Vertinsky in the flesh on the Seventh Tier of the Alexandrinsky — and the question of how defenceless a person is, and how far shut inside their own body.
He pulls his stockings on slowly, and nothing is to interrupt him until he's finished.
In Roman Kaganovich's "Interview V," Vertinsky turns up in the flesh, in both senses. The room it happens in is small, and the pretence is easy to feel — you only need to bring the right lens to it.
But it's hard not to believe him: the right dose of cocaine does its work, and the only question is how much of you is left to resist it.
Though the audience here is closer to a heavenly tribunal, the play being staged on the Alexandrinsky's Seventh Tier of all places.
Camera flashes go off, methodical and unfeeling, pinning things down and pulling them closer. Strange how clear it's become lately how defenceless a person is, and how far shut inside their own body.
He's afraid of losing himself, and for all his inner steel and the coolness in how he handles people, this Vertinsky is intelligent and beyond consoling. He asked not to be pitied, and was unmistakably unhappy.
And by every sign he wanted a home, a country, badly enough to stay faithful to it in body and spirit — Chekhov's sisters were probably in for no smaller a disappointment in their own phantom Moscow. But it's worth living, which means it's worth wanting things.
Not a recommendation but an attempt to think it through — written straight after the run at the Lensoviet Theatre.
How "Robot Kostya" came about — Russia's first robotic theatre production, where it turned out Chekhovian passions were within a robot's range after all.
A world about to disappear, turned into an enormous tip. Not theatre for the casual, and half a manifesto for the theatregoer hidden inside a review.
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