Temptation of The Holy Throat
The attraction of Dmytro Bohomazov’s new play, The Throat (based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Sanctus), lays primarily in its festive, eccentric theatricality, which is characteristic of this director. The result is even more significant because it was created in many respects in defiance of our contradictory conditions.
To begin with, the director had to work in an absolutely non-theatrical space, the Lavra Gallery. There was also resistance of the literary material. Hoffmann’s novella tells about a female singer who had lost her voice, while the main character remains, so to speak, offstage, behind the scenes, and does not take part in the action. Valery Mamontov, making the novella into a play, on the contrary, turned Bettina into an energetically acting heroine. Thus, Oksana Batko, performing the female lead, faced a complex task. First, she had to find the necessary colors for her virtual character. Second, the actress had to play her, by and large, tragic part (being deprived of speech is a heavy penalty for a singer) in a totally comic context. Perhaps the mission proved to be impossible: Batko, though working honestly, was unable to manage Bettina’s part properly. Fortunately, this did not affect the play’s quality as a whole.
Bohomazov has built his dramatic composition upon the conflict between the Conductor (Oleksandr Bondarenko), who is trying to give Bettina’s voice back, and the Doctor (Ostap Stupka), who is confident that his diagnosis is indisputable: his patient will never be able to sing again. A sensible Patient (Dmytro Lalenkov) appears as the Conductor’s ally. Due to the terms set by the director, the design of each part is literally adorned with many comic tricks, ploys, and movements, something the actors are really good at. Tricks played by Bondarenko-Stupka-Lalenkov trio made the audience laugh almost hysterically at times. Dmytro Lalenkov, Lesia Ukrayinka Russian Drama Theater actor, is especially good. His potential as a character actor seems to be as great as it is unrealized or rather unnoticed by directors. His colleague at Lesia Ukrayinka, Oleksandr Bondarenko, is good in his own way, namely, with a masterful combination of comic and lyrical moods in his hero. His robust Conductor is both funny and touching. As for Stupka, he treats his role in a Comedia del Arte spirit, as Doctor Death finding himself in comical situations every now and then.
All this whirlpool of passions is situated behind a black curtain in the kingdom of white color. Designer Oleksandr Druhanov laid out the seenery as a combination of a throat with a hospital ward and a rehearsal hall. A folded white ceiling hangs over a row of beds; Oleksandr Kokhanovsky, whose work as composer and accompanist deserves special mention, sits at a white piano, draped with white muslin. And inside all this whiteness people wearing odd costumes (like the Doctor) or elegant ones (like Bettina) sing their hearts out, trying hard to cure the single sacred throat no matter from what disease; the point is to make its owner want to sing again.
In fact, the play is about temptation. Or rather about two equal temptations, a desire to quit singing at all, devoting oneself to more reliable and mundane pleasures, and the striving to regain contact with heaven through the same voice. Perhaps in The Throat everything looks a bit light. But laughing and singing are true signs of happiness, and the play has a perfectly happy ending. They sing for us, we laugh, and, after all, what else do we need for a fine evening?
