A tour around Kyiv, retro style

Director Oleksandr Bilozub presented at the Chamber Stage his brainchild I cannot but love you, my Kyiv, the literary composition and rhymed lead-ins for which were written by actor Oleksii Palamarenko. The audience will go for a 1.5-hour-long virtual tour over the memorable sights of our capital. The tour will feature actors, reciting the poems by Mykola Zerov, Lina Kostenko, Alexandr Vertinsky, fables by Pavlo Hlazovy, waltzing, performing love songs, variety songs, and jazz compositions to the music by Ihor Shamo, Platon Maiboroda, Yurii Shevchenko, and other masters of art.

The leading part of this retro concert is performed by the Ivan Franko Theater Orchestra and singing drama actors under the guidance of conductor Volodymyr Gdansky and choirmaster Anatolii Navrotsky. The audience stood in ovation to the coloratura soprano of Anzhelika Savchenko, who brilliantly performed the famous “Nightingale” song by Marko Kropyvnytsky; the premieres of songs composed and performed by Ivano-Frankivsk singers also produced a bright impression on the audience (“A Song from Afar” by Olha Tsymbalist and “Evening Kyiv” by Agnessa Boiko). The audience smiled when the revived comedy duo of Tarapunka and Shtepsel, which was popular in the 1950s-1960s, appeared on stage (Oleksii Palamarenko and Anatolii Hnatiuk), as well as the ever witty employee of referral service, who never gets confused, no matter what the situation is (Volodymyr Nikolaienko). The actors did their best in conveying the nostalgic-lyrical atmosphere, and in the finale the audience sang the legendary song “My Kyiv” (music by Ihor Shamo, lyrics by Dmytro Lutsenko) in unison with the concert participants. It was namely a concert, for the production apparently did not reach the level of a play or even a “show,” as Oleksandr Bilozub called the genre of his production.

Bilozub repeated himself in the composition I cannot but love you, my Kyiv, but whereas in his previous work, Romance. Nostalgia the director did find an interesting move by setting the action on a railway station (the plot is based on Mihail Sebastian’s play A Star without Name), where the heroes meet and part, performing popular hits, this move did not work in the new production. Without a plot line the production falls apart into separate fragments, and the concert resembles a motley crew, just like it was in the Soviet time when popular actors of theater and cinema toured across cities and towns with the program “Comrade Cinema”: the screen showed fragments from films, followed by performances of the propaganda team members who recited poems, danced, or sang. It is anyone’s guess what kind of appeal such production can present for the guests who will come to Kyiv during Euro-2012 and are actually its target audience.