Anatolii Khostikoiev and Company were applauded for the 150th time!

The play, one of the most popular in the repertoire of the Franko National Theater, was performed for the 150th time on November 7. It was the first to be directed by Khostikoiev, well-known as an actor, and the role of the legendary British premier actor Edmund Kean who was the best interpreter of Shakespeare’s plays, lived for theater and even died on stage, was a key one in Khostikoiev’s acting career. By the way, this play brought Khostikoiev Kyiv Pectoral prize for best directorial debut in 1999.

Let me recall that the play by Grigory Gorin was to be staged by Serhii Danchenko, the then artistic director of the Franko Theater, but he was forced to postpone rehearsals one after another due to illness. Khostikoiev recalls how, having read Kean IV for the first time, he fell in love with the play, because it offered a lot of creative freedom for all the actors, while the role of Edmund Kean himself could be seen as a true gift, providing great opportunities for improvising, experimenting, searching for a key to revealing the character’s personality in full.

“During rehearsals, I fantasized all the time inventing mise-en-scenes,” Khostikoiev says. “The entire creative team worked very enthusiastically. The set and costumes were designed by Andrii Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky, dances were staged by late Borys Kamenkovych, a fantastic master of choreography, while our fencing instructor was Volodymyr Abazopulo. I and my fellow actors already knew the script by heart, but Danchenko was still ill! We contacted him by phone every other day or so, and he said one day that the play had to go ahead lest the actors should burn out. In fact, these words were his blessing for me to go into stage directing.”

Kean IV is a confession, telling about life in the theater, actor’s profession, happiness and pain... By the way, Khostikoiev acts as an actor, director and musician in it, as he performs brilliantly as solo percussionist in the closing scene (credits for part of the music go to The Beatles). The tragicomedy was first staged on June 9, 1999 by the leading Franko Theater actors, including Oleksii Bohdanovych as Prince of Wales, Natalia Sumska as Ann Demby, Oleksii Pietukhov as Solomon, and Liubov Kubiuk as Helen, but all the action was then and still is concentrated in Kean, Khostikoiev’s character, who looks like he is living on stage and plays to the fullest extent of his abilities. By the way, playwright Gorin, having watched Kyiv version of his play, called it the best performance ever and even proclaimed Khostikoiev the Ukrainian Kean.