouting:

For God's sake, let the performance continue, what are you doing, because the performance will be closed, no one will see it! Why are you stomping, don't you understand where you live, you idiots!

Still, I calmed them down. But, of course, everything was recorded and reported. Well, they closed after that.
An excerpt from the book by Yuri Lyubimov "Stories of an old talker"

"The Good Man from Szechuan" Bertolt Brecht (German: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan) 1940
Brief summary of the play (for those who do not know what it is at all)))

The main city of Sichuan province, which summarizes all places on the globe and any time in which a person exploits a person - this is the place and time of the play.

Prologue. For two thousand years now, the cry has not stopped: it cannot go on like this! No one in this world is able to be kind! And the worried gods decided: the world can remain as it is if there are enough people capable of living a life worthy of a person. And to test this, the three most prominent gods descend to earth. Perhaps the water carrier Wang, who was the first to meet them and treat them with water (by the way, he is the only one in Sichuan who knows that they are gods), is a worthy person? But his mug, the gods noticed, had a double bottom. A good water carrier is a scammer! The simplest test of the first virtue - hospitality - upsets them: in none of the rich houses: neither at Mr. Fo's, nor at Mr. Chen's, nor at the widow Su's - Wang can find accommodation for them. There is only one thing left: to turn to the prostitute Shen De, after all, she cannot refuse anyone. And the gods spend the night with the only kind person, and in the morning, saying goodbye, they leave Shen De an order to remain as kind, as well as a good payment for the night: after all, how to be kind when everything is so expensive!

I. The gods left Shen De a thousand silver dollars, and with them she bought herself a small tobacco shop. But how many people in need of help are close to those who are lucky: the former owner of the shop and the former owners of Shen De - husband and wife, her lame brother and pregnant daughter-in-law, nephew and niece, old grandfather and boy - and everyone needs a roof over their heads and food. “Salvation is a small boat / Immediately goes to the bottom. / After all, there are too many drowning / Greedily grabbed the sides.

And here the carpenter demands a hundred silver dollars, which the former mistress did not pay him for the shelves, and the landlady needs recommendations and a guarantee for the not very respectable Shen De. "Will vouch for me cousin she says. “And he will pay for the shelves.”

II. And the next morning, Shoi Da, Shen De's cousin, appears in the tobacco shop. Resolutely chasing away unlucky relatives, skillfully forcing the carpenter to take only twenty silver dollars, Prudently making friends with the policeman, he settles the affairs of his too-kind cousin.

III. And in the evening in the city park, Shen De meets an unemployed pilot Song. A pilot without a plane, a mail pilot without mail. What should he do in the world, even if he read all the books about flying in a Beijing school, even if he knows how to land an airplane on the ground, as if it were his own ass? He is like a crane with a broken wing, and there is nothing for him to do on earth. The rope is at the ready, and there are as many trees in the park as you like. But Shen De does not let him hang himself. To live without hope is to do evil. Hopeless is the song of a water carrier selling water in the rain: “Thunder rumbles and it rains, / Well, I sell water, / But water is not for sale / And it is not drunk in any. / I shout: “Buy water!” / But no one buys. / In my pocket for this water / Nothing gets in! / Buy some water, dogs!”

Yi Shen De buys a mug of water for her beloved Yang Song.

Vladimir Vysotsky and Zinaida Slavina in the play "The Good Man from Sezuan". 1978

IV. Returning after a night spent with his beloved, Shen De sees the morning city for the first time, cheerful and giving fun. People are kind today. The old carpet merchants from the shop across the street lend dear Shen De two hundred silver dollars, enough to pay off the landlady for six months. Nothing is difficult for a person who loves and hopes. And when Song's mother, Ms. Yang, tells that for a huge amount of five hundred silver dollars, her son was promised a place, she happily gives her the money received from the old people. But where to get another three hundred? There is only one way out - to turn to Shoi Da. Yes, he is too cruel and cunning. But a pilot must fly!

Sideshows. Shen De enters, holding the mask and costume of Shoi Da, and sings “The Song of the Helplessness of Gods and Good People”: “The good people in our country / They cannot remain kind. / To get a spoon to a cup, / You need cruelty. / The good ones are helpless, and the gods are powerless. / Why don't the gods say there, on the ether, / What time to give all kind and good / The opportunity to live in a good, kind world?

V. Clever and prudent Shoy Da, whose eyes are not blinded by love, sees deceit. Yang Sun is not afraid of cruelty and meanness: even if the place promised to him is someone else's, and the pilot who is fired from it, big family, let Shen De part with the shop, except for which she has nothing, and let the old people lose their two hundred dollars and lose their housing, just to get their way. Such a one cannot be trusted, and Shoy Da seeks support in a rich barber who is ready to marry Shen De. But the mind is powerless where love is at work, and Shen De leaves with Sun: “I want to leave with the one I love, / I don’t want to think about whether it’s good. / I don't want to know if he loves me. / I want to leave with the one I love.”

VI. A small cheap restaurant in the suburbs is preparing for the wedding of Yang Sun and Shen De. Bride in wedding dress, groom in a tuxedo. But the ceremony still does not start, and the bonza looks at his watch - the groom and his mother are waiting for Shoi Da, who should bring three hundred silver dollars. Yang Song sings "Song of Saint Never's Day": "On this day, evil is taken by the throat, / On this day, all the poor are lucky, / Both the master and the laborer / Walk together to the tavern / On Saint Never's day / The skinny one drinks at the fat one at a party . / We can no longer wait. / That's why they should give us, / People of hard work, / Saint Never Day, / Saint Never Day, / Day when we will rest.

“He will never come again,” Ms. Yang says. Three are sitting and two of them are looking at the door.

VII. Shen De's meager possessions are on a cart near the tobacco shop - the shop had to be sold in order to repay the debt to the old people. The barber Shu Fu is ready to help: he will give his barracks for the poor, whom Shen De helps (you can’t keep goods there anyway - it’s too damp), and write out a check. And Shen De is happy: she felt in herself a future son - a pilot, "a new conqueror / Inaccessible mountains and unknown regions!" But how to protect him from the cruelty of this world? She sees the carpenter's little son, who is looking for food in the garbage can, and swears that she will not rest until she saves her son, at least him alone. It's time to be your cousin again.

Mr. Shoi Da announces to the audience that his cousin will not leave them without help in the future, but from now on, the distribution of food without reciprocal services stops, and in the houses of Mr. Shu Fu there will be one who agrees to work for Shen De.

VIII. The tobacco factory that Shoi Da set up in the barracks is staffed by men, women and children. The overseer - and cruel - here is Yang Sun: he is not at all sad about the change of fate and shows that he is ready for anything for the interests of the company. But where is Shen De? Where a kind person? Where is the one who many months ago on a rainy day in a moment of joy bought a mug of water from a water carrier? Where is she and her future child about which she told the water carrier? And Sun would also like to know this: if his ex-fiancee was pregnant, then he, as the father of the child, can apply for the position of the owner. And here, by the way, in the knot of her dress. Has not the cruel cousin killed the unfortunate woman? The police come to the house. Mr. Shoi Da is facing trial.

X. In the courtroom, Shen De's friends (Wang the water carrier, old couple, grandfather and niece) and Shoi Da's partners (Mr. Shu Fu and the landlady) are waiting for the hearing to begin. At the sight of the judges entering the hall, Shoi Da faints - these are the gods. The gods are by no means omniscient: under the mask and costume of Shoi Da, they do not recognize Shen De. And only when, unable to withstand the accusations of the good and the intercession of the evil, Shoi Da takes off his mask and tears off his clothes, the gods see with horror that their mission has failed: their good man and the evil and callous Shoi Da are one person. It is not possible in this world to be kind to others and at the same time to yourself, you cannot save others and not destroy yourself, you cannot make everyone happy and yourself with everyone together! But the gods have no time to understand such complexities. Is it possible to refuse the commandments? No never! Recognize that the world must be changed? How? By whom? No, everything is okay. And they reassure people: “Shen De did not die, she was only hidden. There is a good man among you." And to Shen De’s desperate cry: “But I need a cousin,” they hastily answer: “But not too often!” And while Shen De stretches out his hands to them in despair, they, smiling and nodding, disappear above.

Epilogue. The final monologue of the actor in front of the public: “Oh, my venerable public! The end is unimportant. This I know. / In our hands the most beautiful fairy tale suddenly got a bitter denouement. / The curtain is lowered, and we stand in embarrassment - we have not found the issues of resolution. / So what's the deal? We are not looking for benefits, / So, there must be some right way out? / You can’t imagine for money - what! Another hero? What if the world is different? / Maybe other gods are needed here? Or no gods at all? I am silent in anxiety. / So help us! Correct the trouble - and direct your thought and mind here. / Try to find good for good - good ways. / Bad ending - discarded in advance. / He must, must, must be good!”

T. A. Voznesenskaya retold.

You see, Lyovushka, no matter what happens, the main thing is to be able to remain human.
(E. Radzinsky "104 pages about love")

He knows how to do it - to be different, new, unexpected, while maintaining his unique author's style, which the Moscow public has passionately and truly loved for more than 10 years. It is his distinguishing feature. And he does not cement, does not stiffen in his remarkable skill - somehow remains alive, light, youthfully desperate and reckless, perhaps even progressing in this from performance to performance. And you can't create it artificially, it's from within, from yourself. Yes, probably, like this: he creates his performances in his own image and likeness and necessarily inhales a part of his soul into them, in the sense of his own. I feel it this way. And from performance to performance, he seems to push the boundaries of his capabilities - easily and confidently - and carries the viewer into a new space. He repeats in an interview: "The viewer is a friend and ally." Emotional exchange with the audience - finishing touch, the last layer on each of his works - probably also why we love them so much and are so included in them. He is completely restless, inexhaustible with energy, ideas and plans. And theaters are tearing it apart. And I don’t understand how he manages everything and manages to do it brightly, extraordinary, qualitatively and powerfully. He is the best director of the country - Yuri Nikolaevich Butusov.

Just now, in October, in his Lensoviet Theater in St. Petersburg, he released the strongest, absolutely fantastic Macbeth (if the performance does not harvest prizes at the end of the season - the right word, all these awards are worthless), as in February, in Moscow Pushkin Theater - also unlike anything hitherto in his director's biography, the most complex and serious work on Brecht's "The Good Man from Sesuan" with the marvelous original music of Paul Dessau, the "Pure Music" live orchestra on stage and the songs, live performed by artists on German(and since, in terms of stage techniques, Yuri Nikolayevich is, in a sense, a trendsetter, then expect a series of performances in Moscow with authentic music and songs in Japanese, Hungarian, Yagan or the Tuyuka language in the coming years). The play itself is very complicated and all inside is in hypertexts, but Yuri Butusov, of course, plowed over the Brechtian text and sowed it with his hypertext as well. Now all this will gradually (as all his works affect eyewitnesses) germinate and rise in our heads. In the meantime - only the first superficial impressions.

I almost forgot: the artist Alexander Shishkin and choreographer Nikolai Reutov helped him create the performance - that is, there is full squad star team.

Again, I must say one thing. About my interpretation of the works of this director. I really like to understand them, or rather, I try to do it. His creative thinking pushes me into the space of images, but, carried away, I can wander somewhere completely in the wrong place. In other words, Yuri Nikolayevich puts on performances about something about his own, and I watch them about something about my own. And I can’t imagine how often we intersect with him, and whether we intersect at all. Basically, don't take anything for granted.

So, "The Good Man of Sezuan." In Brecht's play, socio-political motives are unambiguously read, which, as they say, was emphasized in the famous (and which I have not seen) performance by Yuri Lyubimov on Taganka. Yuri Butusov is much more(and traditionally) occupy questions concerning the complex and contradictory nature of man, human personality and features of interpersonal relationships. As a matter of fact, this is the base, the foundation on which it is then built, incl. and a socio-political platform, and in general, whatever else you want. Man with his complex inner world- primary.

On the stage, as usual with Yuri Nikolayevich, there is not much, but all this is from his “director's backpack”. Macbettovskaya (Magrittovy) door, gray stones-boulders (from duck hunting) scattered all over the floor, at the back of the stage - a dressing room (from Seagull and Macbeth) - this is the house of Shen Te (who, while waiting for the client, will be dressed in a raincoat made of black "polyethylene" - Macbeth - and a black wig from Seagull), planed boards (Lear), in the left corner of the stage - a bed (Macbeth, Richard, Lear, Seagull), figurines of dogs, more like wolves (Yuri Nikolayevich's dogs live in almost all performances), on the proscenium there is a small table - "stool" chairs everywhere , some are overturned (shattered, shattered, rotten world? think). Actually, everything. Before us is the poor quarter of Sezuan, in which the gods are trying to find at least one good person. For almost 4 hours of the performance, the set design will change very little (he knows how to fill the stage with something else: energy, acting, music, riddles), and, of course, each item that appears will not be accidental.
The aesthetics of the performance sends us back to Foss' Cabaret by associations (in fact, Zongs in German are obviously the same). Parallel. Foss's film shows Germany in the period of the birth of fascism, i.e. on the eve of the world catastrophe, in exactly the same way, on the eve of the catastrophe, the Brechtian world froze. Wang at the beginning of the performance will say harshly and with emphasis: "The world CANNOT remain this way any longer if there is not at least one good person in it." In the publicly available translation of the play, the phrase reads differently: "The world CAN remain so if there are enough people worthy of the title of man." Both phrases are about unstable balance - that the world has stopped at a dangerous line, beyond which there is an abyss. I don’t know German, I don’t know how the original phrase of the play sounds, but it’s quite obvious that the second phrase is that the world is still in front of the line, and the first one is that it’s already a spade, that’s it.
The same boulder stones associatively signal that “the time has come to collect the stones” (Book of Ecclesiastes). The expression “time to collect stones”, as an independent one, is used in the meaning of “time to create”, and in relation to Brecht's play, I would translate it as “time to change something”. Until it's not too late.
Or fine sand, which the water carrier Wang will pour first on the white matter in the forefront, and then on his own head. It's not sand. Rather, it is sand for God (sand is a symbol of time, eternity). For Wang, this is rain, water. Yuri Nikolaevich here conjures with water, as he knows how to conjure with snow. But now I will not go into detail about the props, there is much more to be said.

Surprises begin from the first moments of the performance. Yuri Butusov's three gods of Brecht turned into a quiet, silent girl (Anastasia Lebedeva) in a black long coat draped over sports shorts and a T-shirt. An inconspicuous quiet girl, but the holy fool - the water carrier Wang - unmistakably recognizes in her the messenger of the Wise, for holy fools are God's people, can they not recognize God in the crowd. And while the unfortunate Shen Te is courageously trying to bear the unbearable burden of the mission entrusted to her by the gods, Wang is watching what is happening and in dialogues (and, in fact, monologues) with the gods, he tries to answer the questions posed by Brecht in the Epilogue of the play, which Yuri Butusov logically omitted, since these questions are its essence:

Surely there must be some correct way out?
For money you can’t imagine - what!
Another hero? What if the world is different?
Or maybe other gods are needed here?
Or without gods at all? ..

As this tangle of questions is unwound and comprehended, Wang’s attitude towards the Gods changes - from blind enthusiastic worship (with kissing of the feet) through complete disappointment (then he will drag her onto the stage like a bag) to a conscious one .. I can’t find a word .. let it be "partnership". When disappointment in the gods reaches the limit, Wang begins to speak and act like a common person(without stuttering, cramped muscles) - as if refusing to be God's man. And, perhaps, I will correct my assumption regarding the sand. Still, for Wang, this is also not water, but sand, a symbol of God. By the fact that he pours it on his head at the beginning, he denotes both his closeness to the Wise (as a holy fool), and their unquestioning worship.

Yes, it’s also important here, in my opinion, why Yuri Nikolayevich deprived the girl-God of almost all words, making her almost dumb at times. Whether God exists or not is a deeply personal, intimate question for everyone. individual person, and this is not what we are talking about here (by the way, Gorky’s Luka in “At the Bottom” gives a wonderful answer to this question: “If you believe, there is; if you don’t believe, no. What you believe, then it is”). Here we are talking about this reciprocal silence. There is great benefit in silence: having reflected from it, the question returns to the one who asked it, and the person begins to deal with it himself, to think, analyze, weigh, draw conclusions. And this is what all the sages and philosophers seem to be talking about: the answers to all questions can be found in oneself. The silence of the girl-God in the play by Yuri Butusov allows Wang to answer questions that are important to him.
“..if you keep looking inward – it takes time – little by little you will begin to feel the beautiful light within. This is not an aggressive light; he is not like the sun, he is more like the moon. It does not sparkle, does not dazzle, it is very cool. He is not hot, he is very compassionate, very softening; it's a balm.
Little by little, as you tune in Inner Light you will see that its source is yourself. The seeker is the sought. Then you will see that the real treasure is inside you, and the problem was that you were looking outside. You were looking somewhere outside, and it was always inside you. It's always been here, inside you." (Osho)

In the meantime, the finale is still far away, Shen Te, chosen by the gods as the savior of the world (an amazing work by Alexandra Ursulyak), gradually comprehends the bitter truth that a person, if he wants to live, cannot be ideally kind (which means it is impossible to complete the mission). Kindness, unable to repulse evil in order to simply protect itself, is doomed (“the predator always knows who is easy prey for him”). And in general it is impossible to be an exemplary carrier of any one quality. Even if only because (I know it's banal) everything in the world is relative. For ten people you are kind, and the eleventh will say that you are evil. And everyone will have arguments in favor of their opinion. You can even do nothing at all: neither good nor evil, but still there will be people who consider you good and people who consider you bad, and, by the way, they can change places. This world is a world of estimates. Subjective momentary assessments that instantly become outdated (I love this quote from Murakami very much: “The cells of the body are completely, one hundred percent, renewed every month. We are changing all the time. Even right now. All that you know about me is no more than your own memories"). What you really are, you don’t even know yourself, because in unforeseen situations you sometimes give out something that you didn’t even suspect in yourself. Or, on the contrary, you were absolutely sure that you would do something, but there comes a moment, and you are inactive. Every human action and deed (like every word, even casually thrown, because a word is also an act, moreover, a thought is also an act) like any coin has two sides, two opposite in sign results.

For example, Shui Ta, wanting to "fix" Sun Yang, provides him with the opportunity to work off the spent money and generally gain permanent job and make a career. noble mission. Good deed. Yi Sun is indeed gradually becoming right hand Shui Ta, but at the same time - the most perfect beast in relation to other workers, causing nothing but hatred towards himself. And also - he no longer wants to fly, he lost his "wings", which is heartbreaking maternal heart Mrs. Yang, who knows what a first-class pilot her boy is, and remembers how happy he was in the sky, because he was created for him.

I can't resist.. It's about Chekhov's Black Monk. While Kovrin was not quite adequate and had conversations with a ghost, he was absolutely happy, believed in his chosenness and really showed great promise and was, perhaps, a future genius of science. But loving wife, frightened by his state of mind, out of good intentions, put him on pills and took him to the village to drink fresh milk. Kovrin recovered physically, stopped seeing the Black Monk, stopped believing in his chosenness, lost the desire to work, went out, faded and became nothing, nobody. What is good and what is evil? What is the norm, what is the pathology? Megalomania raised in man a great scientist, able (and thirsty) to benefit humanity. The desire of a woman to save her beloved husband from illness led to the fact that she killed him.

A person learns about the Law of unity and struggle of opposites at school, before going to great life. Opposite in meaning, the concepts “go in pairs” - everything is interconnected, interdependent, one cannot exist without the other and in pure form rare (if ever). Without its opposite, good is not good and evil is not evil - they are such only against the background of each other. Quote from E. Albee: “I realized that kindness and cruelty in themselves, separately from one another, lead to nothing; and at the same time, in combination, they teach to feel. And no matter how you weigh the facts, or subject them to spectral analysis, giving an assessment to something, you will almost certainly make a mistake, not in general, but in particular. We live in a world of misunderstandings and delusions and persist in them. “Do not rush to judge and do not rush to despair” - the translation of the phrase from one of the Zongs will be displayed on the electronic line.
There are no perfectly good people on earth. And no at all ideal people, and if there were - what a longing it would be to be among them (on this topic - getting a person into some kind of ideal space according to his ideas - a lot of things have been written and filmed. it's really scary). And in vain, a tired God - a quiet girl in worn-out shoes - wanders the earth in search of an ideally kind person (on stage she will walk on a treadmill and ride a bicycle - it's all about her search). Her legs were bled (already in her first appearance), then she was barely alive (in Brecht’s text, one of the Gods had a bruise under the eye of “good people”, and this girl-God in bloody bandages had her hands, head, neck , belly) Wang will drag her to the forefront, and for the third time she will be carried out completely lifeless. God himself could not survive in the world, which he commanded to live according to his, divine, rules. People mutilated God, abused him (in the performance - not knowing that this is God (the townspeople do not recognize her at the beginning), but the deep meaning is that people do not need such a God with his commandments), and God died. And Wang contemptuously throws a handful of sand on a lifeless body, uttering a phrase that in the original of the play belongs to one of the gods (I use a publicly available translation of the play, and for the performance YUN specially translated the play again by Yegor Peregudov):

“Your commandments are destructive. I'm afraid all the rules of morality that you have established must be crossed out. People have enough worries to at least save their lives. Good intentions bring them to the edge of the abyss, and good deeds bring them down.”

Why is God here a girl? (I'm just guessing). Here it is necessary to summarize and name by name what I have been rambling on for a long time without a name above in the text. In "The Good Man from Sezuan" (as in "The Black Monk") one of the main themes is the theme of duality (man, phenomena, concepts, etc.). Yuri Butusov loves this theme very much - it sounds in all his works. Moreover, this term has many meanings, but for us, as non-specialists, it is most understandable (conditionally) direct and reverse duality. Those. in one case - a copy, in the other - the opposite, reverse, shadow side. If you look closely, almost every character in the play has his own double. And even not alone. Such a mirror labyrinth of twins. (Yuri Nikolaevich again drew such an ingenious pattern inside the performance - I can’t recognize everything). I didn’t track the video sequence well (you get carried away with the action and forget to keep your nose to the wind) - / the back wall of the stage, as well as the light curtain descending to the proscenium from above, from time to time act as a screen - the video projector creates a video sequence on them / - but two almost-twins of prostitutes (in black dresses, black glasses) against the background of the image of two little girls-twins (sad and smiling; this is a photo of Diana Arbus "Twins" (Diana Arbus - Identical Twins) I remember. And here they are, a pair of antagonists: childhood - adulthood; innocence - vice joy and sadness.
More. I thought: why did Alexander Arsentiev (Soon Yang) have red eyes. Red eyes.. “Here comes my mighty adversary, the devil. I see his terrible crimson eyes .. "And then -" Brodsky's "Elegy". Yes, it's Seagull. Former pilot Sun Yang is a "postal line pilot" who "alone, like a fallen angel, jams vodka." Fallen Angel, Lucifer. Sun Yang's eyes are the red eyes of Lucifer, which the World Soul speaks of in Nina Zarechnaya's monologue. And then the dance of Lucifer with God is also about duality. And about the struggle and interaction of Light and Dark principles in a person. And this is Yang and Yin in the eastern symbol, in which each of the concepts carries the grain of its opposite. One gives rise to another and itself comes from this other .. And this is life (red balloon, symbolizing first sparkling wine in Sun's glass, and then "turning" into the tummy of Shen Te and the God girl, although one became pregnant from a loved one, and the other was probably raped). And if we continue to develop the theme of Sun's Luciferism: after all, he (again conditionally) competes with God in the right to a Good Man, manipulates what for a woman is the energy of life, love. In general, Shen Te found herself in that very monstrous situation, when everyone needs something FROM you, but nobody cares BEFORE you. The only friend, Wang, again, trying to help her, eventually exposed her, declassified her secret. Throughout the play, no one asks her herself: what is it like for her, what she thinks about, what she feels, whether she feels good or bad. In fact, only God talks to her about her (the entire scene of the dialogue between Shen Te and Ms. Shin on the eve of Shen Te’s arrest is rewritten by Yuri Butusov under Shen Te and God, “I will be there when this happens,” God Shen Te says, this about childbirth, but you need to understand this much more widely).
More about doubles: Shen Te with her yet unborn son, Ms. Yang with her son, Mi Ju's double (when she is in black and cradles a birch log wrapped in a blanket). Yes, in fact, we are all mirrors and twins of each other.
And I didn’t finish talking about God-girl. The main and obvious pair of doubles in the play, of course, are Shen Te and Shui Ta (for such a double that hides in the person himself, Wikipedia suggested a sonorous German word - Doppelganger). But towards the end, when Shen Te is already 7 months pregnant (and when she has been in the "disguise" of her brother, "godfather" and tobacco king Shui Ta for a long time), she looks into the mirror, and her reflection in the mirror is a girl- God with the same 7-month-old tummy. Before Shen Te's last time decides to take advantage of her brother, the God-girl will be dressed as Shui Ta (Shen Te suggested that this should be done). She, the girl-God, will fold the wrong thing on the floor Chinese character(what?), or a house of empty cigarette packs that poured on her head in an indifferent rain. Shen Te, she is Shui Ta, the Godfather and the tobacco king - was a God in her tobacco kingdom, established her own rules there, introduced her own Decrees .. In general, the same scenario as the Gods with their rules and Decrees for the world in general (recursion, the process of repeating elements in a self-similar way). And everything is destroyed: the world that God built, and the tobacco empire that Shui Ta created.
Now came to mind beautiful phrase: this performance is about God's search for Man and Man for God. Both girls, through torment and suffering, come to the conclusion that something needs to be changed in the “regulations of interaction” between God and Man.

Brecht left the play's ending open - questions were left unanswered. But Yuri Nikolayevich, despite Shen Te's call for help, nevertheless made the final closed and - giving hope, offering his own version of the answer to the question "what to do". wonderful final scene(again - as I heard it, maybe I misunderstood it), in which poor Shen Te begs the gods to allow her to become cruel Shui Ta at least once a week: the God girl, smiling softly, will allow (do not dismiss this permission in horror, as if not wanting to hear anything, like the Brechtian gods, but will say calmly and consciously: “Do not abuse it. Once a month is enough." Yuri Nikolayevich wisely did not begin to remake this world (because we ourselves create the reality around us, these are the fruits of our own labors and beliefs, and not someone else’s, and if they are “someone else’s”, and we continue to live in them, then they it’s just that they’re also suitable for us (“if you’re unlucky today, nothing, you’ll be lucky tomorrow; if you’re unlucky tomorrow, nothing, you’ll be lucky the day after tomorrow; if you’re unlucky the day after tomorrow, it means you just like it better”); so we’ll be redone, Yes, we will return everything anyway); did not change the hero, because Shen Te is, in fact, perhaps the best specimen of the human race; did not abolish the gods (and everything that can be included in a group with such a common name, i.e. both internal and external concepts) in general, because, alas, without any restraining factors, a person very quickly unrestrains himself, throwing the world into chaos, and this is a direct path to self-destruction. Yury Butusov changed the Resolution. His God softened his requirements for man, lowered unreasonably high bar, allowing a person in a much wider range to be what he is by nature: different - good, bad, kind, evil, strong, weak, etc. And such a God is acceptable for Wang - they will leave, holding hands.

This, probably, is the “message” of Yuri Butusov to the world, which is now also dangerously approaching the line:
“Man, be a man, with all your human weaknesses, flaws and imperfections, but still try to be a Man, then this world still has a chance to be saved.”
“You can do it, Shen Te. The main thing is to stay kind."

Probably, it is not necessary to love all Humanity, it is very abstract and useless. You can focus on a narrower circle, for example, on those who are nearby. And if there is an opportunity to do something that will help another or at least just please him - why not do it? Sometimes just listening is enough. Such trifles and trifles can make a person happy - every time I am surprised, including myself. People are now terribly disunited, distant from each other, have lost mutual trust, are closed in themselves, the main nature of contacts is the mutual use of each other.
It's hard to live - everything is true, but if you observe, then it is those who have the hardest life, or who themselves experienced something terrible, for some reason, who are most capable of compassion and participation for another. When help was collected everywhere in the summer for Krasnodar drowning victims, old worn-out things - pensioner grandmothers - were carried to the collection points. It's not about the times. "Those are the times." The times are always the same (“Do not say: How did it happen that the former days were better than these? For it was not from wisdom that you asked about this.” - Prince Ecclesiastes). There is something wrong with ourselves.
(Abstracting from the inconsistency and ambiguity of concepts and using the usual understanding of terms): good, like evil, has a chain reaction (motorists know: if you let someone ahead of you on the road, then, as a rule, he will soon let someone ahead of him too ). I repeat: life is a difficult thing, but while we are here, we must somehow live it. In a world where there are more “good chains”, life is easier.
The heroine Doronina in the film “Once Again About Love” sent postcards to all her friends for the holidays: “People are pleased when they are remembered. There is not much warmth in life. Into the past New Year sent 92 postcards.

AND last quote. Chekhov, "Gooseberry":
- Pavel Konstantinovich! said [Ivan Ivanovich] in an imploring voice. "Don't calm down, don't let yourself be put to sleep!" While you are young, strong, cheerful, do not get tired of doing good! Happiness does not and should not exist, and if there is a meaning and purpose in life, then this meaning and purpose is not at all in our happiness, but in something more reasonable and greater. Do good!

Good man from Sezuan. Moscow Taganka Theater. 1964

The Good Man from Sesuan (Bertolt Brecht)
Theater name: Moscow Taganka Theater Genre: Parable-play Premiere: 1964
Duration: 02:46:59
Author: Bertolt Brecht Director: Yuri Lyubimov
Music: Anatoly Vasiliev, Boris Khmelnitsky
Translation from German by Y. Yuzovsky and E. Ionova, verses translated by B. Slutsky

Add. Information: The performance, which began the history of the theater.
The premiere took place on April 23, 1964.
Grand Prix International theater festival in Greece 1999
Videotape - October 2010

Fragment of the play "The Good Man from Sezuan"

The Good Man from Sezuan with Vysotsky at the Taganka Theatre.

Fragments of the play "The Good Man from Sezuan"

Fragment of the first part of the documentary trilogy "Theatrical etude on Taganskaya themes".
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Saint Never Day Vladimir Vysotsky

Włodzimierz Wysocki - Pieśni [songs]. Więcej o Wołodii na mojej stronie http://www.vysotsky.neostrada.pl/ [Lyrics: Bertolt Brecht]
Words: B. Brecht, music. A.Vasiliev and B.Khmelnitsky. Performed in the play "The Good Man from Cezuan".

On this day, evil is taken by the throat,
On this day, everyone is lucky
Both the owner and the laborer all march together to the tavern,
On Saint's Day, the skinny one never drinks at the fat one's house.

The river rolls its waters back,
Everyone, brother, is kind, you don’t hear about the evil ones,
On this day, everyone rests, and no one urges -
On the day of the saint Never the whole earth, like paradise, is fragrant.

On this day you will be a general, ha ha!
Well, I would fly that day.
In [....], you will find peace,
On the day of Saint Never, woman, you will find peace.

We can no longer wait
That's why they must give us, yes, give:
people of hard work
Saint Never Day, Saint Never Day
The day we will rest!

Igor Merkulov

The play is a parabola by Bertolt Brecht,

Characters and performers:

Annotation for the play "The Good Man from Sesuan" based on the play by Bertolt Brecht

Written in the 30s of the last century, the play has long become a world classic and a kind of measure of the readiness of the theater and its public to comprehend the original philosophy of the author. Most famous theaters the world did not bypass this play with their attention. In Russia, in the 60s, the Lyubimov Taganka Theater announced its birth by staging this particular play. In 2013, the Moscow theater named after. Pushkin surprised and delighted the capital's theater-goers with a new interpretation of Brecht's "Kind Man ...". This year Kaliningraders will be able to own opinion and about Brecht's dramaturgy and evaluate its reading by the director and actors of our theater.

The action takes place in China, in the non-existent city of Sichuan invented by Brecht (Sezuan is in the European reading). main character- a priestess of love, a kind, trusting woman who finds absolutely unusual way protect yourself from the evil world and evil people. Will she succeed? The viewer will have to find the answer to this question.

This is the story of a woman and her love, but our performance is not a melodrama. This is a story about a non-existent world and its heroes, but our performance is not fantasy. This is a story about spiritual torment and search, but our performance is not a classic drama. In this story, you will visit the court, but this is not a detective story. What kind of Brechtian story will be in our performance, only one person now knows - its director Igor Merkulov, who specially came from Moscow to stage this play.

According to the sketches of the production designer Vladimir Pavlyuk (St. Petersburg), the theater workshops have already begun to create a colorful world on the stage, permeated with Chinese aesthetics. The scenery and costumes are bright, elegant, exotic for the European eye, and worthy of becoming an object of special attention of the public in their own right. A very important topic is the music of the performance. There will be a lot of it - the classic works of Paul Dessau for this play, vocal singing, national Chinese melodies and even rock.

Goes big and very interesting job the whole theater to create a new performance. You have the opportunity to evaluate it personally on February 28, March 1 and 7 at the premiere shows.

03/07/2015 Were at the play "The Good Man from Sezuan". The first act barely sat through. Very delayed. From the second, they left. Herself story line interesting, but the staging is a mess. The acting was very disappointing. They played sluggishly, you can even compare with " art circle". Everyone was on stage on his own, and not in one performance. I didn’t like the costumes, a lot of modern fabrics were used, although the era of the last century was displayed in the performance. Songs and a microphone were played very loudly. theater, this performance left a negative impression.Perhaps the directors of the performance and the actors in the future will create a more pleasant impression of the performance.

[email protected] Filippov Ilya ( [email protected] )

I went to the play "The Good Man from Sezuan" on March 7th.

Alexander

Good man and Sezuana. Briefly about the play: Genre Parabola - the geometry of eternal movement: the outcome-existence-return. Ideally, to a height not less than the starting point of the movement. But this is ideal. More often than not, it's the other way around. Unfortunately, "Kind Man" is from the "most often" cohort. Unfortunately, the performance didn't go well. Of course, this is my personal opinion. And these lines are with sincere love for our theatre. Metaphysics of design. “What kind of power is this, forever striving for evil and always doing good?” - so or almost so asks the great Goethe. An existential paradox with no solution. Neither "positive" nor "negative". The idea, you see, is non-trivial. How to convey the inseparability of "good" and "evil" by means of art? Reception is known - a split personality. Transcendence in sunglasses. Heroes "from eternity", such as, for example, the gods, certainly need the appropriate attributes. How to show "eternity" in theatrical ways? For example, the imposition of costumes of one era on the costumes of another era. Main character. There are three Marina Jungans in the Kaliningrad Drama Theater: 1. Photo in the foyer. 2. The main character in "The Good Man" 3. Alter ego Shen De - Shoi Da. There is only one question - why was she “forced” to walk with an absurd “male” gait with torticollis? Dear Natalia Sales. Her temperament and thirst for life-play is such that it is high time for the theater to stage The Idiot or The Karamazovs, even if only specifically for it. Annoying inconsistencies. Mostly explainable and easily fixable. The costumes and stage are magnificent, amazing! The stage setting is beyond praise.

Svetlana

Amendment to Alexey's review dated 03/03/2015 at 01:18. You wrote so much positive (I don’t agree with you in many ways, but this is a personal opinion that will still remain with each of us) about the actresses in the play “The Good Man from Cezuan”, not even knowing that Sh. was played by Maria Savelyeva, and not Anastasia Bashkina (

kath [email protected] Katerina ( [email protected] )

My husband and I went to the premiere of "The Good Man of Cezuan" on Sunday. I don't understand why so many positive feedback? We can hardly wait for the end of the first act! They just ran away! If THIS is called acting?! Then I don’t know .. Some kind of booth. The only thing that was pleasing to the eye was the scenery. And this cabaret girl? From her screams and singing, her ears were pawned. Dancing out of sync, incomprehensible costume changes, and what are these "Gods" worth?! Waste of money and time! It's sad to call it theater!

Vladimir

The play is a kind man from CESOUAN. I did not get anything. True, the wife is satisfied - Beautiful,

Thanks to the actors and the theater for the new premiere, "The Good Man from Cezuan". It was interesting to me, I read Brecht at the philological faculty at the university, I didn’t think that it was we who dared to put it on. The conflict of cultures is very interesting. Very colorful and, of course, non-standard. Of the actors, the performers of the roles of the Water Carrier and the Pilot were especially impressed, beautiful dancing and costumes.

Vasily Alekseevich

I do not like to write reviews, especially for performances, the impression of which should be subjective. But in the case of the play "The Good Man from Cezuan", I will not answer anyone's question whether to go to it or not. The fact is that the production caused me very strange ambivalent feelings. On the one hand, I saw a very beautiful performance, stop the action at any moment, there will be a great shot. The actors have chic costumes, excellent make-up, some actors seem to be real Chinese. But on the other hand, it is not clear why, some of the actors begin to change into more modern clothes already from 20-30 minutes of action. The idea of ​​the creators of the play here is most likely in an attempt to get away from specifics and direct reference to the place of events, because those who are familiar with Brecht's play know that China, where the action allegedly takes place, is a very conditional place. This is such an attempt to approach the parable. Also, the authors clearly wanted to show that even the Gods are moving away from the eternal towards modernity and manufacturability. But why do costumes change gradually and not for everyone? The idea is logical, interesting, but somehow ill-conceived. On the one hand they play good actors, I saw them in the latest productions of the drama theater, but here they seem to be out of place, and for this you don’t believe almost anyone. I am extremely far from the work of the director and the choice of people for certain roles, but at least the replacement of the actress who plays the main Shin De with the actress who plays her alter ego looks very obvious (and we big group acquaintances discussed these actresses during the intermission, we like them very much, and everyone agreed in the same opinion). And the actresses are not offended, both roles are the main ones. And the performance gets fragile, tender, good girl in the form of Bashkina Anastasia (by the way, a man's jacket on her would also look cool) and sexy defiant Marina Yungans as a screaming alter ego. By the way, as for the main characters, why did they make a water carrier out of our beloved Maxim Patserin - a stuttering half-wit. His character in the book was normal and did not stutter (or am I confusing something?). There are dances in the performance, which is great, they give the action even more colors and variety, especially with umbrellas. They could smooth out some of the roughness and imperfections of the performance, but they immediately became another "imperfection" themselves. Why are the dances not staged. It can be seen that they wanted to use elements of Chinese dance, it turned out a lot (as it seemed to me - it didn’t seem to a professional), but why aren’t the couples simply arranged around the stage? The actors interfered with each other, clustered together. The feeling that the artists simply did not mark the points on the stage. In general, duality and ambiguity in everything, except for the duality that Brecht put into his work. After all the main problem, which clearly rises in the work, is the problem of two people who live inside each of us, how to be good and tough, try to be fair, but do as your heart tells you. I didn’t see the tragedy, I just looked at a certain set of sketches ... with a very beautiful picture. There is no integrity from the performance, but at the same time, the picture with the rain was reproduced in the eyes of the whole evening and the next day. In any case, thanks a lot.

Yuri Butusov staged a performance based on the play by Bertolt Brecht, adjusted to the point of gesture, frightening and beautiful in its certainty.

For the sake of a social experiment, he imagined himself a god capable of teaching people how to get out of poverty - the causes of all evil on earth. And he composed a parable: the Chinese gods were ready to forgive mankind if they could find at least one good person. Pretending to be beggars, the three of them descended into Sezuan, starving from crop failure, where they met a kind prostitute, Shen Te, who let them under her roof. So the gods put all the responsibility on her: they say, come on, hurry to do good, and we'll see. Shen Te diligently began to distribute rice to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, until both sat on her head in unison. Then her second “I” woke up in a kind woman - a tough and resourceful businessman Shui Ta, who began to exploit and profit from this lumpen.

“Distributing or exploiting” is not at all the problem that worries who put “The Good Man from Sezuan” in. Is good possible today? How can a person who is not indifferent to others survive? And is love now primarily vulnerability?

The director, together with co-author-scenographer Alexander Shishkin, stripped the stage naked, turning it into a huge dark world, pulsing with flashes of harsh light and the rhythms of Paul Dessau's electronic music performed live by the Pure Music ensemble. Here, nothing has a cover: in a bare box without walls, the door does not close anyone from anyone, the unmade iron bed stands as if in a ditch, the trees hang without foliage. The inhabitants, in order to at least hide behind something, turn themselves into masks, grotesque and one-dimensional. So, the brutal actor Alexander Matrosov, in front of the audience, turns into a weak fool - the water seller Wang. When people lose their words due to impotence or rage, they begin to chant-sing Zongs in German, which sounds tough, demanding and beautiful. And into this world, Butusov releases a lonely God - a fragile, bloody leg in search of a kind person, a silent girl (). And she meets the lonely and fragile Shen Te () exhausted by other people's desires. And they both decide to love their neighbors.

Ursulyak plays Shen Te, who doesn't turn into Shui Ta for a minute. But when despair rises in her throat, she allows herself to put on the mask of a cynical pragmatist (simply sticks a paper mustache and sideburns on herself) so that she has the strength to say no. And in the mask of evil, she continues to distribute the wealth he has acquired to those in need. Distribute anonymously, not out of modesty, but so as not to reveal the secret and ruin a good deed. Strolling like a little gentleman wrapped in a scarf, she hides all the same suffering eyes under her frowning brows. Shen Te, even for a moment, is still allowed happiness: she loves an unemployed pilot, handsome Yang Sun, and hears his reciprocal confessions. And Shui Ta is forced to listen to the impudent revelations of his beloved, who, it turns out, only needs money. Alexander Arsentiev is the only one who plays Young without a mask, because his egoism is so natural.

After a frivolous, excessive and driving in, he staged a performance, adjusted to a gesture, frightening and beautiful in its certainty, throwing a kind person onto the stage, as if onto a red-hot roof. But Alexandra Ursulyak plays Shen Te without fear of getting burned.

Photo by Sergey Petrov