Kommersant, October 21, 2008

Stendhal after Malevich

"Red and Black" at the Youth Theater

The premiere of the play "Red and Black" was played at the Russian Youth Theater. Director Yuri Eremin decided to look at Stendhal's novel through the prism of the works of Kazimir Malevich. The unexpected director's concept did not spoil the production, MARINA SHIMADINA believes.

Stendhal's novel based on real history young ambitious provincial, which the writer learned from the newspapers, Yuri Eremin played like a chess game - red and black. In his production, the characters of the novel turn into pawns in the hands of two powerful elements of color, which the director is trying to connect with the works of Kazimir Malevich - "Red" and "Black Square". The performance even includes a special character named Male, who, in the course of the action, diligently covers over the square window in the center of the stage, first with red and then with black paint, uttering thoughtful aphorisms of great thinkers and poets between times. But comparing Stendhal with Malevich is like comparing War and Peace with War of the Worlds on the grounds that they sound similar. In the performance, the colors included in the title of the novel are interpreted quite traditionally, in the Stendhal style: red is a symbol of passion and life, black is a symbol of sin, crime and death, respectively, while the founder of Suprematism did not at all put such a thing into the colors of his works. semantic load. In his famous "Squares" red served only as a sign of color in general, and black - its absence.

But if you do not go into fine art criticism, it must be admitted that the technique found is to the benefit of the performance. The appeal to the art of the 20th century sets a certain tone for the production and deprives it of the old-fashioned decorative effect that is usual for a costume drama. Victoria Sevryukova's costumes, conventionally stylized as 19th-century fashion, cleverly play up the director's intent: with each scene, the outfits of the characters, which initially had the color of a blank canvas, show more and more red details, and in the second act, black details.

The scenography by Valery Fomin - a gray wall with doors and moving podiums - is laconic and functional. She does not illustrate the luxury of fashionable Parisian interiors, but organizes the space of the performance. The movement of the actors on the stage is somewhat reminiscent of the movement chess pieces: two steps forward, one sideways, a knight's move, castling - this is how Julien Sorel plays the game of his fate, sacrificing unnecessary pieces in order to break through to the queens.

But the geometric clarity of the mise-en-scenes in no way dries out the acting. Minor characters are outlined with two or three light strokes, without unnecessary pressure and with a share of humor, shading the emotional fever of the main characters. The young Denis Balandin, who plays the role of Julien Sorel in turn with the more experienced Pyotr Krasilov, is convincing in the image of a provincial unsure of himself, painfully ambitious and scrupulous in matters of honor. But whether he loves his noble patronesses or only uses them to satisfy vanity and advance to the upper levels of society, it is difficult to determine from the acting of the actor. But the feelings of Madame Renal performed by Nelly Uvarova are visible at a glance.

The actress, whom the whole country knows as the clumsy girl with braces on her teeth from the series Don't Be Born Beautiful, created in the performance a magnificent image of an adult woman, passionate and sensual, going crazy with love. Mrs. Uvarova works in unusual detail by today's standards and wins back every nuance of her emotionally rich role. And the audience of the Youth Theater will surely appreciate the love scenes with her participation more than the moralizing maxims of Mr. Male.

New Newspaper, October 24, 2008

Alexandra Akchurina

Emphasis on red

The long-awaited premiere took place at the Russian Academic Youth Theater - "Red and Black" staged by Yuri Eremin

The director took on the classic novel by Stendhal and light hand removed a lot of minor episodes, and the text itself was "inventively" divided into two parts - "Red" and "Black". The first, according to the director's idea, tells about passion, and the second about death. The author of the stage version of the novel did not distort the meaning, however, due to the fragments torn out, the images of the characters, as well as the general idea of ​​the novel, remained unfinished. Eremin made a simple performance about love, while Stendhal wrote unsurpassed in psychologically a book about ambition and ambition that absorbs a person. The main merit of the director is that he skillfully worked with the performers of the roles: the images offered to the actors were played flawlessly.

Eremin, in my opinion, does not quite correctly interpret the symbolism of the novel, if it can be interpreted correctly at all. Red is only love here, and black is only death, although there is essentially very little love (both in the novel and in the play): Julien Sorel, a provincial ambitious young man, never elevates love to an absolute, it is no more for him, than a means on the way to achieving career heights, and in the case of Madame de Renal, it only satisfies his pride - and nothing more.

The only person who has a genuine feeling is Louise de Renal (Nelli Uvarova), the wife of the mayor, to whom Julien is hired as a teacher. In love, she is selfish and jealous (not out of religious fear she writes a libelous letter to her former lover), but sincere. In her earthly, non-Christian love, there is even some kind of grandeur and charm. Nelli Uvarova's mother's tragedy is played extremely convincingly, although unforgivably little is said about her in the performance.

Another passion of Julien is Mathilde de La Mole (Anna Kovaleva), an aristocrat with romantic ideas about death and a perfect amateur in love. She was seduced by the rootless Julien only when she realized that he could kill her. She guessed this trait correctly: Julien is capable of murder, but not out of love or jealousy, but solely out of ambition. He also shoots Madame de Renal when she destroys his career plans with her letter addressed to Matilda's father, the Marquis de La Mole.

The main character, Julien Sorel, is played by one of the "stars" of RAMT, Petr Krasilov. This image is an attempt to go beyond the role of the naive and noble youths whom Krasilov has played so far (Erast Fandorin, Petya Trofimov in The Cherry Orchard, Robert in Cruel Dances). In Sorel, Krasilov discovers dark sides but sometimes it overdoes it. In his Julien, perhaps, the balance is broken: a lot of rigidity and less than required feelings. There is very little offended dignity and ardent love for Napoleon Bonaparte in him, and in Stendhal this is the main emotion that the hero experiences. In the performance, the image of Sorel is spelled out worst of all, if only because many episodes of his life path. So, in the play there is almost no word about Sorel's past (only it is mentioned several times about his low origin), there is not enough of his period of study at the seminary and other fragments necessary for understanding the character.

The director used the comic talent of Krasilov and other actors at the wrong time - in the second act, which was supposed to be tragic. Instead of a love drama, the actors sometimes play a farce, which does not fit into the general line of the play.

However, despite all the reservations, the performance, which surprises with the director's interpretation, is watched in one breath, primarily thanks to the excellent acting.

It is impossible not to say about the very successful move of Eremin - the image of the artist Male, invisible to the heroes present on the stage all the action. He quotes Byron, Montaigne, Napoleon, Goethe and Schopenhauer, talks about flowers, love and death, voices internal monologues heroes and perfectly connects the poorly glued composition of the play. Male plays the roles of a narrator, a witness, a sympathizer, and a prompter. In the performance, this is perhaps the brightest and most lively figure, although she accompanies all the action in the background.

The accents in the performance are placed on red, not only figuratively, but also literally - in the color scheme of the characters' costumes (author Victoria Sevryukova). At the beginning of the action, all the characters are dressed in plain light suits and resemble colorless canvases. With the arrival of Sorel in the house of the Renals, red trim appears in the outfits, the maid spreads out the red carpet, fluffs up scarlet pillows, and Male writes out red patterns on a colorless square in the center of the scenery. The scenography (Valery Fomin) is made in an unexpected graphic style: everything is laconic and gloomy, and the main elements are the red and black squares of Kazimir Malevich. Brilliant Paris is embodied on the stage by several cardboard frames, symbolizing the external cascade of a chic secular society (here they have fun), the Renal house - with two doors and beds (they love it here), the La Molay house - a desk with ink and papers (they make a career here), a prison cell - a hole in the window opening (they die here).

In the second act, the color of the costumes gradually shifts to black, but the scarlet tones do not leave the stage until the very end. Obviously, in this way the author emphasizes the constant presence of passion in the lives of heroes, even when facing a death sentence.

Yuri Eremin's productions are always distinguished by a solid, logically adjusted construction, and they always lack some subtlety, elegance of high art. They seem to be textbook slicked down to the needs of a schoolboy - a classic in excerpts and fragments. His performances are good for drawing up a general idea of ​​​​anything. In "Red and Black" you can learn about love, and about Stendhal, and about the life of young people who dream of breaking out from the bottom, and about the musty life of the province. The basis of the performance, unfortunately, is dry, like a biography. But deep acting, interesting costumes and scenography saturate the production with details, thoughts and ideas, without which it would not be viable.

IN performance "Red and Black" famous director Yuri Eremin used unexpected visual images, referring to the work of Kazimir Malevich. All the characters in the production, in the director's interpretation, are associated with two works by the famous artist - "Black Square" and "Red Square".

However, the semantic load of these two colors in performance "Red and Black" does not contradict Stendhal: red remains the color of passion, love and affirmation of life, black - the color of crime, sin and death.

Performance "Red and Black" is played like a chess game in which red and black pieces act. Color accents are clearly expressed in the costumes of Victoria Sevryukova, which, from colorless at the beginning of the performance, first acquire more and more red details, and in the second part of the production they become predominantly black.

Yuri Eremin even introduced a special character named Male into the production. For the entire first half of the performance, he covers over the square window located in the middle of the stage with red paint. Then he applies a layer of black paint on top, while still managing to recite Schopenhauer, Goethe and Byron, as well as talk about love and death, the properties of color and voice the internal monologues of the main characters.

In the play "Red and Black" Male (Aleksey Blokhin) turns out to be an important figure who connects the whole action and gives it the necessary dynamics and compositional completeness.

Ambitious and ambitious Julien Sorel (Denis Balandin) appears in the house of the mayor of a small town, Mr. de Renal (Viktor Tsymbal)

In the role of governor. A handsome young man with a good education and excellent manners catches the attention of the mayor's wife, Louise de Renal (Nelli Uvarova).

She falls in love with Julien and they become lovers. But an anonymous letter forces Julien to flee Renal's house, and soon he becomes secretary to the Marquis de La Mole (Aleksey Maslov).

Julien wants with all his might to be closer to the world of the aristocracy, in which he could realize his ambitious intentions. And the best way is a wedding with the daughter of the Marquis Matilda (Anna Kovaleva).

But everything collapses after an unexpected letter from Madame de Renal, in which a woman warns the Marquis and accuses Julien of hypocrisy and using Matilda for her own selfish purposes.

Enraged, Julien rushes to Renal's house and shoots his former lover with a pistol. Louise does not die from her wounds, but Sorel is arrested and sentenced to death. In the final performance "Red and Black" Julien repents of his crime and receives Louise's forgiveness.

Original scenography, directorial finds and deep acting make Performance "Red and Black" one of the most interesting performances on the stage of the Youth Theatre. famous novel Stendhal appears in a new reading, which will be interesting to the widest range of viewers.

Tickets to Performance "Red and Black" Theater fans can purchase tickets on the TicketService website at any time.

The Russian Academic Youth Theater (RAMT) is preparing a magnificent performance for its devoted audience - "Red and Black". A production based on the work of art by Stendhal has been created. The performance was directed by Yuri Eremin, and Nelli Uvarova and Pyotr Krasilov were involved in the main roles. An unexpectedly interesting and new interpretation of the novel, shown through the prism of Kazimir Malevich's paintings, strikes with freshness. theatrical concept. hurry up buy tickets to RAMT to a wonderful production of "Red and Black".

Two different poles - two different lives

Stendhal's famous novel was based on a true story about a young, ambitious provincial boy and his fate. An interesting directorial approach of the RAMT genius - Yuri Eremin - brought a certain peculiarity to the story. So, in the play, a chess game between red and black is played. These colors symbolize the red officer's uniform and the black cassock of a monk, the struggle between love and death, the confrontation between life and mourning, eternal crime and punishment, all-consuming fire and darkness... Life has never been so similar to casino roulette! In the performance, the main characters of the novel are pawns in the hands of the most powerful and powerful elements of this two-color scale, associated with the famous works of the artist Malevich - "Red Square" and "Black Square". A new character, called Male, who is endowed with important work- diligently paint over the central window in the form of a square with red and then black paints. Doing this, Male utters thoughtful, full of philosophical meaning, aphorisms of the greatest thinkers and poets.

The performance can be called a work in combination of the incompatible. Thus, it is rather difficult to combine two ideas - Stendhal's and Kazimirov's. Both creators interpret these two colors in completely different ways:

Stendhal considers red a symbol of passion and life, and black - death and mourning; Malevich draws the "Red Square", symbolizing the color, "Black Square" - its absence.

In order to appreciate the idea and the uniqueness of the production, you need to book tickets for play "Red and black" in our company.

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Stage version (2h50m) 18+

Stendhal
Director: Yuri Eremin
Julien Sorel: Denis Balandin, Petr Krasilov
Madame Renal: Nelly Uvarova
Matilda: Anna Kovaleva
Male: Alexey Blokhin
and others C 05.04.2014 There are no dates for this show.
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Review of "Afisha":

Director Yuri Eremin, who himself wrote the play based on the novel, literally exaggerates, discarding halftones and focusing on the colors that are stated in the title. The visual solution of the performance, based on the themes of paintings by the artist Kazimir Malevich "Red Square" and "Black Square", is also based on the principle of sharp color contrast and includes elements of some kind of graphic constructivism. That is why right angles predominate in the costumes, and the main detail of the scenery is the glass plate located in the center of the wall, which gradually turns red during the first act, and black during the second. Accordingly, a prominent place in the performance is occupied by such actor, as the artist Male (Anton Shagin), who paints this “canvas” and at the same time represents a kind of second “I” of the protagonist. He now and then comments on the action, “prompting” certain actions, and at the same time sprinkles with quotations borrowed from world sources of literary and philosophical thought. He also sets a clear emotional tone for each action: “red is a symbol of passion”, “the main meaning of black is death.” In accordance with this attitude, the costumes of the characters also change: as passion absorbs the characters, white flows into red when death creeps up on them, red is steadily absorbed by black. Such frank asceticism in the selection of external colors directly correlates with the choice of topics and the choice of characters.

From the entire palette of a multi-layered novel, the author of the play and the director, by and large, singles out only the love story of Julien Sorel and Madame Renal, which, of course, has its pluses and minuses. All other plot and thematic layers adapt as much as possible and turn out to be only auxiliary touches accompanying the main action. Even the episodes that tell about the mutual infatuation between Julien and Mathilde de la Mole are decided primarily in a grotesque comedic way. But the duet of the main characters is filled with true drama and depth of feelings. It is true love that makes the assertively ambitious young man Julien Sorel - Denis Balandin (Pyotr Krasilov also plays this role), at first striving for self-affirmation with all his might and painfully defending his human dignity, to realize that the main thing in his life is that all-consuming feeling that he experienced to Madame Renal. The restrainedly strict heroine Nelly Uvarova herself, rushing into this love like into a pool, experiences a painful struggle between feeling and reason, surrenders to passion and strives for repentance, bathes in boundless happiness and plunges into the abyss of despair. In the finale, the two figures freeze within the black square, as if in a solemn-tragic unity of death and immortal love.