At the Gunpoint of Love

Near the end of the year, Suzirya had yet another premiere, a one-actor play titled “Last Year’s Snow,” based on Anthony Swerling, an English playwright currently living in Sweden. Script, scenery, and stage rendition by the company’s creative director Oleksiy Kuzhelny. Costumes by Nadiya Kudriavtseva. Music by Viktor Pryduvalov. Choreography by Alla Rubin. Cast: Oleh Savkin.

Many theatergoers might be surprised at a premiere in a theater, which has been closed for repair since May, meaning no one knows when it will reopen. And it is very hard to imagine Suzirya without the structure with its very special atmosphere, echoing marble stairs, fireplace, and imposing stucco. Well, it appears they managed to take the atmosphere with them when moving to the new premises, in the basement of that same building on Yaroslaviv val. Of course, the basement had to have a face-lift first and they did it quite resourcefully, turning the basement into a kind of aesthetic retreat and a place for creative experimentation; far from all would risk staging plays in an audience big enough for 21 persons, meaning just the first row and absence of that protective barrier between the cast and audience, implying an altogether different type of the performer’s “vulnerability.” Oleksiy Kuzhelny took the risk...

Before the premiere, in one of the three rooms of Suzirya-2 (or ad hoc Suzirya, if you will) which in the daytime serves as the artistic director’s office and becomes the mini-theater’s lobby in the evening, we whiled away the time with pleasant small talk and sipping good wine (the latter is an invariable treat for the audience — and it’s on the house). One of those present, a well-known Kyiv woman critic, also amazed by the basement’s transformation, asked, “Mr. Kuzhelny, quite honestly, do you have any problems?” He said no, never, and it was, of course, not true. Can you find a drama company without problems in today’s Ukraine? Another thing is that few can and, most importantly, want to cope with them. Kuzhelny can and always will, because he loves his theater. He enjoys staging plays and makes no secret of it. I also strongly suspect that all good stage directors are like this. The point is how well such a director’s ideas prove in harmony with the public’s aesthetic, moral, and social needs. In other words, whether or not his play finds the desired response in the audience.

I think that Oleksiy Kuzhelny has a remarkably keen sense of our times, which has in a way left an impact on his work, his choice of style, and language of images. Also, he is quite carefree, I would even say light-minded about the political winds. After all, he runs a drama company, meaning that he must struggle to win audiences. Yet his choice never fails to surprise the critics in terms of subject and aesthetic approach, while quite soon his choices prove to be the only correct ones. It is just that he thinks many moves ahead of the game. Suffice it to recall his first Suzirya production, Hryhory Skovoroda’s Garden of Heavenly Songs, starring Bohdan and Ostap Stupka, a heavenly duo. It was hard to digest, a real tragedy, an attempt to understand who we really are and where we are rooted. The attempt proved untimely, yet the questions it raised have invariably occupied our minds for a number of years and we are as hard put to find the answers. Or consider his Audience based on Vaclav Havel’s acidly publicist play. It seemed doomed to fade into the background along with the subsiding wave of perestroika media exposes. But no, it is still popular, still drawing full houses, because once again Kuzhelny landed on a truly relevant subject; if you have a lousy way of life, start by blaming yourself, not — or not so much — the regime or the times. There are many such examples, practically every new Kuzhelny production becomes one. Although they are quite different, each has an inherently philosophical approach to the realities, hence their frequently complex creative message. And then suddenly Last Year’s Snow appeared. An impressionistic play, it does not seem to fit in well with the Ukrainian stage pattern, even less so when rendered as a nightclub show or even a video clip, with neon lights playing and the whole action dominated by a throbbing rhythm, when the actor’s lines and music are a single indivisible whole. Still, the music video approach is in a way characteristic of our daily conduct, whether we like it or not, and Kuzhelny focused in on this. Also, once in that sensual nightclub atmosphere, you feel carefree, but whether it can banish your loneliness is anyone’s guess, just as whether this illusory feeling of nonstop festivity is made up of so many hidden human dramas. Maybe the whole thing is like our life, with all of us smiling and pretending to be oh so sure of ourselves (for failures and habitual whiners are not popular these days), struggling so hard to be successful, to have money, live in a big apartment in a topnotch neighborhood, spend vacations at fashionable resorts, and lead an easy and enjoyable life. We struggle and win, but somehow our triumph has a bitter taste. Why? Perhaps because something very important, in fact, indispensable is lost forever. It is called love.

Could we have preserved this love? Are the notions of life and love compatible? With all-consuming, lasting, impassioned, and elevated love? One can live but will never survive with feelings so deep, so intense. Thus, few are destined to undergo their own trial by love, and each tries to find a way to flee, seeking a middle course. As it is with the hero of the play who simply tells us about his women, sharing his memories, reliving situations ranging from tragedy to farce, drawing the audience into the game, dialogue, even the action. Now he is disarmingly sincere and then brutally frank. He mentions things we mention only to ourselves, leaving us frightened by our own inner response to his monologue, making us forget that it is only a play.

Somehow what happens onstage makes the distance with the audience vanish, the more so that certain scenes are acted out together with those in their seats. All this makes the performance extremely complicated, primarily for Oleh Savkin, but the young actor copes with his task well. Moreover, I will risk predicting that Last Year’s Snow will make him one of the capital’s most fashionable actors. He has much to offer: dramatic identification, plasticity, talent, and he is handsome. Incidentally, the audience seemed quite impressed by Savkin’s acting and liked the play. Or, in any case, people in the audience are increasingly willing to accept his rules of the game.

Oleksiy Kuzhelny has once again hit the bull’s-eye with his play (about the whims of love or crisis of the middle age, whichever one infers, for audience response quite vivid to both). Be it as it may, after one of the performances he was approached by a man from the audience who bought all the tickets for the next one as a Christmas present to his company staff. His staff liked the present.