Raikh planned to play it. With her body. I think it's the only male role in world literature that women have attempted. And now suddenly a fat Hamlet. With a loud voice, full of vitality.
When Akimov informed the theater authorities of his project, they were also surprised. There didn't seem to be anything to forbid here.
And in any case, this concept didn't reek of reactionary mysticism. On the contrary, it gave off the healthy smell of alcohol. For Hamlet, according to Akimov, was a merry, cheerful, and hard-working man who enjoyed his drink. Actually, there wasn't anyone who didn't in this unique version. Gertrude, Claudius, Polonius, even Ophelia, drank. In Akimov's version, Ophelia drowns because she's drunk. In the language of a medical examiner's report: "an autopsy revealed traces of heavy alcoholic intoxication." The gravediggers spoke thus: "To drink or not to drink-that is the question." The doubter was set straight:
"�hat question? Of course, to drink." The dialogue was written specially for this scene.
Now about the struggle for power. This struggle became the central theme of Hamlet for Akimov. The struggle for the crown. And none of the traditional pangs of guilt, the doubts, and so on. I'm sick of that struggle for power, the eternal theme of art. You can't get away from it. Particularly in our times. So. Hamlet pretends to be mad the better
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to trick Claudius. Akimov calculated that in the play Hamlet feigns madness seventeen times. Akimov's Hamlet wages a persistent and clever fight for the throne. There is no Ghost, as I said. Hamlet himself impersonates the Ghost. He does that to frighten and terrorize the courtiers. Hamlet wants to present an important witness for his side, from. the other world, to have the witness confirm that Claudius is on the throne illegally. And so the scene of the Ghost's appearance was staged as pure comedy.
As for "To be or not to be,'' Hamlet spoke the lines weighing the crown in his hands. He tried it on, twirled it every which way. His relations with Ophelia, a bitch and a spy, were unambiguous. Hamlet was screwing her. And Ophelia, pregnant, got drunk and drowned herself.
Polonius was marvelous. This was perhaps the acting triumph of Akimov's production (another of his paradoxes). The famous Boris Shchukin played the role. Later Shchukin became even more famous 89
as the first actor to portray Lenin on the screen. Or rather, as the first professional actor upon whom such a historic mission was bestowed.
Shchukin, like Akimov, was a very nasty man. He tried various approaches to the role of Polonius. But nothing seemed to work at first. I later got to know Shchukin better, when he was putting on a Balzac play in his theater and asked me to write the music. It was then that Shchukin revealed a small secret of his success in Hamlet.
I think the story is interesting and quite educational for actors. A small lesson in the art of acting. I laughed heartily when I heard it.
Shchukin wanted to get away from the cliches. Polonius's part isn't very clear. He seems clever and at the same time rather stupid. He can be a "noble father," that's how he behaved with his son. But in relation to his daughter he's a panderer. Usually Polonius's appearances are boring for the audience. But the audience is used to it and bears it.
The feeling is that if it's a classic, you have to bear certain things. You must have respect for the classics.
This was Shchukin's method. He found traits and characteristics in his friends that would help him create a role, and that's what he did with Polonius. He took something from one friend and something else from another. And then at a rehearsal Shchukin tried reading Polonius's monologue as though he were Stanislavsky.
And suddenly the role began taking shape. Everything fell into place. Even the most difficult parts of the role, when spoken in the manner and from the persona of Stanislavsky, suddenly sounded convincing. Shchukin copied Stanislavsky impeccably. You could cry laughing. The result was something majestic and slightly stupid. The man lives comfortably, very well, yet he prattles on with this nonsense.
That's how Shchukin portrayed Stanislavsky.
There were many jokes about Stanislavsky then. He understood nothing about what they call "surrounding reality." Sometimes when Stanislavsky appeared at rehearsal in the Art Theater (and that was becoming rare), the actors were horrified by his stupid questions, particularly if they were rehearsing a play about Soviet life.
One of the comedies, Squaring the Circle, for instance, revolved around the fact that two families were living in one room. Well, two weren't that many in those days. If the room was large, it could be divided into three and even four sections. And there was no talk of a lux-90
ury like an apartment. An apartment could hold ten or fifteen families.
There was a housing shortage, what could you do?
Fine words: communal apartment. The phenomenon must be immortalized, so that even our distant descendants know what a communal apartment is. Zoshchenko is incomparable here. He sings this song: "Of course, having our own separate apartment is nothing but a petty-bourgeois dream. We must live together, in collective harmony, and not lock ourselves up in our own fortresses. We must live in communal apartments. You're surrounded by people. There are people to talk to. To advise. To punch."
And it's easier to make a statement or, to put it bluntly, a denunciation, about your neighbor, since your neighbor's life is on display. Everything is visible-who came, what time he left, who visited whom, who his friends are. What a person cooks for dinner is also visible, since the kitchen, obviously, is communal. You can peek into your neighbor's pot when he steps out. You can pour in more salt. Let him eat something salty if he's so smart. And you can add something else.
For his appetite, for better taste.
There are plenty of diversions in a communal kitchen. Some like to spit into the neighbor's pot. Others limit spitting to teapots. It calls for certain skills, after all. You have to wait for the person to leave the kitchen, rush over to the teapot, pull off the cover, and cough up lots of sputum. It's important not to scald yourself. There is the element of risk. The person might come back any second. If he catches you, he'll punch you in the face.
It's as Zoshchenko said: learned secretaries should be housed with learned secretaries, dentists with dentists, and so on. And people who play flutes should be settled outside of town. Then life in communal apartments will shine in its full glory.
Yes, we need, we really do need, epochal and monumental works on the deathless theme of the communal apartment. The communal apartment must be captured, depicted, glorified, and proclaimed. This is the duty of our art, of our literature.
I confess here that I also tried to take part in the common cause. To wit, to depict this misery in music. I tried to create a musical composition on this immortal theme. I wanted to show that you can kill a man in many ways, not just physical ones. Not only by shooting, say, or 91
through hard labor. You can kill the human being in a man through simple things, by life style, for example, by the infernal communal apartment or kommunalka, as we all call it. May it rot in hell.
This is not a theme for comedy. I mean, not for chuckles and laugh""