Composition
The sixties of the XX century are better known as the times of poetry. Many poems appear in this period of Russian literature. But dramaturgy also plays an important role in this context. And a place of honor is given to Alexander Valentinovich Vampilov. With his dramatic work, he continues the traditions of his predecessors. But a lot of things are brought into his works both by the trends of the era of the 60s, and by personal observations of Vampilov himself. All this was fully reflected in his famous play "Duck Hunt".
So, K. Rudnitsky calls Vampilov's plays centripetal: ".. they certainly bring to the center, to the fore the heroes - one, two, at the strength of three, around whom the rest of the characters move, whose fates are less significant ...". Such characters in "Duck Hunt" can be called Zilov and the waiter. They, like two companions, complement each other.
"Waiter. What can I do? Nothing. You have to think for yourself.
Zilov. That's right, Dima. You're a creepy guy, Dima, but I like you better. At least you don't break like these... Give me your hand...
The waiter and Zilov are shaking hands...”.
The attention of the dramaturgy of this period of Russian literature was directed to the features of the “entry” of a person into the world around him. And the main thing is the process of its approval in this world. Perhaps only hunting becomes such a world for Zilov: “.. Yes, I want to go hunting ... Are you leaving? .. Great ... I’m ready ... Yes, I’m leaving now.”
Conflict was also special in Vampilov's play. “The interests of dramaturgy were turned ... to the nature of the conflict, which forms the basis of the drama, but not the processes taking place inside the human personality,” E. Gushanskaya noted. Such a conflict becomes interesting in the play "Duck Hunt". In fact, the play does not contain, as such, the usual conflict clash of the protagonist with the environment or other characters. The background of the conflict in the play is Zilov's memories. And by the end of the play, even such a construction does not have its resolution;
In Vampilov's play, strange and unusual cases often occur. For example, this ridiculous joke with a wreath. “(Looks at the wreath, picks it up, straightens the black ribbon, reads the inscription on it aloud). “To the unforgettable Viktor Alexandrovich Zilov who burned out at work untimely from inconsolable friends” ... (She is silent. Then she laughs, but not for long and without much fun).
However, E. Gushanskaya notes that an Irkutsk geologist told Vampilov the story of the wreath. “It was his fellow geologist who was sent a wreath with the inscription “Dear Yuri Alexandrovich, who burned down at work”.” This strangeness extends to the content of the Duck Hunt itself. Throughout the play, the protagonist is going hunting, making the necessary preparations, but he never gets there in the play itself. Only the finale speaks of his next training camp: "Yes, I'm leaving now."
Another feature of the play is its three-stage finale. At each of the steps one could finish the work. But Vampilov does not stop there. The first step can be identified when Zilov, inviting friends to a wake, "felt the trigger with his big toe ...". No wonder there is an ellipsis at the end of this phrase. There is a hint of suicide here.
Victor Zilov crossed some threshold in his life, once he decided to take such a step. But a phone call does not allow the hero to complete the work begun. And the friends who came later bring him back to real life, the situation with which he wanted to break only a couple of minutes ago. The next step is a new attempt to "assassinate" Zilov on his life. “Sayapin disappears.
Waiter. Come on. (Seizes Kuzakov and pushes him out the door.) It will be better that way... Now put the gun down.
Zilov. And you get out. (They look into each other's eyes for a moment. The waiter steps back towards the door.) Alive.
The waiter detained Kuzakov, who appeared at the door, and disappeared with him.
In the third finale of the play, Zilov never arrives at any concrete answer to the questions that arise for him in the course of the play. The only thing he decides to do is go hunting. Perhaps this is also some kind of transition to solving their life problems.
Some critics also considered Vampilov's plays in a symbolic way. Objects-or situations-symbols are simply filled with "Duck Hunt". For example, a phone call that brings Zilov back to life, one might say, from the next world. And the phone becomes a kind of conductor for Zilov's communication with the outside world, from which he tried to at least fence himself off from everything (after all, almost all the action takes place in a room where there is no one else besides him). The window becomes the same connecting thread. It is a kind of outlet in moments of emotional stress. For example, with an unusual gift from friends (a funeral wreath). “For some time he stands in front of the window, whistling the melody of mourning music that he dreamed of. With a bottle and a glass, he settles down on the windowsill. “The window is, as it were, a sign of another reality, not present on the stage,” noted E. Gushanskaya, “but the reality of the Hunt given in the play.”
Hunting and everything connected with it, for example, a gun, becomes a very interesting symbol. It was bought for duck hunting. However, Zilov tries it on himself. And the hunt itself becomes an ideal-symbol for the protagonist.
Victor is so eager to get into another world, but that one remains closed to him. And at the same time, hunting is like a moral threshold. After all, it, in fact, is a murder legalized by society. And this "is elevated to the rank of entertainment." And this world becomes for Zilov the world of dreams, eh. the image of a waiter becomes a guide to this world.
As a waiter worries about a trip: “Well, how? Do you count days? How much do we have left? .. My motorcycle is running. Order ... Vitya, but the boat should be tarred. You should have written to Khromy... Vitya!” And in the end, the dream simply turns into a utopia, which, it seems, cannot come true.
The theater of Vampilov E. Streltsova calls "the theater of the word, in which, in an incomprehensible way, the author was able to combine the incompatible." The unusual, and sometimes even comical nature of some situations combines with memories close and dear to the heart.
His dramaturgy included new images of characters, a kind of conflict, strange and unusual events. And on symbolic objects, you can recreate a separate picture, which will become even brighter to set off the actions and behavior of the protagonist. The peculiar open ending, characteristic of his other plays, gives hope that Zilov will be able to find his place not only in his memoirs within the room.
vampil dramaturgy genre play
For "Duck Hunt" (1967) from the very beginning the reputation of the most mysterious and complex play by A.V. Vampilov, including at the level of defining the genre of a work. Numerous research papers devoted to "Duck Hunt" provide quite diverse interpretations of its genre basis: farce, phantasmagoria, tragicomedy, psychological drama.
In the plays preceding Duck Hunt, Vampilov appeared to the reading and theatrical audience primarily as a comedic author, somewhere in a vaudeville style cheerful and ironic, somewhere truly witty and mocking, somewhere lyrical and soft. "In "Duck Hunt", the tonality of the narration and the overall sound of the play become serious. "Duck Hunt" is built as a chain of Zilov's memories," M.B. rightly believes. Bychkov.
Consistently staged, but scattered, memorable episodes from the hero's past life present not only to the reader and the viewer, but also to Zilov himself the story of his moral decline. Thanks to this, from the very first episode of the play, a real drama of human life, built on deceit, unfolds before us. The drama of Zilov's life gradually turns into a tragedy of loneliness: indifference or feigned participation of friends, loss of a sense of filial affection, vulgarization of the sincere feeling of a girl in love with him, the departure of his wife ... Signs of tragicomedy in the play are obvious (Zilov's conversation with Galina at the time of her departure; Zilov's public denunciation of vices friends; preparing Zilov for suicide). However, the leading methods of constructing a play, creating a genre orientation of the work, are the methods of psychological drama. For example, there is the fact that the hero A.V. Vampilov is shown at the moment of an acute spiritual crisis, shown from the inside, with all his experiences and problems, almost ruthlessly turned inside out, psychologically naked. The playwright focuses on the content of the moral world of his contemporary, while there is no definition of the hero as good or bad, he is internally complex, ambiguous. Complicated, according to E. Gushanskaya, the “triple” finale of “Duck Hunt”: the play could have been completed before the main finale twice: when Zilov put a gun to his chest or shared property with Sayapin (then it would be more in line with the canons of tragicomedy). The main ending of the play is open and solved in the tradition of psychological drama.
A play by A.V. Vampilov's "Duck Hunt" is usually regarded as a socio-psychological drama (less often as a tragicomedy with elements of industrial conflict, farcical and melodramatic inserts), in which the playwright revises the problems of his early works.
In the first two multi-act plays ("Farewell in June", "Elder Son"), the playwright was interested in the alignment of forces in revealing the subjectivity of a person hidden under a social mask in a situation generated by unique manifestations of omnipotent life. "They were understood as a combination of circumstances, which is an echo of the multi-event and diversity of life, and a happy or unfortunate event as a form of its individual will" .
According to E.V. Timoshchuk, "the problems of plays were born at the intersection of relative constancy, internal orderliness, regularity in the reproduction of living conditions, shown not from the material side, but from the socially effective side, the subjectivity of a person seeking self-determination and access to reality, and being as a kind of good god who is able to lead life in motion."
Such dramatic tasks were conveniently solved within the framework of the comedy genre: for this, it was practically not required to deviate from its canonical structure. However, even with a slight shift in emphasis from describing the situation to the process of self-knowledge of the individual, a change in genre forms was required, which led to a revision of the disposition in the Vampilov triad of man - life (people) - being.
On the one hand, for the playwright, the infinity of manifestations of the act of self-knowledge and the impossibility of its completion became obvious, on the other hand, social life in reality showed the limitations of its offers to a person and was not able to satisfy his growing need to find a common substantial meaning, from which an individual meaning would be derived. .
"The favorable existence of comedies was, in fact, not a reality of life, but a reality of literature - the playwright was convinced of this by personal example, trying to get through to the reader and encountering constant resistance on his way" . Life retreated from a person, offering him, at the risk of everything, to be active, to fight, without objective reasons, effective methods and faith in a positive outcome of the struggle.
The complication of the picture of the world, the unstoppable actualization and self-generation of models of being that claim to explain the true reasons for its existence and the vector of development, the loneliness of a person in a world that has lost interest in him, pushed Vampilov to move from the comedic element to the tragicomic one, from the canonical features of the drama to its romanization ( term M. M. Bakhtin).
This was expressed not only in the intentional incompleteness of the fate of the protagonist, immersed in the eternal present without the possibility of realizing any future, but also in the complex plot and compositional structure of the play, previously uncharacteristic of Vampilov's poetics.
The "fabric" of "Duck Hunt" falls into three layers: Zilov's past, which is a chain of episodes, to a small extent interconnected by plot and aimed at revealing as many aspects of the manifestation of his personality as possible, the present hero, in which he is deprived of the opportunity to act, and representations of the hero, tied to the moment of the present and showing his capabilities as an interpreter" .
Vampilov freely connects parts of the text, using the logic of memories generated by mentally turning over the phone book. After a party in the cafe "Forget-me-not" (the name is symbolic: the inability to forget the past), Zilov receives a mourning wreath from his friends.
The first episode of the hero’s performances, stage-marked with music and blackout, shows how he sees the reaction of the environment to his own death, if it really happened: Sayapin’s doubts about the veracity of the rumors (“No, he was joking, as usual”), Kuzakov’s confidence in the realization pessimistic version of events ("Alas, this time everything is serious. There is nowhere more serious"), Vera's ironic epitaph ("He was an alik of aliks"), sanctimonious condemnation of Kushak ("Such behavior does not lead to good"), the union in grief of Galina and Irina ("We will be friends with you") and the sinister role of the Waiter, who collects money for a wreath, making the fact of death socially irrefutable.
The described scene gives an idea of Zilov as a psychologist and interpreter of human nature: his assumptions about the possible behavior of the environment are accurate and plausible - this is confirmed by the further course of the play.
In addition, this fragment reveals the specifics of constructing the figurative system of the play (its concentration around the image of Zilov) and the dual definition of the subjectivity of the characters - through the identification of their attitude towards Zilov (acceptance/rejection) and the characterization of their positioning strategy, which involves the following methods: declarative statements: " Kuzakov Who knows ... If you look, life, in essence, is lost ... ".
According to M.B. Bychkova, in this case, a replication of the stable Chekhovian motif "life is gone" is presented.
This is supported by the frequency of occurrence of the phrase in the text, and its contextual environment (it is said at the wrong time, at the wrong time), and lexical design.
In Vampilov, we are dealing with a passive construction, in which a grammatical subject, expressed lexically, and a logical subject, hidden, but easily recovered from the context, are distinguished - life is lost [by us] (accusatory mode). The heroes of "Duck Hunt" are characterized by a partial awareness of their own role in the formation of fate, begun but not completed, and therefore an incomplete recognition of responsibility for life.
Complexes of statements and actions aimed at creating and maintaining a socially approved image: "Sash.<…>I'm far from being a hypocrite, but I must tell you that he behaved very ... mm ... imprudently ". The image of the Sash is more satirical than all the others. The comic mask of an influential, but burdened with vices face is presented here in almost all their basic qualities.
There is neither a tragicomic shift in emphasis (hyperbolization of vice, layering of monstrous features), nor a dramatic complication of subjectivity.
In the criticism of the 70-90s. there has been a tendency to interpret "Duck Hunt" primarily as a drama of losses, since the play consistently exposes value ranks: the hero realizes - or makes visible for awareness - that which could become a solid support in his life, but no longer. And yet, "Duck Hunt" is primarily a tragicomedy of existence and self-valuable awareness: its conflict is born where reality, taking the form of a mercilessly objective mirror, provides the hero with the opportunity to look at himself from the outside.
The vision of subjectivity as an invariably stable, long-standing and correctly understood entity, which gives the hero self-confidence, conflicts with the image that appears before him when he is not in the role of a participant in events, but in the role of an eyewitness.
The question “Is it really me?” that is not verbally expressed in the play, the catastrophic divergence of I-for-myself and I-in-really, the unwillingness to be myself give rise to an existential conflict that involves two ways of resolving: the destruction of the unwanted “I” by physical elimination (suicide) or by transfiguration."
Zilov consistently tries both. The open ending of the play does not leave us the opportunity for an unambiguous statement about the transformation of Zilov: Vampilov did not want categorical certainty. The consciousness of the hero, weighed down by the burden of dramatic guilt, having acquired the ability to reflect, is thrown open into life, like the consciousness of the reader and the author. Subjectivity has no limit, it is capable of change.
Speaking about the play and about Zilov: "It's me, you understand?" - Vampilov, apparently, wanted not only to point out the limitations of the vulgarly sociological interpretations of the play, but also to declare it as a drama of self-comprehension, in which the hero, reader and author are equal.
The Vampilov Theater is an open, unfinished system in which three dramatic knots are clearly distinguished: plays devoted to the problem of existence, in the center of which is an individuality cut off from the world ("Farewell in June", "Duck Hunt"); plays in which the object of the image is a utopia under construction or collapsing ("The Elder Son", "Last Summer in Chulimsk"); plays depicting a deformed, "inverted" world ("Provincial Anecdotes", this line was, apparently, to be continued by the vaudeville "Incomparable Tips", work on which was interrupted by the death of the playwright).
In the creative system of A. Vampilov, there is a dialogic tension between comedies, on the one hand, and tragicomedy and drama, on the other: the former are positive arguments in favor of the possibility of building an ideal strategy for human existence in the world, and the latter are negative.
Elements of other genres are included in the general comedy logic of the first two multi-act plays as factors for expanding the interpretive field: "Farewell in June" reveals a thematic proximity to the tragicomedy "Duck Hunt", "The Elder Son" has vaudeville and melodramatic features that determine the breadth of the idea, its irreducibility general schemes for the construction of dramatic works.
Vampilov is a playwright who wrote worthy plays, among which is Alexander Vampilov's Duck Hunt.
Vampilov duck hunting
Vampilov's play was written in 1971. This vivid work tells us about the values of the past generation, the generation of the thaw. Studying the work of the playwright, we see that Vampilov in Duck Hunt created characters with different characters that puzzle the reader, and in the past even caused public concern. If we talk about positive and negative characters, then there are none here, they are all neutral.
Here we meet Dima, who was confident in himself. There is also a defiant Faith. A sash that lived in perpetual fear. Of course, the most striking image of the work is the image of Zilov, who is the main character. We get acquainted with the plot of the book through the prism of the memories of the protagonist. He recalls the past days after his friends joked about him by sending a funeral wreath with the inscription: Zilov, who died untimely at work.
Zilov himself appears before us in the form of a man tired of life, although he is only a thirty-year-old young man. He is healthy and may well be of benefit to society, but no. There are no values for him. Already at the beginning we learn that he made some kind of scandal in a cafe. When friends come to his house for housewarming, he cannot even answer what is important for him in life. His own friends are responsible for him, who remind him of the hunt.
We see that Zilov likes to drink and eat, talking about work is boring. This is a man who did not find time to visit his sick father. He died without waiting for his son. Zilov loves to follow girls, he easily cheats on his wife, who wanted everything to work out for them, but this does not happen, and she goes to a childhood friend.
Reading the work Duck Hunt, there is an ambiguous opinion about the hero. It would seem an insignificant person who does not know how to love, who can be called a bastard, sincerity and indifference, charm and lies, daydreaming and cunning are intertwined in him. When it comes to hunting, his passion, he transforms. Hunting for him is like a Muse for a creative person. He talks about her like a poet and waits for her, as a relief from boredom. Waiting as freedom, as a dream come true, as an opportunity to relax, get rid of the bustle of the city. For him, hunting, which he goes on his vacation, is like a period of respite, an opportunity to start living in a new way. That's just the new does not come, but all because Zilov does not care about anything. He is tired of everything, everything is indifferent, and as his wife said, he has no heart.
Vampilov's work is interesting and at the same time has an unexpected ending, because it is not for nothing that the writer was called the master of open endings. So in the Duck Story, our hero falls on the bed and either cries or laughs there, but we won’t know about it. And then he calms down and, as if nothing had happened, agrees to go hunting.
Duck hunting summary
It all started with a call. He woke up Zilov, but the hero did not pick up the phone. Only after a while did he call Dima to find out about the scandal that the hero caused in the cafe. After a conversation, a boy calls at Zilov's door and hands over a funeral wreath from friends who decided to play a joke on the hero. And then we get acquainted with the memories of a man. First, he remembers a cafe where he often meets with friends during a break. Here is his boss, and his mistress, and a friend. Zilov invites all of them to a housewarming party, because the Zilovs recently received an apartment.
In the evening, everyone gathered at the Zilovs, bringing gifts. At the table, everyone taunts the hero.
Further, Zilov recalls how he and Sayapin were supposed to prepare a report, but the information turned out to be false. However, he doesn't care, he persuades Sayapin to sign the report and hands it over to the director, not fearing the consequences. Zilov receives a letter from his father, but does not react in any way to the content, which says that the old man is very sick. Especially since he had already planned a hunting trip during his vacation. Then a certain Irina appears, who was looking for a newspaper publisher, but confused the offices, getting into the office where Zilov worked. A man meets Irina and they start an affair.
We learn that Zilov does not spend the night at home, and then tells his wife about the business trip, although everyone saw him in the city. The hero justifies himself, lies on lies. He learns from his wife that she was pregnant, but had an abortion. The news didn't bother him much. Further, in order to soften his wife a little, he begins to remember the past when they first met, but later he could not remember a very important moment in their life, which brought his wife to tears.
Zilov recalls how at work the director called him to him about a fake report. The man takes the blame, but the angry director was calmed down by Sayapin's wife, who took Kushak to the football match. Here Zilov receives news of his father's death. Before leaving, Zilov visits a cafe where a meeting with Irina is scheduled, his wife also came here. So Irina learns that the hero is married.
Alexander Valentinovich Vampilov (August 19, 1937, Irkutsk region, RSFSR, USSR - August 17, 1972, near the village of Irkutsk region, RSFSR, USSR) - playwright and prose writer.
encyclopedic reference
Born in a teacher's family. His father, a rural teacher, was innocently repressed in 1937 and died, his mother continued to work, raising three children. The parents of the future writer lived in the regional center Kutulik. Although often the birthplace of A.V. called the regional center Kutulik, in fact he was born in the maternity hospital of the neighboring town of Cheremkhovo.
From childhood he was fond of music, played in a drama club, went in for sports. After leaving school (1955) he entered the Faculty of History and Philology. The first stories, which later compiled the book "Coincidence of Circumstances" (1961), were published on the pages of the newspaper "" and "Irkutsk University". In 1960 he defended his diploma, a year later his first book was published, in 1964 - the first one-act play "The House with Windows in the Field".
Already the first "full-length" play by Vampilov "Farewell in June" attracted attention. It was still in manuscript when it served as a pretext for Vampilov's admission to the USSR Writers' Union, and a year later, published in the Theater magazine (1966. No. 8), it began its march through the country's theater groups, was staged in many European theaters. His play "", completed in 1965, during the life of Vampilov went around the world. The only city where she was forbidden to enter was the capital of our homeland, Moscow. Three times in different years the Yermolova Theater handed over The Elder Son to the official commission, and three times the performance was not accepted (only six months after the death of Vampilov, the same commission allowed The Elder Son to be staged).
“From the very beginning, this became a creative feature of A. Vampilov as a playwright - to take a person who, at first glance, seems either ridiculous, unlucky, or frivolous, carefree, or almost downcast, waving his hand at himself, and showing what resources of humanity really are. he has”, - notes the literary critic A. Ovcharenko.
Having told about how two young people, having missed the last train, are looking for an overnight stay, Vampilov introduces his heroes to the house of the failed musician Sarafanov.
“...According to the properties of his soul, Sarafanov cannot only drag existence through everyday life,- wrote literary critic V. Lakshin. - He certainly needs to live some kind of dream, at least a domestic myth, that he works in a philharmonic society or is about to write an oratorio that will glorify him. Thanks to Busygin, Sarafanov begins to face the truth, realizes that even without fulfilling his cherished dream, he lives usefully, that people also need playing the clarinet. And let Sarafanov be naive and a little ridiculous, but he evokes sympathy because “he doesn’t want to become stale, moldy, dissolve in the bustle”.
Vampilov's earliest records relating to the play "The Elder Son" date back to 1964: the title is "Peace in the House of Sarafanov", future characters: Sarafanov Alexei Nikolaevich - retired colonel, Emma - his daughter, Vasya - his son, ninth grader, Zabrodin - a student on vacation, Kemerovo - a typist, Chistyakov - an engineer.
Even earlier, in Vampilov's notebooks, the names and characteristics of future characters are mentioned, different from the final version: Nikolai Zabrodin - a student on vacation, a physicist (22), a tramp and a fatalist (embittered). Aleksei Nikolaevich Sarafanov - tuner (50), kind-hearted, cheerful, understood everything and forgave everything, a gentle person. Loves work. Olenka Sarafanova - a girl making her way onto the stage. Sober, cold, but sweet, etc. Greta Komarovskaya is a woman who is waiting for an opportunity. Secretary typist. Vasenka Sarafanov - an infant, a novice bastard, behind his back the first two courses. Yuri Chistyakov is an engineer, a person with a Moscow residence permit, Olenka's fiancé.
The first version of the play was created in 1965 and published in excerpts under the title "Grooms" on May 20, 1965 in the newspaper "Soviet Youth". In 1967 the play was called Suburb and in 1968 it was published in the anthology Angara.
In 1970, Vampilov finalized the play for the Art publishing house, where The Elder Son was released as a separate edition.
The playwright Alexei Simukov preserved Vampilov's letter, in which he explains Busygin's actions:
“... At the very beginning ... (when it seems to him that Sarafanov went to commit adultery) he (Busygin) does not even think about meeting him, he avoids this meeting, and when he meets, he does not deceive Sarafanov just like that, out of evil hooliganism, but rather , acts like a moralist in some way. Why shouldn't this (father) suffer a little for that one (Busygin's father)? Firstly, having deceived Sarafanov, he is always burdened by this deception, and not only because he is Nina, but also before Sarafanov he has downright remorse. Subsequently, when the position of the imaginary son is replaced by the position of the beloved brother - the central situation of the play, Busygin's deception turns against him, he acquires a new meaning and, in my opinion, looks completely harmless.
Duck Hunt (1967)
"Duck Hunt" (1967) is Vampilov's most bitter, most bleak play, the most suffered in his work.
In the eyes of the protagonist of the play, Zilov, there is boredom and indifference to everything: work, wife, friends, life. As if from boyhood, he immediately entered the old age of the soul, having passed maturity. This is not only his fault, but his misfortune - because he has lost the meaning, the justification of life. Another would have lived without thinking about anything, like many others, but Zilov cannot do that. And not finding something to live for, he loses himself, becomes a vulgar consumer. The energy of his soul as a result is spent on self-destruction.
“Vampilov was vitally interested in why people who enter life young, healthy, morally strong, far from reaching the pinnacle of their destiny, break down and die. How to overcome the process of moral degradation, how to keep honest and strong convictions? Vampilov's answer turns us to ourselves, to those inexhaustible reserves of the human soul that every person has - if only he does not stop believing that he can and should live with dignity.”, - notes V. Lakshin.
Last Summer in Chulimsk (1972)
In 1972 A.V. Vampilov is finishing work on the play Last Summer in Chulimsk.
“Together with Vampilov, sincerity and kindness came to the theater, - wrote V. Rasputin. - Valentina appeared on the stage (“Last summer in Chulimsk”), and involuntarily everything low and dirty retreated before her ... Weak, unprotected and incapable of defending themselves in front of the prose of life, but look how steadfast, what complete inner conviction they have in the main and holy laws of human existence...”.
The play was written in early 1971. The first version was created specifically for Moscow Academic Theatre. Vl. Mayakovsky, but was not put on stage. One version of the play ended with Valentina's suicide.
Initially, Vampilov called the play "Valentina", but the name had to be changed, because while the play was being approved by censorship, M. Roshchin's play became widely known " Valentine and Valentine", written later. The name was changed to “Red Summer - June, July, August ...” In his first one-volume book, A.V. Vampilov included the play under the working title "Last Summer in Chulimsk" - and after the author's death it became final.
Expert opinion
Literary critic A. Ovcharenko:
"From the very beginning, this became a creative feature of A. Vampilov as a playwright- take a person who, at first glance, seems either ridiculous, unlucky, or frivolous, carefree, or almost downcast, waving his hand at himself, and show what resources of humanity he actually possesses.
I remember the time when Vampilov's plays were triumphant across the country. Together with them there were legends about a provincial playwright who wrote five plays, went to Moscow, where one of them was accepted for production, he returned home and ... drowned. Like a true genius, at the age of 35.
It was then that I watched four of Vampilov's five plays. The fifth, "Duck Hunt", for some reason did not go anywhere, and this was intriguing.
I read the play a few years later in a book and understood why perhaps they were afraid to stage it. The fact is that in addition to the obvious realistic plot, there is another layer in it, not quite clear, reeking of phantasmagoria. And in fact, an open end, leaving room for a variety of interpretations.
The film, staged by V. Melnikov (director of the magnificent "Elder Son" based on another play by Vampilov), I think, turned out to be not entirely successful, despite the brilliant Oleg Dal in the title role and a lot of other wonderful actors (it was called "Vacation in September"). Melnikov shot a realistic film, the result was a plot about a disgusting and immoral drunkard, who was absolutely incomprehensible for what women loved and about whom it is not clear why they wrote a play and made a film. But the play is about the tragedy of the "superfluous man" of the middle of the 20th century, and its hero Zilov is a descendant of Onegin and Pechorin.
Now I think you will understand why it was so interesting for me to see "Duck Hunt" in the theater for the first time, especially since, judging by the reviews, the performance of the theater Et Cetera was by no means realistic.
What did they get?
For my taste, Et Cetera turned out to be too much phantasmagoria. In addition to the actors, there are three "mourners" on the stage (who at some point turn into brides), a guitarist, an orchestra, a male and female "choir" (as it is stated in the program, although rather a corps de ballet). They all play, sing, dance and quack. Some of the characters' lines are spoken by one of the "additional" characters, and the characters scream much more often than they just talk. The hero's girl is Buryat, in some places she speaks Buryat, and in one scene she comes out in an unimaginably complex national costume. The stage is flooded with water, some of the characters walk in wading boots, some in model shoes, and those and others periodically flop into the water and get wet (it's a pity for the actors). You get tired of all this noise very quickly, and additional effects drag out the performance, which lasts three and a half hours.
Is there any point in all these "additions"? To be honest, I didn’t take it, except for the fact that horror and hopelessness are on the rise. Perhaps this is exactly what the director wanted to achieve. Then we can say that he coped with his task. The performance was terrifying and hopeless. And the main character is simply disgusting (an order of magnitude more disgusting than the cinematic Dahl). So the theme of the "superfluous person", who wants to empathize, has remained undisclosed here.
While preparing the post, I found out that another film adaptation of "Duck Hunt" has recently appeared - with Evgeny Tsyganov and Chulpan Khamatova.
I don't think I'll risk watching after this show...
To cheer up, I will give a photo of the monument to playwrights in the courtyard of the Tabakov theater-studio (Chaplygina Street, 1a). Alexander Vampilov - in the center.
