"Chocolate Soldier" based on a play by Bernard Shaw - premiere at the Moscow Art Theater. Gorky

MOSCOW. In the Moscow Art Theater. On January 26, Gorky, the audience was presented with the premiere of the play staged by People’s Artist of the Russian Federation Yuri Gorobets on the play “Weapons and Man,” written by Bernard Shaw, the famous English playwright. Viewers saw this play called The Chocolate Soldier, which became more common in the theater world.

The premiere of this play took place in 1894 in England, was successfully held in New York and moved to European theaters. The name of the play changed when composer Oscar Strauss wrote the operetta The Gallant Soldier based on her motives. In the form of an operetta, the play returned to the English scene, having already received a new name - “Chocolate Soldier”, under which it appeared in Russia.

Russian directors have addressed this play not too often. The last time it was in 1966, when Boris Ravensky put it on the stage of the Pushkin Theater. Now Yuri Gorobets decided to remind modern viewers about the work of the great playwright.

According to the director, his appeal to this play is due to the fact that the problems raised by the author in it are relevant today, so this play should be interesting to the modern audience.

Yuri Gorobets believes that the work on the play was not easy, since although the Show is a brilliant playwright, the humor in his work is peculiar, sometimes difficult to perceive even by the artists themselves. The playwright does not declare the problems presented to him, but shows them in the actions of the heroes of his work.

From the performances on which Yuri Gorobets worked as a director, it is clear that he is not a fan of experiments on stage. In his productions, the costumes of the heroes and the scenery remain in accordance with the time the action of the plot of the play, but the problems of its heroes cause associations with the present.

Ludmila Trautmane © Gallerix.ru