By Aashiq
Link: https://www.digitaltheatre.com/consumer/production/onegin
Available until: Till Red Torch
Theatre or whoever decides to withdraw access.
I hate it when I watch a play
which I feel I ought to enjoy and I just don’t. It’s like I’m watching it and
my brain is telling me it’s good, but my emotions aren’t listening. Not that my
emotions have ever been very good listeners, but I wanted to enjoy this because
I love the story. I’ve seen six different productions of the opera (if you
include DVDs). I’ve sung Lensky’s aria and also Olga’s (I have a high
extension) and totally murdered Tatyana’s Letter Scene (I don’t have that
high an extension). I’ve seen the ballet and I’ve seen the Ralph Fiennes film. I’ve
read two different translations of the Pushkin.
I love a bit of Russian drama. It feels so… normal. I wasn’t quite so in love with the film, but everything else about this story, I love.
Except this play.
Timofey Kulyabin’s production has
won awards, but it didn’t work for me. It took a good half-hour for the story
to get started. And when I say a ‘good’
half-hour, I don’t actually mean it was good, because it wasn’t. Denis
Solntsev’s ‘lighting’ was mostly either too dark to see anything (it’s a good
thing Oleg Golovsko’s set was mostly bare at these points, there could have
been serious accidents and we get enough of that in the story) or the
characters are doing something so unbelievable, you almost prefer the darkness.
I have no idea why Onegin and Lensky were leaping about all over the furniture
and scribbling graffiti on the walls. I don’t really see Lensky as rebellious
enough for all that and I can’t see Onegin exerting himself.
The Pushkin novel is in verse and from
what I remember, it is mostly description without a lot of direct speech and
the play stays true to that. A disembodied creepy voice (Igor Belozerov) reads
part of the story in the background (the play is in Russian with English
subtitles). The characters do speak, but more often, they’re silent. Their
feelings and actions are described by the voice. The production is said to look
at the inner realities of the characters, but I really felt cut off from their
inner selves. I never really felt involved in the characters’ emotions and I
love getting concerned in other people’s emotions so that voice totally
spoiled my fun. It wasn’t even a sensual voice, though some people might like
it. It was deep and dangerous, but I don’t really like dangerous men. I like
men who cosset me.
Pavel Polyakov is brooding and
dangerous as Onegin and Darya Yemelyanov shows Tatyana’s shyness very well, but
they are ciphers and I don’t really feel like I know them (even though I kind
of know them already). Sergey Bogomolov’s Lensky was a bit unkind and not really
sweet enough. As Olga, Valeriya Kruchnina laughed and tossed her hair a lot (I
spent most of her scenes wondering what hair product she uses and also
wondering if my husband’s hair would look like hers if I persuaded him to grow
it again and found the right products), but she didn’t do very much else. All
four of them are really interesting characters, but it was like I was watching
them from a long way away.
I do know this story mainly
through the opera so a lot of my expectations are probably based on that, but
it was like one of those weird parallel universe dreams where you see people
you know and they behave completely differently.
I did like Artur Oschepkov’s
choreography though. And the opening music was brilliant. It came from the
opera. The Russian song at the end was good too. I used to play that sort of
song all the time when I was in my Russian phase.
It probably didn’t help that the
video kept stopping and going back to the beginning and then I had to find my
place again. That did kind of make me want to scream and throw things and it’s
hard for me to enjoy anything when I’m in that sort of mood. So I might have
liked it better if it hadn’t done that. Digital Theatre had better not make a
habit of that or I won’t be happy.
But do you ever get the feeling
you’ve watched something really good, but you’ve missed the point of it?
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