Наши мюзиклы Их глазами
 

Rocky Khorosho*

Neil McGowan reviews DRACULA - the latest in the wave of big-budget musicals to open in Moscow.


One of the paradoxes when I lived in London was that my visiting friends from Russia always wanted to make "a London musical" one of the high-points of their trip - yet in a country where musical and dancing talent comes regrettably cheap and plentiful, there were no shows of this kind to see. The situation had not always been thus -pre-Revolutionary Petersburg was almost notorious for its exotic and elaborate cabaret shows, and in that bizarre brief flowering between the Revolution in 1917 and Lenin's death in 1924, Mayakovsky and others oversaw all kinds of new and interesting theatrical entertainments - of which Shostakovich's "Nose" and "Lady Macbeth" are rightfully part. However, Stalin's cultural crackdown in the 30's abruptly halted such experiments, and turgid productions of "the classics" became the standard repertoire - on the basis that they were "morally improving". New work in opera and ballet was very limited in both scope and extent - subject-matter was either "so long ago that it cannot be controversial" such as Khatchachurian's "Gayana", classic works of literature like Schiller's "The Robbers" (made into a ballet by Shostakovich's nemesis Schedrin, a talentless yes-man who became President of the Union of Soviet Composers for turning-out rubbish and turning-in his contemporaries), or even worse soviet-realist pot-boilers like "Cement" - which is, yes, about a successful soviet attempt to beat the world cement-mixing record. However, nothing resembling a musical penetrated the censorship system, and even the term "myuzikl" itself has had to be russified from the English word.


One of the first to break this bar was the enterprising former rock-musician turned entrepreneur Stas Namin. Unfortunately Namin's efforts to bring western popular culture to Russia usually result in him being pilloried by the Russians as a scruffy and decadent tool of the West, whilst simultaneously being sued for copyright and rights infringements by the Western operations involved - most notoriously when he acquired an old cafe in Culture Park (which is the name by which "Gorky Park" is really known in Moscow) and titled it "The Hard Rock Cafe". The writs flew thicker than the milkshakes. Not deterred, Stas has now installed a tiny theatre on his premises, where he has been presenting entirely unauthorised versions of "Hair", "Godspell", and even one called "Jesus-Christus - Superzvezda!" which hardly needs translating. Really Useful are either more tolerant than Hard Rock, or have sloppier lawyers, and these shows (with a band of three, usually featuring Stas himself) are still showing to a smallish walk-in audience. Although not quite 40w-bulb, they're not far off - but they carved a niche for which Stas will, as ever, fail to get any credit. The "Green Theatre" experiments highlighted a problem, though - musicals need proper venues, and the soviet legacy provided none.

The next venture into musicals came at the opposite end of the scene to Stas Namin's tent in Gorky Park, with the unlikely participation of the Moscow Operetta - and a new phenomenon, an all-Russian musical "Metro". Although the Operetta was best known for well-worn soviet productions of high-camp operetta, it did make sense - a troupe accustomed to doing both Song and Dance, with a largish decent theatre capable of at least reasonable costumes. The idea was not connected with any kind of patriotic feelings, or rejection of the West - it was sheer financial prudence. The thinking went that (i) a Russian audience would want something in Russian (ii) foreign shows would want to be paid huge performing rights for a Russian version (iii) a home-based show could be written to avoid expensive special effects. "Metro" remains, however, a rather obvious crib of "Miss Saigon" - rewriting the "Madam Butterfly" story in a Moscow setting, with the poor honest Russian girl who meets the American (of course:) businessman in the Moscow Metro, who promises her so much, but abandons her so heartlessly. The plotline is pure saccharine, but there are 1-2 reasonable musical numbers, and it remains in repertoire (alternating with Die Fledermaus, Der Land des Lachens, etc) selling well three years later.


However, the real watershed for Moscow musicals has been Nord-Ost - a new all-Russian piece, with a wholly new company, performing in an old variety theatre which was bought and entirely rebuilt especially to house the production. Running at slightly more than 3 hours it requires something approaching devotion from its audience to sit through it - and several entrepreneurs wisely bade their time and watched to see how such a piece would fare. The critics derided it, and Afisha - Moscow's equivalent of Time Out - relegated it to the "Children's" section. However, a truly massive billboard campaign for pre-sales, and TV advertising after the launch has succeeded in packing them in to a show in which, as the posters state, "a WW2 bomber lands on the stage - nightly". The real success is due to the book - which is an abridgement of the soviet-era "boy's own" tale "The Two Captains", which is now a bit of rosy nostalgia for wealthy thirty-something Muscovites, who remember the TV version from their childhood. The plot is a straggly mess which doesn't gain from having entirely incidental scenes inserted because they make good dance numbers, and the music is a series of shameless stylistic borrowings from Broadway and London shows. Moscow audiences have not, however, seen the originals, and are less likely to cry "crib!" when they see a "Moscow Morning" scene peopled by ragamuffin urchins in short pants, nor a central heroic older man who's been whittled carefully out of Jean Valjean. The special effects are, however, easily worthy of London or Broadway - the railway station is great (with a moving train), the bomber is better than your worst expectations led you to believe, and the final scene when they find the wrecked ship in the glacier is genuinely moving in its gargantuan grandeur. However, even native Russian-speakers say that the dialogue is stilted formulaic tub-thumping stuff, and there are some stage depictions of some of the ex-USSR's ethnic minorities (a cheating lazy Uzbek, and an appallingly degrading portrayal of Chukchi eskimos) which would be booed-off western stages. There is at least one good moment in the drama, although it comes as the cliffhanger to Act One, leaving Act Two as merely going through the motions. The young boy saved by Jean Valjean (oops, but you know who we mean) sees his benefactor enamoured of a beautiful widow - but she will not rewed, clinging to the belief that her husband was not truly lost on a doomed Arctic expedition. The young man (now in rugged flying-jacket) risks all to obtain papers which show that the expedition's entire company perished as a result of a fraud in the equipment-purveying perpetrated by one of their number. At the great denouement, he summons the family to read the papers to them: only to discover that the man named as the fraudster who caused all their deaths was the missing husband. The wife commits suicide. A pity there's still 1.5 hours of banal music to sit through, though.


All of which brings us to Dracula - said to be the most audaciously-expensive yet of Moscow's musicals, and which opened this month at the Akademichesky Concert-Hall - the only venue in Moscow capable of staging it. In fact, the publicity is misleading - the show is neither new nor Russian, although it has a mostly-Russian cast. It's a Slovak venture from Bratislava entrepreneur and choreographer Richard Gess, with music by Karel Sloboda. To call it a musical is also rather inaccurate - it's more of a rock opera, and more of the latter than the former. All-sung with no spoken dialogue, Karel Sloboda's music succeeds in being memorably tuneful when needed, and for the more menacing moments it conveys an appropriately dark timbre without resorting to cliches. There are a couple of hit numbers including "Maya lyubov" (My love) for Dracula and Adriana, and a good duet "All for you" for the Jester and Lorraine - with a little choral leitmotif for Dracula himself to illustrate his unchanging nature during the passing of the centuries. The plot takes a fresh look at the Dracula legend and owes nothing to Stoker's novel at all. Instead, it uses the familiar device we know from The Tales of Hoffman and Blackadder - the central group of characters who remain unchanged despite time-settings that range across the ages. The three acts are Transylvania in 1608 (with much dastardly church-desecrating from the Count as Vlad The Impaler), then both London and Transylvania in the mid-C19th, and a final reckoning in a very odd-looking London (entirely peopled by leather-clad gangs of bikers) of our own era. The 1608 Jester has become the Count's butler by the C19th, and by the C20th is a mad scientist who keeps his master's failing body alive as he serves-out his never-ending sentence of unwanted immortality. There are, though, two leading ladies - his bride of 1608 dies in childbirth, but by the C19th he has found the Londoner Lorraine, who consents to marry him in his Transylvanian eyrie. The showdown in a Docklands Casino finally has the Count express remorse for his misdeeds, and as he is knifed by the bikers for trying to steal their girl, he greets death with a weary welcome. He is united in death with the faithful Lorraine.


The scenery is truly sumptuous, with 4-5 total changes of scene and period. There is also a smaller chamber for "internal" scenes which rises hydraulically out of the floor (from what must presumably be the theatre's pit) and provides a constantly-changing stage setting. It must have cost billions, and the costumes are no less magnificent. In the title role is the distinguished Ukrainian baritone Andrei Bestschastny - an accomplished Don Giovanni at the National Opera in Kiev, whose operatic training serves him excellently. As the only "trained" singer in the cast, though, he was saddled with a headphone mike instead of a throat-mike - the only answer when the whole extravagant musical score is on playback. Anna Buturlina sang prettily as Adriana, wife of the C16th Count, and Alessya Manyakovskaya gave a super portrayal of Lorraine. Although Bestschastny's lead role is a phenomenal and committed performance, the audience's sympathy seemed to go elsewhere amongst the male roles, and Andrei Sokolov dazzled in the triple roles of Jester/Butler/Mad-Professor. His dancing is his strongest suit, gamely turning cartwheels to delight the young bride of his master. His singing is not bad either, but he sets himself an almost impossible task with two assumed voices as the Butler (grating) and the Professor (doddering) which make singing twice as hard for him. Miroslav Prokhaza was dashing as both Lorraine's brother Stephen and "callously murdered Priest", and Valery Lerner sang well as Nick The Biker whilst riding a large Harley round the stage. The cleverest staging idea is the group of three dancers called "The Blood" in the program-notes, who ritually surround and engulf Dracula's victims - neatly avoiding melodramatic ghastly murders. These were danced excellently by Nastya Lebeda, Alexei Kislyakov and Anton Domashov. In fact, vampirism is almost excised from the story - the only instance being when Dracula is nursing the dead body of his wife in his arms, and is surprised by the Jester. To the jester, it appears that the Count is biting the neck of the corpse, although "we know otherwise".


The recorded score is annoying, and prevents any kind of musical elasticity or suppleness from the performers. It is, however, something of a technical necessity in this piece, and perhaps a financial necessity too.


Following fresh on the heels of Nord-Ost, Dracula feeds on the appetite of the Moscow public for more and more musicals - both Notre-Dame de Paris and Chicago are set to open in the upcoming months, and will be reviewed here.


*khorosho="good"(Russian)


DRACULA is showing for an indefinite period at the Akademichesky Concert Hall, Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow (Metro: Leninsky Prospekt). NORD-OST has been showing for 6 months at the Nord-Ost Music-Theatre Project, Moscow and is currently booking to end-July. METRO is in the current repertoire of the Moscow Operetta. NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS opens in Moscow on 21st May, also at the Moscow Operetta. CHICAGO is receiving pre-opening publicity on chat-shows, but no venue or opening-date have formally been announced to date.

Кажется человек писал по рекламе от Дракулы, а всме остальное сам не видел...

"Дракула" - это так все, разминочка.

Если уж говорить о наших мюзиклах их глазами - то в январе "Норд-Ост" едет на Бродвей. Вот и посмотрим после этого как смотрятся наши мюзиклы их глазами :)

С этого места поподробней, пожалуйста. :-))

Я слышала только об американских гастролях:) Как я поняла, это будут концерты типа "Норд-Ост, мы с тобой!".

Норд-Ост
 

пока что представители Вест-Энда и Бродвея, побывавшие на НО, отзывались о нем сугубо положительно:) Подробнее не помню, не очень этим интересовалась.

"Я слышала только об американских гастролях"

Ну вот и да. Разве Бродвей - не Америка? :) Вроде в Нью-Йорке всегда находился :)

"С этого места поподробней, пожалуйста. :-))"

А что подробней-то ? :) Едут на гастроли, что еще можно сказать :) Без самолета, естественно. Типа концертной версии спектакля, наверное.

Я сказала, что слышала об американских гастролях. А Америка -это не только Бродвей, это даже не только Нью-йорк:)) Мюзиклы идут там в каждом крупном городе, кстати говоря.

Ясно, ты говорила в более широком смысле, я - в более конкретном :)

Кстати уж о статье - у когонибудь была ассоциация Кораблев - Вальжан?! Я долго думала, где же они там Вальжана углядели... И, если уж на то пошло, Мариусу-то поболе лет было. :)
А как наш любимый Ллойд Уэббер заимствует, мы лучше промолчим. :)

Никакую статью не читала, но вообще надо сказать, что у меня не раз возникала мысль , что если бы у нас поставили Отверженных, Маркин в роли Вольжана был бы очень не плох. Не знаю, что имелось в виду в этой статье- Кораблев как персонаж или исполнитель роли Кораблева, но то, что Петя у меня ассоциируется с Вольжаном - совершенно точно.

Маркин, может, был бы и не плох, только партия Вальжана - теноровая и довольно неудобная. А сравнение Кораблева с Вальжаном притянуто за уши, и я готова поспорить, что автор спектакля не видел.

бред терзает...:)
 

да, сравнение идиотское какое-то... еще мне понравилось написание Лесиной фамилии, надо б ей скинуть это:) чуть ли не Маньяковская получилась:D

мыши конечно универсалы, но не до такой степени, чтоб сочный бас теноровую партию пел:) даже памятуя о баритоне Уорлоу.

Все, брейк. Бродвей отменили вроде.

Кина не будет, электричество кончилось :)
Макинтош не допустил, наверное :))

Представляю себе эту картину - Кэмерон взялся продюсировать русский мюзикл, а потом решил, что лучше всего этот мюзикл пойдет в стране, где понимают русский. Например, в России. И никаких там Бродвеев. :-))

А вообще жаль. И что, шансов, что повезут хотя бы через годик, нет?

Кто же это знает ?

Там все меняется со скоростью мысли (сначала одна мысль в чью-то голову придет, потом совсем другая, потом третья:) )

Может все еще будет. Вроде гастроли зарубеж в широком смысле этого слова еще должны быть.

Словом, увидим :) (норд-ост в феврале на Дубровке:D )

Или в Израиле - легко. :)

Почему-то мне кажется, что Норд-Ост теперь вообще никуда не поедет. Впечатление просто такое складывается.

А из чего оно складывается?

Из октябрьских событий.

Ну , почему же ? Они с февраля возобновляют спектакли !:)

В том то все и дело, что это Вам так только кажется.:)

Еще одна статья о мюзиклах Москвы
 

Большая статья в "NYTimes":

"Broadway Comes to Moscow, and Takes on the Risks"

By JASON ZINOMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/19/ar...=1044377414&ei

А сюда ее можно поместить? А то на nytimes.com еще регистрироваться просят - а не хочется. :-))

Текст
 

Broadway Comes to Moscow, and Takes on the Risks
By JASON ZINOMAN

MOSCOW
It sounded like a great idea. Importing an American musical to a Moscow hungry for Western culture and maybe rich enough to pay top ticket prices.
The show was "42nd Street," the 1980 musical based on the 1933 movie classic about a chorus girl who triumphs when she replaces the ailing star. One of the producers, Boris Krasnov, 41, insisted on an American cast singing in English.
"Look," he said in English last fall in his office backstage at the Palace of Youth, a vast auditorium on the outskirts of Moscow, "Russians know ballet, Germans know cars and Americans know musical comedy."
No need to import designers: Mr. Krasnov, a well-known designer in Russia, would make the sets and costumes himself. Last May, he contacted Nicholas Howey and Randy Buck of Troika Entertainment, a production company based in Gaithersburg, Md., that sends non-Equity versions of Broadway shows on national tour. The three men met in New York.
Intrigued, Mr. Howey and Mr. Buck visited Moscow in June. While there, Mr. Buck saw something else that encouraged him: wealth.
"This town is taking off," he said in October, during another visit. Speaking at his hotel, across the street from Red Square, Mr. Buck said: "There are Mercedes all over the place. Jags, S.U.V.'s. Someone is going to break into this market, and we're hoping it's us."
The three men shook hands on July 10. The Troika producers were responsible for casting and the show's license. Besides the sets and costumes, Mr. Krasnov said, he also came up with financing for the $6 million musical, one-third of it out of his own pocket.
"42nd Street" was cast in New York by the end of July and rehearsals began in August. But "42nd Street" in English didn't travel so well in Russia. The reviews were mixed, and while the box office started strong, it tapered off. The show closed on Dec. 31, after running for 11 weeks.
If "42nd Street" was a flop, another import, a Russian-language production of "Chicago" ($5.5 million), has been anything but. Opening just two weeks before "42nd Street," "Chicago" was met by enthusiastic reviews and packed houses. The tawdry, cynical story about criminals with razzle-dazzle seemed as much about mobbed-up Moscow as it does about gangster-era Chicago. According to the show's producers, it is still selling well, consistently filling 90 percent to 95 percent of its theater's seats.
These shows represent the risky yet enticing prospect of introducing blockbuster American musicals to the land of Stanislavski and Meyerhold. But the results have been so different that no one can really say whether it has been a good idea or not.
Compared with imported movies and television shows, foreign stage musicals have taken much longer to arrive in post-Soviet Russia. "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "The Osbournes" are popular, and Hollywood movies receive wide release, but the high price tags of most musicals make producing them here financially perilous. And it is still not clear whether there are enough wealthy theatergoers to go around.
Nevertheless, there are signs of a growing musical-theater scene — and an expanding class of Russian consumers. In the last few years, a new crop of foreign musicals has arrived in Moscow, including the current French production of "Nфtre Dame de Paris," based on the Victor Hugo novel known in English as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," and "Metro," a Polish musical (which had a brief run on Broadway in 1996) that closed last spring. There are also a number of smaller-scale Russian musicals, including the long-running rock opera "Junon and Avos" (seen in 1990 at City Center in New York), as well as reworked versions of "Hair" and "Jesus Christ Superstar."
The most popular musical may have been "Nord-Ost" ("Northeast" in German), a romantic Russian epic based on a popular Soviet-era novel, "Two Captains" by Veniamin Kaverin. An Andrew Lloyd Webber-style spectacle of special effects that spans Russian history, it was the first musical in Russia to run for a year on a daily schedule.
These shows encouraged the arrival of "Chicago" and "42nd Street," which opened with huge expectations. Here were American and Russian producers presenting big-budget musicals every night — a schedule typical for Broadway but not for Russian theater, which has a repertory tradition.
Only weeks after the American musicals opened, Chechen guerrillas seized another Moscow theater, where the audience was watching "Nord-Ost." More than 750 people were taken hostage. By the time the surviving guerrillas had been captured, more than 100 hostages had died from the effects of the gas used to subdue the attackers. The crisis brought theatergoing to a brief halt in Moscow, and some producers wondered if it would dampen the eagerness to pay the ticket prices that the two American musicals were charging — up to 3,000 rubles, or $100. ("Nord-Ost" is expected to reopen on Feb. 8 for the first performance since the attacks.)
The stakes were high, especially for Mr. Krasnov and his rival, a Russian producer of "Chicago," Philip Kirkorov.
Mr. Kirkorov, 35, who also stars in the musical (he plays the slick lawyer, Billy Flynn), is one of the most famous men in Russia, a pop singer often compared to Ricky Martin and Michael Jackson and best known for his outlandish Vegas-style stage shows, which he likes to call "consumerism for the senses."
Mr. Kirkorov is producing "Chicago" with his wife, Alla Pugacheva, a fellow pop music star, and the veteran Broadway producers Fran and Barry Weissler, who are the producers of "Chicago" at the Shubert Theater on Broadway.
Last fall, Mr. Kirkorov was sitting at a desk backstage at the Estrada Theater, where "Chicago" is playing, a renovated house across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. Wearing a bright blue silk shirt with baroque gold letters that read "Armani," Mr. Kirkorov allowed that his childhood hero had been Engelbert Humperdinck. Then he adopted a serious pose. "People are sick and tired of rock stars," he said dramatically, speaking in Russian through a translator. "There is a vacuum for new entertainments, and that's why there is such excitement for `Chicago.' "
The audience's reaction that night seemed to bear him out: they appeared to be transfixed by the sinuous movements of the performers — all from the worlds of ballet, classical dance and pop music. The cast had rehearsed more than three months with a Broadway team to master Bob Fosse's choreography.
" `Chicago' is a universal, timeless piece of theater that is understood on all levels and in all languages," said Mr. Weissler, who has produced the show in 255 cities around the world (the figure includes several national and international tours). "We go everywhere and we've done it so many times that it's like a formula."
By contrast, the formula for "42nd Street" never quite worked. " `42nd Street' is a musical about nostalgia for the old days of American theater," said Pavel Rudney, the theater editor of Vash Dosug, an arts magazine. "But our audience has no memories of this. And a musical that has no Russian language and no Russian themes is doomed to fail."
There were some problems with the physical production, which appeared to be the product of artistic compromises. For example, slides that were supposed to summon up New York in the 1930's included, alongside signs for Vogue and Bazaar, a huge red advertisement for the Marriott Moscow Grand Hotel.
Mr. Buck and Mr. Krasnov blamed the "Nord-Ost" hostage crisis for the show's early demise. The week after the siege ended, "42nd Street" sold only 450 seats, falling far short of the 14,000 its producers expected. Security was increased at the theater (as it was at the Estrada), but in the next month there were four bomb threats, all false alarms. The North American cast grew uneasy and five actors gave notice.
If the attack on "Nord-Ost" doomed "42nd Street," why didn't "Chicago" fold also? This question upsets Mr. Krasnov, who was in New York last week, seeking partners to remount "42nd Street."
" `Chicago' had no bomb threats," he said, sitting very still in the lobby of a hotel in the Broadway theater district. "Also, when there are money problems, Russian producers can just tell Russian actors, `Could you hold off on payments?' I didn't have that opportunity."
Mr. Krasnov said he hoped to reopen "42nd Street" in March and, failing that, he wanted to produce another blockbuster ("The Phantom of the Opera" or "Cats") next fall.
Mr. Buck, of Troika, declared he was willing to listen to any new ideas, but said he thought he would handle things differently next time. "We would take a more active role in the production," Mr. Buck said. "There are elements of the physical production where we could have helped them."
While Mr. Krasnov and Mr. Buck remain positive about the future of producing big-budget musicals in Moscow, common wisdom agrees that its long-term success depends on the country's economy.
For his part, Mr. Kirkorov of "Chicago" conceded that Russia has a long way to go. "Right now, there is no middle class," he said. "We have rich and very poor. We sell out the $10 seats and the $100."
If that situation continues, "Chicago" may have trouble filling houses for two years, which is the length of time that Igor Gourevitch, a Russian producer who turned down "Chicago" before Mr. Kirkorov signed on, estimated that it would be necessary to make a profit. "I'm pessimistic," Mr. Gourevitch said. "There aren't enough tourists in Moscow, and musicals need tourists to be profitable."
That hasn't stopped producers from trying, though. There are several new shows in the pipeline, including versions of "Jekyl & Hyde" and "Victor/Victoria" (to be co-produced by and to star Mr. Kirkorov).
Once-skeptical Western producers, like Cameron Mackintosh in London, have started to take a second look at Russia. Mr. Mackintosh turned down an offer to take a production of "Les Misйrables" to Russia several years ago because, he said, the market was too volatile. Now he is in talks with several producers to bring "Les Miz" to Russia. He is also working with a Russian producer to bring "The Witches of Eastwick" to Moscow next month.
"In the last few years, Russians have been getting expertise and proving that there's an audience" for musicals, Mr. Mackintosh said by telephone from London.
From those who would see the closing of "42nd Street" as a cautionary tale, Mr. Krasnov asked for patience. "Perhaps we bit off more than we could chew," he said, sounding chastened for only a moment. "But remember, we have almost no tradition of musicals. We have no unions. And then `Nord-Ost' chased away the tourists. Russia is an emerging market and we are only just beginning."
Jason Zinoman is the theater editor of Time Out New York

Интересно-интересно, Гуревич, значит, рассматривал возможность продюсировать Чикаго? Дракулы ему мало показалось (хотя, как говорят, от провала Дракулы пострадали все, кроме Росинтерфеста).

Вообще, список мюзиклов, возможных для постановки, очень забавный. Кстати, по поводу "Ведьм", говорят, что какие-то проблемы у Юзефовича с Макинтошем были:(

Особенно "забавно" будет увидеть Киркорова в роли Джекилла-Хайда.

а еще забавнее в роли Виктории:))))))