Two premieres in a renovated theater

After major renovations, reconstruction and decoration work, the theater opened the doors to the renewed and modernized hall. The theater prepared two premieres for its young and grown up audience: family fairy tale Hedgehog in the Fog based on the story by Serhii Kozlov and a philosophical parable for adults Chevenhur based on the novel by Andrii Plantonov. Both plays were staged by famous Kharkiv tandem consisting of theater director Oksana Dmytriieva and chief artist Natalia Denysova.

The plot of Hedgehog in the Fog is well-known from the cartoon made by Yurii Norshtein – it is a charming story and one can easily recognize many of us with our expectations, hopes, ideas, and dreams in its characters. Little theater fans with great enthusiasm watched the adventures of the Hedgehog (Tetiana Tumasiants) and its friends: Little Bear (Viacheslav Hindin), Hare (Oleksandr Markin), Donkey and Ant (Hennadii Hurinenko). On the stage there are as if two parallel worlds: fantasy world of dolls imagination and the world of non-childish thoughts of the acting animals. The successful combination of expressive stage design elements, the use of technological devices, sound effects, and, at the same time, deep dramatic transformations make the play interesting for the viewers of any age.

Bright and optimistic story of the Hedgehog and its friends is different from another premiere play – Chevenhur. Andrii Platonov is a writer with an interesting literary style, which is hard to convey on stage. But Oksana Dmytriieva (she is also the author of the staging of the Chevenhur novel) together with the art director Natalia Denysova and composer Oleh Kadanov, created their own Platonov’s style universe. City of Chevenhur is Platonov’s country-utopia. The protagonist, Sasha Dvanov (Artem Vusyk) is a noble man with pure heart, spiritually beautiful, and open to the world. He is looking for ideal life. “Bolshevik must have an empty heart where he could fit anything” is Sasha’s motto. It seems that Stepan Kopenkin (Viacheslav Hindin) is opposed to him. Kopenkin is a tireless fighter, who will fight for the idea to self-denial, rather than just passively look for it.

The whole performance is this grand collision of childlike inspirations of Dvanov’s youthful romanticism and Kopenkin’s greatest concerns, which came to him through great suffering during the war and revolution. For heroes communism is only the measure of morality and conscience, the way to eternity, heaven province, and not the political system. The world of the play is cosmic and the story on the stage as if bursts beyond the routine and becomes a mythological statement about finding happiness and meaning of life.

The performance does not have the life aspect to it. It is only puppets that tell the story to the audience. They are different: big and small, old and young, but at all times they are incredibly gentle and lonely, doomed to inability to change neither themselves, nor the world around them. They best create the illusion of the world of loneliness and inevitable failure in search for happiness.

Uncluttered stage design, minimalism in the color (black and gray dominate) are also as if created by the director and set designer to go along with the extremely complex narration. However, the director did not leave us without questions: lonely fish skeleton repeatedly appeared on stage, or suddenly tin watering cans that hung bored on the sides of the stage come alive. Images of Pyiusia, Tytych-God, and Pashyntsev turned out bright and vivid (played by Oleksandr Koval). Sonia, played by Olha Koval, was very gentle and feminine. Olha Mokhlenko (Klavdia), Oleksandr Markin (Proshka Dvanov), and Hennadii Hurinenko (Chepurny) expressively performed their parts in the play. Each of the actors lives a short life with their characters, giving them unique qualities and features. And puppets as if come alive in their hands so that we, the audience, would also come alive in our thoughts and feelings.