TRIP TO PURGATORY OR FIRST NIGHT OF “SYMPHONY”

What awaits us beyond the line? Does the heavenly office record all our actions, or rather misconduct? An attempt to cross the line, and in this case to look behind the curtain, is the opening night of the new theater season in Ilkhom. On September 8, the theater opened its 43rd theater season with another Artem Kim Lab project and again with a full house, tickets can still be purchased only for October shows. So what was the premiere prepared for us at Ilkhom?

The fact that the performance is musical is clear from the name itself. It is also theatrical in emphasis (at the entrance the audience of the chamber hall is suggested to rent binoculars, and a red velvet curtain hangs on the stage, which has never been at the Ilkhom Theater before). In addition, it expressly resembles a circus (acrobat actress Jema Fagradyan performs tricks on canvases, pigeons appear from the cylinder, and the actors play so that (now I will be insinuating) sparks fly and seeing double). However, it looks like a concert at the Conservatory, where a choir of professional vocalists and universal Ilkhom artists performs, as well as a trumpet, clarinet, oboe, flute, tuba – an entire orchestra. And also, all this resembles a room of fear, where many angry “boogiemen” are waiting for you.
All this “Symphony” is an ironic horror in “four acts” where, either the play character Ponizov or the actor Gleb Golender is attempting to examine the first sin, the very one with which the decline of personality begins. Gleb Golender, Ilkhom’s first-generation actor, classmate of Boris Gafurov, after many years of wandering, returned to the Alma Mater and stepped into the theater for the first time in 20 years on January 25 this year, on Mark Wail’s birthday, and now is the protagonist of the loud premiere in duet with Boris Gafurov. He is a co-director, painter, set designer and co-author of the staging. By the way, this Laboratory project has four directors at once: Boris Gafurov, Gleb Golender, Anvar Abdullaev and Artem Kim. And the four care-takers – the ushers – the new generation and the bright future of the theater, young actors – graduates of the 10th studio, “fastening the seat belts” and sending the audience on an hour and a half journey to “purgatory”.
In the play of modern Ukrainian playwright Viktor Ponizov, the two main characters are BAD and GOOD (while reading the play, you understand that these names can be assigned in the opposite order and nothing will change – there are no good or bad ones). In the Ilkhom reading, the main actors and characters Boris Gafurov and Gleb Golender, (who at some point in their existence begin to talk about themselves and their lives, turning to an absolutely human, but completely non-stage whisper), recall their childhood and about the performances once played together, and try to just repent humanly or to play it.
According to the play, UP THERE absolutely everything we do is taken into account, and we are responsible for each of our seemingly insignificant “ugly” actions, which, subject to the well-known “butterfly effect”, can entail terrible consequences. And therefore it is so important to repent, and the heavenly gates are open to whoever first repented, well, although it comes down to luck, nobody gives out guarantees THERE, and most importantly, do not try to deceive anyone – tickets to paradise can turn out to be as false as ours repentance.
Well, in general, it is not reliably known how it is with the “gateway to paradise”, but the season can be accurately considered open, and tickets for sale are very real. By the way, tickets for the “Symphony” as an exclusive for the most sophisticated, are offered at a special, increased price, and for “last-minute tours to purgatory” in the near future you should definitely not count on it.
Anastasia PRYADKINA
Newspaper “Na Dosuge” [On Leisure] No. 38 of September 20, 2018