"Baba Babel" - the so-called new production of the Odessa Puppet Theater. For the staging, director Evgeny Kornyag chose three stories by Isaac Babel, "The King", "Father" and "Jesus Sin".
“Jesus sin” was once staged by a graduate of VGIK, Ector Sierra Ramirez, a young director from Colombia, according to the scenario of Ukrainian playwright T. Koltunova. On the issue of ownership of the film, Mosfilm and Odessa Film Studio were torn apart, as a result of which a copy of the film was taken to Colombia, and in Ukraine there was not a copy, not even a script. The film won several significant awards in Latin America.. It was still the only test of the production of the story, and now he came to life on the Odessa puppet scene.
Calling a doll scene will not be entirely accurate.. On stage, the usual live actors with doll heads in the hands of different caliber and different aesthetic orientation. Sometimes they speak for the doll in direct speech, sometimes by the author, Babel's remarks.
The first story "The King", strictly speaking, is not about any woman. This is one of the stories about Bene Creek, and the heroine, there is acting, one - his sister Dvoira, 40 years old, overripe, disfigured by illness, but desperate to get her piece of woman's happiness. So little attention has been paid to her in the story that it is impossible to take Dwoir as the heroine of the story, although the main event of the story is the wedding of Dvoira..
On the stage, the director reproduced the noisy, many-sided atmosphere of a rich Jewish wedding, the quintessence of the life of the famous Odessa Moldavanka. Everything boils, knocks, yells and rushes back and forth.. The human cauldron of passions, hopes, betrayal, cunning and revenge. And there is one typical Babel phrase there, which, in essence, is the core, the highlight of the story, at first glance, imperceptible. "The groom, numb from anguish ..." And all. Four short words that enclose a terrible human tragedy of the future broken life, bought by Beney Creek for his sister with the money of a rich relative. Then the groom will be pushed to the bedroom, languishing from the yet unknown passion of Dvoir.. And everything that awaits their married couple is clear to us, and all this is told by Babel, the genius of a laconic phrase, in four words, one of which is a short excuse "from".
But the place of this key phrase in the play and in the story is different.. In the story, the phrase arises much earlier, because the reader runs along the page with his eyes much sooner than he sees the same thing on the stage - there it takes time to move the actors, to speak, to make gestures and t. Especially in the first part, where the wedding itself is depicted. That is why the most penetrating phrase has moved to the end, having lost its rightful place in the architectonics of the story..
Babel’s beloved female character is huge, full-bodied women, languishing from unsatisfied passion, which not only torments them, but also leads, often to many sorrows, inseparable from the flesh, and it is the very life created by God just such carnal. Sinful. And the fact that God created man sinful, the writer accuses him, justifying human sin. The author described these women not only in Odessa stories.. He displays such women in the story “At the Fat of Our Makhno,” in the story “The Tale of a Woman,” and others. Therefore, for the dramatization of "Baba Babel" was what to choose. But the director settled on the "King", probably in order to pay tribute to Odessa.
It is a pity that in the scene, when the boy informs Bene about the upcoming raid, several voices uttered a textbook, well-known phrase: “Dad, eat and drink, and don't let this nonsense worry you,” like “. don't let this nonsense bother you, "squeezing Odessa juice from it.
In “King”, the director brought the largest number of characters onto the stage at the same time, creating chaos, which should probably show us that ebullient, “distended” Babel language, the human world, which was the Odessa Jewish suburb at the beginning of the last century. However, it seems to me that Babel's style is characterized by great silence and depth. The edge of Babel's prose is directed deep into and down.. The edge of the Kornyagov staging - up and in breadth.
Reading Babel, we calmly and soberly peer into the interior of human Being..
Looking Kornyaga, we observe the outer side of the motley fair of life before us.
Very often, Babel has no plot at all as such, but a close, slow peering into the cruel truth of life, its filth, despair and pain.. Tiny sketches are tragic, described by the most surprising language in Russian-language literature, which probably has no equal. "Lyubka woke up, opened her eyes and closed them again. She saw her son and the moon breaking out of her window.. The moon jumped in black clouds like a lost calf ". Or, “At that time, the sun did not reach the Near Mills.”. It flowed in clouds like blood from a riped boar ".
This Babel language, its unbelievable capacity and imagery, perfected metaphor is an independent hero of his prose, a hero who is present in all absolutely works, along with the terrifying truthfulness, cruelty of the depth of the human soul, into which the writer looks and makes us see its bottom.. And peering there, down into reality that is close to our eyes, does not tolerate the hustle and bustle built on the stage, requires concentration and thought. Understanding why human life is built like this and not otherwise.
"The land smelled of raw mineral resources, grave, flowers. The whitewashed wires buzzed overhead, the mongrel ran in front, in a side street a young man in a vest smashed a frame in the house of Khariton Efrussi. He smashed it with a wooden hammer, raised his whole body and, sighing, smiled on all sides with a kindly smile of intoxication, sweat and spiritual strength. The whole street was filled with a crunch, a crash, the singing of a scattering tree. The man beat only in order to turn over, mist and shout unusual words in an unknown, non-Russian language.. He shouted and sang them, tearing blue eyes from within, until the procession from the duma appeared on the street.. Old men with painted beards carried a portrait of a combed king in their hands, banners with tombstones flitted over the cross-walker, inflamed old women flew forward "- description of the Jewish pogrom. Quiet and peaceful, and therefore even more scary.
“Inflamed old women flew forward” - again four words, but how much burning sense in this phrase!.
Back on stage. A very good find - a huge Basia, Froim Rook's daughter, is shown not by one doll, but by large parts of pink flesh, a head separately, each arm and leg separately, spread throughout the whole scene, and each other piece is played up by another actor.
Many such staged finds in the third part of the production. “Jesus sin” - speaking inside, in the shine of a box, as if on a television set, Jesus, a doll, in human growth, depicting Arina, who is being moved from hand to hand by walking men, “as if they broke the chain”.
Of the three novels - this is the deepest. The most philosophical, and it is good that it was in her that Evgeny Kornyag approached Babel most closely..
We end with the words of the great writer, with whom he himself outlined his creative credo: “Then I started talking about style, about the army of words, about the army in which all kinds of weapons move. No iron can enter the human heart as icily as the point set on time. ”.
His stories, language, army of words - iron entering hearts.
Prints a step on the Odessa scene army of words, armed with all kinds of weapons.
November 10, 2018.