“Nothing passes without a trace!”
he Lviv Maria Zankovetska Theater brings the chamber performance My Life to Kyiv and enjoys great success
The characters of Anton Chekhov’s My Life. The Story of a Provincial got a new life on stage owing to the renowned director from Lviv, Alla Babenko. The great performance of the Maria Zankovetska Theater was well received at several international festivals, including “Melikhovskaia Vesna” (“Melikhovo Spring”) and “Zolotoi Vitiaz” (“Golden Knight”) (this year the Lviv company received financial aid from the Embassy of Russia in Ukraine to cover traveling expenses to the festivals in Melikhovo and Moscow). On December 12, they presented their work in Kyiv. The performance was staged at the Russian Center for Science and Culture.
By the way, My Life had never been performed on stage before. There is only a screen version, a film of the same name made in the early 1970s by directors Grigori Nikulin and Viktor Sokolov, where the popular actor Stanislav Lyubshin appeared as Misail Polozniev.
And now, almost four decades later, Babenko has once again tackled this story. Babenko is a subtle director. Her productions are as delicate as lace. She also makes stage versions for her productions herself. Chekhov is one of her favorite authors. Each year, Babenko produces chamber performances based on Chekhov’s stories.
She began her exploration of Chekhov on the Lviv stage with Uncle Vanya, on a prompt from the artistic director of the Zankovetska Theater, Fedir Stryhun. Now her record includes ten performances based on the works by Chekhov, and one about the classic’s life (Chekhov and Lika after the play by Bychkov).
The master’s last work is My Life. The main character, Misail, is a nobleman who challenged society and began to earn his living by working. He is trying to pursue simple human happiness. Meeting his future wife, Maria Viktorovna (Oleksandra Liuta) was for him a gift of fate. She is the daughter of a well-known engineer Dolzhikov, and an emancipated young lady who has read books on agriculture and has decided to run her Dubechno estate “by the last word of science.” But alas, the heroine soon losses enthusiasm not only for her experiments, but also for her quirky husband, with his ridiculous nickname, “Little Use.” The biblical phrase, “everything passes,” which Maria had engraved on a ring, is the refrain and illustration of her life. “All is vanity and suffering of spirit.”
The spectators received Babenko’s production enthusiastically. Among the audience was the renowned actor of the Lesia Ukrainka Theater, Mykola Rushkovsky, who highly praised Babenko’s innovations and the professionalism of the actors Liuta and Chekov. He also noted that “Babenko is a great director, with a sharp perception and an ability to very convincingly render the magic of Chekhov on stage.”
By the way, the other day Babenko was invited to take part in the international theater festival “Melikhovo Spring 2011.” She is also going to stage an eleventh performance, only this time it will be a comedy. The opening night is scheduled for May.
