A concentration camp, solitary confinement cells, torture… The main character Evgenia Ginzburg manages to go through eight circles of hell, but remains a real person. She, along with other imprisoned women, overcomes all the difficulties of Stalinist repressions, having spent about 20 years of her life in prisons and camps. Play " steep route based on the autobiographical novel by the writer Evgenia Ginzburg.
The magnificent play of the actors makes every viewer remember those terrible and, for many, tragic years. An irresistible state of fear that the characters on stage experience is transmitted from the stage to the auditorium. Appropriate are the scenery on the theatrical platforms, which convey the spirit of that terrible era.
The Steep Route was first staged in 1989 at the Sovremennik Theatre, and then it impressed the audience to the core. Over time, the performance has not lost its sharpness, tragedy and relevance. This explains the hype for tickets for this production among real theatergoers. If you want to see this exciting performance and enjoy the magnificent acting of the actors, then you should buy tickets for the play Steep Route in Sovremennik.
Evgenia Ginzburg
Chronicle of the cult of personality
Staged by Alexander Getman
Stage movement - Valentin Gneushev
The Moscow Sovremennik Theater would like to thank the consultants Nadezhda Adolfovna Ioffe, Zoya Dmitrievna Marchenko, Paulina Stepanovna Myasnikova, Doctor of Historical Sciences V.T.Loginov for their assistance.
The subtitle of the performance is “a chronicle of the cult of personality”. The staging of the famous novel by Evgenia Ginzburg about one of the most terrible periods of Russian history was embodied on the stage of Sovremennik almost into an epic, with undisguised harshness, but without savoring political details, telling about a time when any person, regardless of his status and position, could be turned into nothing through absurd far-fetched accusations and put him in a cage for a long time.
A huge iron cage-prison that occupies the entire mirror of the stage becomes the main visual image of the performance. Throughout the action, the figure of a sentry will loom over it, as if reminiscent of the all-seeing eye of the then head of state. And inside the cell, the everyday life of prisoners will flow, where days filled with conversations, squabbles and memories are replaced by nights, when the oppressive silence is continually torn apart by cries of pain and despair.
The heroine of Neelova goes through all the circles of Dante's hell in succession: night interrogations, solitary cells, again interrogations with the same requirements, then punishment cells - and so on ad infinitum. Proud and strong, she almost breaks down, but she manages to find in the depths of her tormented being the opportunity to continue to live - for the sake of the children left at liberty, for herself. And the strength emanating from this fragile woman, who managed to cope with the most terrible blows of fate, infects and captivates people on both sides of the ramp.
Galina Volchek's performance turned out to be not only a chronicle of time, but also the history of people, their amazing ability to preserve themselves under any circumstances.
"Steep Route" - the legendary performance of the Sovremennik Theater and its director, Galina Volchek. It was based on an autobiographical novel by Evgenia Ginzburg, whose heroine had to learn firsthand what concentration camps are - she spent almost 20 years of her life there.
About the play "Steep Route"
The play "The Steep Route" is about women. The fate of Zina, Milda, Derkovskaya and many others was broken by the Stalinist repressions. Fates, but not characters. Even in the cells of the concentration camp, they remain strong and rebellious.
And then she appears - a young journalist and a convinced communist. Interrogations, torture, the “dirt” of everything that happens do not kill her, but, on the contrary, allow her to realize that the “bright path”, it turns out, has a downside. And the happy future promised at the end of it is nothing but a deception. But the center of the story is still not events and disappointments, but characters.
The Steep Route premiered in Sovremennik on February 15, 1989. Since then, a lot has changed in our country and life. But interest in this performance remains unchanged.
Like many years ago, in 2018, Marina Neelova, Liya Akhedzhakova, Alla Pokrovskaya shine on the stage in the Steep Route. Over the years, the actresses have become so accustomed to their roles that it seems to many viewers that they, and not fictional heroines, bore the entire burden of Stalin's concentration camps.
Other activities of the director
The name of Galina Borisovna Volchek and the Sovremennik Theater are inseparable. On the stage that has become truly native, she staged a lot of wonderful performances: “Two on a Swing”, “Gin Game”, “Murlin Murlo”, “Three Sisters” and others.
How to buy tickets for the performance
Buying tickets for the play "The Steep Route" is only more difficult every year. He, like a good wine, only gets better and does not lose its relevance. Our company offers you not just to buy tickets. Unlike our competitors, we value:
- your good mood - a personal manager works for each appeal, who will help resolve any issues that arise;
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We also respect your preferences, so we provide the opportunity to place an order not only online, but also by phone, as well as pay for it in various ways (cash, bank card, transfer).
"The Steep Route" is indeed a Sovremennik legend that has conquered more than one generation of theatergoers in Moscow. The performance is so strong that at the end of it the audience and actors stand opposite each other in silence. And only after this ringing meaningful silence is heard a flurry of applause.
Dmitry Matison reviews: 14 ratings: 16 rating: 11
The material is very strong. It is all the more difficult to embrace it and experience it, both for the director and for the viewer. If you start with the audience, then entering the theater from a noisy, hurrying Moscow street, it is impossible in ten minutes to understand what people on stage are crying about, why they are screaming. All heaviness and pain is understood by the mind, but the body is silent. The gap between everyday consciousness and the extremeness of a rushing heart is so great that you only feel annoyance for it, there is no living connection. The apotheosis of the imbalance can be the general applause of the hall on the final song, when the prisoners go to the stage from the casemates. The glorification of the party ghoul by the gloomy and thirsty for at least a drop of hope convicts evokes reciprocal joy in the blind heart of the audience. There is no connection, everything turns into a farce. If even in the temple of the soul and freedom people take pain in the soul as a reason for fun, isn't that what happens in their lives.
It seems to me that the director did not catch this abyss, his production did not draw a connecting bridge.
NastyaPhoenix reviews: 381 ratings: 381 rating: 405
Yevgenia Ginzburg, a Ph.D. in history, taught at Kazan University and worked for the Krasnaya Tatariya newspaper with a man whose textbook article had once been criticized by Stalin. This pretext was enough to label the 33-year-old woman "terrorism" as "a member of a Trotskyist counter-revolutionary organization." And it turned out to be strong enough to resist the mighty state machine of repression for eighteen years with its false denunciations, prisons, conveyor interrogations, Yezhov's torture, punishment cells, camps, humiliation, hunger, without human rights, without communication with the outside world, where they remained husband and children. She did not sign a single protocol, did not hand over a single person, did not tarnish her honor and dignity, survived, having gone through all the circles of hell, and wrote the book “The Steep Route” about this. About twenty years after her death, about seventeen years ago, Galina Volchek staged a performance of the same name, in which the entire female troupe of Sovremennik is now engaged - two dozen characters who were touched by the same misfortune: young and old, resilient and discouraged, ideological and religious, humane and vile, losing their mind and keeping it. Thanks to acting talent, they are all remembered, each separately, without secondary roles - lively, convincing images that evoke sympathy or rejection, sometimes - a sad smile, but never leave indifferent. Here Klara (Feoktistova) shows a scar on her thigh: a Gestapo shepherd dog, and bloody stumps instead of hands - already the NKVD; here the old woman Anfisa (Doroshina) is perplexed: the investigator called her a “traktist”, but she didn’t even approach the “traktor” in the village. Neelova in the role of Ginzburg herself is amazing, beyond any hackneyed epithets, her dedication - to the rupture of the aorta, to absolute immersion, she bows with a face flooded with tears. I think that a large part of the audience also cried - it was painfully difficult, even psychologically and emotionally terrible, the material of the performance, this is a nightmare in reality. Now in art, both stage, cinematographic and literary, there are practically no such reliable and catchy, if not shocking, and long-lasting works about the era of the cult of personality. Satire, sentiment, pathetic pathos and moaning on cothurni will never achieve the same tragic effect that an almost documentary, objective look from within can have without exaggeration or understatement. It is impossible to reproach Volchek for “excessive naturalism”, when an immersive atmosphere is created on the stage to such an extent that both cries of despair and pain and funny songs beat on the nerves equally. This performance is a must-see for everyone - not only as evidence of true history, that huge mistake that should not be repeated, but also as proof that, according to Hemingway, a person can be destroyed, but cannot be defeated - if he has an inner moral core of honesty to oneself and respect for oneself.
25.07.2010
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Tatiana Mironenko reviews: 54 ratings: 199 rating: 121
Incredible in perception, fantastic in concept, a powerful Performance. There was a lump in my throat, because at the end I didn’t want to talk, my eyes were just wide open and the thought throbbed in my head: “God!!! BOOOOOOO!!!”. I liked everything: the production, the performance of each actor, the text. Each female fate was remembered, each made the heart shrink ... "Katorga - what a blessing!"- the lines of Pasternak sound piercingly from the lips of the main character, going to There!
I experienced an incredible amount of emotions in this production. Thanks to the director and actors of the theater for the Great Performance! One must have a certain courage in order to stage and continue to play this performance for many years. A serious evening and, moreover, the history of our state of past years. The theater with its performance makes it possible to think and sigh with regret about the past years.
"Cool route" really a masterpiece of the theater, the city and the whole of our country!!! This is genius! The atmosphere, scenery, musical accompaniment - such a terrible combination of sounds characteristic of that distant time, the acting simply makes you not tear yourself away from what is happening. forget about everything and follow the development of events. BRAVO EVERYONE!
issaa reviews: 1 ratings: 1 rating: 3
"The stage production of Evgenia Ginzburg's memoirs includes scenes of a strange, bizarre world, reminiscent of the circles of Dante's "Hell" or Goya's paintings.
The surrealistic horror of the Stalinist prison system was first restored on the Soviet stage in a performance by the Sovremennik Theater and undoubtedly became one of the biggest hits in Moscow theatrical life. This attempt to recreate the horror and madness of the Stalinist camps clearly shocked the Moscow theatrical audience that filled the theater hall, which at the end of the performance gave the director Galina Volchek and the performers an unceasing ovation that lasted fifteen minutes.
"Marina Neyolova dissolves her own personality in the fate of the heroine. In the first minutes, the actress is simply unrecognizable. The dignity of integrity, the cast completeness of the work, opened in Neyolova the gift of a tragic actress."
"In the underworld inhabited by Stalin's victims, cruelty reigns, diluted with flashes of humanity and even black humor. The production of the Sovremennik Theater, true to the spirit of Ginzburg's memoirs, shows that many victims retained their political faith, despite inhuman suffering, half a century later, Moscow audiences react to this immediate pure faith with a mixture of amazement and shock."
"Memories of Ginzburg were read by the theater as a folk drama. Both the director Galina Volchek and the actors showed us the art of living collectively on stage, inspired by the passion and high meaning of work."
"The hall of the Moscow Sovremennik Theater has turned into a cabinet of horrors of the most terrible period of Soviet history. For two and a half painfully tense hours, a dramatic picture of Stalin's prisons of the 30s unfolds. With harsh realism, it describes the state to which the Soviet people were brought by the thirty years of Stalin's rule ."
"Spiegel", 1989, No. 18
"What strong scenes! What a variety of female types! A long acquaintance with samizdat leaflets, recently renewed in the open press, did not interfere with watching with great interest. What would happen, I knew. But how it happened, I saw for the first time."
"Spark", 1989, No. 22
"The performance emphasizes that the moral roots of Ginzburg's character and behavior are in the moral structure and tradition of the 19th century. Worlds separate this fragile, intelligent woman and her executioners. Tortured and humiliated by endless interrogations, tormented by insomnia, hunger and thirst, barely able to move her lips, she still remains firm, because she - and this is her similarity with the poetess Anna Akhmatova - comes from a world that gives her moral support.
"With all her (Marina Neyolova's) essence, the heroine opposes the machine of suppression, loosening. A small fragile woman carries honor and dignity, quiet, but inaccessible to destruction. With the powerful attraction of true art, the performance returns us to spiritual priorities, makes us wonder: where is that the only basis from which only self-recovery, rebirth can begin?
"The stage is rejoicing. It seems that never with such frenzied joy has it sounded" Morning paints the walls of the ancient Kremlin with gentle light ... "They sing in such a way that it seems like another second and such enthusiasm will embrace, cannot but embrace, the hall. But the more enthusiastic the song sounds, the audience listens to her with all the more stupefaction.A dead silence sets in in the theater - those on the stage also suddenly fall silent, the darkness swallows up their figures for a moment, and when the light is lit again, in front of the ramp shoulder to shoulder in a dense gray line - no, not actresses of the Sovremennik theater, and - our sisters in prison clothes ...
Perhaps it was for the sake of this moment - the moment of complete involvement of the fates of some in the fates of others - that the play "The Steep Route" was staged by director Galina Volchek.
"Survive, survive, resist. Do not give up and do not kneel - this is the inner spring of most of the characters in this human tragedy of our people. From the main character, Evgenia Semyonovna Ginzburg, who is played by Marina Neyolova to break the aorta and heart, to the "Trotskyite" woman Nastya, who is perplexedly portrayed by Lyudmila Ivanova, - all the characters are a diverse, multilingual, diverse mass of individuals, united only in their complete and obvious innocence.
And when it becomes clear that everything will perish and everyone will perish, then, at the very end of this soul-tearing performance, the playwright and director will save up a completely unbearable plot move that can crush even the strongest nerves. Having lost not only faith and love, but even hope, these women perceive the camp news about the replacement of People's Commissar Yezhov by People's Commissar Beria as a breath of freedom, as an approach of will. Walking towards the audience with a slender wall of prisoners, their voices bursting with happiness and grief in a single impulse, they sing: "Morning paints with a gentle light ..."
Let's remember them like this.
And let us not forget their tears and their anguish."
"New time", 1989, No. 36
"Marina Neyolova - fragile, sensitive, immersed in herself, impeccably owning a gesture - plays Evgenia Ginzburg, who wants to survive while maintaining her human dignity.
Other figures also fall into our field of vision: opponents and supporters of Stalinism, random victims, people far from politics - everything humanly possible and impossible in a system of arbitrariness. Magnificent collective work of the Moscow theater.
A few minutes of shocked silence - and then a storm of applause and cries of "bravo!" in gratitude to the Soviet theater "Sovremennik" for its deep and merciless understanding of the past."
"Hessishche Allgemeine", 1990, No. 102
"Dozens of figures depicted in the play by G. Volchek are combined into a holistic folk image. The director of the play has a rare ability to build folk scenes, as it was once done in academic theaters. Without immersion in the folk element, the element of folk tragedy, in the darkness of what is happening Eugenia Ginzburg's confession could not be heard in full."
"Theater", 1990, No. 2.
"The performance of the Moscow theater "Sovremennik" - "The Steep Route" - is a real theater. A huge troupe has a wide range of psychological characteristics and flexibility - from explosions of despair to the most delicate and subtle colors.
The audience first of all gets acquainted with Evgenia, whose role is superbly played by Marina Neyolova. Evgenia does not give up either when she is confronted with colleagues who betrayed her, or when she is interrogated for five days without food, drink or sleep. This is one of the most intense scenes in the play. When they finally give her a sip of water, we see Evgenia come to life. Her eyes look straight, firmly, the former irony returns to her. With a gesture that speaks of great human dignity, she straightens her blouse. Director G.Volchek is wonderful in choosing such precise little details.
Much can be learned from The Steep Route about how to save your soul in the face of inhuman treatment and torment. Spiritual strength is the only thing that can help you survive."
"The Sovremennik Theater was born to put on such a performance as" Steep Route ". And it was staged superbly. It is not surprising that the audience rewards the actors with a standing ovation. It is interesting that the men playing investigators and warders do not bow. Maybe because they did their job too well."
"In the performance, actresses who play not very large roles look very accurate, for example, Liya Akhedzhakova is a visual aid in developing details. She starts as an arrogant grand lady from the new communist aristocracy. Bullying, torment and hunger turn her into a half-mad creature."
"The performance is very emotionally saturated. The work of the Sovremennik Theater under the direction of Galina Volchek is absolutely truthful. It is obvious that in The Steep Route one can see not only the wonderful artistic and acting capabilities of the troupe, but also the heart and soul of each actor."
"For the whole evening, you feel terrible mental pain at the performance of the Moscow Sovremennik Theater, which reveals to you a terrible chapter from Russian history. The performance is sustained in a harsh documentary tone, and the viewer is directly confronted with horror. So it was, and so you see it. "Steep Route" - the focus of the theater community at the festival in Seattle.
"The performance of Sovremennik restored on the stage not so much the course of events as the psychological atmosphere of violence. The combination of wonderful acting and professional directing by Galina Volchek, emphasized by sound images - the clang of metal bars, the screams of the tortured, makes us face the horrors of terror. This is not just a play that you are watching, you are living it.
Marina Neyolova plays the role of Ginzburg as a road to death. This woman who cannot simply walk on a level road, not because she has a heightened sense of self-preservation - she protests, she is not capable of lying. And more and more tightens her steep route of her own personality.
The merit of Volchek is that she was able to show the psychological side of the characters. Emotionally, she revealed how society dissolved into an orgy of violence and crime.
This theater is not entertainment. He immerses the viewer in his performances, and it doesn’t matter if the viewer is good there or not, and the more the theater will do this, the better.
"The main role in The Steep Route was played by a great actress, because with such dedication to play a role played more than a hundred times, to play with such contagiousness, such mastery of internal reincarnation, without any speech and plastic adaptations - only genuine talent can ."
"Wonderfully played by an ensemble of more than 35 people, The Steep Route conveys the claustrophobia, the horrors of tyranny with incredible force. The image of repression is so demonically vivid that it seems that even George Orwell could hardly have dreamed of such a thing in his worst nightmares."
"The terrible details of the life of female prisoners, with whom Yevgenia Ginzburg crossed all of Russia in a prison car, are explored with piercing sharpness and authenticity. Anger and despair, attacks of hatred and love (...) are revealed through the relationship of a dozen women who are doomed to share with each other other horrors of imprisonment."
"This is much more than the story of one woman, one victim. This is a story full of epic sounding, telling about the tragedy of an entire nation."
Theater Week, November 1996
"Rational analytics immediately recedes into the background in front of a terrible fresco about the horrors of Stalin's repressions. The performance is ten years old. And it is held by a powerful director's frame and a well-coordinated ensemble. Today, the performance burns just like in the days of the premiere. In the finale, when these "happy" captives they say with delight what an intelligent face Comrade Beria, who replaced Comrade Yezhov in a responsible post, you are crushed ... Even the most laudatory tirades are worthless in comparison with the dedication of Neyolova, Tolmacheva, Ivanova, Pokrovskaya, Akhedzhakova and all, all, all, who creates images-appearances, images-symbols significant and memorable.
“A woman by nature is not designed to be a hero. How did Yevgenia Ginzburg survive without betraying a single person, without signing a single false word? Finding an answer to this question was very important for the theater.
Having gone through the nightmare of interrogations and torture, Yevgenia Ginzburg found support in the main thing - in the recognition of universal human values and Christian morality. This is what the play "The Steep Route" was staged. Throughout almost the entire life of the performance, the role of Evgenia Ginzburg is played by Marina Neelova. To survive, to survive, not to give up, not to kneel - this is the inner spring of this heroine.
Trud, November 2004
“The Ginzburg phenomenon is in infallibility. She went through the hell of the camps without slandering anyone, without committing perjury, setting an example of crystal-clear conscientiousness - not even in the face of history, which does not dare to ask for such a sacrifice, but exclusively in front of itself.
<…>The epic scope of the events and voices of the era - from revolution to counter-revolution, the unity of man and history, the nationwide concern for the fate of the country, an objective sense of community - it is not only difficult to feel, but also difficult to express on stage. And it is absolutely unthinkable to keep this feeling from the Gorbachev era to the Putin one.<…>Actually, the "steep route" is something that has never stopped in Russia"
"House of the Actor", January 2005
“Neelova is a great actress. The whole first act rests on her, she plays here practically without partners. The horror of the first days of arrest, despair, fear - all this is in every gesture, word, look.
The second act demonstrated the artist's art of living and breathing on the stage in unison: this is not a game of prisoners of the Butyrka prison, but real life. One hundred percent believe that people were gathered here by one common misfortune, a catastrophe<…>The show is seventeen years old. This is a lot for the theatrical life. But he did not exhaust himself. It feels like The Steep Route in the 21st century is fueled by today, includes our anxieties and concerns, and looks into the future.”
"City News", June 2006
<…>this performance is directed by the director - perfectly built, verified by Galina Volchek, accurate in nuances and details ...<…>This is an acting performance - every work in it, even episodic ones, has a special meaning, because it was not for nothing that one of the critics called "The Steep Route" a "folk drama"
Krasnoyarsk Worker, June 2006
<…>In the production of Galina Volchek, each mise-en-scène is amazingly structured compositionally. The place and posture of the girls seated in a semicircle on the bunk are clearly defined. The table at which interrogations are being conducted is softly outlined by the yellow light of the lamp. The motionless figure of the warden at the top of the stairs creates a constant, uncomfortable feeling of someone's presence. The lattice of a huge cage that locked the main character - Evgenia Semyonovna (Marina Neelova), stretches high up, and on the backdrop lies the shadow of a woman clinging to the bars of the lattice...
Despite the fact that some viewers today believe that the performance rather gently reflected the suffering of the people of that era, many in the audience are crying, moving away from the shock. But this push is needed. At least in order to remember history and realize how it is worth appreciating the life that we have now.
"Nevskoe Vremya", March 2007
Maria
"The thirty-seventh year began, in fact, from the end of 1934" - this is how the steep route of Evgenia Ginzburg began and this is how the work of the same name begins. Today it is difficult for us to imagine what the phrase, enemy of the people, parents of the enemy of the people, children of the enemy of the people, is fraught with, how it is to live with a suitcase in the hallway, wake up, go to work and not know whether you will return, whether you will find your loved ones free. We live in a different time, with other worries and catastrophes, and we slowly forget, calm down, swim in fat and complacency, drown in excesses and luxury. But every day you need to remember that no one is immune from life with its surprises, they have not come up with this yet. And the events have already proven more than once that the story is a capricious lady, and she likes to repeat herself, so to speak, to consolidate the material.
In 1989, already the last century, Galina Volchek, in the then Soviet, and at first glance quite democratic, Union, staged a performance based on the first part of E. Ginzburg's novel "The Steep Route". It would seem, why? Yes, empty shelves, yes, shortages and queues, yes, five-year plans are not being built in any way, but that horror is no longer there, everything is completely different, it seemed so. And then there were the 90s with their surprises and upheavals, the hysterical 2000s, either the millennium or the end of the world, the crisis 2010s, we won’t swim out, and finally today, when they are shouting from all angles about total surveillance and espionage, nothing reminds? All these thoughts were born in my head after watching the performance and I really wanted to share my impressions.
Initially, I chose according to the principle, I was tired of comedies and the cast. Since the "Steep Route" is a female story, the majority of female roles in it, and these episodes are performed by O. Drozdova, N. Doroshina, L. Akhedzhakova, O. Petrova and other well-known actresses from films, the main character is superbly played by M. Neelova. The whole performance is a story, women's touching, mournful, hopeless, desperate, patriotic, disappointed. These are naive girls from school graduation, and exemplary activist wives, and simple village women who do not understand what happened to them, and who have begun to see clearly and understand what lies ahead. The whole performance was terrified and involuntarily thought, how would I behave in their place? Would you be able to maintain dignity, honesty, humanity? After all, despite the torture, beatings, bullying, these women remained themselves, continued to believe in the system, in the party, naively believing that all this was right, it was right. And how the last remark of the heroine sneaks, "Katorga!!! What happiness!!!". For them, half-dead, exhausted, sick, being sent to hard labor, to logging was happiness! This is our history, our shame, and more than once the heroines of Stalin are compared with Hitler, saying that their methods and actions are the same.
The performance is striking in its depth, authenticity, frankness, acting, but the theater itself does not remain indifferent to the production, entering the lobby, you will not recognize it, slogans, portraits, as they say now, of the first persons, agitation stands and a full-length statue of Himself .Before the performance, you perceive this as a slight digression into the past, during the intermission you already look more closely at these faces, trying to guess the seal of the horror that they did. At the end, you find yourself in the usual strict foyer of the Sovremennik, as if they are telling you that this is the past, a nightmare. So that the dream does not come true again, you need to remember to watch such performances, bring children, because the textbook will not convey emotions, will not penetrate into the soul, and this performance will remain in memory for a long time. Thanks to the theater for this production and thanks to the actors for their stunning images.
Life was great, life was fun
Heroes of the cult
And on the other side and on this it was equally unbearably scary
