О спектакле «Друг мой» Санкт-Петербургского театра «Суббота»

Фрагмент из статьи Н. С. Скороход The New Wave of Belarus Dramа, опубликованной в международном журнале исследований театрального искусства IATC journal CRITICAL STAGES, № 29 за 2024 год. С полным текстом статьи можно ознакомиться на сайте издания.

Drug Moi, by Stershik, directed by Andrei Sidel’nikov. In the picture: Ivan Baykalov as I, Vladislav Demyanenko as Friend, Grigory Sergeenko as Muzhik. Photo: Alexej Ivanov

The 2022 stage production of Drug moi directed by Andrey Sidelnikov and performed at the Saturday Theatre in St. Petersburg turned out to be a more serious undertaking. The theatre characterized the play as a modern existential parable narrated in the genre of road movies. Actual realia were used in the design of the performance, while the set designer Maria Smirnova-Nesvitskaya applied the pars pro toto principle here. For instance, instead of a car, only a red front door with a car mirror moved across the stage, while a real ambulance was brought onto the stage together with two pairs of gurneys and a functioning siren. One of paramedics held a recognizable orange case on his lap and the other held a flash light in his hand. The atmosphere of the fictional night was enhanced by the overall lighting design. Most of the episodes of the play were visible in small spots of light surrounded by complete darkness, an effect designed by Maxim Akhrameev. The innovative setting contrasted with the conventional acting style: almost all the scenes between I, played by Ivan Baykalov, and the Friend, played by Vladislav Demyanenk, were performed using the methodology of Stanislavski’s psychological school. For the duration of the production, the relationship between two friends evolved, conflict increased, culminating in a slap, a fight, and a break-up, the climax of the play. The conflict between friends depicted in the play has a number of possible explanations.

Drug Moi, by Stershik, directed by Andrei Sidel’nikov. In the picture: Anna Vasil’eva and Ekaterina Rudakova as an ambulance servers. Photo: Alexej Ivanov

Director Sidelnikov explained his interpretation of the moral dimensions of Steshik’s text. He said:

Generally speaking, this story represents a struggle with yourself. One of the characters, one side of yourself, doesn’t want to help others, he simply wants to live his life and not get involved in other people’s problems. At the end, the friend who comes to save everyone leaves and finally disappears, like all the good things in a person’s life. All this happens over one night, which turns out to be their entire life.

Here, it seems to me that the logic of the director and that of the playwright collide. To me, the quarrel between friends is written in a spirit similar to that of Lewis Carroll’s narrative, where Tweedledum suggests to Tweedledee: “Of course you agree to have a battle?” By making the dialogue very heavy in moral sense and very realistic in a sense of acting style, the director and actors have shattered the lyrical text, which could not possibly withstand such intense emotions. In the final scene of the play, the character Friend disappears from the scene and the location where they disappear into darkness. The hero I has aged, the work of a make-up artist who comes on stage and transforms the actor in front of the spectators’ eyes. The finale of the production might be understood as a moral sentence for the hero I because he killed a good person inside himself during the night.

Drug Moi, by Stershik, directed by Andrei Sidel’nikov. In the picture: the final of the performance. Photo: Alexej Ivanov

Although the Saturday Theater’s production of Drug Moi differs from the one staged in the Moscow Art Theater in terms of acting style, atmosphere, and genre, which was interpreted by Saturday Theatre as a monodrama, in both cases Drug Moi is understood as a parable about moral and ethical issues.