Gombrowicz Witold
Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy
Vitold Gombrowicz
Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy
Leonard Bukhov, translation from Polish
W. Gombrowicz (1904 - 1969) - a classic of the Polish avant-garde, who had a great influence on Polish and European literature and drama of the 20th century. The play was written in 1938, but its first production in Poland took place only in the early 1950s. Since then, "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" has not left the stage for more than half a century. Translated into sixteen languages, the play occupies a firm place in the repertoires of theaters around the world. One recent production was by Ingmar Bergman at the Stockholm Drama Theatre.
Publication of the translation: "Modern Dramaturgy", 1996/1. (C)(C)(C)
Characters:
KING OF IGNATIA
QUEEN MARGARITA
PRINCE PHILIP - heir to the throne
CHAMBERLAIN
IZA - court lady
KIRILL - friend of the prince
Yvonne's Aunts
INNOKENTIY - courtier
VALENTIN - footman
Dignitaries, courtiers, beggars, etc.
Place of festivities: trees, benches in the depths, festively dressed audience. At the signal of fanfare enter: KING IGNATIUS, QUEEN MARGARET, PRINCE PHILIP, CHAMMERGER, KIRILL, CYPRIAN, ladies and gentlemen of the court.
QUEEN. What a wonderful sunset.
CHAMBERLAIN. Truly wonderful, your majesty.
QUEEN. Looking at such beauty, a person becomes better.
CHAMBERLAIN. Better, without a doubt.
KING. And in the evening we will play cards.
CHAMBERLAIN. Only Your Majesty is given to combine an innate sense of beauty with your natural propensity to play bridge.
Fits BEGGAR.
What do you want, a kind person?
BEGGAR. Please provide financial support.
KING. Chamberlain, give him five groszy. Let the people see that we remember their needs!
QUEEN. Give me ten. (Turning towards the sunset.) At the sight of such a sunset!
LADIES. Ah-ah-ah!
KING. What's there - give me fifteen! Let him know his sovereign!
LORD. Ah-ah-ah!
BEGGAR. May the Lord Almighty bless the Most Serene King and may the Most High King of the Lord Most High bless. (Exits singing a song.)
KING. Well, let's go, we shouldn't be late for dinner, because we still need to take a walk around the entire park, fraternally communicate with the people on the day of the national holiday.
Everyone heads for the exit except PRINCE.
And you, Philip, are you staying?
PRINCE (picks up a newspaper lying on the ground). Me for a minute.
KING. Ha ha ha! It's clear! Ha ha ha! He has a date! Just like me at his age! So let's go, ha ha ha!
QUEEN (reproachfully). Ignatius!
Fanfare signal, everyone leaves except PRINCE, KIRILL and KYPRIAN.
KIRILL and KYPRIAN. End of boredom!
PRINCE. Wait a minute, here is the horoscope for today. (Reads.) From twelve to two ... No, not that ... Here! - The period from seven to nine in the evening will bring you a powerful surge of vitality, an increase in individual qualities, and will give impetus to wonderful, albeit risky ideas. This is a watch conducive to bold plans, great deeds...
CYPRIAN. And what is it for us?
PRINCE. ... conducive to success in love affairs.
KIRILL. Then another matter. Look, some girls are spinning over there!
CYPRIAN. Forward! Don't delay. Let's do our duty.
PRINCE. What? What's the other debt? What do you mean?
CYPRIAN. Our duty is to function! Function! Nothing else but to function with blissful joy! We are Young! We are men! We are young men! So let us fulfill our function as young men! Let's set more work priests so that they can function! Ordinary division of labor.
KIRILL. Look, a very elegant and seductive lady is coming. And the legs are nothing.
PRINCE. No - how so? Is it the same again? And so on to infinity? Again and again? Again and again?
CYPRIAN. Don't you agree?! What can she think of us?! Of course, again and again! Always!
PRINCE. Don't want.
KIRILL. Do not want? What? What?! Refusing!
CYPRIAN. (surprised). Don't you, prince, feel sweet, carefree pleasure when sweet lips whisper: "yes", as if once again confirming their unchanging readiness?
PRINCE. Of course, of course, naturally ... (Reads.) "contributing to bold plans, great deeds, strengthening individual qualities and sharpening emotions. These watches are not safe for overly proud natures, who are characterized by an overly heightened sense of self-esteem. The cases that you will start in these hours, can be useful, but possibly harmful ... "Well, it's always like that.
ISA enters.
We greet you!
CYPRIAN. With the greatest pleasure!
KIRILL. With admiration!
ISA. Good afternoon What are you, Prince, doing here in seclusion?
PRINCE. I am doing my duty. My father inspires his subjects with his appearance, and with mine I immerse their daughters in the dreams. Why aren't you with the Queen?
ISA. Late. Here I'm chasing. Was on a walk.
PRINCE. Ah, you're chasing. Whom?
ISA. What are you, prince, absent-minded. Why is there such melancholy in his voice? Are you not enjoying life? And that's all I'm busy with.
PRINCE. Me too, and that's why...
PRINCE. Hmm... (Looks at them carefully.)
ALL. So what?
PRINCE. Nothing.
ISA. Nothing. Are you well, prince?
KIRILL. Cold?
CYPRIAN. Migraine?
PRINCE. No, on the contrary, something just came over me! Something has surged! Believe me, I am literally overwhelmed with emotions!
CYPRIAN (looks around). Oh, nothing blondie. Quite... quite...
PRINCE. Blonde? If you said - brunette, it would not change anything. (Looks around with a depressed look.) Trees and trees... Let something happen.
KIRILL. Oh, and there's another one coming.
CYPRIAN. With aunts!
KIRILL. With aunts!
Enter YVONNE and her two Aunts.
ISA. What's happened?
CYPRIAN. Yes, you look, prince, look, you will die of laughter!
KIRILL. Quiet, quiet, let's hear what they're talking about.
1st Aunt. Let's sit on the bench. Do you see, my child, those young people?
YVONNE (silent).
1st Aunt. Yes, smile, smile, my child.
YVONNE (silent).
2nd Aunt. Why so sluggish? Why are you smiling so languidly, my child?
YVONNE (silent).
2nd Aunt. Yesterday you were out of luck again. And today you are not successful. And tomorrow, too, no one will pay attention to you. Why are you so unattractive, dear? Why not sexy at all? Nobody wants to look at you. The true punishment of God!
1st Aunt. We spent every last penny of our savings to order this floral dress for you. You cannot complain to us.
CYPRIAN. Well, ugly!
ISA (offended). Why same immediately - ugly.
KIRILL. Wet chicken! And the nose turns up!
CYPRIAN. Crybaby! Everything is wrong with her! Let's go show her our contempt! Let's hit the nose!
KIRILL. Yes Yes! This inflated roar would be nice to teach a lesson! Our sacred duty! You go first and I follow you.
They pass with sarcastic mines right in front of Yvonne, and then burst into laughter.
CYPRIAN. Ha ha ha! Right under your nose! Right under your nose!
ISA. Leave her - it doesn't make sense!
1st Aunt (to Yvonne). See what we're going through because of you.
2nd Aunt. She makes everyone laugh at us! God's punishment! I thought that even in my old age, when the end of my female disappointments comes, I can not be afraid that I will seem ridiculous. And now I have grown old, but because of you I continue to endure bullying.
CYPRIAN. Do you hear? Now they are talking to her. Ha ha ha, she deserves it! Get it right!
2nd Aunt. They laugh at us again. But you can’t leave, then they will laugh after us ... But if we stay, they laugh in our faces!
1st Aunt (to Yvonne). Why didn't you even move your foot at yesterday's ball, dear child?
2nd Aunt. Why isn't anyone interested in you? Do we enjoy it? We have invested in you all our feminine ambition, and you... Why don't you run skiing?
1st Aunt. Why don't you take up pole vaulting? Other young ladies are jumping.
CYPRIAN. How clumsy she is! Just looking at her annoys me! Damn annoying! This crap just pisses me off! Now I'll go and turn the bench over! How, huh?
KIRILL. No, it's not worth it. Why so much effort? It is enough to show her a finger or wave a hand, or something else like that. Any gesture towards such a creature would be a mockery. (Sneezes.)
2nd Aunt. Here you see? We are already being sneezed on!
ISA. Leave her.
CYPRIAN. No, no, let's do some trick on her. I came up with an idea: I'll pretend to be lame, and she will think that even a lame dog does not come to her for tea. (Intends to go to the bench.)
PRINCE. Wait! I came up with something better!
CYPRIAN. Wow! I give up my seat!
KIRILL. What did you come up with? Looks like you're about to do something unimaginable!
PRINCE (laughs, covering his mouth with a handkerchief). Fortel - ha-ha-ha, fortel! (Approaches the bench.) Allow me to introduce myself. I am His Highness Prince Philip, son of the King.
Vitold Gombrowicz
Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy
Leonard Bukhov, translation from Polish
W. Gombrowicz (1904 - 1969) - a classic of the Polish avant-garde, who had a great influence on Polish and European literature and drama of the 20th century. The play was written in 1938, but its first production in Poland took place only in the early 1950s. Since then, "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" has not left the stage for more than half a century. Translated into sixteen languages, the play occupies a firm place in the repertoires of theaters around the world. One recent production was by Ingmar Bergman at the Stockholm Drama Theatre.
Publication of the translation: "Modern Dramaturgy", 1996/1. (C)(C)(C)
Characters:
KING OF IGNATIA
QUEEN MARGARITA
PRINCE PHILIP - heir to the throne
CHAMBERLAIN
IZA - court lady
KIRILL - friend of the prince
Yvonne's Aunts
INNOKENTIY - courtier
VALENTIN - footman
Dignitaries, courtiers, beggars, etc.
Place of festivities: trees, benches in the depths, festively dressed audience. At the signal of fanfare enter: KING IGNATIUS, QUEEN MARGARET, PRINCE PHILIP, CHAMMERGER, KIRILL, CYPRIAN, ladies and gentlemen of the court.
QUEEN. What a wonderful sunset.
CHAMBERLAIN. Truly wonderful, your majesty.
QUEEN. Looking at such beauty, a person becomes better.
CHAMBERLAIN. Better, without a doubt.
KING. And in the evening we will play cards.
CHAMBERLAIN. Only Your Majesty is given to combine an innate sense of beauty with your natural propensity to play bridge.
Fits BEGGAR.
What do you want, good man?
BEGGAR. Please provide financial support.
KING. Chamberlain, give him five groszy. Let the people see that we remember their needs!
QUEEN. Give me ten. (Turning towards the sunset.) At the sight of such a sunset!
LADIES. Ah-ah-ah!
KING. What's there - give me fifteen! Let him know his sovereign!
LORD. Ah-ah-ah!
BEGGAR. May the Lord Almighty bless the Most Serene King and may the Most High King of the Lord Most High bless. (Exits singing a song.)
KING. Well, let's go, we shouldn't be late for dinner, because we still need to take a walk around the entire park, fraternally communicate with the people on the day of the national holiday.
Everyone heads for the exit except PRINCE.
And you, Philip, are you staying?
PRINCE (picks up a newspaper lying on the ground). Me for a minute.
KING. Ha ha ha! It's clear! Ha ha ha! He has a date! Just like me at his age! So let's go, ha ha ha!
QUEEN (reproachfully). Ignatius!
Fanfare signal, everyone leaves except PRINCE, KIRILL and KYPRIAN.
KIRILL and KYPRIAN. End of boredom!
PRINCE. Wait a minute, here is the horoscope for today. (Reads.) From twelve to two ... No, not that ... Here! - The period from seven to nine in the evening will bring you a powerful surge of vitality, an increase in individual qualities, and will give impetus to wonderful, albeit risky ideas. This is a watch conducive to bold plans, great deeds...
CYPRIAN. And what is it for us?
PRINCE. ... conducive to success in love affairs.
KIRILL. Then another matter. Look, some girls are spinning over there!
CYPRIAN. Forward! Don't delay. Let's do our duty.
PRINCE. What? What's the other debt? What do you mean?
CYPRIAN. Our duty is to function! Function! Nothing else but to function with blissful joy! We are Young! We are men! We are young men! So let us fulfill our function as young men! Let's give more work to the priests so that they can function! Ordinary division of labor.
KIRILL. Look, a very elegant and seductive lady is coming. And the legs are nothing.
PRINCE. No - how so? Is it the same again? And so on to infinity? Again and again? Again and again?
CYPRIAN. Don't you agree?! What can she think of us?! Of course, again and again! Always!
PRINCE. Don't want.
KIRILL. Do not want? What? What?! Refusing!
CYPRIAN. (surprised). Don't you, prince, feel sweet, carefree pleasure when sweet lips whisper: "yes", as if once again confirming their unchanging readiness?
PRINCE. Of course, of course, naturally ... (Reads.) "contributing to bold plans, great deeds, strengthening individual qualities and sharpening emotions. These watches are not safe for overly proud natures, who are characterized by an overly heightened sense of self-esteem. The cases that you will start in these hours, can be useful, but possibly harmful ... "Well, it's always like that.
ISA enters.
We greet you!
CYPRIAN. With the greatest pleasure!
KIRILL. With admiration!
ISA. Good afternoon What are you, Prince, doing here in seclusion?
PRINCE. I am doing my duty. My father inspires his subjects with his appearance, and with mine I immerse their daughters in the dreams. Why aren't you with the Queen?
ISA. Late. Here I'm chasing. Was on a walk.
PRINCE. Ah, you're chasing. Whom?
ISA. What are you, prince, absent-minded. Why is there such melancholy in his voice? Are you not enjoying life? And that's all I'm busy with.
PRINCE. Me too, and that's why...
PRINCE. Hmm... (Looks at them carefully.)
ALL. So what?
PRINCE. Nothing.
ISA. Nothing. Are you well, prince?
KIRILL. Cold?
CYPRIAN. Migraine?
PRINCE. No, on the contrary, something just came over me! Something has surged! Believe me, I am literally overwhelmed with emotions!
CYPRIAN (looks around). Oh, nothing blondie. Quite... quite...
PRINCE. Blonde? If you said - brunette, it would not change anything. (Looks around with a depressed look.) Trees and trees... Let something happen.
KIRILL. Oh, and there's another one coming.
CYPRIAN. With aunts!
KIRILL. With aunts!
Enter YVONNE and her two Aunts.
ISA. What's happened?
CYPRIAN. Yes, you look, prince, look, you will die of laughter!
KIRILL. Quiet, quiet, let's hear what they're talking about.
1st Aunt. Let's sit on the bench. Do you see, my child, those young people?
YVONNE (silent).
1st Aunt. Yes, smile, smile, my child.
YVONNE (silent).
2nd Aunt. Why so sluggish? Why are you smiling so languidly, my child?
YVONNE (silent).
2nd Aunt. Yesterday you were out of luck again. And today you are not successful. And tomorrow, too, no one will pay attention to you. Why are you so unattractive, dear? Why not sexy at all? Nobody wants to look at you. The true punishment of God!
1st Aunt. We spent every last penny of our savings to order this floral dress for you. You cannot complain to us.
CYPRIAN. Well, ugly!
ISA (offended). Why same immediately - ugly.
KIRILL. Wet chicken! And the nose turns up!
CYPRIAN. Crybaby! Everything is wrong with her! Let's go show her our contempt! Let's hit the nose!
KIRILL. Yes Yes! This inflated roar would be nice to teach a lesson! Our sacred duty! You go first and I follow you.
They pass with sarcastic mines right in front of Yvonne, and then burst into laughter.
CYPRIAN. Ha ha ha! Right under your nose! Right under your nose!
ISA. Leave her - it doesn't make sense!
1st Aunt (to Yvonne). See what we're going through because of you.
2nd Aunt. She makes everyone laugh at us! God's punishment! I thought that even in my old age, when the end of my female disappointments comes, I can not be afraid that I will seem ridiculous. And now I have grown old, but because of you I continue to endure bullying.
CYPRIAN. Do you hear? Now they are talking to her. Ha ha ha, she deserves it! Get it right!
2nd Aunt. They laugh at us again. But you can’t leave, then they will laugh after us ... But if we stay, they laugh in our faces!
1st Aunt (to Yvonne). Why didn't you even move your foot at yesterday's ball, dear child?
2nd Aunt. Why isn't anyone interested in you? Do we enjoy it? We have invested in you all our feminine ambition, and you... Why don't you run skiing?
1st Aunt. Why don't you take up pole vaulting? Other young ladies are jumping.
CYPRIAN. How clumsy she is! Just looking at her annoys me! Damn annoying! This crap just pisses me off! Now I'll go and turn the bench over! How, huh?
KIRILL. No, it's not worth it. Why so much effort? It is enough to show her a finger or wave a hand, or something else like that. Any gesture towards such a creature would be a mockery. (Sneezes.)
2nd Aunt. Here you see? We are already being sneezed on!
ISA. Leave her.
CYPRIAN. No, no, let's do some trick on her. I came up with an idea: I'll pretend to be lame, and she will think that even a lame dog does not come to her for tea. (Intends to go to the bench.)
PRINCE. Wait! I came up with something better!
CYPRIAN. Wow! I give up my seat!
KIRILL. What did you come up with? Looks like you're about to do something unimaginable!
PRINCE (laughs, covering his mouth with a handkerchief). Fortel - ha-ha-ha, fortel! (Approaches the bench.) Allow me to introduce myself. I am His Highness Prince Philip, son of the King.
Aunts. Ah-ah-ah!
PRINCE. I see, dear ladies, you have some problems with this nice young lady. Why is she so apathetic?
1st Aunt. Just trouble! She has some kind of organic ailment. The circulation is sluggish.
2nd Aunt. And from this puffiness in winter, and mustiness in summer. In the autumn she has a constant runny nose, but in the spring - headaches.
PRINCE. Excuse me, you are literally at a loss as to which time of the year to prefer. And no medication helps?
1st Aunt. Doctors say: if she were livelier, more cheerful, blood circulation would increase and all ailments would stop.
PRINCE. Then why can't her mood improve?
1st Aunt. Due to poor circulation.
PRINCE. So, if it becomes more alive, the circulation will increase, and if the circulation increases, then it will become more alive. Funny situation. Some kind of vicious circle. Hmm... of course, yes... you know...
2nd Aunt. You, Prince, of course, are being ironic. Well, we can't ban it.
PRINCE. I'm being ironic? No, I'm not ironic. Too serious right now. Don't you feel a certain strengthening of your individual qualities, a surge of vitality - don't you feel intoxicated?
1st Aunt. We don't experience anything, it's just a little chilly.
PRINCE. Strange! (To Yvonne.) And you - don't you feel anything either?
YVONNE (silent).
2nd Aunt. Where is she, what can she feel?
PRINCE. You know, when I look at you, I'm tempted to do something to you. For example, take on a leash and drive forward, or deliver milk to you, or prick you with a pin, or mimic. Your appearance annoys me, you are like a red rag, you provoke. Yes! There are people, as if created in order to unbalance others, annoy, drive them to madness. Such people exist, and each of them affects only specific person. Oh! How you sit, how you touch with those fingers of yours, how you dangle with your foot! Unheard of! Just wonderful! Amazing! How do you do it?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Oh, how silent you are! How silent you are! And what an offended look! And you look just wonderful - like an offended queen! All filled with anger and resentment - oh, how much dignity and pretension you have! No, I'm going crazy. Everyone has their own creature, leading him into a state of delirium tremens, and you are such a creature created for me! And you will be mine! Cyril, Cyprian!
KIRILL and KIPRIAN come up.
Allow me to introduce you to this insulted queen, this proud Anemia! Look at how she moved her lips ... She would like to answer us with a barb, but right now nothing comes to mind.
ISA (suitable). What nonsense! Leave her! The whole thing is starting to get tasteless.
PRINCE (sharply). And you find that up to this point the taste has always been respected!
CYPRIAN. Allow me to introduce myself - Count Unworthy!
KIRILL. Ha ha ha, Baron Anemia! The sharpness, of course, is not the best ... but to the point.
ISA. Stop it, stop it - leave the poor thing alone.
PRINCE. Poor thing? Well, well, take it easy! Take it easy - I can and marry her.
KYPRIAN and KIRILL. Ha ha ha!
PRINCE. I said: take it easy - I can marry her!
KYPRIAN and KIRILL. Ha ha ha!
PRINCE. Stop it! I will marry her! Yes, she annoys me to such an extent that I will marry her! (To the Aunts.) You agree, don't you?
KIRILL. The joke is going too far. You can give a reason for blackmail.
PRINCE. Joke? But tell me, isn't she herself a colossal joke? Are jokes only allowed on one side? And if I'm a prince, isn't she a proud, insulted queen? Yes, look at her! Listen! Mademoiselle, mademoiselle! Mademoiselle, allow me to ask for your hand.
1st Aunt. What?
2nd Aunt. What? (He catches himself.) Prince, you are a noble youth!
1st Aunt. You, prince, are a true philanthropist!
CYPRIAN. Unheard of!
KIRILL. This is madness! I conjure you with the memory of your ancestors!
CYPRIAN. And I conjure you by the memory of your descendants!
PRINCE. Enough, gentlemen! (Takes Yvonne's hand.)
ISA. Stop - the king is coming!
CYPRIAN. King!
KIRILL. King!
Fanfare signal; enter KING, QUEEN, CHAMMERGER, courtiers.
Aunts. Let's leave quickly, here now such a storm will break out!
Aunts run away.
KING. A! Philip! Well, I see you are having fun! What did I say! Blood is not water!
QUEEN. Ignatius!
KING. Blood is not water, I tell you! All in me! (Aside.) But something, it seems to me, this nymph is a little ... that ... And what kind of stuffed animal is this, my son?
PRINCE. Allow me to introduce, most illustrious sovereign, - my bride.
KING. What?
ISA. He is joking!
KING. Ha ha ha! Joke! Joke! I see, my son, that you have inherited my penchant for jokes. And really, what else is left in my life. And, strange to say, I myself cannot understand why, but the more stupid and primitive the joke, the more joy it gives me. I instantly look younger.
CHAMBERLAIN. I fully agree, Your Majesty, with Your Majesty's subtle remark. Nothing rejuvenates like a truly ridiculous joke.
QUEEN (with displeasure). Philip...
PRINCE. This is not a joke at all.
QUEEN. How so? Not a joke? What is it, in that case?
PRINCE. My engagement!
KING. What?
The startled courtiers flee.
QUEEN (indignantly). First of all, I ask everyone to observe tact. (To Yvonne.) Look, my child, what a beautiful tree there is. (To the Prince.) Philip, what position are you putting her in? What position are you putting us in? What position are you putting yourself in? (To the King.) Ignatius, calm down!
PRINCE. Your majesties, in your eyes I see indignation at my act: how could I, a royal son, even for a moment put my person next to such a creature.
KING. He speaks well!
PRINCE. But if I nevertheless got engaged to her, then I did it not out of poverty, but out of excess - and therefore I think that I have the right to take such a step, I don’t see anything humiliating for myself here.
KING. From excess?
PRINCE. Yes! I am rich enough to be engaged to extreme poverty. And why should I only like beauty? Why can't you like a nondescript one? Where is that written? Where is there such a law that I am obliged to obey as a soulless mechanism? Am I not a free man?
KING. Wait, Philip, are you seriously presenting us with your paradoxes? Don't pretend to be independent, it's just that everything is mixed up in your head, my son. Why complicate simple things? If the young lady is beautiful, you like her, and if you like her, then - go ahead ... but if she is ugly, then - goodbye, and legs in hand. Why complicate? This is the law of nature, which I myself, speaking between us (Looks back at the Queen.), I obey with pleasure.
PRINCE. And this law seems to me idiotically stupid, wildly rude, ridiculously unjust!
CHAMBERLAIN. He is stupid, of course, stupid, but, so to speak, it is the most stupid laws of nature that are most pleasant.
KING. Really, Philip, are you tired of classes at the Faculty of Boiler Design and your ideological work in the civil-social field?
QUEEN. Are you tired of your youthful games and amusements? Are you fed up with tennis? Are you tired of playing bridge and polo? But you could still play football and dominoes.
CHAMBERLAIN. Or are you, prince, no longer attracted by, how to put it more elegantly, the current ease of love-erotic relationships? Just unbelieveble. It would never stop tempting me.
PRINCE. To hell with erotic connections, to hell with everything - I'm getting married and the end!
KING. What? What? Is he getting married? And you dare to say that? He's mocking us, the impudent sucker! Yes! Scoffs! I will curse him!
QUEEN. Ignacy, you can't do this!
KING. No, damn it! I promise, damn it! I'll shackle him! Ha! I'll kick the bastard out the door!
QUEEN. Ignatius, calm down, otherwise there will be a scandal! Terrible scandal! Ignatius, because he does it out of the kindness of his heart!
KING. Out of the kindness of your heart to hurt right in the heart of the old father?
QUEEN. He's out of mercy! Out of mercy! He was touched by the plight of this poor thing - he was always unusually sensitive! Ignatius, I beg you, there might be a scandal!
KING (in disbelief). Touched by a hard fate?
CHAMBERLAIN. Your Majesty, now Her Majesty is right, the prince does this by virtue of innate nobility. He is doing a noble deed. (Aside.) Your Majesty, if you do not agree that this is a noble deed, you will get a scandal like twice two. He won't back down. You can't bring it to a scandal!
KING. Oh well! (To the Prince.) Philip, on reflection, we recognize the nobility of your decision, although it is somewhat hasty.
PRINCE. Where is the nobility here!
QUEEN (hurriedly). Nobility, nobility, Philip - do not interrupt, we know better - and in recognition of the nobility of your intentions, we deign to allow you to introduce us to your bride, whose plight aroused in us the highest feelings, all our generosity. We will accept her in the castle as equal to the most noble ladies, which, of course, will not lower our dignity, but, on the contrary, will elevate us!
PRINCE (goes to the back of the stage). Cyril, give it here - the king agreed!
QUEEN (aside, to the King). Ignacy, - just calmly.
KING. OK OK.
The Prince approaches, leading Yvonne by the hand.
Yes, this is ... well, well!
The courtiers, peering out from behind the trees, approach; fanfare signal.
PRINCE. Most Serene Sovereign! I present to you my bride!
YVONNE (doesn't respond).
CHAMBERLAIN. Bow, bow...
PRINCE (in a whisper). Bow!
Following the Queen, the King bows slightly.
YVONNE (doesn't respond).
PRINCE (a little bewildered, to Yvonne). This is the king, my father, his majesty, and this is my mother, her majesty ... Bow, bow!
YVONNE (doesn't respond).
QUEEN (hurriedly). Philip, we are so touched... What a lovely creature. (He kisses her.) My child, we will become a father and mother for you, we were so pleased with the Christian act of our son, we respect his choice. Philip, you should always strive for the sublime and never for the low!
CHAMMERGUER (gives a sign to the courtiers). Ah-ah-ah!
COURT. Ah-ah-ah!
KING (bewildered). Yes, yes... Well, in general... Of course...
QUEEN (hurriedly). Now send your bride and tell her to prepare a chamber for her. (Magnanimously.) And so that she has everything in abundance!
Chamberlain (signing to the courtiers). Ah-ah-ah!
COURT. Ah-ah-ah!
PRINCE, YVONNE, KIRILL, COURTIERS leave.
KING. Wow... Hold me! Have you seen? Have you seen anything similar? After all, it turns out that it’s not she to us, but we to her - not she to us, but we bowed to her! (Amazed.) Well, ugly!
QUEEN. Yes, ugly, but the deed is beautiful!
CHAMBERLAIN. If the bride is ugly, then the deed, of course, must be beautiful. Your Majesty, in a few days this will be over with the prince, but there is no need to force it, and I will look at him today and try to find out what his true intentions are. This is the usual extravagance, but just do not irritate him and cause resistance on his part. Now we should remain calm.
QUEEN. And tact.
The Prince's quarters, through one door enter the PRINCE, KIRILL, YVONNE, through the other - the footman VALENTIN with a rag in his hand.
PRINCE (to Valentine). Valentine, please don't get in the way.
VALENTIN exits.
Plant her here. I'm always afraid she'll run away. Maybe tie it to a table leg?
KIRILL. She is already half dead. Won't run away. Philip...
PRINCE. What?
KIRILL (with disapproval). Why do you need all this?
PRINCE. For what? For what? I have to defeat this monster, overcome the obstacle - you understand? There are hunters who go out one on one against the buffaloes on a dark night... There are those who grab the bull by the horns... Kirill...
KIRILL. Can't agree with you today.
PRINCE. But, most likely, I am possessed by some burning curiosity similar to the one with which we examine the worm, touching it with a stick.
KIRILL. Let me tell you what I think.
PRINCE. Please.
KIRILL. Let's leave her alone, because half an hour will pass, and we will not know what to do with her ... And this is unpleasant, even very, I'm not talking about anything else - all this is too unceremoniously towards her.
PRINCE. It seemed to me that at first you yourself did not stand on ceremony with her too much.
KIRILL. I agree, I agree! But it's one thing - a light joke in the fresh air, and quite another - to drag her here, to the castle. Philip, leave this venture.
PRINCE. Yes, look at how she sits. Unheard of! No, just think, what an injustice! Really, if a girl is what she is, no one should like her? What confidence! What wildness in the laws of nature! (Looks attentively at Yvonne.) Here! You know? Only now, looking at her, I begin to feel like a prince to the marrow of my bones. And before - at best, I felt in myself a baron, and even then one of the poor.
KIRILL. Strange. And it seems to me that you treated her more like a baron than like a true prince.
PRINCE. Indeed, strange, and yet I must confess that I have never felt so confident, so excellent, even brilliant. Tra-la-la ... (Takes a pen with a pen and balances it, putting the end on his finger.) Look, it never worked before, but now it does. Apparently, in order to feel superior, you need to find someone who is significantly worse than you. Being nominally a prince doesn't mean anything yet - but now I understand what it means to be a real prince. Ease... (Dances.) Joy... Well, now let's look at the subject of our madness. Mademoiselle, would you be so kind as to tell us something?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. You know, she's not so ugly, only there is some component of misfortune in her.
KIRILL. That is the main trouble.
PRINCE. Tell me why are you like this?
YVONNE. (silent)
PRINCE. Silent. Well, why are you like this?
KIRILL. Doesn't answer, offended.
PRINCE. Offended.
KIRILL. And it seems to me that she is not offended, but rather, a little scared.
PRINCE. Slightly shy.
YVONNE (quietly, with effort). I'm not offended at all. Leave me alone, please.
PRINCE. A! Are you not offended at all? Then why don't you answer?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Well?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Can't answer? Why?
YVONNE (silent).
KIRILL. Ha ha ha! Can not! Offended!
PRINCE. Please, explain to us - what is the mechanism of your failures. You are not that stupid at all. Then why do people treat you like you can't even count to three? Why such stubbornness on their part?
KIRILL. She's not stupid, she's just in a stupid position.
PRINCE. OK then! Sorry, Cyril, but that's what surprises me! Look, she even has a proportional nose. And you can not say that it is limited. And in general, she looks no worse than many girls we know. Why is no one bullying them? Why, tell me? Why exactly did you become a goat, or rather, a scapegoat? Why did it happen?
YVONNE (quietly). And so without end. So in a circle.
KIRILL. Round?
PRINCE. How is it in a circle? Don't interfere. Round?
YVONNE. So in a circle, always everyone, everything is always ... It's always like that.
PRINCE. Round? Round? Why - in a circle? Some kind of mystic. Ahh, I'm starting to understand. Here, in fact, there is some semblance of a circle. For example: why is she so sleepy? Because I'm not in the mood. Why not in the mood? Because sleepy. Do you understand what a circle is? Hell circle!
KIRILL. It's your own fault, fool! Head up!
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Ha! She doesn't take you seriously!
KIRILL. A little more daring! A little bolder! And better mood! More life! Take my advice - now you look offended. And you smile, and everything will be fine.
PRINCE. Let us smile. Do not be shy!
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Doesn't want to. And she does the right thing - if she smiles, it will come out insincere. And this will irritate, anger, unnerve, excite, provoke even more. She is right. It's just amazing, Cyril! Fabulous! This is the first time I see something like this. What if we smile first?
KIRILL. It won’t help either, because the smile will turn out to be forced, out of compassion.
PRINCE. There is some devilish combination here. Some specific, infernal dialectics. Look, you can’t say that she didn’t understand the situation in all its depth. This can be seen from her, although she is silent, like a grave. You know, it all resembles a certain system, like a perpetuum mobile - as if a dog and a cat were tied to a stick: the dog chases the cat and scares it, and the cat chases the dog and also scares it, and all this together rushes madly without end; and around - a complete stupor.
KIRILL. The system is closed and hermetically sealed.
PRINCE. Fine! And what was in the beginning? What was born first? It couldn't have been that way from the start. Why are you scared? Because timid. Why are you timid? Because a little scared. But what was the first thing that first began in you, long ago?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Hold on, hold on. Well, fine, but don't you have any merit at all? Really nothing at all? You can't just be made up of flaws. There must be at least something positive in you that gives support, a feeling of being right - something that you believe in, that you like about yourself. You will see - we will inflate this light, awaken you to life.
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Wait! Stop! This is very important - for example, let's say someone comes up to you and says that you are such and such - the most nasty and terrible things that kill a person, destroy, deprive him of the power of speech, life. And you answer: "Yes, I am like that, it's true, but ..." What - but?
YVONNE (silent).
KIRILL. Well? What - but? Speak boldly.
PRINCE. Well, for example: "... I have a good heart. I am kind." You understand only one advantage. This one plus!
KIRILL (sharply). Yes, speak! Answer!
PRINCE. Maybe you write poetry, huh? Some mournful songs, elegies... well, even if they are completely mediocre, but I swear to you, I will recite them with inspiration. Give me at least a foothold, just a foothold! So you write poetry, right?
YVONNE (silent).
KIRILL. She despises poetry.
PRINCE. And do you believe in God? Are you praying? Are you praying on your knees? Do you believe that our Lord Christ died on the cross for you?
YVONNE (disparagingly). Certainly.
PRINCE. Oh miracle! Finally! Thank you, God Almighty! But why is she talking about it... in a tone... in a tone of... disdain? About God - with disdain! About believing in God - with such contempt?
KIRILL. This is beyond my understanding.
PRINCE. I know, Cyril, what's the matter here. She believes in God because of her shortcomings and understands this. If she didn’t have flaws, she wouldn’t believe. She believes in God, but at the same time she knows that God is just a lotion for her psychophysical wounds. (To Yvonne.) Isn't that right?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Brrr... But there is, however, some terrible wisdom, insensitive wisdom in this ...
KIRILL. Treatment needed! Medicines! Pills and an appropriate course of treatment would help against this very wisdom. Healthy lifestyle - morning walk - sports - rolls with butter.
PRINCE. But, I'm sorry, you forget that her body does not perceive drugs. He does not perceive, because he is too sluggish. We have already established this. Cannot take drugs for lethargy due to being too lethargic. You forget about the vicious circle. Morning walks and sports would certainly help her to get rid of weakness, but she cannot go for walks because she is too weak. Dear gentlemen, that is, no, not gentlemen, Kirill, have you ever heard of anything like that? She evokes sympathy in me, yes, although this kind of sympathy ... its property ...
KIRILL. This is surely the punishment for sins. You must have sinned greatly as a child. Philip, in the depths of all this there is undoubtedly some kind of sin, it could not do without sin. Of course, you made a big mistake.
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Ha! I know where the dog is buried! Listen - if you are so weakened, then you feel less suffering - weakness entails weakening, do you hear? The circle closes in your favor, one balances out the other. All the charms, all the temptations of this world should not affect you so much, as a result you suffer less.
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. Well, how?
YVONNE (silent, scowling at the Prince).
KIRILL (notices her look). What is she looking at like that?
PRINCE. How?
KIRILL. It seems to be - usually! But still...
PRINCE (worried). What's up with her?
KIRILL. Philip! She's on you!
PRINCE. What - on me?
KIRILL. That's the thing... After all, it... devours you with a look... Passionately! Hot, damn it! She's getting close to you... well, in her own way... She's getting to you! To you! Beware - her lethargy is passionate, lustful as a thousand devils!
PRINCE. Yes, she ... She's just shameless! What shamelessness! Sophisticated shamelessness! And you dare to pester me, you otter! Let's set it on fire, shall we? Take a poker and heat it white - then it will jump with us! Then dance!
KIRILL. But Philip!
PRINCE. It has something impossible! Something unbearable! Your whole being offends me! It hurts to the very depths of my soul! I don't want to know anything more about your misfortunes - you, a pessimist, you - you, a realist ...
KIRILL. Philip!
PRINCE. Look how she sits.
KIRILL. Let him get up then.
PRINCE. And she will stand the same! Look how pleading she looks... how she asks... She keeps asking for something... something, something... she wants something from me. Cyril, this creature must be destroyed. Give me a knife - I will slit her throat with a light heart.
KIRILL. Good God!
PRINCE. No, I'm kidding! However, she is afraid - look, she was really scared. Terribly frightened - what meanness. Don't be afraid, I was just joking... It's a joke! Don't take it seriously if I'm joking...
KIRILL. You start fiddling.
PRINCE. What? Yes, indeed. It's funny. Do you really think I'm being silly? Very possible. But it's her fault, not me! She drove me, not I her!
Call: VALENTIN enters.
KIRILL. Who is it there? (Looks out the window.) It seems that there are guests ... Chamberlain, ladies.
VALENTIN. Open?
PRINCE. They came for reconnaissance. Let's go get ourselves cleaned up.
PRINCE, KIRILL and YVONNA go out. VALENTIN opens the door. Enter: Chamberlain, two gentlemen, four ladies, INNOKENTY.
1st LADY. Nobody here. (looks around.)
2nd LADY. Oh, that's hilarious! (Chuckles.)
1st MR. What if he's serious?
CHAMBERLAIN. Calm, calm, dear ladies! .. I beg you, just be serious.
The ladies giggle.
Please, no giggles.
The ladies giggle.
We just went in after a walk, as if nothing had happened, we want to understand what the matter is leading to.
1st LADY. Are you seriously? Ha ha ha! This is an idea! Look at her hat! Hat! Just morbid!
2nd LADY. You can burst out laughing!
CHAMBERLAIN. More restrained! More restrained! Pull yourself together!
GUESTS. Hee hee hee - oh, I can't! - Hee hee hee! Stop it, or I'll die. You stop it. - Scream! You can burst out laughing! (They laugh softly, encouraging each other; the laughter now intensifies, then subsides, only Innokenty does not laugh.)
Enter: PRINCE, KIRILL, YVONNE.
Prince! (All bow.)
CHAMBERLAIN. We were just walking nearby and could not resist (Rubs his hands.) - the whole company!
PRINCE. Yvonne dear! Glad to be able to introduce you, gentlemen, to my fiancee.
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah! (Bow.) We wish you happiness! We wish you happiness!
PRINCE. Get over your timidity, my joy, and say something. Darling, these gentlemen belong to better society, do not be afraid of them, as if in front of you is a crowd of cannibals or monkeys from the island of Borneo. Excuse me, gentlemen, but my fiancee is extraordinarily delicate, proud and shy. Show indulgence. (To Yvonne.) Sit down, dear, we won't stand forever.
YVONNE (as if trying to sit on the floor).
PRINCE. But not here!
GUESTS. Ha ha ha!
1st MR. I'd swear there was a chair.
1st LADY. Was, yes swam.
GUESTS. Ha ha ha! Witchcraft! Bad luck poor thing!
CHAMBERLAIN. Please, please. (Gives Yvonne a chair.) Just be careful!
KIRILL. Hold on tight so you don't run away again!
CHAMBERLAIN. Be careful, don't miss!
PRINCE. Don't miss, dear.
Yvonne sits down.
That's good!
Everyone sits down except the Prince.
1st LADY (aside to the Prince, familiarly). In truth, Prince, she's just ridiculous! Scream! I burst with laughter!
2nd LADY (towards the Prince). Oh, I'm dying! I'm dying of laughter! Now this is the most fashionable kind of joke - a draw; I did not know that you, prince, know how to play so talentedly. No, just look, ha ha ha!
PRINCE (taunting the guests with laughter). Ha ha ha!
GUESTS. Ha ha ha!
PRINCE (louder). Ha ha ha!
GUESTS (louder). Ha ha ha!
PRINCE (more loudly). Ha ha ha!
GUESTS (indecisively). Ha ha ha!
1st LADY. Unfortunately, I have to go... I remembered that I had a meeting. I hope you, prince, excuse me.
2nd LADY. I have to go too... Excuse me, Prince... They are waiting for me... (Quietly to the Prince.) Now I understand. All this is done to harm us! To play a trick on us, right? You, prince, wanted to mock us! You got engaged to this unfortunate woman to ridicule us! This is simply a caustic allusion to the vices and shortcomings ... of some court ladies. Oh I get it! You heard about how much effort Iolanthe spends on cosmetics and massages... and that's why you got engaged to such a mess... to make fun of Iolanthe, ha ha! I figured out the ironic meaning of your idea! Goodbye!
PRINCE. ironic meaning?
1st LADY (overhearing). Even if so, then rather, to put on public display and ridicule your two false teeth, which everyone knows about! Haha, don't be so cruel to her, prince, haha - goodbye, I'm already late.
2nd LADY. My teeth? And in my opinion - your planted bust!
1st LADY. Or your crooked back!
2nd LADY. Better watch your toes!
GUESTS. Went! It's time for us!
PRINCE. What are you, gentlemen, running away?
GUESTS. We must go now! Goodbye! It is time!
The GUESTS leave, except for the Chamberlain and INNOKENTY; exclamations are heard: "leg", "teeth", "massage", "cosmetics" and caustic laughter.
CHAMBERLAIN. I'm sorry, prince, I'm sorry, prince, I'm sorry, prince, but I have to talk to you, and, right now! Please give me a minute to talk! You scared the beautiful ladies so much!
PRINCE. They were not afraid of me, but of their vices. It turns out that there is nothing more frightening. Ha! What is war, pestilence, and the like compared to an ordinary, minor, but hidden flaw, in other words, a defect.
INNOCENT. Sorry.
PRINCE. What's happened? Did you stay?
INNOCENT. Yes sir. Sorry. I just wanted to point out that this is meanness.
PRINCE. What?
INNOCENT. This is meanness. Excuse me, I'll sit down. (Sits down, breathing heavily.) Excitement always takes my breath away.
PRINCE. Did you say something that was meanness?
INNOCENT. Sorry. I got carried away. Excuse me, prince. Forget this incident. I'm sorry. (Wants to leave.)
PRINCE. Wait, wait, you said something that was meanness. Hold on for a minute.
INNOCENT (speaking either with deathly calmness or extreme irritation). But I see that I can no longer cope.
CHAMBERLAIN. Can't cope? Can't cope? What is this strange expression to handle?
INNOCENT. Get over what you started. (Wants to leave.) Excuse me.
PRINCE. Wait, why so mysterious, sir...
INNOCENT. The whole point is that I love her ... and therefore got carried away and protested. But now I take back my protest and ask you to forget this whole incident.
PRINCE. You? Do you love her?
KIRILL. That's the thing!
CHAMBERLAIN. Comedy!
PRINCE. You struck me to the very heart, sir. Unexpectedly, the matter took a very serious turn. I don't know if you're familiar with the sudden transitions from laughter to seriousness. There is even something sacred in it. Some illumination. I am convinced that the trivial words - "love is blind" - should be placed on the pediments of temples.
INNOCENT. I'm just a humble person.
PRINCE. Yvonne, I'm sorry. Thank God, that means you can still be in you... Therefore, you can... And you have a man who... What a relief! After all, I started all this only because I could not stand you - even the thought of you was unbearable - if we are to speak seriously ... Excuse me, please. My children, I bless you. Go in peace. Leave me alone.
KIRILL (seeing that Yvonne lowered her head). Crying...
PRINCE. Crying? It's from happiness.
KIRILL. I would not trust this crybaby too much. She can only cry in grief. Do you love him?
YVONNE (silent).
KIRILL. This is silence in denial.
PRINCE. Oh! No need to worry! If there is a person who loves you, that's half the battle. (To Innocent.) You are a determined person, a true man. Falling in love with her is a wonderful thing to do! You saved the whole world from disaster. Our duty is to show you the highest honors!
INNOCENT. My dignity compels me to declare that she loves me too, but, apparently, she is ashamed to admit this to you, prince, because loving me really does not honor her. (To Yvonne.) Why pretend - you yourself have said more than once that you love me.
YVONNE (silent).
INNOCENT (irritably). Well, well, you don't have to ask. To be completely honest, you attract me exactly as much as I attract you, and maybe even less.
PRINCE. You hear?
INNOCENT (coldly). Allow me, Prince, I will explain everything. If I said that I love her, I meant - well, that I simply did not find anything better, due to the absence. That is to say, due to lack of...
CHAMBERLAIN. Fi donc! How can you!
INNOCENT. The thing is that the best women, and even mediocre ones, are incredibly difficult to handle and unkind to me, but with her I rest, you can at least rest near her, and I am no worse for her than she is for me, with her I at least I can forget for a while about this relentless, endless rivalry ... About all this tinsel. We fell in love with each other because I don't like her as much as she likes me, and - no inequality.
PRINCE. I admire your candor!
INNOCENT. I would gladly deceive you, but now it is impossible, the times are not the same, everything is in sight, the fig leaves have withered. And there is nothing left but to be frank. Yes, I do not hide that our love is so ... for the sake of mutual consolation ... because I am successful with women to the same extent that she is with men. But I will also not hide that I am jealous - yes, I will not hide my jealousy, I will express it with all consistency, I have the right! (To Yvonne, with unexpected passion.) Fell in love with him? Fall in love? Well? What?
YVONNE (shouting). Go away! Away! Away! Go away!
INNOCENT. Fell in love!
YVONNE (calming down). Out!
PRINCE. Responded. But in that case... She answered. She spoke. Have you heard? But in that case... that means... if she's already talking... that she's really in love with me...
INNOCENT. So it is visible. And as always, I lost. And so he must leave. I'm leaving. (Exits.)
PRINCE. I fell in love... And I should have hated it. I mock her. I humiliate. And she fell in love. And now... loves me. Because I can't take it. For this he loves me. The situation is getting serious.
VALENTIN enters.
Go away Valentine! What am I to do now?
CHAMBERLAIN. This situation, prince, should be treated with your characteristic youthful frivolity!
PRINCE (to Yvonne). No. Say no. You do not love me?
YVONNE (silent).
PRINCE. If she loves me, then I... then I am, therefore, loved by her... And if I am loved by her, then I am her lover... I exist in her. She enclosed me. And I have no right to despise her... if she loves me. I have no right to continue to despise her here, if there, in her, I am her lover. Ah, after all, I, in fact, always believed that I exist only here, on my own, on my own - and then immediately - bam! She caught me - and I ended up in her, like in a trap! (To Yvonne.) If I'm your favorite, then I can't help but love you. I'll have to love you... and I'll love you...
KIRILL. What did you think?
PRINCE. Love her.
KIRILL. You're up to something incredible! This is impossible!
PRINCE. Yvonne, put on your hat.
KIRILL and CHAMBERGER. Where are you going? Where are you going?
PRINCE. We'll take a walk. Together. Alone. To love.
Exeunt PRINCE and YVONNE.
KIRILL. What to do now?
CHAMBERLAIN. Turned his head!
KIRILL. For such an ugly thing to turn your head? Such a freak?
CHAMBERLAIN. Ugly women, when you let them get too close to you, can sometimes turn your head more than beautiful ones.
KIRILL. My mind is failing me!
CHAMBERLAIN. And I assure you, there is nothing more dangerous ... It is usually believed that the danger comes from pleasant women, but an unpleasant, truly unpleasant woman affects men - just like, however, a truly unpleasant man affects women ... wow! I always try not to get too carried away. The opposite sex always attracts! And such an unpleasant woman, especially if she is young and if her unpleasant qualities are pronounced ho, ho, ho! Especially for a young man who approaches her trustingly, passionately - ho, ho, ho - and then suddenly finds himself face to face ... with such terrible ... terrible things ...
KIRILL. What kind of things?
CHAMBERLAIN. You, young man, do not know about them, and although I hope I have considerable life experience, I do not know either. There is a certain kind of phenomena which a gentleman cannot know, for the reason that if he knew them, he would cease to be a gentleman.
What's there again?
VALENTIN enters.
VALENTIN. Open?
Enter KING and QUEEN.
QUEEN. Where is Philip? What are they, no?
CHAMBERLAIN. Gone.
KING. We came here in person, because he... Dear God, what did he do there again? The ladies ran to the queen with a complaint that our son, allegedly on purpose, for a prank, got engaged to this scarecrow in order to make fun of, well, this ... some kind of imperfections in their appearance ... Ha-ha-ha! Here's the bad guy! Well, if it's only for this, then it's not so bad.
QUEEN. And yet such things should not be allowed. My ladies-in-waiting are terribly indignant, and here you allow yourself inappropriate jokes.
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes Yes Yes! If only that was the case! Be careful!
KING. What's happened?
CHAMBERLAIN. It happened... What happened is that he is now falling in love with her there... he wants to love her... No, everything that is happening here cannot be put into words. The tongue does not turn! The situation is developing ... explosive. Your majesties! Be careful - it won't explode!
King and queen. What to do?
Rooms in the castle. KIRILL sits on a chair, two ladies pass by, giggling, followed by the PRINCE.
PRINCE. What are you doing here?
KIRILL. And nothing.
PRINCE. What were they talking about? Didn't you hear what those flip-tails were laughing at? Didn't pay attention?
KIRILL. The women laugh all the time. Giggling is the natural state of any woman, because a smile always adorns them.
PRINCE. And it's not over me?
KIRILL. Why should they laugh at you? So far, they've only made fun of each other.
PRINCE. If not over me, then over her... over my fiancee. I notice, however, that the character of laughter has changed. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it begins to seem to me that instead of ... she becomes the object of ridicule. All the courtiers - both ladies and gentlemen - are constantly whispering and giggling. Or maybe I imagined? But I guess... I beg you... Please try to find out what they say about us, what kind of ridicule. I want to know what they are laughing at. Of course, I don't care at all, I just want to know. And tell them on occasion that if they continue to allow themselves behind my back...
KIRILL. Philip, what's going on with you? You became irritable and touchy, as if you were your own bride.
PRINCE. Well, well, don't overdo it. Enough. I'm not used to me, my actions, my feelings becoming the subject of ridicule. Tell this public, if anyone will allow themselves faux pas, even if only in a hint...
In the depths, doors open, to the signals of fanfare enter: KING, QUEEN, CHAMMERGUER, YVONNE, IZA, courtiers.
QUEEN. Did you like it? It was delicious? Is it true? Are you full, baby? (Smiling, he kisses Yvonne.) Would you like another pear? Pear in sugar? Baked in sugar? Do you want something sweet?
YVONNE (silent).
QUEEN. The pear will give you strength. (Laughs) It's useful! Healthy!
KING. Healthy! Oh ho ho.
Silence.
QUEEN. Maybe some cream? Cream strengthens. This is useful. Well, do you want cream? Or milk? Milk with sugar?
Silence.
Well, what are you? No appetite? Oh, this is not good. What are we to do now? What? What should we do?
YVONNE (silent).
CHAMBERLAIN. Nothing? (Laughs indulgently.) Nothing?
KING. Nothing? (Laughs condescendingly. Suddenly nervously.) Nothing? (To the chamberlain.) Nothing?
QUEEN. Nothing...
CHAMBERLAIN. Absolutely nothing, your majesty. In essence, if I may say so, nothing.
Silence.
QUEEN. How timid she is... So sweet, quiet. That's only if at least occasionally answered us. (To Yvonne.) You should at least occasionally answer, my bird. It's easy. You should at least say something sometimes, baby, it is required by decency, elementary decency. You probably don't want to violate decorum... What? Well what are we going to do? What shall we do now? A?
KING. Well?
CHAMBERLAIN. A?
YVONNE (silent).
KING. Well, so how? Nothing? It's impossible not to know what you want! You can’t wander around the house all day and do nothing - nothing! It's boring. After all, it's boring. (Looks stunned at everyone.) Boring! Fear God!
CHAMBERLAIN. Boring!
QUEEN. Good God!
VALENTINE (entering). Your highness, the doctor is here, waiting in the gallery.
PRINCE (to Yvonne). Let's go talk to the doctor. With your permission!
PRINCE and YVONNE go to the door.
QUEEN. Philip! I beg you for a minute! Philip! (Prince returns. Queen - to the courtiers.) Leave us, gentlemen, we need to talk to our son.
The courtiers step aside.
Philip, you have nothing to complain about, we respect your feelings. They adopted the poor bird as father and mother. But is it possible to somehow influence her to become more sociable? Today at dinner she was silent again. And she was silent at dinner. Silent also at breakfast. And in general, all the time is silent. What does it look like and how do we look because of her silence? Philip, you have to keep up appearances.
PRINCE (sarcastically). Decency!
QUEEN. Philip, my son, did we not treat her cordially, as if we were a daughter? Don't we love her despite her many shortcomings because she loves you?
PRINCE (threateningly). So love her! Love! Anyway - I wouldn't advise you not to love her! (Exits.)
QUEEN. Lord, enlighten, Lord, show the way! Ignatius, maybe you're not warm enough to her - she's afraid of you.
KING. Afraid ... And how she snoops around the corners and looks out the windows, now at one thing, then at another. And nothing. (Surprised.) And nothing more! She will look through all the windows for us. Afraid... (To the Chamberlain.) Give me the reports! Here, France again boils! (To herself.) She is afraid, but what does she herself not know? To be afraid of me? (To the Queen.) And you too - you dance all around her. (Mimics.) A pear, a cake ... Like the hostess of a boarding house.
QUEEN. Yes, but you behave with her absolutely at ease before you speak, be sure to swallow your saliva. Maybe you think you can't hear it. And you talk to her like you're afraid of her.
KING. I? Like I'm afraid? This is what she is afraid of. (Hush.) Rogue.
CHAMBERLAIN. Perhaps the majesty of Your Majesty inspires timidity in her, which does not surprise me at all, since I myself sometimes feel awe. And yet, I would consider it useful if Your Majesty would deign to chat with her alone ... To instill in her great confidence ...
KING. Should I be alone with her? With this swell?
QUEEN. Great idea. She needs to be tamed gradually - first somewhere aside, alone, and then she will get used to us, so we will help her free herself from her incredible isolation and timidity. Ignatius, take this seriously. Now, under some pretext, I will send her here. Philip is just talking to the doctor. I will send her as if for a skein of wool, and you treat her like a father. (Exits.)
KING. You, chamberlain, sometimes blurt out such things - well, what am I going to talk to her about?
CHAMBERLAIN. But, Your Majesty, this is the most common thing - to approach, smile, talk, joke - then, of course, she will have to smile or even laugh - and then Your Majesty will smile again - and so from the smiles will arise what we call the atmosphere of secular communication.
KING. I'll smile, I'll smile ... And I have to grimace in front of her because she is timid? Chamberlain, you're on your own somehow. (Wants to leave.)
CHAMBERLAIN. But, your majesty! After all, your Majesty, I think, is not the first time to give courage - as well as instill timidity.
KING. Yes, but she's afraid... You know... well, it's... afraid, rogue.
CHAMBERLAIN. Every person is afraid of something.
KING. I agree, but she is afraid somehow sluggishly - afraid, but somehow apathetic. (Frightened.) Chamberlain, she is indifferently afraid. Whoa, it's coming. Hold on, I'm not going to play around here alone in front of her. Don't leave, stay. Eh, eh, eh (Tries to put on a friendly expression.)
Enter YVONNE.
Ah, please.
Yvonne approaches, looks around. The king is kind.
Well, well, what is there - what is there?
YVONNE. Wool...
KING. Wool?
YVONNE. Wool...
KING. Oh-oh! Here is the wool. (Laughs.)
YVONNE takes the skein of wool.
YVONNE (silent).
KING. Wool lost?
YVONNE (silent).
KING. Hm, hm! (Comes closer.) Well, well, what is it? Oh well. (Laughs.) Well? Are we a little scared? A? There is nothing to fear. Well! Nothing! (Impatiently.) If I said - nothing, then - nothing!
YVONNE (stepping back a little).
KING. I'm Philip's father... Philip's father, papa? Ugh! Not dad, but father! In any case... I'm not a stranger. (Approaches, Yvonne steps back.) Well, don't do it like that ... I ordinary person. The most ordinary one is not King Herod! Didn't eat anyone. So there is nothing to be afraid of. And I'm not an animal. I'm telling you I'm not a beast! Not a beast! (Excitedly.) And there is nothing to be afraid of! I'm not an animal! (Approaches, Yvonne abruptly retreats, dropping a skein of wool, the King screams.) Well, I tell you, there is nothing to be afraid of! After all, I'm not a beast!
CHAMBERLAIN. No no. Shhh... Not like that!
KING. Such a bastard!
Yvonne continues to back away and exits.
CHAMBERLAIN. Quiet! They can hear!
KING. Fears. Chamberlain, do you remember the one... that one... that was afraid... Swell... M-m-mu... Bye-bye...
CHAMBERLAIN. I would say that she does not know how to be afraid. Some of the ladies of the court are simply wonderfully afraid - charming, piquant - but this one has some naked fear. (With disgust.) Naked!
KING. Ha! I remembered something.
CHAMBERLAIN. Remembered?
KING. Fears. Do you remember, chamberlain, remember that one... that one... that we... A long time ago. How everything is forgotten.
CHAMBERLAIN. Who, your majesty?
KING. Yes, it was a long time ago. I completely forgot myself. For a long time. I was still in the princes then, and you were only in the project for a chamberlain. Do you remember that baby, which is that ... which we ... Yes, it seems, on this very couch. She seemed to be a seamstress...
CHAMBERLAIN. Yeah, seamstress, on the couch... Oh, youth, youth, it was a wonderful time. (Valentine enters.) What do you want, Valentine? Please don't interfere.
VALENTIN leaves.
KING. She then died, didn't she? Looks like she drowned...
CHAMBERLAIN. But how! I remember like today. I went to the bridge, and from the bridge into the river... Oh, youth, youth, what could be more beautiful.
KING. Don't you think she looked like that squiggle?
CHAMBERLAIN. What are you, Your Majesty, because this one is a plump blonde, and that one was from lean, piquant brunettes.
KING. Yes! But she was also afraid. Swell. Mmmm. Just the same I was afraid. I was afraid to hell - a rogue!
CHAMBERLAIN. If this memory gives your Majesty even the slightest grief, it is better not to remember. It is better not to remember dead women. A dead woman is no longer a woman.
KING. She was afraid and, like this one, she was somehow - tortured. On this very couch. And it is necessary that there is always someone ... that ... when something ... Pah, pah! That's the devil, chamberlain, damn clearly remembered.
The QUEEN enters.
QUEEN. Congratulations! You just magically cheered her up! Just wonderful! The poor thing can't take a breath! What fly bit you, Ignatius? You ruined everything!
KING. Devilry, devilish! Don't come near me, ma'am.
QUEEN. What happened to you? Why can't I get close to you?
KING. From what? Why? Again - why? Am I not allowed to do what I want? Am I under guardianship? Not a master in your own house? Should I be accountable for everything? Well, why are you looking at me? What are you looking at me? All - why and how? Why did he scream? Because she reminds me of something!
CHAMBERLAIN. Don't talk about it! Your Majesty, why remember again!
KING. Yes, it reminded me of something, but about you! About you, my dear!
QUEEN. About me?
KING. Ha ha ha, why are you looking like that? Damn it, Margarita, I admit: yes, I flared up, but imagine, strange thing, I can’t look at this baby so that I don’t immediately remember something about you. I didn't mean to say, it's not exactly convenient, but since you're asking, I'll be honest. Sometimes it happens that one person resembles another, but ... how should I say it ... not quite dressed. And when I look at our prankster, how she moves ... how she digs, fiddles ... you understand how something is squelching inside her ... then immediately something reminds me of you, somehow suddenly arises the thought of you... in a negligee...
QUEEN. She reminds you of me... what? In a negligee?
KING. Exactly! Exactly what you are thinking right now! Well, tell me what? Tell me what you think now, and then it will become clear whether we are thinking about the same thing. Say in your ear.
QUEEN. Ignatius! What are you talking about?
KING. So I'm right, my queen! So we have our own secrets!
QUEEN. You forget!
KING. On the contrary - I remember! I remember! I remember evrything! Bye-bye! Mu Mu! (Suddenly exits.)
QUEEN. What does all of this mean?
The CHAMMERGUER runs out after the KING. The QUEEN stands in thought, puts her finger to her forehead. ISA enters and turns around in front of the mirror.
Stop flirting.
ISA (ashamed). Your Majesty...
QUEEN. You are flirting all the time. Since this... this... unfortunate woman appeared at the court, you all have been flirting endlessly. Come to me, dear lady. I need to ask you something.
ISA. Empress...
QUEEN. Look in my eyes. Admit it - you didn't tell anyone, you didn't blather to anyone about ... about my poems? Tell me frankly - I could not resist and told!
ISA. Your Majesty!
QUEEN. So you didn't tell anyone? About nothing? Then I do not understand how he could find out. He must have found my notebook under the mattress.
ISA. Who, your majesty?
QUEEN. The only reason is this, it cannot be otherwise. He meant only that! And now - tell me frankly, you can talk to me like I'm not a queen, I temporarily release you from all the conventions of the ceremony. Answer sincerely, when you look at Yvonne, nothing comes to your mind? No thoughts arise? Well, certain associations?.. Her gait, for example? Her nose? Look and generally the whole demeanor? Doesn't that remind you of anything...? Don't you think that some mocker could find some connection here with... with... with my poetry, in which I may have put too much poetry... my poetry... my confessional poetry?. Ah!
ISA. What? Your poetry, lady, and... and... How is it?
QUEEN. Damn it, my poetry! This world is too rough! Damn my impulses, ecstasies, dreams and confessions! You don't want to be sincere with me! Ha... he said: "in a negligee", why "in a negligee"? If I had not read poetry, I would not have said it - but were those my lines negligible? .. A disgusting word! You're not telling me the whole truth! Now swear that you won't say a word about what I've just told you. Swear! Swear before these candles. I'm not into jokes. Swear! And leave your false shame. Quick, get on your knees... and repeat after me: I swear...
The PRINCE enters.
PRINCE. Mom, I would like to talk to you. Ah, sorry. Looks like I interrupted your magic.
QUEEN. No, nothing, she straightens my shoe. They bought me too wide.
PRINCE. Why did the king frighten my bride?
QUEEN. Philip, just please, not in that tone!
PRINCE. And what? What tone should I use when my father, without any reason, attacks my fiancee, shouts at her - in the rudest form! If my fiancee was almost paralyzed with fright. If I can't move away even for a moment without you immediately starting to get up with her, what will you get into your head? It seems to me that I, on the contrary, am too calm.
VALENTIN enters.
Come out Valentine. Mom, I would like to talk to you alone.
QUEEN. I agree to talk to you, but first tell me what you want to talk about.
ISA comes out.
PRINCE. You are very circumspect, madam. I'm sorry, Mom, but I have to tell you something... something that might seem a little wild and eccentric. I don't even know how to put it better. Does she remind the king of some of your sins?
QUEEN. Who told you?
PRINCE. Father! He supposedly yelled at her because she reminds him of some of your intimate sins.
Enter KING and CHAMMERGUER.
QUEEN. Ignatius, what did you say to Philip?
KING. Have you spoken? I didn't say anything. He bothered me, so I told him. And he - what? How? Why? I told him the whole truth. Let it bother you rather than me.
QUEEN. Ignatius!
PRINCE. Just a minute... just a minute... Think about the position you're putting me in. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, my father attacks my fiancee. He scolds her with the last words, and when I ask him about the reason, which, as it seems to me, I have every right to, you tell me such things that I no longer understand what I should think about all this, how should I react to this? What happens? The mother sinned, and therefore the father attacks my bride?
KING. Yes, I pounce. Yes, I am a father who lashes out. So what, what, do you think something is wrong here? What am I because of my own sins? Margarita, why are you looking like that? Don't look at me or I'll start looking at you.
PRINCE. So, my parents are staring at each other because of my fiancée. The mother looks at the father, and the father looks at the mother, and all about the bride.
KING. Well, well, Philip, don't make a fool out of your father. Calm down.
QUEEN. Philip, your father got excited and told you God knows what, if only you would not torment him with questions. There is no need to discuss such nonsense any longer. Let's change the subject.
PRINCE. Majesty, I know that all this is nonsense.
QUEEN. Let's not talk about this. Absolute nonsense!
PRINCE. Nonsense, without a doubt. Just stupidity. Even idiotic. (Bows.)
QUEEN. Why did you bow to me?
PRINCE (in confidence). Because I myself look somewhat idiotic in front of her...
QUEEN. Are you idiotic?
PRINCE. You can't call it otherwise. I don't love her. And so I willingly believe that you, too, behave senselessly and idiotically towards her, because I myself behave in the same way towards her.
KING. Well, well, don't overdo it. (Prince bows.) Why are you bowing, donkey? What?
PRINCE (in confidence). With her, you can do whatever you want.
KING. What? What? Anything? I don't allow myself any of that. What do you want from me? Chamberlain... (Steps back.) This is... Mm... What kind of news is this?
QUEEN. Philip, what do these bows of yours mean? Stop bowing!
KING (aside). Scoundrel! Scoundrel!
CHAMBERLAIN. If you can afford anything with her, this does not mean that you, prince, can do the same with us. (Prince bows to him - he jumps back.) Not to me! Why are you bowing to me? I have nothing to do with everything that's going on! Please don't come near me!
PRINCE (in confidence). And anyone can get close to her. Grab her by the hair. By the ear!
KING (suddenly). Ha ha ha! (Pauses ashamedly.) This is... that one... Hmm...
CHAMBERLAIN. Prince, if you, Your Highness, touch me, then I...
PRINCE. And anyone can touch her! Believe me, you can do whatever your heart desires with it! She is such that everything is possible with her! Timid. Will not protest. And unsympathetic. And everything is possible. With her, you can act idiotic, disgusting, stupid, scary, cynical - as you want - as you please. (Bows to the Chamberlain.) Complete freedom... Complete freedom...
CHAMBERGER (jumps away). None of this concerns me! I don't care. (Bows to the Prince.) Goodbye... Goodbye... (Exits.)
KING. Scoundrel. Scoundrel. Well, well, son ... Why are you staring like that? Goodbye. (Bows.) Goodbye. Out! Out! (Exits.)
QUEEN. What does all of this mean?! Explain what it all means, why are you saying all this ... Goodbye, goodbye. (Exits.)
PRINCE (following the departing). Everything is possible! All! Who wants what. (To herself.) And she is sitting there, sitting somewhere in the corner and loves me - and loves me! Loves me! And everything is possible! Everything is possible! Who will like it! All! (Notices Iza, who wants to leave, getting up from the chair at the back of the set, where she sat during the entire scene. The prince approaches her and kisses her neck.) You can not stand on ceremony with her!
ISA. Let me go!
PRINCE. Oh! Yes, don't be shy! Everything is possible. (Kisses her on the lips.) Ah! What a delight...
IZA (trying to free herself). I'll scream now!
PRINCE. I tell you, do not be shy, everything is possible with her! Sorry! I didn't really want to. It's just like that... Excuse me, what have I done? He behaved like crazy.
ISA. Just audacity!
PRINCE. I beg you, do not tell anyone, because if the rumor reaches my bride, she will suffer ... She will suffer! Suffer, suffer, suffer!
ISA. Let me go, prince!
PRINCE (continuing to hold her). Now, now... Be patient. (Kisses.) Ah, what a nose, what lips! Don't go! Looks like I'm cheating on her! It's horrible! But it's wonderful! Oh, how easy it is for me! (Screaming) Valentine! Valentine!
ISA (breaking out). Please don't call anyone.
PRINCE. On the contrary, on the contrary, my golden...
VALENTIN enters.
Valentine, please ask Mr. Cyril to invite Mademoiselle Yvonne here! Fast!
VALENTIN exits.
I don't even think about letting you go. Only now, with you, I feel like I belong. Ah, what a pleasure to hold in the arms of a creature ... not disgusting. I will send you flowers. Ah, how easy. I must enjoy this ease. The lightness that I found again! I love you!
Enter KIRILL and YVONNE.
Cyril, now Isa is my bride!
KIRILL. Like this?!
PRINCE. Yvonne, I have to confess something to you. I just cheated on you with Isa. And you cease to be my bride. I'm very sorry, but there's nothing I can do. You are deprived of sex appeal, which Iza is endowed with in the highest degree. Do not be angry that I inform you of what happened in such a way, so unexpectedly, but I decided to take advantage of a certain ease that suddenly visited me thanks to you ... thanks to you, my treasure. (He kisses Iza's hand, then to Yvonne.) Well, why are you standing like that? Please, stay, stay as long as you like, I don't care! And goodbye! I'm leaving, I'm sailing, I'm leaving, I'm moving away, I'm breaking with you! And you can't stand anything!
KIRILL. She can't stand anything! Let it stay for at least ten years! This is joy!
PRINCE (to Iza). Sorry my precious, I forgot to ask you for consent. Don't refuse me. (Kissing her hand.) Ah, every such touch heals me. Now I will give all the necessary orders. No need to hide from the world that we got engaged. And parents will be happy. Chamberlain ... our glorious chamberlain! Courtiers... what a relief for everyone. After all, the atmosphere at the court really became unbearable. (To Yvonne.) Well, what are you all standing around for? In my opinion, everything has already been clarified between us. What are you waiting for, dear.
KIRILL. She won't move on her own.
PRINCE. Call this, her lover, let him take her to himself, or, in any case, take her away from here and take her to her place of permanent residence.
KIRILL. I'll bring it right away and we'll send it. This minute, Philip! Just ... look, no matter how she survives something here!
PRINCE. Don't be afraid!
KIRILL exits.
And you can stand as long as you like, you will no longer be able to put me in a stupid position. I became different. Changed the tone, and immediately everything changed! Here you stand, like a reproach of conscience, but I don't care! Well, stop if you want! Ha, ha, ha. However, you love to be hurt because you are absolutely devoid of sex appeal. You don’t love yourself, you are your own enemy, and therefore you subconsciously provoke and turn everyone against each other, and everyone feels like a robber and a scoundrel in relation to you. But now, even if you stood here for a year, your gloom and tragedy will not be able to overcome my carelessness and lightness. (Laughs playfully towards Yvonne and whirls along with Isa.)
ISA. Maybe it's better not to talk to her like that? Have mercy, Philip.
PRINCE. No, no, no mercy. Only frivolity! I already know her - I have experience. Firstly, while she is waiting here, you need to constantly say something, and secondly, you should say exactly the worst, and in a light, cheerful tone. The main thing is to say all the most unpleasant, obscene things in an innocent, dismissive tone. This deprives her of the opportunity to express herself, deprives her silence of the power of influence, and the fact that she sticks out here ceases to matter at all. All this takes her to a sphere where she is helpless. You don't have to worry, I'm safe now. Breaking the connection with a person is damn easy, it is, first of all, a matter of changing the tone. Let it cost as much as it likes, please, let it stand and look ... But by the way, we will leave. That's right, it just didn't occur to me that I could pick up and leave. If it is worth it, then we leave. (Yvonne leans in.) Don't you dare bow to me!
YVONNE. I don't bow.
PRINCE. Put it down! What did you pick up from the floor? What is this? Hair? What is he to you? Whose hair is this? Iza's hair. Put it down - do you want to take it? For what?
YVONNE (silent).
Enter KIRILL and INNOKENTY.
INNOCENT. Sorry, but that's not how they do it! You, prince, made a girl fall in love with you, and now you are pushing her away! Royal whims! You made her unhappy! I protest!
PRINCE. What? What? Are you protesting?
INNOCENT. Sorry, I'm trying to protest. (Under the menacing gaze of the Prince, he suddenly sits up.)
PRINCE. See how this man sat down on his protest.
KIRILL. He sat down like a dog on his tail. Well, on the road! Take your beauty.
PRINCE. Stop! Let me give you hair!
KIRILL. What hair, prince?
PRINCE. Yvonne, give back the hair! Let her give her hair!
ISA. I have enough hair. Philip...
PRINCE. No, no, let him give! I can't bear it if she has... left... this hair! Give it back! (Takes away hair.) He took it! So what about what you took away? She is not this hair - she has enclosed us both! (To Iza.) We ended up there, in it. She has. In her possession. Come out everyone! I will come now. Kirill!
Everyone comes out except PRINCE and KIRILL.
Keep her in the castle. Don't let her leave. Tell them not to publicize our breakup just yet. Let everything remain as it was for a while.
KIRILL. I knew she would be up to something. You start again!
PRINCE. On the contrary, I want to end it once and for all. Do not be scared. I'll have to... (Pointing to her throat.)
KIRILL. What?! Whom?!
PRINCE. Yvonne.
KIRILL. Don't go crazy, for heaven's sake. After all, everything is already settled. You broke up with her. I will send her home. She won't be anymore.
PRINCE. It won't be here, but it will be somewhere else. Wherever she is, she always will be. I'll be here and she'll be there... Brrr... I don't want to. It's better to kill once.
KIRILL. But you are cured!
PRINCE. I give you my word, I'm completely cured. And fell in love with Isa. Managed to break away from the suffering of this sufferer. But, Cyril, we ended up in her Iza and I - we are in her, and she will be there, in herself, with us ... above us ... she will act with us in her own way, in her own way, you understand? Pah, pah! Don't want. I'll kill her. What will change when she leaves? Yes, he will leave, but he will carry us away with him ... Yes, of course, I know that one shouldn’t act like this, that one shouldn’t kill ... believe me, I’m in my right mind, I understand what I’m saying, I’m not exaggerating at all, not in that , not the other way... (With a slight uneasiness.) You must admit that I don't look like a madman.
KIRILL. Do you want to kill her in the literal sense of the word, that is, just take and kill? But that's a crime.
PRINCE. Just one more prank, just one more eccentric prank, so that later they would not exist at all. In addition, everything will be done absolutely smoothly, coolly, soberly, easily - you will see for yourself, it only seems to you that it is scary, but in fact it is a simple operation, nothing more. It is very easy to kill such a fly, she suggests herself. Do you promise to help me?
KIRILL. What is she pushing you for... scoundrel!
PRINCE. We have reached a dead end with her and now we need to get out. And my betrothal to Isa should be kept secret for the time being. Don't tell anyone about it. Let everything remain as it is until tomorrow. Tomorrow I will consider the most appropriate way to eliminate it. But you have to help me, because I'm alone... I don't want to be alone, I have to be with someone, I can't do this alone.
Rooms in the castle. To a signal of fanfare, the KING enters, followed by three Dignitaries.
KING (absently). Well, good, good. You only bore me. I have more important things to worry about. What else do you have there?
CHANCELLOR. Your Majesty, it is necessary to decide in what costume our Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary should be sent to France? In a tailcoat or in a uniform?
KING (gloomy). Let him ride naked. (The dignitaries are surprised.) Excuse me, I'm a little distracted today. Let him ride what he wants, as long as it is at his own expense.
HOFF MARSHAL. Your Majesty, this evening there is a gala dinner in honor of Prince Philip's chivalrous in its democratic betrothal to a representative of the lower strata of society, Mademoiselle Yvonne Zopek. Perhaps you, Your Majesty, would be so kind as to express any special wishes regarding the menu?
KING. Give them all the garbage ... (The dignitaries are surprised.) That is - I wanted to say, delicacies ... Why are you staring at me like that?
Dignitaries. This is the decision we expected, convinced of the deepest wisdom of Your Majesty.
HIGH JUDGE. Your Majesty, one more thing - here is a petition for clemency for old Khlipek, supported by positive resolutions from all twelve instances.
KING. What? How to pardon? Execute him!
Dignitaries. Your Majesty!
KING. Execute, I said. What surprises you? The right of pardon belongs to me. And I do not agree to pardon. Let it die! Death to a scoundrel, but not because he is a scoundrel, but because I... Hm... Togo... What did I want to say? We are all rascals. And you too. Stop staring at me. Look wherever you want, but not at me. I'm fed up with your constant staring. I command that from today no one dares to stare at me. And then everyone just does what they stare and stare.
Dignitaries. This is the decision we expected, convinced of the deepest wisdom of Your Majesty.
KING. Well, well, now get out. I'm tired of your chatter. And don't be surprised by anything. So that no one is surprised. I was too lenient with you! I'll show everyone what I'm capable of. You will walk along the line. (The dignitaries bow.) Well, well, don't you dare bow! I forbid you to bow! Everyone just to bow! Out! Go away!
Alarmed, the Dignitaries exit, the KING looks around suspiciously, then hides behind the couch. The CHAMMERGUER enters, carefully looks around the room and, as if unwillingly and secretly from himself, begins to rearrange the furniture with anger, moves a chair, turns away the corner of the carpet, turns the books on the shelf upside down, throws a stone from a plum on the floor, etc. Notices the KING.
CHAMBERLAIN. ABOUT!
KING. Hm... hm...
CHAMBERLAIN. Your Majesty?!
KING. Yes I. What are you doing here?
CHAMBERLAIN. I? Nothing.
KING (gloomy). He must have been surprised to find me here. (With difficulty he crawls out of his hiding place.) Be surprised, be surprised - now the fashion has gone like this: everyone only does what is surprised ... I hid here, well, you know, I hid.
CHAMBERLAIN. Your Majesty are hiding? Who are you waiting for?
KING. Nobody. Specially - no one. Hiding just for fun. (Laughs.) You see, this room adjoins the chambers of our swell. And Margarita also sometimes passes here, and even sits down. Here you can see something. That's what I wanted to see. See with your own eyes.
CHAMBERLAIN. For what?
KING. To Margaret.
CHAMBERLAIN. To her majesty?
KING. On her majesty - you know, to see what she is, what she does when no one sees. We have lived together for so many years, and I, in fact, know nothing about her. She has a bad conscience. Um... Or maybe she - maybe she - maybe she ... Yes, what is there, what she just can't do. Everything can. When I think about it, my head is spinning. Maybe she's cheating on me? It's probably changing. Or maybe something else. Yes all! Anything! - I want to see her sins...
CHAMBERLAIN. Your Majesty at the couch...
KING. Shut up donkey. I deliberately hid behind the couch so that no one would notice me. Behind the couch you can! (Laughs.) You can! And you, chamberlain, why are you here? Why do you rearrange the furniture and, in general, set about this still life with such love?
CHAMBERLAIN. This? Just...
KING. Just? If so, then speak up! Me too, just like that.
CHAMBERLAIN. Well, I walk around the castle and so a little ...
KING. What?
Chamberlain (laughs). I create trouble.
KING. Difficulties?
CHAMBERLAIN. Here is an example of a chair. It's harder to sit on if it's standing like this. (Laughs.) You can sit by ...
KING. And why are you, chamberlain, tossing bones?
CHAMBERLAIN. I make walking difficult.
KING. Walking? (Grimly.) Ah, that means she's finished you too ... our squiggle. Well, well, nothing, nothing.
CHAMBERLAIN. I, Your Majesty, am a person of a certain social level, a secular person, and therefore I can’t stand some ... Your Majesty, if this continues, I don’t know what all this impudence, impudence will lead to ... some kind of licentiousness ...
KING. Yes, yes, there is a lot of arrogance. Debauchery, ha ha! Have you forgotten, old man? (Pushes him.)
CHAMBERLAIN. I don't want to remember anything!
KING. No, no, he bowed to you too! Well, well, nothing, nothing. The licentiousness is growing, the insolence... All right, all right. Chamberlain, what if she passes here ... and I jump out to meet her. Jump out and scare, ha ha! I'll scare! It's possible with her! (Laughs.) You can! I'll frighten and... and... well, let's say, I'll suffocate! I will kill! We've already killed one.
CHAMBERLAIN. Your majesty, fi donc!
KING. I'm telling you, you can do it with her. Everything is possible with her.
CHAMBERLAIN. Out of the question, your majesty. We just missed it! Fear God - and so the whole court is already in a fever from gossip and gossip. His Majesty, His Serene Highness, jumping out from behind the couch... No, no! Never has the strictest observance of tact and other rules of secular communication been so necessary as under present circumstances. Although, it's true, I also had a certain idea, (Laughs.) Something came to mind. (Laughs.)
KING. Why are you laughing so idiotically?
CHAMBERLAIN. This is me about my idea. (Laughs.) After all, today Your Majesties are organizing a solemn banquet on the occasion of this most unfortunate betrothal. What if you serve some fish to the table, bony fish, with sharp bones, crucian carp, for example, now it’s the most fishing for crucian carp, so serve crucian carp in sour cream.
VALENTIN enters.
Please come out!
KING (gloomy). Go away! Karasey?
CHAMBERLAIN. Karasey. (Laughs.)
KING. What's with the crucians?
CHAMBERLAIN. Yes, Your Majesty, it was crucian carp at a solemn dinner party. Perhaps you, Your Majesty, also noticed that she, than more people, the more lost. And yesterday, when I looked at her, well, a little... arrogantly, condescendingly... so she almost choked on potatoes, ordinary potatoes. What if, Your Majesty, submit carp, and then - strictly, arrogantly. (Laughs.) Crucian is a difficult fish ... bony ... At a gala reception, in the presence of many strangers, it is easy to choke on it.
KING. Chamberlain... (Looks at him.) All this is a bit... stupid... Carp?
CHAMBERGER (offended). I know it's stupid. If it wasn't stupid, I wouldn't say.
KING. Chamberlain, but... if she really... if... Do you think she really can choke?..
Chamberlain (haughtily). Your Majesty admit such a possibility? But that's stupid. And even if, by a strange coincidence, such a misfortune had happened... what would we have in common... with such stupidity?
KING. Yes, but... we're talking about this right now, aren't we?
CHAMBERLAIN. Oh, our conversation... so, by the way... (Examines his nails.)
KING. By the way? No! So we will do it! With her, if strictly, arrogantly, everything can be done - any stupidity, the most stupid, such that no one even dares to suspect anything. Karasi? Why not carp? Chamberlain, I ask why not carps?
CHAMBERLAIN. Carp, carp...
KING. But why not carp? Or acne? Why? Why? Okay, let carp. Hm... (With fear.) Strictly? Sharp? Down?
CHAMBERLAIN. That's it! Most Serene Sovereign in all his greatness.
KING. Yes, yes, in all its glory. Let there be a lot of lights, a lot of people and elegant costumes ... Shine, festivity ... If you shout at her with arrogance, she will choke ... For sure. Will choke to death. And no one will guess, because it is too stupid - and haughtily, haughtily, and not stealthily, majestically, in all its splendor. We will kill her from above. What? Um... Wait, let's hide, the queen is coming.
CHAMBERLAIN. But I...
KING. Hide quickly, I want to watch the queen.
Both hide behind the couch. The QUEEN enters, looks around - she has a vial in her hand.
(Aside.) And what is this?
CHAMBERLAIN. Shh...
The queen takes a few steps towards Yvonne's room, stops - takes out a small notebook from behind her corset - lets out a low moan, covers her face with her palm.
KING (aside). What is this book of grief?
CHAMBERGER (aside). Shh...
QUEEN (reading). I'm all alone. (Repeats.) Yes - I am so alone, completely alone, I am alone ... (Reads.) Nobody knows the secret of my womb. (Spoken.) Nobody knows my womb. Nobody knows, oh oh oh (Is reading.)
Notebook-girlfriend, oh, only you
Worthy of knowing my dreams
And chaste dreams
My unshed tears
Only you will know about them!
(Speaks.) Only you will know about them, only you will know. Ooo! (He covers his face.) How scary, scary... To kill, to kill... (Looks at the vial.) Poison, poison...
KING (aside). I?
QUEEN (with a grimace of pain). Only you will know. (Waving his hand.) Read on. Reading! May reading give me the strength to commit a monstrous deed. (Is reading.)
For you people, I'm on the throne
I'm in the crown.
Ah, you do not know the flame,
What rages in my womb.
You think I'm proud
Prudent and firm.
And I just want to be flexible all the time.
(spoken) Flexible, oh! Ooo! Flexible. And I wrote it! It is mine! My! Kill, kill! (Is reading.)
I want to be flexible, like viburnum,
And flexible, like a mountain ash,
And sensual like Messalina
To bend, all burning,
Elastic to be like the wind of May,
I just want flexibility! I don't need greatness!
Oh, how I long for flexibility, defying decency!
Flexibility, oh! Flexibility! Ahh! A! Burn, destroy! Kalina, mountain ash, Messalina ... How scary! This is what I wrote! This is mine, mine and, come what may, must remain mine! Oh, only now I see how monstrous it is! And, therefore, Ignatius ... read! Oh-oh! But there is a resemblance - there is a resemblance ... with the way she digs into herself, how something squishes inside her ... Oh yes, of course, she evokes terrible associations with my poetry! Scammer! She exposes me! It's me! I! It is mine! There are similarities between us. Oh, how she laid bare and exposed all my innermost! Anyone who looks at her will immediately find a resemblance to Margarita. Anyone who looks at her will immediately understand what I really am, as if reading my works. Enough! Let her die! Yes, Margarita, you must destroy her! Get to work, killer vial! She cannot exist in this world, the hour has come - otherwise this insidious relationship between us can be discovered by anyone. I do not want to become a victim of bullying, harassment, ridicule, aggressiveness through the fault of this scammer. Destroy! Come on, let's go quietly into her room with a bottle, add a few drops to her medicine... No one will guess! Nobody will know. She is a sickly girl, everyone will think that she herself died, just like that ... Who would ever think that it was me. After all, I'm a queen! (He walks.) No, no, it's not time yet. You can't go like that. I look like usual - and in this form go to the murder? No, I need to change my appearance. At least tousle the hair... Hair... Quite a bit, not too defiantly, just a little, so as not to look like always. Oh, like this... Yes, yes!..
KING (aside). Shh...
QUEEN. But how can I go in disheveled? Ooo! It might give you away! Suddenly someone will notice that your hair is in a mess ... Stop talking to yourself. She's probably talking to herself too. Margarita, stop talking to yourself - you can expose yourself. (Looks in the mirror.) Oh, how this mirror took me by surprise. I need to find the most repulsive features in my face, only then can I enter her. Stop talking to yourself. They can hear. I can't keep quiet. Do all murderers talk to themselves before committing a crime? Well, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that... (Examines himself.) Let me have a strange and sinister look. Make a face, make a face, Margarita! That's it, that's it, now let's go! You are with me, I am with you. That is, how it is - you are with me, I am with you - because I will go alone. Make a face! Went! Remember all your verses and go! Remember all the secret, flexible dreams and go! Remember all the viburnums, all your mountain ash and go! Oh, oh, oh, I'm coming, I'm coming! Ah, I can't bring myself to - it's all pure madness! Now, just a minute - let's make up some more, and this one more ... (He stains his face with ink.) So, now, with stains, it will be easier ... Now I have become different. Wait, it might give you away! Let's go! Death to the informer! I can not! Let's honor more! I have to read more. (Pulls out poetry.) Let's read it, it will excite us, increase the thirst for murder.
KING (jumps out). Well Margaret!
QUEEN. Ignatius!
KING. Here you got it! Show me! (Tries to tear out the notebook.)
QUEEN. Let me in!
KING. Show me! Show me! Oh you killer! I want to get to know your sins better! Show me and we'll have a new honeymoon! Show me, poisoner!
QUEEN. Oh! (Falls senseless.)
CHAMBERLAIN. Water! She's stupid!
KING. Well, you see how things turned out! Dreams of flexibility and therefore wants to kill the swell! But it doesn't matter anymore. I killed her a long time ago anyway.
QUEEN (recovering). Killed? Who do you kill...
KING. I drowned her! With a chamberlain. We drowned her together with the chamberlain ...
CHAMBERLAIN. Water! Here is the water!
QUEEN. Drowned? Yvonne uh...
KING. Stupid. Not Yvonne, but that doesn't matter. Not Yvonne, another one, well, there's one. A long time ago. Now you know what's in me. Do you know now? Compared to my sins, your stupid poems, which you are also ashamed of, are nothing. I killed that one and now I'm going to kill that one. I'll kill Tsatsu too.
QUEEN. You will kill tsa...
KING. Yes, now I'll kill the swell. And her, too, if all goes well. And hers too, and it will always be like this... Always someone, somewhere, sometime someone... Always like this... Not that one, then another, if not that one, then again this one, and always like that. - resolutely, majestically - with aplomb, confidently. To catch up with fear, and then, that one ... (To the Chamberlain.) Give me water. (Drinks.) Yes, I'm getting old ... the years are not the same ...
QUEEN. I will not let! Ignacy, I won't allow it!
KING. Let me, mother, let me ... let me, you also allow yourself. Everyone allows himself something and therefore must allow others ...
YVONNA enters, seeing those present, wants to return, but does not dare and goes into her room. From that moment on, everyone speaks in an undertone.
QUEEN. Ignacy, I do not give consent, I do not want, I do not allow, Ignacy!
CHAMBERLAIN. For God's sake, be quiet!
KING. Shut up, stupid. The deed will be done ... Do you think I will sneak up on her, like you ... No, I will openly, with arrogance, kill her - haughtily, with chic, majestically - and everything will look so stupid that no one will guess . Ha-ha, Margarita, one must kill from above, it is impossible to stealthily. And you first of all wash your face, otherwise you look like a crazy person. And, secondly, take care of the banquet that we are arranging today - it's time already ... And don't forget - they brought carp for a snack. I like to eat crucian carp, crucian carp in sour cream. Good fish. Exquisite.
QUEEN. Karasi? Karasi? (To the Chamberlain, joyfully.) Yes, he has gone mad! Thank God I'm crazy!
KING. Shut up, I'm out of my mind. Give carp.
Chamberlain (to the Queen). Your Majesty, carp in sour cream is a wonderful snack. I don’t see any reason that would prevent the submission of crucian carp.
QUEEN. There will be no carp! Ignacy, don't drive me crazy, I won't serve any carp. What kind of fantasy are these crucians? I tell you, there will be no crucian carp, why is it suddenly crucian carp, why are there some crucian carp right now? There will be no carp!
KING. What are these whims? (To the Chamberlain.) Give me the crown. I'll show you.
The chamberlain presents the crown.
QUEEN. Ignatius, what is this for? Take off the crown - Ignacy, why?! Ignacy?!
KING. Margarita, since I said that you should serve crucian carp, it means that they were to be served. And do not argue, otherwise you will get it from me ... but I can, if I want, I can, because there are many sins on me - I can do everything, wife, tremble before me, that I have sins! I am the king of sins, you understand, the king of stupidity, sins, lawlessness, groaning!
QUEEN (amazed). Ignatius!
KING (calming down). Well, well, well ... Order the carp to be served. And invite the highest dignitaries, the most sophisticated, the most experienced, from those practitioners who know how to catch up with fear, paralyze a person like a hundred thousand devils. (Quieter.) Margarita, leave your timidity, shame, do you understand all your fears? And enough of this poetry, flexibility, viburnum, mountain ash ... You are no longer a primrose, you are a lady, a queen, well, well. You should not bend, let them bend before you - well, well. Wash yourself, you slut, otherwise you look like a scarecrow. Put on a brocade dress - show, mother, what you are capable of! Come on! Get together, demonstrate all your elegance, grace, dignity, tact, manners, that's why I keep you, and order your bastards to also dress up, whoever can. Well, well, go - did you understand everything? And to be solemn! The reception should be festive, with ladies, and not with disheveled. Invite your guests and tell them to lay the tables, and don’t let your head hurt about the rest, I’ll take care of the rest myself! Arrogant, condescending - majestic! Go, go, cook! (The Queen, who at the end of the King's monologue covered her face with her hands, exits.) Chamberlain...
CHAMBERLAIN. your majesty?
KING (quieter, gloomily). Bow to me... I want you to bow to me...
Chamberlain (listening). Someone is coming.
KING (hard). Let's hide then.
Hiding behind the couch. Stealthily, enter: PRINCE with a knife in his hand, followed by KIRILL with a basket.
PRINCE. Where did she go?
KIRILL (peeping through a door in the back of the scenery). Shh. She is here.
PRINCE. What is he doing?
KIRILL. It catches flies.
PRINCE. And how did you get it?
KIRILL. Yawns.
PRINCE (holding a knife). Well, let's try then... One, two, three... Check if anyone is coming, get the basket ready...
Kirill opens the basket, the Prince creeps up to the door.
KING (aside, to Chamberlain). Oh, so my son too!
KIRILL (looking from the side at the Prince). Philip, stop it! Philip, I'm going to make a fuss!
PRINCE. Nerves?
KIRILL. Simply unimaginable! You're with a knife, sneaking up on that slut! (Breaks into low laughter.) None of this will work - no, it will not work! .. Kill? To kill such a?! .. And also this basket! Also a basket!
PRINCE. Stop it! (Puts down the knife.) The basket is needed for technical reasons.
KIRILL. You yourself do not understand what you are doing - you do not see yourself from the outside.
PRINCE. Stop it, finally!
KIRILL (peeping in). Falls asleep. Seems to be asleep...
PRINCE. Did you fall asleep?
KIRILL. Shh. As if... Nodding off... On an armchair...
PRINCE (peeking). Now or never! If it doesn't hurt now... Here, try it!
KIRILL. I?
PRINCE. It’s easier for you - you are an outsider for her, you are on an equal footing with her, you are not the object of her adoration, she does not love you. Cyril, do it for me. Just a moment... It's like an operation, a procedure - she won't feel it. She won’t know anything, and remember, at the very moment when you do this, she will already cease to exist, everything will happen apart from her, it’s easy - only we will act, unilaterally, it won’t affect her at all ...
KIRILL. The easier it is, the more difficult it is. (Takes a knife.)
PRINCE. No no no!
KIRILL. No?
PRINCE. It looks like you're about to slaughter a chicken.
KIRILL. Isn't it possible? After all, it would seem that it is possible, but it turns out that it is impossible. What the hell is this? Probably because it is too painful, weakened. That would be a fat, ruddy woman, but she is pale ... A hand does not rise on a pale one ...
PRINCE. Someone is watching here.
KIRILL. This is what I'm looking at.
PRINCE. No, someone is looking at us - someone sees everything.
KIRILL. This I see.
PRINCE. Yes, you look at me, I look at you. Go away, I'd rather be on my own. I'll do everything myself. Just a procedure, albeit a monstrous one, but a procedure. I'd rather be monstrous for a moment than for a lifetime. Stand outside the door, I'm on my own... (Kirill exits.) On my own. For her, this will be a deliverance... An end to all her suffering - and mine too... This is an expedient procedure, expedient... Hm... (Looks around, takes the knife, puts it down again.) Kirill!
KING (aside, very excited). Ehh, slob!
KIRILL. What's happened? (Returns.)
PRINCE. Alone is even worse. A person, when he is alone, begins to burst, he grows ... to size ... (Listens.) What is this?
KIRILL. Breathe. (Both listen.)
PRINCE. Breathing... (Looks in the door.) Yes! So she breathes - she lives there in her insides - up to her own ears ... immersed, closed in herself ... No, nothing will work ... (Takes a knife.) It would seem, to plunge into the body ... But how difficult it is... I feel a terrible lightness, but it is precisely in this lightness that the terrible difficulty lies.
ISA enters.
ISA (seeing the knife). What is this? (Looks in the door.) Murder?
PRINCE and KIRILL. Shh...
ISA. Murder... Do you want to be a killer?
PRINCE. Be quiet! Don't interfere! This is where I handle my personal business. When I'm done, I'll be there. Get out of here!
ISA. Are you here too? And are you involved in this?
KIRILL. Nonsense! Philip, let's get out of here, it's all nonsense! Let's leave this thing!
KING (aside). Stupidity! Be brave!
ISA. Let's get out of here!
PRINCE (looks in). Asleep.
ISA. And let him sleep. What do you care if she sleeps. Philip, I'll sleep too... tonight.
PRINCE. Quiet. I sighed!
ISA. Philip and I will sigh... tonight. Stop giving her so much attention. Because I'm here! Stop dealing with her, stop killing her... Let's go.
PRINCE. She is dreaming of something. I wonder what?
ISA. Let me dream. I'd rather tell you what I dreamed. In a dream I saw you. Let's go to.
PRINCE. And she, probably, we will shoot! She sees us in her dreams! Me, you. We are there, inside.
ISA. Where? How is it inside?
PRINCE. Well, in her gut. Do you hear how she sleeps heavily? How painfully sighs? How painfully she works inside herself, how there, inside, we plunge into her, and how she does with us whatever she pleases, I wonder what she does to us there, how she takes revenge on us ...
ISA. Are you talking like crazy again? Can't you stop?
PRINCE (still in a whisper). I am normal, but I cannot remain normal if someone else is abnormal. Okay, I'll be normal, and you'll be normal too, so what if someone else, abnormal, will play along with us, normal, on such a small pipe, tra-la-la - and we will dance to it and we will cry...
ISA. Philip, are you saying this after what happened between us last night?
PRINCE (listening). Snores.
PRINCE. Snores.
ISA. No, you're overstepping the bounds of decency.
KING (aside). Steps over! Well, go ahead! Let him cross. Wow! Wow! Step over!
PRINCE (involuntarily answering the King). I am unable to cross. But what is it? Who said that? What is going on in this room? Look how wild everything looks here - all this furniture. (Kicks the chair.)
KING. wildly! Wow! Wow!
CHAMBERLAIN. Shh!
KIRILL. Either we finally kill her, or let's get out of here, I can no longer stand like this, with this basket, I'd better leave, or even run away. I'll run away from the castle. I can't hang around here like a third wheel anymore - I can't.
PRINCE. I must cross! Must!
KING. Be brave!
ISA. Kiss Me. (To Kirill.) Let him kiss me.
PRINCE (listening). Yawned!
ISA. Enough. I'm leaving.
KIRILL. Prince, kiss her. Damn it, do something to get him to kiss you. Let him kiss you!
KING. Let him kiss! Uh, uh! Be brave!
CHAMBERLAIN. Shh!
ISA. I don't intend to beg for kisses. I don't want to stand indefinitely with a stupid basket and a knife under the door of this unfortunate woman. Enough. I'm leaving forever. Enough for me.
PRINCE. Do not leave me! Isa, I'll kiss you. Wait!
ISA (pushing the Prince away). Don't want! Please let me go! I don't want to be here, on order, under the door, completely pointless, with this basket, with this knife. How can you kiss here? Leave me.
KING (remaining at the couch). So it! Forward! Let's!
PRINCE. Keep cool. First of all - composure, otherwise we will all be completely asleep. Hush, or she'll wake up... Iza, wait, don't be so harsh. I can't lose you. Don't react to all this nonsense. Yes, I agree, a kiss in these circumstances is pointless, and yet we will kiss, no matter what, we will kiss as if it were completely natural ... For God's sake, if we cannot remain normal, then at least we will pretend that we are normal, otherwise we will not get out of here. And I see no other way out than a kiss, maybe it will bring us back to normal, give us the strength to escape from this place. (Hugs her.) I love you. Say that you love me. Do you love me!
ISA. I will not say! I won't say anything! Let...
PRINCE. She loves Me! And I love her!
YVONNE appears at the door, rubbing her eyes. The KING, in great agitation, leans out from behind the couch, the CHAMMERGUER tries to restrain him.
KING. So her!
ISA. Philip!
PRINCE (ardently, passionately). Philip! Philip!.. I love you!
KIRILL. Philip, she's awake!
KING (loudly). Okay Philippe, well done! So she needs it! Don't give up! Death to her! Grab her! Grab the chick!
CHAMBERLAIN. Stop his majesty.
ISA. Let's run from here.
KING. Do not scream! Get me out of here. (Getting out with difficulty.) All stiffened. The old bones are numb. (To the Prince.) Get moving! Move! Grab her! Muddlers! Now we will finish it! Grab her, I say! Well, - Philip, Chamberlain, - I'll go from the other side! Take her, dude!
The QUEEN enters in a ball gown, the footmen bring in the tables set for dinner, behind them the guests bring in the lighting.
Stop! So nothing will come of it! Forgot about crucians! She needs to be haughty! Above, not below! With dignity, majestic! Baffle, and then that ... Forward! Get to work, Margaret! Forward! (To the guests.) Please! .. Please! .. Come in, gentlemen! Philip, straighten your collar, smooth your hair ... haughtily, with dignity, my son! Grab it! (To the Chamberlain.) Give me the crown.
PRINCE. What's going on here?
CHAMBERLAIN. Nothing special, just dinner!
KING (to guests). We cordially welcome! Please, welcome.
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah! (Bowing.) Your Majesty!
QUEEN. Please. Welcome!
GUESTS. Your Majesty! (Bow.)
KING (to guests). For business! Come on! Grab it! And haughtily, gentlemen, with superiority, chamberlain, offer each a place according to the title and let the more worthy stab the less worthy, and the less worthy - the more worthy, that is, I wanted to say, let the more worthy experience a sense of legitimate pride at the sight of the less worthy, and let the less worthy draw from the more worthy the stimulus and striving for more and more fruitful efforts in noble rivalry. And put my future daughter-in-law in front of us, because today's reception is arranged in her honor.
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah! (Bow.)
QUEEN. But, regardless of place in the hierarchy of places, let each one bloom with the luxuriance of his whole being under the sun of our favor. Let the ladies show what they are capable of, and let the gentlemen show the ladies! With brilliance, gentlemen, with chic, elegant, bright and elegant!
KING. Yes, yes - grab ... that is, that ... Forward! Have a seat!
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah! (Bow.)
The King and Queen sit down.
CHAMMERGUER (to Yvonne). Please, mademoiselle, sit down.
YVONNE doesn't move, the CHAMBER GUARD continues coldly.
Be kind, sit down... (Seats Yvonne.) And here the prince will sit... I beg you, prince... And here is their excellency, here is their eminence, here is their excellency the countess, and here is our magnificent, our priceless, our refined ... (Brings some old man up, breaking into a smile.) Ai-ai-ai!
KING. As I said, this modest but exquisite dinner we arranged for death, that is, rather, in honor of our future daughter-in-law, and today we decided to honor her with the title of Princess of Burgundy in partibus infidelium. So, she is the heroine of today's feast. Look how sweetly she smiles.
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah! (Muffled applause.)
KING (begins to take food). A little bony, lousy, but tasty ... Fish, I wanted to say, this one ... um ... (Puts fish on a plate.)
QUEEN (serving food). A little old, but in this sauce it looks decent, and dignity, I must admit, is much closer to me than what is usually bashfully called poetry. Perhaps I am not sentimental, but (with arrogance.) I can not stand everything that even remotely reminds me of viburnum or mountain ash. Older women are closer to me, ladies in the true meaning of the word!
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah!
CHAMMERGUER (serving food). The fish is modest in appearance, but in principle, in its very essence, it is unusually, simply incredibly aristocratic, suffice it to say that its bones are extremely thin! And what a great sauce! It seems to be sour cream, but at the same time immeasurably thinner, more refined than sour cream! And what a taste - spicy, spicy, spectacular, paradoxical! I am sure that all those present will appreciate it accordingly, since such a refined society has never gathered around this table!
GUESTS. Ah-ah-ah!
KING (to Yvonne). What is it - we do not taste good? (threateningly) Don't like it?
CHAMBERLAIN. What's the matter with you, mademoiselle, no appetite?
GUESTS (sadly). ABOUT!
YVONNE (starts to eat).
KING (to Yvonne, grimly). Just eat carefully, otherwise you can choke! Karas, he only looks like - nothing special, but in fact ...
CHAMMERGUER (to Yvonne). His Majesty deigned to note that while eating you should be careful, otherwise you can choke. (Sharply.) The danger is great! This is a tough fish!
KING (threateningly). Dangerous fish, I tell you!
GUESTS (astonished). Oh! (Everyone stops eating, silence.)
QUEEN (with dignity). Eh bien, Yvonne, vous ne manges pas, ma chere?
Chamberlain (inserting a monocle into his eye). Are you neglecting? Do you neglect His Majesty's crucian carp?
KING (threateningly). What's happened?!
YVONNE (starts to eat alone).
KING (gets up, points threateningly at Yvonne). Choking! Choking! Bone! She has a bone in her throat!! Bone, I tell you! Well!!!
YVONNE (choking).
GUESTS (amazed, jump up). Save! Water! Tap on the back!
QUEEN (amazed). Save!
GUESTS. Ah, unfortunate! What trouble! Catastrophe! Dead body! Dead! Let's not interfere! (They all leave, leaving the body in sight.)
PRINCE. Died?
CHAMBERLAIN. The bone choked.
PRINCE. Oh! Bone. Looks like she really died.
Silence.
QUEEN (nervously, as if a little ashamed). Ignatius, mourning will have to be taken care of. You don't have a black suit. You have recovered, all your suits have become small.
KING. Why no suit? If I order, it will.
QUEEN. Yes, but you must send for a tailor.
KING (surprised). For a tailor? Yes, that's right... (Rubs his eyes.) That's right, tailor Solomon, men's confection... (Looks at Yvonne.) What? Died? Seriously?
QUEEN (after a pause). We'll all die!
KING (after a pause). Yes, do something. Something needs to be done about it. To say something. Somehow break this silence! Philip... of that... be of good cheer. Nothing can be done - she died.
QUEEN (strokes the Prince on the head). Your mother will not leave you, my son.
PRINCE. What are you talking about?
Chamberlain (to the servants). Come here, you need to take it out and put it on the bed for now. Let one of you run and prepare everything. And call Petrashek immediately. Someone should immediately run to Petrashek's funeral home, without Petrashek we can't cope. Urgently call Petrashek, this is the most important thing. (Servants approach the body.) Wait a minute, I'll kneel. (Does it.)
KING. Yes, that's right... (Kneels down.) He's right. Gotta get on your knees.
Everyone kneels down except the Prince.
In fact, it should have been done right away.
PRINCE. I'm sorry. How so?
CHAMBERLAIN. What? (The prince stops.) Please kneel down.
QUEEN. Get on your knees, Philip. It must be done, my son. So they demand decency.
KING. Faster! You can't stand alone when we're all on our knees.
The prince falls to his knees.
It is desirable to emphasize the following features of the play as clearly as possible:
1. All elements of the grotesque and humor, neutralizing the painful situation underlying the play, without losing, however, the psychological realism and naturalness of the characters and the whole action.
2. Ease and freedom of text. The play should not be taken too seriously.
3. Full awareness of the actions of the characters. The most bizarre scenes should be played realistically. The heroes of the play are completely normal people who just found themselves in an abnormal situation. Their surprise, uncertainty, sense of shame in the face of these situations should be emphasized in accordance with the text. Costumes - modern, in extreme cases - with some fantasy elements (for example, a king in a jacket and with a crown, etc.). Scenery - better naturalistic. In the last act, complex lighting effects are needed. The last scenes (banquet) may have the character of a dream, unreality - after which awakening occurs.
1 How ugly! (French).
2 Only in name, nominally (lat.)
3 Yvonne, don't you eat, dear? (French)
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In the interpretation of director Mirzoev, Yvonne became a fragile girl, almost an invalid, sent to the court as a warning |
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Roman Dolzhansky. . "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Vakhtangov Theater ( Kommersant, 01/24/2011). Alla Shenderova. ( INFOX.ru, 21.01.2011). Alena Karas. . At the Theatre. Vakhtangov played the legendary "Yvonne" ( RG, 25.01.2011). Marina Davydova. . At the Vakhtangov Theater Vladimir Mirzoev staged the play by Witold Gombrowicz "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" (Izvestia, 25.01.2011) . Olga Egoshina. . The first premiere of the anniversary season at the Vakhtangov Theater was Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy ( New news, 26.01.2011). Olga Fuchs. . "Princess Yvonne" by Vladimir Mirzoev at the Theater. Vakhtangov ( VM, 01/27/2011). Irina Alpatova. . "Princess Yvonne" Theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov ( Culture, 03.02.2011). Marina Timasheva. Two premieres of the Vakhtangov Theater (Radio Liberty, 03.03.2011). Vera Maksimova. . In the theater. Evg. Vakhtangov, director Vladimir Mirzoev staged a play by the classic of the Polish avant-garde Witold Gombrovich "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" ( Planet Beauty, 1-2, 2011) . |
Princess Yvonne. Theatre. Vakhtangov. Press about the play
Kommersant, January 24, 2011
Holy and hassle
"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Vakhtangov Theater
The Vakhtangov Theater showed the premiere of the play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" based on the play by Vitold Gombrowicz directed by Vladimir Mirzoev. By ROMAN DOLZHANSKY.
Starting a conversation about the play by Witold Gombrowicz, it is customary to emphasize that it was written in 1938. Any work born at the end of the 1930s, in one way or another, casts the shadow of the forthcoming war on the world and the wave of violence and mutual extermination that has already rolled over Europe. "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" does not seem to be an anti-fascist pamphlet; there is no open journalism in Gombrowicz's play. But the play gives plenty of room for arbitrarily sharp interpretations.
In terms of genre, this is generally a fairy tale: in a certain kingdom, in an unnamed state, the royal family lives, and the crown prince falls in love with a strange girl on a walk - she doesn’t look like anyone, behaves strangely and hardly speaks. When the prince brings Yvonne to the palace as a betrothed, the whole well-established life fails - the skeletons of the past crawl out of the "closets", the unsightly essence of the characters comes out. She then bothers the prince. In the end, they decide to kill Yvonne, and each of the members of the royal family offers their own way of killing, but the strangest of them turns out to be the most effective - slip crucians on the hated princess for dinner so that she chokes and dies.
Of course, the main thing when staging "Yvonne" is to understand who these kings and princes are and who the princess is - what is the difference between society and the alien, what does their meeting mean and what is the death of the title character. Say, in Oleg Rybkin's performance, in the best "Yvonne" of many seen by your observer, the royal court was a collection of cheerful half-robots, bright cartoon objects generated by universal computerization, while Yvonne was a sweet old-fashioned simpleton in a cotton dress.
Vladimir Mirzoev does not pedal the theme of the eve of fascism, although a characteristic military march sounds once, in the costumes of Alla Kozhenkova one can see the motives of the 30s, and about Prince Dmitry Solomykin, a tall fair-haired man in riding breeches and with a steely look, it is easy to say "true Aryan" . And yet, the "alignment of forces" is easier to determine by looking at Yvonne. In the play by Vladimir Mirzoev, this is literally a girl - but a sick girl, a cripple, a fragile, bent mouse, with a pale face and permanently dislocated limbs. The heroine, bravely played by Liza Arzamasova, would not hobble around the stage, but ride in a wheelchair. Although she is probably supposed to accept torment: this Yvonne is a blessed, saint, sent to the rest of the heroes of Gombrowicz to give them the last chance to show them the way, it is not by chance that a ball of thread appears in the hands of a meek limp. A pure soul remains unrecognized by the rest, its mission is impossible - so there is no need for carp, in Mirzoev's performance, the unrecognized Yvonne simply fades away, taking the prince with her into the other world. Although he tormented her, even hung her on a cable, at least he made an attempt to fall in love - the only one of all. Together they leave on a cart in the finale somewhere in the depths of the stage, at this moment turning into a kind of temple.
It must be said that Vladimir Mirzoev usually saturates his performances with so many meaningful puzzles that it is not easy to watch his theatrical compositions, especially since many of Mirzoev's "riddles" arouse great suspicion that they are obviously unsolvable, from the evil one. "Yvonne" is made much cleaner, although this performance also begins with strange dances beloved by Mirzoev, either aerobics or oriental gymnastics. But in general, I repeat, new production The director's stage "consistency" is stricter than most of the previous ones, the director does not fool the viewer in vain. And Kozhenkova's scenery is impressive and strict in an operatic way: a gray space, vaguely reminiscent of a tram depot, even has rails, in the first act the walls converge deep into a wedge, and in the second they form a rectangular hall. Why is another question, but it looks solemn and serious.
The problem in "Yvonne" is completely different, it affects almost everyone except the main character. Maybe Vladimir Mirzoev wanted to create some kind of integral environment, but nothing has come of it yet - the actors have "pulled away" their characters in all directions. In one of the interviews, the director admitted that he sees a direct connection between the styles of Witold Gombrowicz and Eugene Schwartz. Probably, he was too carried away by this, in principle, completely defendable thought. And now, as if from fabulous Soviet parable films, Yuri Shlykov's valet appears on the stage. Efim Shifrin, who was invited to play the role of the king, to give him his due, tries to play unbeneficially, but the stage still climbs out of all the cracks, unrelenting. And Marina Esipenko in the second act simply arranges a parade of styleless acting lies. Other characters fuss smaller, but just as unconvincing. Why it was necessary to send the saint to this actor's holiday, no one explained. And only memories remain of good intentions by the end of the performance.
INFOX.ru, January 21, 2011
Alla Shenderova
Vladimir Mirzoev makes you remember the worst
In addition to "X" and "Zh" in the Russian alphabet, there is another secret letter - "I". The famous director of "Khlestakov" and "Marriage" released on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater "Princess Yvonne" based on the play by Witold Gombrovich.
How is the princess
On the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater, where his excellent Cyrano is still being performed, director Mirzoev, who took a long time out, educated a course of students, made a movie and released a couple of not very successful performances, returned noticeably changed.
Judging by Yvonne, he has become more straightforward, his metaphors are not so vague, although they are quite inventive. The former protagonist of all Mirzoev's productions, Maxim Sukhanov, does not participate in the performance - only the young Vasilisa Sukhanov, who appears in a small but well-made role, reminds of the former tandem.
"Yvonne" begins with Mirzoev's trademark passes, which are repeated by all the heroes of the play, admiring the sunset not in the free air, as in Gombrowicz's text, but in a shabby government building, reminiscent of the gymnasium of an old gymnasium.
Mirzoev's longtime collaborator, artist Alla Kozhenkova, made the walls sliding. In the first act, they converge at an angle, and in the second, a blank, rough wall appears between them. Even in the prologue, looking at the hopeless light coming from the high windows, you think that it was probably in such halls that the Nazis in Eastern Europe gathered schoolboys and shot them - all or selectively, depending on how much resistance the city offered.
In 1938, the classic of the Polish avant-garde wrote the farce Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, which takes place in a fairy-tale kingdom, but the proximity of fascism is felt in the play as clearly as bestial cruelty in the cutesy remarks of the characters in the play.
Fed up with erotic adventures, Prince Philip meets an unusual girl. With her painful and unrequited appearance, she terribly infuriates those around her. And although she is barely alive, she is suspected of arrogance, mockery and even voluptuousness - of all those sins to which the king, queen, prince and their courtiers are subject. “She annoys me to such an extent that I will marry her,” the prince declares.
Dmitry Solomykin plays his modern-day guy. He is tall, blond, athletic, though he is dressed not in jeans, but in riding breeches, but whatever fashion dictates. At the sight of the wretched Yvonne, a spark of childish curiosity ignites in his eyes that have already seen a lot: at last he saw a new, incomprehensible toy. What should be done? Drag it to the palace, break it into many pieces, and see how it works.
The first scenes in Mirzoev's performance are worth a lot. The actress of the Vakhtangov Theater Maria Berdinsky plays Yvonne in such a way that the viewer believes that an ordinary girl has wormed her way into the company of artists. Painful, lopsided, strangely twisting her thin fingers, but not very stupid and therefore silently turning away every time one of the heroes admits another cruelty or tactlessness. And Prince Philip and two of his henchmen are going to torture this girl before our eyes.
There is little naturalism in the performance, except perhaps a special table with a saw, hooks and knives that Philip prepared, who attached a cable to Yvonne's belt and hung her from the grate. Closing her eyes and swaying slightly, she soars like a moth. Actually, nothing more cruel happens in the performance, but the viewer has a chill running down his back.
Where does Yvonne begin?
The king is played by Efim Shifrin, who previously appeared on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theater in productions by Roman Viktyuk. The monologue of the royal shameless, to whom the wretched Yvonne reminds of the seamstress, who was raped and killed by him once in the same living room, through which Yvonne is now creeping half-dead from fear, he delivers in a farcical manner, in fact, it was written by Gombrowicz. But the train of pop intonations takes over: living life turns into a bad theater.
The queen, whom in the first act Marina Esipenko depicts as a secular beauty, a lover of trying on a mask of good nature and mercy, in the second act turns into an evil clown. She is secretly obsessed with poetry, and her ailing daughter-in-law somehow reminds her of these verses, just as hopelessly miserable and absurd. And now Her Majesty howls provincially, squeezing a vial of poison, preparing to either really kill, or play another role. In other words, Yvonne in an incomprehensible way provokes everyone to remember all the most ridiculous and unsightly about himself, and the director mockingly theatricalizes these memories, the background for which are the Nazi marches coming from nowhere.
In the finale, a collective way out, of course, will be found: to destroy Yvonne, and then dress up in mourning, raise your eyes to the top and listen to a mournful chorale. And although the ominous rhythm and absolute authenticity of the first act is lost in the second, Mirzoev embodies the theme slyly declared by Gombrowicz quite clearly.
“X (lestakov)” and “F (enitba)” - this is how the names of hits staged by him at the Stanislavsky Theater were once written. It was the Gogol of the new time, a Gogol seasoned with drive, shamelessness and the absurdity of being in post-perestroika Russia. The current premiere of Mirzoev should be written in the same manner: "And (out)". Because such topical words begin with “and”, without which you cannot describe our Russian reality today: the Extermination of the Other and the Dissident.
RG , January 25, 2011
Alena Karas
Death of gods
At the Theatre. Vakhtangov played the legendary "Yvonne"
The play by the classic Polish avant-garde Witold Gombrowicz "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" was written in 1938, almost a year before the start of World War II, and the situation of Europe eaten away by fascism was reflected in it in an extravagant and unexpected way. For Vladimir Mirzoev, this was the starting point for his reflections on the play.
Gombrowicz's masterpiece, which acquired the same meaning of an all-encompassing symbol as Beckett's Godot, decisively influenced the Polish and European theater. Written as a parody of a Shakespearean tragedy, Yvonne has assumed the role of a new global European metatext. The famous silent princess, endowed with only seven phrases-puzzles, with one of her appearance, or rather, her complete neutrality, provokes a whole storm of reactions, reflections, sadomasochistic exercises, outbursts of an unclean conscience, self-abasement...
"Everyone has his own creature, which brings him into a state of delirium tremens," says Prince Philip, and any of Gombrowicz's characters could say this. His main character Yvonne, about whom nothing can be said, leads others into real confusion. Irritated by her appearance, the prince offers her ... to marry him and with every moment becomes more and more inflamed, reaching a bestial frenzy. Queen Margarita discovers with contempt and horror the mediocrity of her poetry, and her husband King Ignacy recalls his old carnivorous sins crowned with murder. The text of the play flickers, swaying from chilling irony, endless parody to artful psychological analysis, in which each meeting with the silent princess makes them say more and more to themselves. Gombrowicz reveals the very mechanics of hysteria and frenzy - silence is unbearable for us, it becomes a screen onto which our unconscious is projected. And there is nothing good there.
Vladimir Mirzoev opened the play through the social unconscious of a society overtaken by fascism. His Yvonne is not neutral, she is an icon of foolishness, an icon of non-triviality, in relation to which society shows all its intolerance. Just as in his previous works Maxim Sukhanov blew up the stability of society with his transcendent otherness, here it is done by Maria Berdinskikh in line with Liza Arzamasova. Crooked with a bone disease, similar to Norshtein's Akaki, touchingly moving his lips, she evokes compassion or tenderness. But not for the characters in the play.
Alla Kozhenkova built two massive brownish walls for this kingdom, converging together. A typical example of Hitler-Stalinist architecture, complemented by a fascist march, creates quite definite associations. For a long time Mirzoev was not so definite in his statements and imaginative decisions, as he is here. For him, there is no neutrality in Yvonne, she is determined by her holy fool, "other" - let's add, luminous - beauty. Unfortunately, when the actress begins to speak, this magic of her beautifully crafted "choreography" dissipates. In relation to her, the blond prince (Dmitry Solomykin), who is also played ingenuously and rudely, is immediately read as the apotheosis of fascism, not to mention the rude dork, King Ignatia in a T-shirt and a brocade mantle instead of a dressing gown (except for Leonid Gromov, whom I saw, he is played by Yefim Shifrin). The scene where the queen (Marina Esipenko) reads her poems, in which mountain ash and viburnum rhyme with Messalina, is deadly funny, and she herself is horrified by their mediocrity.
But still here I see some kind of failure of the aesthetic code. For Mirzoev, "Yvonne" is not so much a story "about us" as a story "about them" - about power, about fanned nationalist hysteria, about intolerance as the main feature of today's Russia. The performance crowns the funeral choir from "La Traviata", while Yvonne and the Prince of the dead, enchanted by her, float away on a pedestal inland, to where, behind the parted "totalitarian" walls, the stained-glass rose of the cathedral shines. With this "opera" gesture, Mirzoev equates the bird Yvonne and her executioner, makes them the same victims of the overstrained history. The whole final atmosphere in the spirit of Wagner or, rather, Visconti's "Godsbane" should make us horrified. But she doesn't seem to be able to.
Izvestia, January 25, 2011
Marina Davydova
Yvonne at the court of the stage king
At the Vakhtangov Theatre, Vladimir Mirzoev staged Witold Gombrowicz's play Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy. In addition to representatives of the Vakhtangov school itself, pop star Yefim Shifrin and star of the TV series "Daddy's Daughters" Liza Arzamasova take part in it.
The first thing that should be said about the new performance by the famous Russian director is an intelligible performance. The intellectual, rhetorician and connoisseur of Eastern philosophy, Vladimir Mirzoev, often overtook the scene with such a meaningful fog that behind the mysterious gestures, facial expressions, postures and other staged patterns, not only the meaning was lost, but sometimes even the very plot of a particular play. In the new performance, the plot lies in front of the audience, at a glance.
The dramatic work of the Polish classic of the 20th century Witold Gombrowicz is one of those that are usually placed in the mainstream of theatrical absurdity. It inherits the dramaturgy of Alfred Jarry, anticipates Ionesco and Mrozhek, but the plot, it seems to me, most of all echoes the mysterious film of Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Theorem". In these two works, stylistically very far from each other, the initial situation coincides.
A strange guest arrives at Pasolini's wealthy Milanese family, communication with which (the culmination of this communication in The Theorem every time becomes intercourse) turns out to be a turning point in the life of all the characters and makes each of them turn their eyes deep into their souls. At the same time, everything is more or less clear about family members: their characters, like their social status, can be easily described in words. Nothing is clear about the mysterious guest himself. Who is he - a newly appeared messiah, a messenger of Satan, a psychic, just a blond beast - everyone is invited to answer this question on their own. Gombrowicz has a similar plot.
In a certain kingdom-state live the king, queen, crown prince, court servants. And suddenly, at the whim of a spoiled and jaded heir, either a girl, or a vision, or a dangerous crazy Yvonne gets into their palace mansions. A meeting with this amazing creature brings out all the old complexes and hidden fears of the heroes and becomes a true test for each of them. So, in the end, they unanimously decide to put an innocent guest out of the world, about which we really don’t know anything, just as we didn’t know anything about the mysterious alien from The Theorem.
Of all Mirzoev's latest performances, this one was suddenly permeated with obvious Christian motifs, which the stage director, who gravitates towards Buddhism, not only avoided altogether, but - let's say carefully - shunned. When asked who Yvonne is, at first he answers simply, not to say primitively. main character in the performance of the Vakhtangovites, it seems that he suffers from all diseases: from oligophrenia to cerebral palsy. Her reactions are slow. She moves in the dark. Almost does not speak. Not the fact that he can touch the tip of his own nose the first time.
At first, this conceptual solution resembles the famous joke: "Scientists have solved the mystery of the Gioconda's smile. After many years of research, it was found that she was just a fool." But gradually something else emerges behind the joke. Yvonne at Mirzoev is not a fool. She, as the Scripture says, is poor in spirit. Blessed. The smile with which she looks at the prince is the smile of a baby who sees his own face bending over him. In this creature not adapted to life, completely devoid of habitual reflexes, there is not and cannot be any self-interest, hypocrisy, ambitions, pride, or passions. And this enlightenment frightens the inhabitants of the palace, included in the usual coordinate system, worse than any black hole. In the finale, in the scene of Yvonne's death, Mirzoev will point out Christian reminiscences directly, turning the very conditional space of the performance into a Gothic cathedral with a stained-glass window glowing in the background.
But the most interesting thing about Vakhtangov's premiere is how the confrontation between Yvonne and other characters, which is inherent in the director's concept itself, unintentionally turns into a confrontation with the acting style of the performers. Yvonne is played by a very young (15 years old) Lisa Arzamasova. And her role is a small acting miracle. In essence, it is her rare, amazing organics that is the main interest in this performance. Just as in Yvonne herself there is no self-interest or hypocrisy, in Liza Arzamasova there is no acting narcissism that is inherent in her partners - from the pop king Efim Shifrin (he plays King Ignacy) to the veteran Vakhtangovites - Marina Esipenko and Yuri Shlykov.
We must give Shifrin his due: he happily avoids the antics that Yuri Stoyanov, involved in the local "Marriage", allows on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater. But pop humor and the desire to quickly go to the reprise still make themselves felt. Artists academic theater reaching out for a pop star in the vain hope of re-starring her. All of them are typical representatives of a benefit theatre, and a meeting with Lisa Arzamasova on stage for them is indeed like a meeting with Yvonne for the royal court. Only, unlike the heroes of Gombrowicz, they do not experience complexes. They do not notice their defeat in this unannounced competition. And they go to the bows terribly pleased with themselves.
Novye Izvestia, January 26, 2011
Olga Egoshina
Bad joke
Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy became the first premiere of the anniversary season at the Vakhtangov Theatre.
Written in 1938, Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy is one of the most sought-after plays by the Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz. At the beginning of the 2000s in Russia, it was staged by Oleg Rybkin and Alexei Levinsky. At the Vakhtangov Theatre, the Polish play was staged by the provocative director Vladimir Mirzoev, who invited Yefim Shifrin and young star serials Lisa Arzamasova.
In his The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, among other sinners, brought out a gloomy knight who once made a bad joke and now pays for centuries for his pun about light and darkness. In the play Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, written around the same time, the Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz tells the story of a royal joke that ended in death. Crown Prince Philip decides to give his rake friends a lesson "how to joke" and announces the poor, nondescript, sickly maiden Yvonne as his bride. The silent simpleton accepted into the palace quickly becomes the object of hatred of the courtiers, royal parents, friends of the groom, and finally, the prince himself. Her defenselessness causes aggression of others, her homeliness provokes cruelty, and her eternal silence serves as a sure guarantee of impunity for any offenders. The king father wants to strangle the hated bride, the queen mother wants to poison her. The prince himself, along with his friends, guards under the door of her bedroom with a knife and an ax. Finally, the court chamberlain comes up with a sophisticated plan for a grand dinner in honor of Yvonne. Crucians are chosen as the main dish on it (as the chamberlain explains, a painfully shy girl will certainly choke on a fish bone, especially if the whole royal court looks at her plate).
Any naturalist knows this law of the flock: if a fish, a bird or an animal is not like the others, its neighbors will certainly finish it off. So, the ravens will certainly peck the white crow... The philosophical parable of Witold Gombrowicz transfers these laws of the flock to the human community. The place of action is everywhere, the time of action is always. His play is built like a kind of chess study, in which the exact number of moves inevitably leads to the declared mate.
Vladimir Mirzoev turns the royal court into a collection of strange freaks, each of which exists in his own stylistic manner. The Queen (Marina Esipenko) resembles some kind of villain from children's fairy tales. Yefim Shifrin plays the king with yet another variation of his stage klutzes. Prince Philip, played by Dmitry Solomykin, seems like a character from Cruel Intentions. And Yuri Shlykov - the chamberlain with his reprise phrases - would be quite appropriate in Schwartz's "Ordinary Miracle". Against this motley background, Yvonne does not at all seem like a “creature from another world”, as the playwright wrote, Vladimir Mirzoev turned the “strange girl” of the play into a wretched cripple. Liza Arzamasova wanders around the stage, bending like the letter “Zu”: her back is a wheel, her walk is like a duck, her eyes run to the bridge of her nose ... And a smile of malicious satisfaction flutters on her face every now and then: this is me! It seems that the director sought the effect of provoking evil feelings not only in the characters, but also in auditorium: well, try to feel sorry for this evil fear-man!
Usually unceremoniously cutting out any bizarre figures from the author's text, Vladimir Mirzoev in this production follows the text of the play almost replica after replica (sacrifice only a few episodic scenes). And saves the main surprise for the finale.
Next to the body of the choked fish bone and the dead Yvonne, the prince is laid down and, it seems, also gives his soul to God. It is rather difficult to explain this unexpected impulse of repentance of an eccentric bully. Neither the logic of the development of the character of the character, nor the logic of the movement of the plot of Gombrowicz, this ending is in any way consistent. However, in a world where crime and punishment have long been unrelated and no one is afraid that a “bad joke” can cost the salvation of a soul, all that remains for us is to guess senseless spectacular gestures made solely for the sake of the gesture itself, such as a mournful sculptural composition final of the performance by Vladimir Mirzoev.
VM , January 27, 2011
Olga Fuchs
Scarecrow
"Princess Yvonne" by Vladimir Mirzoev at the Theater. Vakhtangov
"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" - a premonition of an irreparable catastrophe dressed in a fairy tale - was written by the Polish classic Witold Gombrowicz in 1938.
But, as often happens, the Polish public (and then the public of other countries) saw Yvonne for the first time when it was time to comprehend the horror experienced - in the fifties (until that time, Gombrowicz's work was banned in Poland). The play, translated into sixteen languages, was staged a lot and willingly (Ingmar Bergman became one of its directors) - after all, there are always plenty of reasons to persecute someone who is not like the majority (the main motive of the play).
It is impossible not to feel this atmosphere in our society today - and Vladimir Mirzoev staged "Yvonne" at the Theater. Vakhtangov. The artist Alla Kozhenkova built on the stage a collective image of a resonant gym, palace vaults and a temple - an enclosed space where the beauty of the sunset is replaced by a dead glow through thick glass. The illusion of freedom.
Faustes Latenas, a recognized master of theatrical music, voiced the performance with a mix of Nazi marches, operetta arias and a quiet lullaby that could be called "Yvonne's theme".
About Mirzoev's "Yvonne" one is drawn to say that, they say, the director fell into heresy, into unheard-of simplicity. If there are elements of psychedelic zaumi left somewhere, it is only at the very beginning, during the palace ceremonial: that’s why it’s ceremonial, to be pretentious. The actors felt this freeman and each played their own game: Yuri Shlykov (chamberlain) and Marina Esipenko (queen) - operetta villains, Leonid Gromov (king) - a psychologically reliable simple man in underpants, whom fate-mockery threw on the royal throne and forced to comply . The Vakhtangov youth and Yevgeny Fedorov (an old footman who always gets in the way, clumsily trying to save the victim of the royal games) play here most precisely.
The handsome Prince Philip (Dmitry Solomykin) is so fed up that not a single girl in the kingdom attracts him, and two of his friends - a sort of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Vasily Simonov, Artur Ivanov), transformed by Polish absurdity - are trying in vain to convince him that their saint duty is to indulge in pleasures befitting young men. This young two-meter Viking is bursting with an excess of young strength and the poison of spleen, until Yvonne (Maria Berdinskikh) accidentally catches his eye with two grotesque grumbling aunts (Nina Nekhlopochenko, Agnes Peterson).
The director outlined her dissimilarity very clearly: Yvonne is a disabled child, the actress draws the features of autism and cerebral palsy with medical precision. Any word is given to her with difficulty, she definitely saves words and strength, speaking only when she wants to scream. This miserable, gentle creature evokes a storm of emotions in the prince: only with such a creature does he feel like the absolute master of the world and, much more difficult, of his own destiny.
The prince shows monstrous infantilism: having acquired live fun in front of his parents through youthful hysteria, he first plays doctor with her (listens through a phonendoscope, insolently examines), then torments, hanging from the ceiling, and then gets rid of her like a boring toy. But in the infantilism of his soul, childishness comes through: he cannot get rid of pity for this “defective toy” and vaguely feels that Yvonne is the only one who fell in love with him, and not his status.
The appearance of Yvonne in the palace is a litmus test that reveals the hidden vices of the rulers of this world. Everyone sees in her not a person, but his secret reflection. Yvonne is a conscience, a sick, twisted, almost voiceless conscience, which is unpleasant to deal with. To contemplate this creature becomes unbearable, and one thought visits three crowned heads - to kill Yvonne. Kill picturesquely, with a dagger, as the prince wants, secretly with poison, as the queen thinks, or by rigging an insidious absurdity that guarantees an alibi, as the king and chamberlain are plotting.
Yvonne dies from neither one nor the other, nor from the third - from the carbon monoxide of hatred spilled around. Just lies down and quietly freezes.
Mirzoev brings hope to this hopeless farce. The role of the prince is written in such a way that you can make the main monster out of him, but the director does not deny him rebirth.
"Having been ill" with Yvonne, the prince himself cannot live in the poisoned air and freezes next to her. To no longer "be, not be, not participate" where someone's life may be superfluous.
Culture , February 3, 2011
Irina Alpatova
era of degeneration
"Princess Yvonne" Theater named after Evg. Vakhtangov
The performances of Vladimir Mirzoev are like puzzles, charades. And, by and large, viewers who have a taste for such things are capable of adequately perceiving them. Those attracted only by the genre subtitle “comedy” will probably be puzzled, not getting what they want in full. But what to do, after all, the classic of the Polish avant-garde Witold Gombrowicz composed plays full of hidden meanings and hints, and easy accessibility is by no means his path. In addition, the end of the 30s of the last century, undoubtedly, responded in high-quality literature and dramaturgy with certain foresights, forebodings and life analogies. Anxiety, instability, the expectation of vague changes, and sometimes signs of the “era of degeneration” - all this can be easily found in the captured phrases and dialogues.
Princess Yvonne, written in 1938, is no exception. Despite the fact that in the list of characters you will find the King and the Queen, the Prince and the Chamberlain, in general, those characters who most often appear in fairy tales. But, according to the director, Gombrowicz's “fabulous” world is akin to the one that was composed at about the same time by the Russian author Evgeny Schwartz. A few years ago, Mirzoev mastered the aesthetics of Schwartz in the play "Dragon". However, he also staged Yvonne, but for a long time in Canada. The new version appeared on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theatre, where the director is also not a novice and, perhaps, made a number of his most successful Russian productions(in particular, "Cyrano de Bergerac" with Maxim Sukhanov and Irina Kupchenko).
So, the fabulous life “hints” have already occupied theater program, where the silhouettes of a lady in an old dress and a peaked Ku Klux Klan cap and a man in a military uniform from the time the play was written converged. Without much pedaling, but clearly all this will then sound in the performance. A German military march (musical arrangement by Faustas Latenas) will pass in a quiet background, and Queen Margarita (Marina Esipenko), acting as a comedian in front of the public, will succumb to the temptation to depict the Nazi salute for a moment. Yes, in fact, Prince Philip (Dmitry Solomykin), dressed in riding breeches, visually resembles a “blond beast”. But all this, it is worth repeating, is only a background that envelops a very whimsical and not always intelligible story, placed, rather, not even in timelessness, but in timelessness. Which, by the way, is no less eternal than time itself.
The royal family with their retinue is enclosed in a spacious and empty space with glazed walls, behind which nothing living is guessed. The windows are covered with dust and almost do not let in light (scenography and costumes by Alla Kozhenkova), and the inhabitants of such a strange “castle” habitually indulge in Mirzoev’s favorite plastic exercises (choreography by Artur Oshchepkov). Their life seems to be escheated and debugged to the point of automatism, after which the internal “mechanism” is supposed to either break down or “restart” according to a new program. In general, some external reason is needed that can provoke any changes.
A similar reason here is a creature named Yvonne (Liza Arzamasova), who is being dragged under the arms of two elderly aunts (Agnessa Peterson and Eleonora Shashkova). This Yvonne is indeed a “creature”: legs that do not bend at the knees, a protruding ass, inhibited gestures, a hazy look. Young Liza Arzamasova, of course, at the suggestion of the director, manages to convey the main thing: she is “different”, “a thing in itself”, a holy fool girl, ugly and touching at the same time. She is here - an unwitting troublemaker, a powerful irritant and provocateur. By its mere existence, without its own knowledge. But in a collision with the “other”, defiantly different, everything is tested for strength: one’s own “I”, old foundations, family ties, established relationships, and this whole picture of the world that has long been established.
You can mock Yvonne without considering her a full-fledged person. You can hang it over the stage by an iron hook and torment with questions. You can make faces at her or, on the contrary, spread rot with “high society treatment”. You can even propose a hand and a heart, which Prince Philip-Solomykin does. Moreover, she is not capable of intelligible and coherent speech, she rarely speaks and mostly in riddles. But this Yvonne paradoxically demonstrates to the half-degenerate royal family that there is another somewhere, real life: touching, sentimental, with timid touches, fearful glances. Where a casually thrown word is given meaning, where they don’t know how to act as a comedian, but they take everyone on faith. It is impossible for them to understand it, even more so to accept it, but it is also impossible to exist, having before their eyes this very lively “other”, which turned the whole former royal life inside out. Too much, carefully hidden, she recalls.
And throughout the second half of the action, the characters are inventing themselves in search of a way to kill Yvonne. King Ignacy (Efim Shifrin), behaving in the excellent traditions of a comedy performance with dressing up and all sorts of “tricks”, offers to serve carps in sour cream so that the girl chokes on a bone (and she is here for everyone “bone in the throat”). Margarita-Esipenko even indulges in a benefit monologue with the reading of poems of her own production and theatrical “repentance” for past sins, clutching a bottle of poison for Yvonne in her hands. The Prince and his friends Kirill (Arthur Ivanov) and Cyprian (Valery Ushakov) brandish their swords. It is clear that there is no way out, and an unenviable fate is destined for everything “other”. However, this Yvonne-Arzamasova does not need much. She seems to be dying on her own, not from bones or poison. The supply of air just ends, and there is no need to talk about oxygen in the airless space of the castle.
As, however, it is too early to talk about the stylistic integrity of Vakhtangov's performance. The director Vladimir Mirzoev can be treated differently, but he just cannot be deprived of the aesthetic alignment of the plan. But the young cast of the play and the experienced Yevgeny Fedorov (the lackey Valentin) who joined him are closer to its embodiment. But the King - Shifrin with the Queen - Esipenko sometimes do not deny themselves the right to beneficial "exits". They, of course, are also staged by Mirzoev, but in their performance they sometimes go beyond the acceptable boundaries of style and overall integrity. However, such a grotesque is still more appropriate than the psychological nuances that are sometimes expected from Gombrovich or Mirzoev for unknown reasons. And in general, if a theatrical spectacle does not resemble semolina porridge, which is obsequiously put in your mouth, does not copy banal signs of everyday life, but makes you at least somehow think about it, then it has some real value. But everyone is able to concretize it for himself.
Planet Beauty, No. 1-2, 2011
Vera Maksimova
About sin, fear and sorrow
In the theater. Evg. Vakhtangov, director Vladimir Mirzoev staged a play by the classic of the Polish avant-garde Witold Gombrowicz "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy."
Does it really matter that the famous play by Witold Gombrowicz was written in 1938? Is the chronological reference to the time of the first, still bloodless victories of fascism in Europe so fundamental for Vladimir Mirzoev's performance?
In the performance of a half-tale, or a fantasy, or a play of dreams (creepy, like Hoffmann's), there are material and sound "marks" of fascism. The march of the Nazis sounds bravura, with a hooligan whistle.
Prince Kirill (Dmitry Solomykin), who, out of boredom, irritation, or jokingly decided to marry the sickly and strange silent Yvonne, is a pure Aryan, furious and cold, with a medal profile, blond hair, an athlete’s figure, wears riding breeches, boots and a black T-shirt - shirt.
But the exemplary performance staged and performed by the Vakhtangovites is not only about fascism, as a socio-political phenomenon of recent history. It is not about the past, perhaps - about the present, but most of all - about the future or the eternal. About ineradicable complexes of inferiority, fear, envy, sin, despondency and boredom in a person. (How dangerously the joyless cruel mischievous Prince Philip is bored with his fascist friends Kirill - Artur Ivanov and Cyprian - Valery Ushakov). Quite pessimistic, a performance about the metaphysics of the “underground” in a person, about the fear of exposure; about the rejection, the destruction of everyone who is weaker or more perfect, more beautiful than the "average majority". A play about mystery and the soil (not only social, but also physiological, biological, "medical"), on which fascism can flare up at any moment. (The motive of sadism in the Prince, who frightens Yvonne with torture instruments, is by no means accidental.)
According to Gombrowicz and Mirzoev, fascism continues life b in man, lasts and smolders, hiding until the time. A play written long ago hurts today and will hurt for a long time. It is obvious.
Solemnly - ritually staged is the exit of the family, headed by the slowly smooth, beautiful and thin, like a snake, Margarita (Marina Esipenko), - indivisible, like a single body, undisguisedly aesthetic in exquisite costumes and the spacious pavilion of the artist Alla Kozhenkova (which is either a hangar, in architectural style of the Third Reich, where it was handy for the Nazis to shoot "inferior" children, or a modern industrial lifeless space with gray smoky air). However, as soon as the strange, almost transcendent, Yvonne with "sluggish blood circulation" appears, introduced into the palace at the whim of the Prince, the ritual collapses, the unity disintegrates, self-satisfied peace disappears. Anxiety, anxiety, fear of all degrees and shades will come to each of the characters. Not too strong in the plebeian, hysterical and fool - King Ignatius (Vakhtangov actor Leonid Gromov in this role seems more convincing, lively, funny, faithful to the intellectual play than the invited one - to the delight of the audience and as a guarantee of box office success - stage performer, noisy showman Yefim Shifrin ). Fear - torment, neurasthenic throwing up to screaming and screaming (there could have been fewer of them) - in the prince, who is afraid to receive from Yvonne an impulse of trouble, dissatisfaction with himself, to become infected with doubt and suffering.
Everyone has a secret. The graceful Chamberlain (Yuri Shlykov) will “spicily” chat, gracefully “dance” the long-standing crime common with the King - the rape and murder of a seamstress girl. Fear - horror will strike Margarita (Marina Esipenko). Her monologue is not a confession about bad poems that the Queen hides from people, but about sinful “impulses”, about the “flame” that rages in her “empty bosom”, about the desire to “bend, burning ...” The huge monologue will become an acting, genre , the stylistic climax of the performance. Everything - to the fullest extent of their strength, with a frantic temperament, but also laughing at the heroine, at her pathos and pathos. The actress interrupts the solemn royal sounds with worldly, plebeian ones - a completely bewildered woman. (Only the specific Roman Dolzhansky, a columnist for Kommersant, who generally finds it difficult to perceive female beauty on stage, could respond with rudeness to the actress, not appreciate the “luxurious”, as they would say in the old theater, ironic play, talent and God-given data - faces, figure, musical gesture, "flowing" and flexible, like a prima ballerina's hands).
Perhaps the most difficult thing was to play the alien Yvonne. For two performers, she is outwardly polar different. Invited "from the outside" girl - a child prodigy, Liza Arzamasova, known for many films and performances, ideally performs a super-complex plastic drawing. Her Yvonne is half-crippled on twisted feet, with crooked fingers, and her back bent at an angle. (Almost "Down").
The young talented professional actress Maria Berdinsky looks like a teenager with a sweet rounded face, only slowed down and slow beyond measure. The similarity of both is that they are touching and natural, like children, childishly closely and relentlessly watching everything that happens. Naturalness, attention - understanding of Yvonne, as she is played by both actresses, frightens to death chained in etiquette, pretenders - the inhabitants of the Court. Her secret is frightening. When occasionally she unclenches her mute lips and utters short phrases in a transparent, glassy voice: “Get out”, or “I don’t want to”, “I won’t”, it is obvious that the alien is normal, reasonable and she has a character. Both actresses are adorable. At the Berdinskys - gentle, quiet, silent - almost constantly. Arzamasova - occasionally. But in the episode when the choosy prince peers at Yvonne demandingly, we agree with him that her face is correct and beautiful. It is very important in the play that the wordless Princess of Burgundy is in love with what she loves. Hastens to touch, to lean against the Prince. Humor is included in the sad part. Yvonne, persistent in her love, unwaveringly sitting on a stool, cannot be torn off the floor, moved from her place, carried away from the irritated Prince away, by three hefty men.
The ability of the Vakhtangovites to embody the most terrible situation (like chopping off the heads of the suitors-applicants in “Princess Turandot”) grotesquely conditionally, easily, with humor, “without burdening”, came in handy in Gombrowicz’s production. As well as the philosophy inherited from the founder, expressed not in word disputes that kill the theater, but in a bizarre play of situations, situations, in grotesque and eccentric accents.
Only one scene is sad and serious - the death of the heroine in the finale. The alien is killed in the most vulgar way - they are forced to choke on a fish bone, and not from highly pedigree burbot, carp or eel, but from the most prostets crucian carp. However, this is how most often they kill "unique" in life.
But here's the mystery. The prince does not get up reluctantly, after the persuasion of the hypocritical family, on his knees before the bed of the deceased (as written by the author). He lies down next to the dead, curled up bride. Dying or wanting to die? Both of them will be silently rolled deep into the stage, into the twilight of nothingness, leaving us to think that human death is terrible, and that it is impossible to kill.
The population of the parterre after the intermission is renewed by more than half - the "dear" audience begins to run away long before the break, but during the intermission "from the mountains" students descend and as a result the hall remains completely filled, and there is someone to clap on the bows, despite the fact that as before In the case of Nyakroshus, Ostermeier, Lepage, not to mention Wilson, Yazhina's premiere at the Theater of Nations is simply impossible to compare with those of his things that were brought to Moscow from Poland. Yazhina showed an excellent performance, and then all the more surprising because the original source is outdated and raises many questions, the modern theatrical version of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, like Jan Kljata's Macbeth at the Moscow Art Theatre, like another Macbeth by Krzysztof Garbachevsky from Alexandrinka, is a third-rate European theater for export. In the case of Yazhina, unlike Klyata, it is also, we must admit with regret, unbearably dreary, sometimes deadly boring. At the same time, and this is more important for me than the boringness of the spectacle, the heaviness of the action, it is Yvonne by Yazhina, perhaps - if not the most successful, then at least the most meaningful of the six (!!!) productions of Gombrowicz's first play, which I happened to see on Moscow venues over the past ten years: Safonov (in the TsIM), Urnov (by the way, in the Theater of Nations too, but before the arrival of Mironov), Levinsky (in the Hermitage), Lavrenchuk (in the Polish Theater in Moscow) and Mirzoev (in theater named after E. Vakhtangov). I take only those that I watched myself, because there are even more of them (for example, the Cherry Orchard shopping center has its own Yvonne, called Carp in Sour Cream - I haven’t seen it and I’m unlikely to ever get there ).
Yazhina perceives Gombrowicz's early, almost "puppet" play not as a flat anti-totalitarian pamphlet, but does not turn it into a primitive parable about holiness and sacrifice. In general, his performance of all the alternative, so far performed Moscow versions of Yvonne ... reveals similarities only with a semi-amateur, but in its own way amusing (and not boring, unlike others) in the so-called. "Polish Theater in Moscow" - where performers of varying degrees of professionalism played Gombrowicz in Polish, which is not native for most Muscovite studios, in a format close to performance, in the spirit of futuristic dystopia and ... without Yvonne, or rather, with a rubber doll replacing her, an inflatable woman , but .. with Igor Nevedrov in the role of King Ignacy, where I saw Nevedrov for the first time.
At Yazhina, the scenes of the play are interrupted by English-language remarks recorded on a phonogram and translated through monitors (co-author of the stage version - Szczepan Orlowski, voice of the narrator - Emma Dallow), where Salvador Allende and Julian Assange are mentioned, the title of the film "Minority Report" arises in connection with the idea "prevention of crimes," some fantasy story about an attempt to control the economy with a computer in Chile in the early 1970s and the penetration of self-censorship into the Internet, caused by the voluntary desire of social network users to share the opinion of the majority - to be honest, this speculative nonsense is not only optional, but also on duty, banal (especially in its ritual anti-American I wonder where Yazhina would be today without the United States? would he stage pioneer matinees for the anniversary of Lenin in the house of culture? or would he drink himself under a bridge in Paris? in any case, the use of such techniques in a Russian-language, Moscow production today is not only vulgarity, but also foul language ), in terms of content, it adds nothing to the performance, but, by the way, it performs its rhythmic function, as a structural element of the composition, and distracts attention while the assemblers rearrange the “decorations”, consisting of abstract hollow cubes and trapezoids, a giant cut-off of a “metal” pipe, placed into a gray enclosure, the inner surface of which also serves as a screen for computer installations. On the other hand, the first picture, where Philippe and his friends meet Yvonne for the first time and further, when the prince introduces the shabby little girl to the crowned parents, is solved, despite the grotesqueness of the external image of the characters (costumes, the queen's hairstyle, the plastic mask on the Chamberlain's face) quite traditionally, stylishly but predictable. And from the second picture, in addition to the mentioned English remarks (with quotes provoking a variety of associations, like the Chinese proverb “kill the chicken to scare the monkey”), a real, albeit quite moderate in terms of the degree of radicalism, “cyberpunk” begins.
Well, yes, technical details are, of course, an important aspect of the project, but still, unlike most of the previous Moscow Yvonne ..., the current one gives some reason to talk about the play and the performance in essence. The heroine of Daria Ursulyak, and this is perhaps the most important point, is not ugly or messy, which is easy to imagine from the description and the inertia of the perception of the play through the previous director's interpretations. Yvonne here is an autistic androgyne in what looks like overalls, in boots, with a short “typhoid” haircut; she, of course, is not a beauty in relation to the "glamorous" secular maidens of the "court", but it is difficult to take her for a fearful person, for a homeless person, but for a sick person, which he insisted on in his version, and in two cast members offering a choice of clearly different diagnoses, even more so. For the royal family, for the prince, for his entourage, for the father-king and mother-queen, Yvonne, who has strayed to the court by Philip's whim, is the object of manipulation, and in this case not only moral abuse, but also quite specific physical violence. However, very soon the manipulators themselves become dependent on her, thanks to the presence of Yvonne they cease to control themselves, their old sins emerge into the light of day ... - all this, in general, according to the play, according to the plot, but so far this "changeling ' was not so clear. Having placed a kind of socio-psychological experience over Yvonne, the unfortunate experimenters themselves become its victim, turn into guinea pigs, lose control over what is happening and over themselves, do not stand the test.
Maybe not too original, but the characters of the play are curiously presented in the performance, and the actors work at the limit of selflessness. First of all, the performers of the main roles: Daria Ursulyak's Yvonne is at the same time simple in her defenselessness, and mysterious, incomprehensible; Mikhail Troinik, who usually plays the role of brutally boorish, Prince Philip turned out to be unexpectedly refined, in a sense vulnerable (sometimes the actor simply cannot be recognized). The tall and skinny Chamberlain in a long-sleeved robe and with a plastic mask is the sinister character of Sergei Epishev. Whereas Philip's friends are figures of a rather comical nature, especially Kiprian-His Kovalev, and to a lesser extent Kirill-Kirill Byrkin (their kiss with Philip-Troynik in the end of the first act finally finishes off the parterre spectator, so after the break in their places it turns out to be completely different audience, but that's for the best). Coping with the task, portraying the likeness of a "cyborg", Igor Sharoiko-Valentin, mechanistically wandering from corner to corner of the site. It is more difficult than the rest for older actors, no matter how hard Agrippina Steklova and Alexander Feklistov try, but talent, skill and well-known looseness still do not allow them to fully comply with the rules of the game proposed by the director, where internal impassivity and calmness are necessary with the external grotesque of the picture - Steklov then and the case breaks through an open emotion, which, in my opinion, is inappropriate here.
Alena Karas
Alien vs Predators
"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" by Grzegorz Jazhina at the Theater of Nations
The poster shows an African face, by which gender is as difficult to identify as age. One of those "savage" faces that were destroyed throughout European history. Witold Gombrowicz, who grew up in a wealthy Polish estate of the 19th century, was sensitive to social inequality, to those who did not enter the canon of beautiful gentry Poland. Therefore, his play Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, written in 1938, a year before the World War, turned out to be prophetic - it explores the mechanism for the destruction of the Other. First - in itself, then - outside of itself. First - as an endless self-censorship, then - as a total censorship in relation to any Other.
"Yvonne" is a philosophical parable, despite high level allegory, quite clearly, however, correlated with the cruel political context of his time. Grzegorz Jazhina not only ignores this context, but sharply draws it into the present. He needs the tension of those meanings that Gombrowicz's play at the beginning of the 21st century attracts to itself - although Yvonne, who wears sensors on her head that scan her brain, resembles a victim of Dr. Mengele's experiments.
The stunning space, pulsing with the most complex video and acoustic vibrations, enters the consciousness as a living organism, like Yvonne herself, fearlessly and accurately played by Daria Ursulyak. Actually, Yazhina, together with Piotr Lakomy (scenography), Jacek Grudzen (music), Felice Ross (lighting), Marta Navrot (video), Andrey Borisov (sound) and Anna Nykovskaya (costumes) literally pumped up the entire stage “body” with the attraction of Yvonne, materialized her defiant silence, which is the main secret of the play. It includes the public according to the principle of the same mechanism as described by Prince Philip: “If she loves me, then I ... then I am therefore loved by her ... I exist in her. She enclosed me in herself ... Ah, after all, I, in fact, always believed that I exist only here, on my own, on my own - and then immediately - bam! She caught me - and I was in her as if in a trap!
The performance is designed in such a way that we all find ourselves in it as if in a trap. Yazhina invented a technology that coincides mainly with the motive of Gombrowicz's play: invisible sensors along the wings vibrate the entire stage field, which becomes literally electromagnetic - every movement of the actors produces sound, extracts sounds from space. It's hard to guess, but the magic of the rising and falling sound, the video pulsation of color flooding the screen, implicitly dependent on the movement of bodies around the stage, affects the subconscious of the audience, who find themselves in the same dismay in relation to Yvonne's radical silence, as well as similar to the insensible Cyborg Prince Philip (Mikhail Troinik). Yvonne, by the way, appears on the stage, dressed in something like overalls or a stage fitter's costume - one of those who, always invisible, makes the performance's celebration come true.
Only in the second act, when the silent Yvonne begins to talk about herself with the help of a theremin - an electric instrument created in 1920 by Lev Theremin that reacts to the slightest vibrations and extracts music literally from the air - do we begin to guess that the entire stage box was such a theremin. A zone in which silence resounds, or the subconscious itself, repressed, right according to Lacan, by the repressive machine of language. Until then, the mechanism hidden in the wings is localized on the stage as an instrument from which Yvonne extracts music, as total as her androgynous creature with huge eyes and a cap of cropped white hair.
The totality of her presence in the midst of the cyber desert is the theme of the performance, whose society is made up of simulacrum shells. Here the ladies of the court wear hats fused with their heads, the Chamberlain's (Sergey Epishev) face is completely overgrown with a transparent mask, a silicone layer between man and the world, and Queen Margarita (Agrippina Steklova) in a nightly hysterical burst of revelation exposes herself to silicone nudity, revealing under her clothes a sanctimonious body-mask, a shell of the same silicone soul. The king (Alekander Feklistov) does not need a mask at all - there, along with the crown, shorts and a T-shirt have grown to the body: not a ruler, but a hunted layman, most of all afraid of himself.
The reading of Yvonne by Yazhina clearly resonates with Lacan's concept of a language structured as the unconscious, where contact with oneself becomes more and more difficult as the subject becomes culturally advanced. Directing exacerbates this theme, bringing it almost to the point of parody. The text space of the performance is expanded with interludes recited by the announcer's voice in the purest English (co-author of Yazhina's stage version - Szczepan Orlowski) and devoted to how the system - language, politics, cybernetics, censorship - turns the individual into the mass. This voice in a language that is the same part global peace, like cyberspace, describes the experiment: the subjects, obeying the majority, call white black. The incapacity for independent judgment seems to be a harmless property until people like Yvonne become its mass victims.
“Control is not carried out from the outside, it is built into the infrastructure,” the Englishwoman tells us, while we glance over the cylindrical, cubic and human figures, on which Yvonne’s silence has an implicit but powerful effect, forcing, like ultrasound, to commit the most eccentric and cruel actions. “Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, a nonprofit journalistic organization, describes fear-based self-censorship as a pyramid scheme…Remember when you last time wanted to say something and changed their mind because of the possible consequences? Self-censorship guides our every action, and we do not notice. The truth is, we're living a lie."
This manifesto of Jazhina, sounding on its own, would cause nothing but boredom if it were not embedded in the text of Gombrowicz, whose political parody borders on psychoanalysis, drawing our entire psychic and rational nature into the process of self-reflection.
Twenty years ago, Yazhina had already staged Yvonne, and then in Gombrowicz's play he was interested in the intimate, deep side of human relationships. Today, the director's interest has shifted to where there are no longer relationships, but there are communications. Where the inexpressibility of inner experience has long been trapped in the System.
Having received an invitation from the Theater of Nations, the director and artistic director of TR Warszawa, it seems, was pleased to include in the context of the performance the very bourgeois respectability of the most brilliant theater venue in the Russian capital, the premieres of which are always marked by a special atmosphere of chic. In a pre-premiere interview with COLTA.RU, the director directly noted that he hopes for a recognition effect: “What they [the audience] will think during and after the performance is very important to me. Gombrowicz's play is also about court life, so here we build something like a mirror.”
The mirror is the most important motif of "Yvonne", directly borrowed from "Hamlet", with an eye on which Gombrowicz's philosophical parable was written. Bitter attacks against a bourgeois democracy with silicone masks of equality, tolerance and social responsibility, where Prince Philip's intention to marry a commoner marked by clear signs of autism is perceived first as a strange joke, then as a populist game, and finally as a disaster for the regime - all this is addressed to us no less than in those days of 1938 when the play was being written.
But only before the public, which has financial influence and power, does Yazhin install this mirror? "Yvonne" plays with much more complex reflections, drawing our whole being into her "political body". Baroque chords of the wedding ceremony, a huge table, a screen flooded with pink flowers and stage space, white feathers and crinoline silks of the bride, making her finally look like a sacrificial lamb ... Fear of the Other, nesting in the depths of any violence, kills Yvonne quietly - with a small crucian bone. She collapses onto the table, transformed from the living person she never was to them into a pile of white skirts bathed in the pinkish color of her anemic blood...
P.S. Since the large-scale touring projects of the Polish theater in Moscow stopped a few years ago, and some major directors led by Christian Lupa refused to come to Russia with their performances for political reasons, the mutual isolation of the two theater worlds seemed inevitable. The change of government in Poland also did not seem to contribute to active contacts in the field of the theater. But here long-term mechanisms of mutual attraction came into play: a series of lectures, exhibitions and video screenings began, and then - productions by Polish authors, little known to us or not staged at all before. Instead of high-profile tours, Russian and Polish theaters are beginning to cooperate on the level of deeper creative exchanges. And the fact that after Yvonne, created in co-production with TR Warszawa, several performances based on the plays of Witold Gombrowicz will appear in Russia one after another - in the St. Petersburg Theater. At the Lensoviet, the young director Beniamin Kots is staging "The Wedding", the same play is rehearsed at the Moscow School of Dramatic Art by Elena Nevezhina - perhaps it will allow a deeper understanding of the author, so consonant with our time.
Kommersant, October 19, 2016
Rejection game
"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Theater of Nations
The 11th TERRITORIA festival opened with the premiere of the Theater of Nations "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy". This is the first production by the Polish director Grzegorz Jazhina in Russia, created with the support of the Polish Cultural Center and the Mickiewicz Institute. ALLA SHENDEROVA tells.
"The weather was beautiful, the princess was terrible" - in summary the beginning of the play by Witold Gombrowicz can sound literally like this. The royal family walks in the park, talking about how looking at a beautiful sunset makes you feel better. Prince Philip sees the ugly Yvonne, who is so "infinitely proud, tender and fearful" and infuriates him so much that he decides to marry her. The king and queen are shocked, but ready to accept his choice: compassion for the sick and pitiful also makes us better.
Anyone who is a little familiar with the history of literature, having heard the text of "Yvonne" (in the performance, the translation of Yuri Chainikov is used), will immediately remember not only Dostoevsky and Stavrogin, who married Khromonozhka, but also "Princess Malene" by Maurice Maeterlinck. And he will be right. In 1889, the symbolist Maeterlinck invented a princess with a "green face and white eyelashes", doomed to become a victim - Witold Gombrowicz obviously borrowed this decadent image, deciding to figure out why society not only makes outcasts, but kills such princesses.
"Yvonne" was written in 1938, when Freud had already said everything (it was with Freud that the writer Bruno Schulz compared Gombrowicz), and the Germans were preparing to swallow Poland. What is fascism, Gombrowicz understood before others and left Poland a few days before the occupation, during the war he lived in Argentina, and then returned not to socialist Poland, but to France. In Poland, his books were banned until the late 1950s.
A student of Christian Lupa, head of the theater "TR Warsaw", one of the most talented radicals of the Polish stage, Grzegorz Jazhyna already staged "Yvonne" at the beginning of his career - almost 20 years ago. Today he returned to her, trying to figure out what instinct makes us afraid of those who are different from us. As a result, he succeeded in what is often said, but which in reality comes out extremely rarely: "Yvonne" by the Theater of Nations - a performance in which reflections on eternal topics are clothed in the form of modern art.
The director called in a strong team of artists to help him. Petr Lakomy, for example, has never worked in a theater before and insists that he did not create scenography, but space. But when you watch a play, you don't get the feeling that good, accurate actors fit in with an effort into the milieu of radical art that is alien to them. The space continues and reflects what they are playing. Cubes, cylinders, blocks, among which the heroes of Gombrowicz roam, attract attention not because they resemble Suprematist compositions. They are just as simple in appearance, but in fact inexplicable, like the nooks and crannies of our consciousness.
"She devours me with her eyes ... She is simply shameless ... Take a poker and make it white hot ..." - suggests the handsome prince (Mikhail Troinik), unable to restrain his painful voluptuousness. "But Philip!" - besieged by his friends. An encephalogram of the brain, which they do to Yvonne by tying her hands and feet, is projected onto the walls. When King Ignatius (Alexander Feklistov), wanting to joke with his daughter-in-law, brings her to a fit, an alarming purple ripple runs along the walls - a cardiogram of an exhausted soul hidden from everyone. The black-and-white luminous ball is blown away as the queen (Agrippina Steklova) loses her desire, if not to talk, then at least to feed the savage.
Gombrowicz does not fully reveal who Yvonne is, and neither does the director. He does not, like the prince, experiment on a strange, obviously intelligent girl, who, in the almost wordless, but bright performance of Daria Ursulyak, has moments of liveliness and even passion. He tries to understand what she is doing to others. Why is it not enough for them to simply remove her from sight, but must be killed; why the queen, looking at her, remembers her mediocre poems hidden under the mattress. And to the king and the chamberlain (Sergei Epishev), she reminds of the seamstress, whom they lured to "this very sofa" in the days of dashing youth. “But she was a thin brunette, and this plump blonde,” clarifies the chamberlain, holding Yvonne, while the king gives some kind of injection to the frightened victim. Sadism, seasoned with palace etiquette, thickens in the air, coloring the walls with aesthetic video mapping (video by Marta Navrot).
The visual climax happens in the wedding scene: huge roses appear on the walls (here are the flowers that the heroes of Alice in Wonderland painted, and the glamor brought to the grotesque - a technique of modern artists) and spread in disturbing bruises. Dressed in an exquisite white dress (the costumes of Anna Nykovskaya), Yvonne suddenly turns out to be pretty. But he does not want to sit down at a long table - everything is rushing about, escaping from the hands of the tall chamberlain. It is logical that it is he who, following the observance of etiquette, offers the king a way to get rid of the poor thing - to serve bony fish to the table. He realizes the plan, pushing everyone who wants to help away from the wheezing victim.
Accurately built by the director and beautifully played by Sergei Epishev, the role leads to a mystery: we hate and want to get rid of everyone who breaks even the most senseless, but familiar rituals that replace our lives. But now Yvonne stiffens on the table, order has been restored. In the play, there is a farcical conversation about mourning, a tailor and a funeral parlour. In the play, too. But Prince Philip suddenly jumps up on the table, yelling for the lights to go out. Another second - and he seems to wrinkle in Yvonne's pathetic smile.
RG , October 12, 2016
Zoya Apostolskaya
Alien among their own
"Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" presented at the Theater of Nations
The Theater of Nations showed the second premiere of the season - the play "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" based on the play by the Polish playwright and writer Witold Gombrowicz. This is a grotesque story about how Prince Philip (Mikhail Troinik) falls in love with an extremely silent girl, Yvonne (Daria Ursulyak). Her silence is so annoying to everyone - including the king (Alexander Feklistov) and the queen (Agrippina Steklova) - that the princess simply needs to be disposed of.
The performance was staged by director Grzegorz Jazhyna, who was invited from Poland. He already addressed the play of his compatriot many years ago, but since then he has revised his views on it. He discarded love relationships and left two simple and merciless thoughts: a person is afraid to be different - this is the time. Two - "others" are not accepted by either other people or the system.
Yvonne is a stranger, she is not at home. She is incomprehensible and annoying. It wants to be squeezed out and destroyed - this is the instinctive desire of society. And in Lately it is only getting worse all over the world, says Grzegorz Jażyna. And the theme of silence too - people have become less likely to express their opinion. The director verbalized this idea by inserting texts that are not in the play. They recalled the fear of being in the minority, the types of self-censorship and total control over the means of communication.
Yvonne is almost incapable of communication and, therefore, it is almost impossible to control her. So, it needs to be eliminated, deleted from the system. At the same time, Yvonne herself tries to follow the situation - she invisibly finds herself where she is not supposed to be according to the text of the play. For example, she hears all the conspiracies against herself, knows how they plan to kill her. Hears the speeches and poems of the queen. She takes off her clothes and finds herself in a latex suit that imitates a naked body. She also feels that she is being spied on, which is why she feels naked.
Here, all the characters are naked. Unmasked. Become obvious - under the gun of total silence. Yvonne in the interpretation of Grzegorz Jazhyna is not a miserable mess. Sometimes she seems to be an androgynous creature - in overalls, with a very short, spiky haircut. And she is not only silent, but also tries to resist - at the table she spits out cream and throws pears. Knocks out the recorder from the hands of researchers. She is a creature worthy of study. And Prince Philip and his friends are studying it. They set up experiments, recording everything on camera and on a voice recorder. They ask questions, test with Rorschach spots (a test by a Swiss psychiatrist, known since 1921: by what an individual sees in a blot, his personality traits are determined).
Yvonne is silent, her associations, interpretations are prompted to her - and they are waiting for a nod of the head. Over time, the symmetrical Rorschach spot will break in two and spread along the light meridian grid into different sides. It will become like the continents on the map, like two worlds that are getting further and further apart. The director Yazhin tightens the bullying of Yvonne, they are no longer only moral, as with Witold Gombrovich, but also physical. The very specific violence of the king over the princess - and the phrases that you can do whatever you want with her - go to another level and acquire some sophisticated meaning.
The set designer of the performance was the artist Petr Lakomy - this is his debut on theater stage. But the director also wanted to avoid excessive theatricality, he wanted to push the old text and new art together. Lakoma solves space extremely concisely. From the scenery - a hollow cylinder and a parallelepiped, which is disassembled into component fragments from scene to scene. Everything else is created by video projections and light.
The light here is a special story: either it sharpens the shadows, forcing them to live a separate life, or it “suppresses” everything around and makes reality wadded. The space is interactive - it is not just a tribute to fashion, it is a visual evidence of how the system reacts to the actions of individuals. A special camera captures the movements of the actors and changes the background - and now the light grid pulsates and twitches nervously. Sensors respond to movement around the stage - and now the actors themselves create the sound space, write the score of the performance with the trajectory of movement.
A separate role is assigned to the theremin - an electronic instrument that creates sound with the help of an electric field (I remind you that it was once invented by Lev Theremin in Petrograd). It is controlled by the wave of the hands - the theremin is sensitive to external stimuli, it requires long exercises and absolute pitch. Needs a special approach - just like Yvonne herself. She plays on it - first she broadcasts her pain with her hands and body, then she connects her voice and tries to sing in unison. In a vacuum. The duet with the instrument turns out to be more sensitive than the people around.
To get rid of Yvonne, the family serves carp on the festive table. They are bony, she is shy, in the presence of guests she must certainly choke and die. The king and queen invite everyone to the table, say "one-one", as if they are checking microphones. Harassment is like a celebration, murder is like a performance, getting rid of something else is like a celebration. Yvonne tries to escape three times - she knows exactly what will happen next. But escape from the System is impossible, it is returned every time. And they force you to choke.
They put pressure on her - and she chokes. Because every personality in itself is like a bone in the throat.
The New Times, 17 October 2016
Xenia Larina
Power of Silence
The festival "Territory" opened with a loud premiere: the Pole Grzegorz Jazhina staged "Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy" at the Theater of Nations
On the playbill there is a photograph of a dark-skinned girl with a wild, animal fear frozen in her eyes.
Secret signs
The Polish director Grzegorz Jazhina works with Russian artists on the Russian stage for the first time, although his name has long been known to Russian theater people: Jazhina is one of the leaders of modern European theater, a rebel and an intellectual who does not recognize any taboos in culture, professing a theater of bold ideas and open emotions. He turns to the famous text of the Polish philosopher and avant-garde artist Witold Gombrowicz for the third time: he staged his first "Yvonne" in his homeland in 1997, then composed the libretto for the opera of the same name, and now he has chosen this play to be staged in Moscow.
"Yvonne" has long become a classic - it is staged all over the world along with the absurdist dramas of Ionesco and Beckett, although it came to the Russian stage relatively recently and immediately became one of the most popular. Yvonne was staged by Vladimir Mirzoev at the Vakhtangov Theatre, Alexei Levinsky at the Hermitage, Oleg Rybkin at the Novosibirsk Red Torch. And every time a surprisingly tenacious and modern text written in the late thirties last century, amazed us with new meanings and paradoxical accents, immersing us not even in today, but in tomorrow.
In the Theater of Nations, "Yvonne" is almost a dystopia, gloomy, terrible, not even a warning, but an omen, before the inevitability of which one can only reconcile. Yazhina emphasizes the relevance of the play with information blocks abruptly bursting into the fabric of the performance, when the impassive metallic voice of the announcer overturns sensational news from various fields - either new technologies or historical discoveries, then social phenomena.
However, at some point stage reality wins over the truth of life and outstrips it in terms of social and political urgency.
The genius of Gombrowicz seems to have encoded in "Yvonne" secret signs that appear as sympathetic ink in a certain atmosphere. Guess and recreate this atmosphere - here the main task director. Yazhina - like a real theatrical thinker - certainly knew how to achieve this. But he could hardly have imagined what a significant role Russian reality would play in this search, the notorious "Russian soil" that does not want to fit into the global context, but hysterically demands its own "special path." Well, did they demand? Get it.
Naked kings
But it turned out - about the power of silence, about the desperation of dumbness. Yvonne has almost no words, just a few mysterious remarks and a piercing, deafening scream, from which windows explode and pawn ears. Yvonne - a strange girl with a short haircut, in a shapeless baggy jumpsuit - will fall into the very core of supreme power, where a reflective heir falls in love with her and, in order to annoy her parents, declares her his bride. The silent Yvonne, like a ghost, roams the palace chambers, irritating its inhabitants with her blissful appearance - either a madwoman or a saint. Yvonne does not bow or bend, laughs at what causes sacred awe in these walls, peers intently at what is not customary to peer into, and never looks away, even if her hands are tied and threatened with a knife. This heartbreaking look of Yvonne burns out of the rulers all their secret vices and hidden sins, turning well-bred successful aristocrats into disgusting cowardly monsters. The masks fall down together with the clothes - and by the end the kings literally turn out to be naked, and even a sparkling crown hastily placed on the head is not able to hide this disgusting nakedness.
Yvonne's silence destroyed the fact that neither the revolution nor the uprising could defeat. It was silence that aroused a reciprocal hatred, a passionate desire to kill the silent, to deal with this damn silent creature that pulled out everything that was so carefully and seemed to be hidden forever.
Yvonne is a loner, organically incapable of falseness, she herself is a tuning fork that sets a clean note. That is why the rattling, croaking voices of the inhabitants of the royal palace, who have long lost their hearing, and with it the ability to distinguish truth from lies, virtue from vice, crime from duty, are so self-revealing. Yes, indeed, everything begins with the purity of the note taken, with the impossibility of lying. How can one not recall here the famous formula of one of the most persistent dissidents, Andrei Sinyavsky, about "stylistic differences" with the authorities.
Throat of the Silent
Grzegorz Jarzyna brought his production team with him, which, among others, included costume designer Anna Nykowska (Anna is not only a constant co-author of Jazyna's performances, but also his girlfriend) and a brilliant contemporary artist Piotr Lakomy (this is his debut as a stage designer) .
The visual image of the performance is a self-sufficient artistic space, where the color scheme, light reflections, neon flashes, bizarre video installations are not a background for the actors, but their full partners, sometimes very aggressive, crushing the actors. And also a sound track, almost continuously sounding - now with a rustle, now with a siren, now with a pencil scratching on paper, now with sudden music, now with a buzzing street crowd. And also the costumes of extraordinary complexity that transform the characters from scene to scene - costumes that you get rid of gradually, like rudiments and atavisms, in the form of torn sleeves, bursting jackets on the backs, falling skirts and torn dresses.
The light on the stage is cloudy, diffused, viscous like fog, the faces of the actors, usually ennobled by spotlights, here look ominous, almost losing their human features.
With all the richness and variety of staging techniques, "Yvonne" is an eminently acting performance in which there is not a single random appointment - even for supporting roles.
Yvonne Darya Ursulyak is an almost infernal creature, a girl from a star, radiating both goodness and danger. The plasticity of a wild animal is combined in it with languid female eroticism, the trusting smile of a child imperceptibly transforms into a devilish mockery. As if neither body, nor eyes, nor lips belong to her, as if someone breaks her from the inside and breaks out.
The royal couple performed by Alexander Feklistov and Agrippina Steklova is a triumph of permissiveness and absolute moral corruption, disguised as respectability and puritanism. They have to go through the most difficult path - from tyrants sated and corrupted by power to mad with fear of losing it all, hunted old people.
The romantic hero of the play - Prince Philip - the actor Mikhail Troinik decomposed into parts how rats are laid out in laboratories, and was horrified to find that "blue blood" is no different from rat blood. What he took for adherence to principles turned out to be pride, what for rebelliousness turned out to be cowardice, and what was for courage turned out to be cowardice.
The split, which has grown into a ruthless war with oneself, with one's true being, with one's reflection, overtakes each participant in the drama. And the king rapes and kills again and again, pulling a latex glove over his hand like a condom, and the secret vice of lust tears the queen's celluloid-clad body, and the knife trembles treacherously in the hands of the prince, bent over Yvonne's throat.
This manic desire to cut the throat of the silent one is one of the main metaphors of the play, as if answering the announcer's question: "Remember the last time you were going to say something and changed your mind because of the possible consequences? What if the minority is the silent majority?"
