In his new work at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Andrei Kalinin turns to the classic Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman (1896). Since the end of the XIX century, when Henrik Ibsen's dramaturgy came to the Russian theater scene, the plays of the Norwegian classic were staged at the Alexandrinsky Theater, here at different times went: The Feast at Solhaug, The Vikings at Helgeland, The Lady from the Sea, Pillars of Society, Ghosts, Peer Gynt, A Doll's House ... One of the latest references to Ibsen's dramaturgy on the Alexandrinsky stage is Hedda Gabler directed by Kama Ginkas in 2011. But there have been no performances of the play John Gabriel Borkman (1896), which was the penultimate in the playwright's work, in the theater's repertoire.
The play has a compact, concentrated structure - its action unfolds over the course of one winter evening. The main characters of this drama gather at the family estate of Rentheims - John Gabriel Borkman, who has worked his way up from the son of a miner to the director of a bank, but who has lost everything, both his name and his money, spent several years in prison for fraud with depositors' funds, and then locked himself up on the second floor of the house; his wife Gunhild; their son Erhart; his wife's twin sister and Borkman's former lover Ella, whom he once gave up for a position and a share in the bank. All of them - both Borkman, who longs for revenge, and Gunhild, who is painfully worried about her present condition and dreams of regaining her former status, and Ella, who has actually come to the ancestral home to die, connect all their aspirations with Eckhart and his future, and expect him, one way or another, to solve their problems. But, as the main character says in another Ibsen play The Master Builder: Youth is retribution, the young man has other plans, and he wants something completely different from life... Scene after scene, in which the playwright confronts the characters with their past experiences, losses, betrayed love, broken hopes, ambitions, so different ideas about the future - the action moves towards an inexorable and dramatic finale.
Andrei Kalinin, following the author, explores the nature of human feelings on the example of a private story of family disintegration and a crumbling house, avoiding in the play the trappings of any era, not tying the characters and situations to any time. In the main, the director follows the playwright without changing the plot moves of the play, slightly editing only the ending. In the performance there is a place for psychological intensity of dialogues, and lyrical, intimate intonation. But at the same time Kalinin builds a distance with the text and plot twists, resorting to irony, and some situations solving and resolving through the grotesque.
Premiere - February 17, 18, 2023
The play was created with the support of the R-Pharm Group of Companies and the "Lessons in Directing" festival
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A ruler deprived of peace - but this paradigm in the solution of Borkman's image is finally clarified only in the finale. Standing in the middle of the snowy desert, he utters words about his kingdom, about the mountains, forests, seas, which he was ready to seize and owned, but failed. Meanwhile, on the huge backdrop there is a projection of the fruits of human endeavor - endless pictures of port containers, a grid of railroads, a cluster of factory pipes and wind turbines, factory buildings, oil derricks, felled forests, garbage, streams of black oil. All this was erected by the builder Borkman, and in this performance he turns out to be the embodiment of all humanity. Creation turned out to be destruction, and the one who turned the seas and forests into an industrial hell is the monster, the troll who destroys his land.
Irina Seleznyova-Reder. A monster named a Man
Without being lifted from their seats, the audience is taken on an elevator ride from the first floor of the Rentsheim-Borkman house to the second floor and back again. With the help of a huge white cloth and mighty wind blowers, a picture of a crushing snow and sail storm in the mountains is unfolded. Video projection means materialize Borkman's fantastic industrial visions. Not limiting themselves to Ibsen's play, they explicitly and implicitly refer the audience to other works by the great Norwegian.
Andrei Kirillov. Possessed
The theme of reckoning, of imminent retribution for lust for power and betrayal, still turns out to be overriding. Here it is not so much the physical death of the protagonist in the finale, as the realization of the meaninglessness of everything he has done. You can spend eight years in prison, and then walk around the room from corner to corner for another eight years, reveling in illusions about the possibility of starting over, regaining your position and money, but one evening fate will knock on the door. Nemesis. A beautiful woman with dark glasses.
Maria Chernova. Life can't be turned back
Meanwhile, it is the territory of spirits, trolls, giants and monsters that turns out to be the space of Borkman, who is almost a spirit himself. The machinery of the New Stage provides the main trick of this performance - the floor of Frau Borkman suddenly begins to descend somewhere underground, revealing where the footsteps were heard coming from. There is practically nothing on the boardwalk, precipitating on all sides into a dizzying abyss. An ascetic bed with a canopy frame and a chimney on the roof of this world, the smoke from which covers the stage with a shimmering web for the whole performance. In the timeless, out-of-doors space, lost somewhere in the cosmic heights, dwells the same Borkman, who has broken away from everything earthly - he has not cut his hair or beard for years, he is barefoot, barely able to manage with a tiny comb with his braided mane and almost overgrown even with his body. The shaggy brown coat thrown over his shoulders seems to be the skin of this gigantic monster.
Irina Seleznyova-Reder. A monster named a Man