In Volgograd, three Baba Yagas appeared in one performance
Volgograd Young Spectator's Theatre
Yulia Grechukhina
Volgogradskaya Pravda, 09.01.2019
In Volgograd, three Baba Yagas appeared in one performance
The premiere of the musical fairy tale How the Baba Yagas Saved the Fairy Tale was a success at the Volgograd Young Spectator's Theatre. The author of the idea and artistic director is Albert Avkhodeev.
Before the performance, Father Frost, the Snow Maiden and fairy-tale characters entertained the children with circle dances and games by the decorated New Year tree. How the Baba Yagas Saved the Fairy Tale pleased both children and adults.
The production, based on Mikhail Mokienko's story of the same name, was staged by director Tatyana Zakharova. The premiere team included composer Andrey Shishlyannikov, artist Elena Orlova, and choreographer Denis Postoev. With the help of video installations, Yuri Goncharov turned the production into a kind of film-performance. What was unusual was that the actors “lived” both on stage and on screen.
This cheerful story invites viewers to remember magic and the good old fairy tale, forgotten in an age of technological progress. How dull and dreary life is without faith in miracles! Even fairy-tale heroes have grown sad. Rejuvenating apples no longer restore beauty, Koschei has faded and stopped courting girls, and Nightingale the Robber no longer frightens the district with his bold whistle. What kind of fairy-tale life is that? Only in name…
Something had to be done, the Baba Yagas decided. There is a whole lively family of them here. In their crooked, rickety hut they developed their own strategic plan for restarting a real fairy tale and reopening its magical world. And they carried it out brilliantly.
Three Baba Yagas at once — Alexey Maksimov, Olga Nikitina and Elena Efimovskaya — became the engines of fairy-tale progress. They stirred up the whole forest and alarmed all its inhabitants. In short, evil was defeated, and even weddings were celebrated… They helped the valiant Russian soldier Mokey (Dmitry Borisov) fight all kinds of forest evil spirits and rescue his beloved Masha (Anastasia Golubeva). On stage, the fearsome but charming Likho One-Eyed (Irina Talay) and the nimble rogue Koschei (Roman Grebenyuk) cheerfully made mischief. In this festive performance, several genres came together in an extraordinary way: theatre, musical and cinema. The production is not without gentle irony. Judging by the responses, its mischief and slight parody were well received by both young and adult viewers. And so, as before, a fairy tale may be a lie, yet it contains a hint — a lesson for good fellows: good always triumphs, but only if there is courage, compassion, friendship and selflessness…
The Volgograd theatre invites audiences to look into the eyes of deer
Vladimir Apalikov
RIAC
The Volgograd Young Spectator's Theatre hosted the highly successful premiere of How the Baba Yagas Saved the Fairy Tale. The author of the idea and artistic director is Albert Avkhodeev; the performance is based on the story of the same name by Mikhail Mokienko.
Yes, citizens, life in this world has become rather boring. Home, work; for some — school, for others — kindergarten; for everyone — television. The next day, the same whirl again. Boring! The fairy tale has gone, disappeared. And what is life without it? Mere existence.
The family of Baba Yagas — or however one should decline their names — reasoned in roughly this way in their patched and leaning hut on its lame chicken legs. And from reasoning they moved to action. They carried out a real act of sabotage in the first military unit they came across, and thereby set a genuine fairy tale in motion.
Then all kinds of evil spirits climbed onto the stage: the frightening yet rather attractive Likho One-Eyed (Irina Talay), the extraordinarily plastic and thoroughly wicked Koschei (Roman Grebenyuk). And our valiant Russian soldier Mokey (Dmitry Borisov), with the help of three Baba Yagas — Alexey Maksimov, Olga Nikitina and the legend of our theatre Elena Efimovskaya — set out to fight them and rescue his dearest Masha (Anastasia Golubeva).
The production interweaves several genres in an astonishing way. Here there is theatre, cinema, musical, parody and much else besides. All this is seasoned with a measure of irony — subtle, and hitting the mark. Surprisingly, both children and adults understand it. That happens only when the fairy tale is the real thing.
Here, as they say in Odessa, yes indeed, it is the most real fairy tale there is. One is sorry to part with it and its characters. After the performance, in the foyer, a little girl of about three cried bitterly: she very much wanted a hug from the beautiful Masha, but her parents led the child to the cloakroom. I do not know how the child was consoled, but I personally quite understand her grief — I would have wanted a hug myself. And not only from Masha, but from everyone involved in creating this remarkable work.
And perhaps — after Albert Avkhodeev, of course — above all from the artist, our magnificent Elena Orlova. She managed to create a cozy, joyful holiday atmosphere on stage. At the very beginning, behind the Russian stove, we see a rug on the wall. To be precise, it is not a rug at all. After the war, craftsmen went from house to house, took old sheets and painted landscapes on them — tempting, beckoning ones. Those were our postwar carpets. People lived poorly, but they still longed for fairy tales.
They loved to depict forests where graceful deer wandered among curly trees, looking at people with inexpressibly sad eyes. It was hard to tear oneself away from them; one wanted to tell them about troubles, sorrows and small joys. It seemed that the deer listened, that they heard.
And perhaps they really did…
How and where Elena Orlova managed to find this old truth is a mystery. But that makes it all the more interesting to solve.
In fact, there are countless such mysteries in the performance. It is a fascinating task for any audience to try to understand them and find its own answer. Or at least to look into the wondrous eyes of the deer…
