According to "Chaif": the musical "Time does not wait" conquered the Bolshoi Theater
A production based on 25 songs by the legendary Chaif group was presented on the New Stage of the Bolshoi Theater as part of the XI Festival of Musical Theaters of Russia "To See Music". The story of the search for family values, the finale of which was the joint singing of artists and the audience, was also appreciated by the leader of the collective Vladimir Shakhrin, who specially came to the capital. Izvestia visited the screening and shares their impressions.
Five years of searching and the right to make mistakes
The path to this production took the Sverdlovsk Musical Comedy a long five years. As the main director of the theater, Philip Razenkov, admits, the original idea was repeatedly frozen and rethought.: The rapidly changing context of the time required the authors to reconsider previous decisions.
Creating a jukebox musical based on the songs of the Chaif group has become a professional challenge. The director understood that he had no right to make mistakes. He had to write an original story that had nothing to do with the real biography of rock musicians, but at the same time was perfectly woven into the philosophy of their work. Playwright Karina Shebelyan wrote a play that turned into a large-scale three-hour fantasy spectacle with one intermission.
The story begins on a modern construction site. The main character, foreman Pavel Terentyev (Alexander Kopylov), commands a colorful team of hard workers who sing, dance dynamically and deftly throw real bricks to the cult song "Chaifa" "My Movie".
Pavel's own life has long since cracked. He separated from his wife Olga (Olga Balashova) many years ago, and their son Roma (Anton Shapenkov) is being raised by his stepfather. Left without his father's attention, the teenager gets involved with a bad company, gets into huge debts, which are eventually resold to violent scumbags. In desperation, the mother begs Pavel to finally prove himself a real father and hide his son.
In search of a safe haven, Pavel and Roma go to a remote village, to the house of the foreman's late mother, Nina Andreevna. At one time, she was a strong woman, headed the factory's trade union, until the company was cynically bought out and ruined. It was as if time had frozen in the empty house: the interior retained the aesthetics of 30 years ago. While sorting through old things, Pavel stumbles upon an artifact of the era — a videotape recording of the psychic Sokolovsky, who in those years charged water through screens, cured binge drinking and collected millions of people who fervently believed in him from televisions.
But it is here, surrounded by old things, that a real miracle happens: the old TV screen flashes, and the father and son fall through the time loop, transported back 30 years to the very epicenter of the turbulent 1990s. Now the foreman has to unwind the tangle of old grievances, face himself in his youth and correct a fatal mistake in order to return the woman he loves and give his son a chance to grow up in a full family.
Surprisingly, the songs of the Chaif group in the play take on a completely new meaning. The directors have so successfully woven them into the plot that at some point the viewer suddenly begins to really understand what is behind these poignant lyrics. In total, 25 compositions were carefully integrated into the fabric of the plot, including "No One will hear", "I paint on the window", "Light a fire in my eyes", "Rock'n'roll of this night", "Cry for him", "Orange Mood", "Dogs from the city outskirts", "We are taking a step," "17 years," and, of course, "Time does not Wait," which gave the name to the whole performance.
Concrete constructivism instead of glamour
Philip Razenkov emphasizes that the work of the Chaif group is authentic, rooted Ural rock. To get away from the excessive glam and varnished images typical of the classic musical genre, the authors created a harsh but honest set design. There are grey concrete blocks on the stage.
This is both a visual greeting to industrial Sverdlovsk, the capital of constructivism, and a reminder that Ural rock was born in residential concrete areas. In addition, concrete is a metaphor for construction. Vladimir Shakhrin once worked as a foreman, just like the main character. But if at the beginning of the performance the audience is presented with a fragmented, cold world of broken human ties, then in the finale a warm, real house is built on the stage, in which the family is finally reunited.
Chaif is a unique phenomenon: having received the recognition of a huge country, the musicians remained true to their roots and did not leave for the capital. That is why the musical "Time does not Wait" is also the story of Yekaterinburg itself. The text is saturated with local codes and references to the history of the city, which the audience always sincerely laughs at at Ural screenings.
Director Philip Razenkov talks about the musical phenomenon of the band and its connection with the Ural soul as follows: "The Chaif group is Ural rock, this is important to me. There is no touch of glamour and pop music. When they tell me that the Chaif group is three chords, I reply: sorry, it's not three chords after all. They took classic rock and roll, blues somewhere, reggae somewhere, folk rock somewhere and mixed everything, reinterpreted it in their own way. This is a band with a unique face, a combination of musical styles."
The Blues Doctors team provided uncompromising energy and guitar drive on stage. The choice turned out to be symbolic: the band's leader, Vladimir Demyanov, worked as a technician on the Chaifa tour in his youth, and brought guitars to Vladimir Shakhrin. This experience inspired him to connect his life with music and create his own band.
Vladimir Shakhrin showed absolute trust in the theater by granting copyrights without restrictions. The Moscow premiere was held to an absolute full house. The real madness started at the bows. The actors came off the stage directly to the audience and, together with the audience, sang the legendary "No One will hear." At that moment, the Bolshoi Theater finally turned into a raging rock concert: fans, completely unashamed of the strict ushers, jumped up from their seats and threw up their hands with a rocker "goat". And when a loud "Cool tea!" rang out over the applause from the back of the hall, Vladimir Shakhrin himself took the stage. The leader of the rock band also watched the performance carefully — he specially flew to Moscow to personally support his fellow countrymen at the country's main theater venue.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
