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A pinch of Shakespeare
The Natalia Sats Children's Musical Theatre presented a new version of Prokofiev's opera Romeo and Juliet staged by the artistic director of the ballet, Kirill Simonov, on the stage of the Helikon Opera as part of the IX Festival "Viewing Music" Yes. Tatyana Kuznetsova appreciated the solipsism of the production.
Kirill Simonov, a graduate of the Vaganova Academy, is a child prodigy choreographer. In 2001, the 26-year-old dancer performed The Nutcracker at the Mariinsky Theatre, quickly replacing Alexei Ratmansky, who could not get along with the artist Mikhail Chemiakin. And although she turned out to be a weak link in this stage exhibition of the works of choreographer Chemiakin, Kirill Simonov has been in great demand ever since. He has staged them both in Russia and in the West, and since 2004 has written and staged dozens of ballets. After joining the Karelian Musical Theatre, he has been directing the ballet troupe of the Moscow Children's Musical Theatre since 2016. He is staging Romeo and Juliet for the third time. We do not know the 2003 Tokyo version, but the second production, the Petrozavodsk one, was transferred to Moscow for the 2010 mask competition. And although the performance showed a determination to surprise with freethinking (in particular, the public scenes on the square were replaced by mass washing on the beach, and all the characters appeared in striped bathing suits), the author’s radicalism was not appreciated.
The Moscow premiere is also about modern times, but some of Simonov’s discoveries from Petrozavodsk have been transferred to it, although they are much more rural.
There is no clan feud here either, and there are faint hints of a wedding. Juliet's friend, a young nurse, is having an affair with Mercutio again. Comic couples are meant to create romantic couples. Tybalt smashes Mercutio's head in the same way, but this time it hits the wall instead of a tree. However, to counter the crushing defeat of the Ballet, the director has come up with a new move. Petrozavodsk The bucket of cruel sand that Juliet received instead of a bottle of sleeping pills was replaced in the children's theater by a "magic" white flower (perhaps the former dancer Simonov remembered an episode from the ballet "Le Corsaire"). The girl, who smelled it, falls into a coma, but Romeo, whose breath is clearly stronger, smells the flowers and dies. When Juliet wakes up, it seems that she will no longer poison herself. Simon's script vaguely describes the final mise-en-scène. "Juliet embraces Romeo's lifeless body and humbly accepts death."
It's not Shakespeare, but the rest is more or less clear. In Simonov's first scene, Romeo and Juliet are passionately kissing right in the square, and the enraged Signora Capulet pulls the first man out of the crowd of spectators as a replacement. Naturally, the lovers were in despair. Jumping up and down and wringing their hands. But in the next scene, Juliet, her mother and her nurse friend frolicked as if nothing had happened, all three dancing with the same steps. Fortunately, Prokofiev wrote music for: a different script; After the massacre in the square comes a scene called "Juliet".
The composer generally held back new works with his excesses. And he has too much music (musical director and conductor Artem Makarov cut it by almost a third), its power is disproportionate to the number of people in the troupe and the childish innocence of the dances, the love scenes are too drawn out.
The non-musicality of the production is so bold that it seems as if the choreographer is staging a black comedy. The mise-en-scene partially confirms this suspicion. Thus, in the scene of the "Capulet's Ball", Juliet's mother and Tybalt, arguing like an old married couple, are a parody of the gestures of Italian films. And in the "Balcony" (the first Adagio of the main character), the environment (from the nurse to Paris) suddenly intervenes. The director generously uses the technique of the commedia dell'arte in his performance. The characters hit each other, spit in each other's faces, and the deaths themselves are comical. The ominous chords of "The Death of Tybalt" are so random that Romeo and Capulet's nephew. It turns out that not only the main characters are having fun, fighting with each other on the floor, strangling their enemies.
Tatyana Noginova's costumes also supported the comedy version. Set designer Alona Pikalova partitioned the stage diagonally and erected a single set for the entire ballet (a sort of white "metaphysical" aqueduct) with a clear hint at Giorgio de Chirico, and Noginova organized a whole journey through the history of 20th century costume..., reinforcing her erudition with considerable irony. Tybalt (Maxim Pavlov), a dandy with an unimaginable colored tie, a cyclamen-colored jacket, a tight gray checkered suit, combed moustache, short hair with a parting and the manners of a provincial swindler, especially came to the rescue. He looks like a completely parodic character. Lady Capulet (Barbara Serova), young and slender, like a model, behaves with her niece like a shrewish wife and changes clothes for some reason. The graduation party turned into a real fashion show. In “La Vie en Rose,” all the characters appeared dressed in different shades of pink and iconic styles: from Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dress of the mid-1960s to Maya Plisetskaya’s anniversary Cardin dress from 2005.
The variety of costumes somewhat brightened up the monotony of the choreography, which consisted of two-thirds standard classical combinations and steps (this time, all the characters were dominated by small, nimble walkers), and one-third of various mossy decorations. In Russia, it is still misunderstood as "modernity", and Kirill Simonov has been using it since his first youthful performances. And since the choreographer is not shy about repeating himself, the critic has the right to use this technique, referring to reviews of previous versions of "Romeo and Juliet" (see "Kommersant", April 9, 2010). In front of an imaginary mirror in an even hole, the characters stamp their feet in the style of 1970s disco and form an imaginary figure eight with their bodies, arms and hips. Fortunately, the children's musical theater is visited primarily by young people, so the director believes that the new version of "Romeo and Juliet" will be unfamiliar to them. Moreover, the artists openly tried to revive both form and content. Both the touchingly feminine Felicia Rusu (Juliet) and the delightful mastery of Valery Kravtsov (Mercutio) succeeded in this.