Reviewed by John Freedman
The numbers, when it comes to the final curtain, will be downright
humble. A
twenty-month run. Fifty-six shows
performed in ten cities for an estimated
70,000 spectators.
For perspective, compare that to the
Blue Bird" which, in various forms, has been performed more
than 4,600 times
over a 94-year period. Or the Beatles playing a one-night stand at
Shea
Stadium for 100,000.
Still, when Oleg Menshikov's production of Maxim Kurochkin's
"Kitchen"
closes on Tuesday, it will be a milestone. This is a
show that, arguably,
stirred more passions than any other in recent
memory in
opened in November 2000, critics frothed at the mouth
and tumbled head over
heels in search of the snidest epithets and the most
damning verbs.
It was ridiculed as everything from pop fluff to cryptic
intellectual
balderdash. It was the first time in recent history
that a contemporary play
had served as the basis for such a large-scale
commercial production and
many did not know how to react. Meanwhile, the
residents of
busily being divided into two distinct groups: those
who had seen the show
and everybody else. That is a state of affairs that
has continued to the
present day.
There is no question but that "Kitchen" became a cult
item in large part
because it starred and was directed by
Menshikov. Kurochkin, who is now 32,
admits that being plucked out of obscurity to write
the play for the matinee
idol was rather like "Luke Skywalker being
given free access to the black
box."
"I knew basically what would happen when I got the
offer," the native of
change a person's fate, to alter the level of
attention that people will pay
to anyone working with him."
Menshikov's status is still not enough to explain the sustained
and often
fanatic responses to this weird and wonderful production,
however. His
previous and subsequent productions of classic
plays, Griboyedov's "Woe from
Wit" (1998) and Gogol's "The Gamblers"
(2001), were unquestionably and
uncommonly popular. But they did not whip up the
maelstrom that rose around
"Kitchen," a wild and woolly tragic epic with farcical
detours in which
modern Russian workers in a kitchen are revealed to be
Nibelungs locked in
an ancient battle to the death among themselves
and with invading Huns.
This, after all, is a play that many spectators will admit they do
not
understand except in the simplest of terms. It
confuses them no end, and --
surprise! -- they love
it all the more for that.
The depth of the play is what struck many in the theater world.
Olga
Subbotina, one of
after the show opened. "Contemporary authors are
afraid to speak in elevated
language," she said at the time.
"Kurochkin is not. He writes monologues
that can be compared to 'to be or not to be.'
'Kitchen' may not be a perfect
work, but segments of it are on the level of a
masterpiece."
"Kitchen" has something of a built-in personality split.
On one hand, it is
a pop happening and is proud of it. Aside from
jokes about Beavis and
Butthead, the internet, inane beer ads and the flip
"wisdom" of glossy
women's magazines, one popular scene has a
character cracking a linguistic
pun based on Menshikov's name. The kitsch is out in
the open and it's all in
fun. On the other hand, the play and its production
come together in a
tremendously ambitious work of
dramatic art. Here is a work that raises the
specter of social ills inexorably emerging from
historical processes while
posing challenging questions about guilt and
responsibility for betrayal,
for murder and for the sin of ignoring one's own
sins.
The show works as a pop spectacle and it works as poetic,
thought-provoking
art because its creators made it voluminous enough
to hold a multitude of
contradictions.
"'Kitchen' is a very baroque work," Kurochkin explains.
"It is excessive in
its devices, its colors and its textures. Its set
is excessive. Even I, who
wrote a play of excess, was amazed at the excess that
Oleg put into his
handling of the play."
The significance of Menshikov setting out to stage a box office
hit on the
basis of a strange play by an unknown writer cannot
be overstated. In fact,
Menshikov was determined to do something out of the ordinary. When
he heard
about Kurochkin -- essentially, an unproduced
playwright with a reputation
for writing unwieldy plays mixing different nations
and historical eras --
he invited him in for a chat.
"The ideas of the kitchen, the medieval castle setting and
the modern Slavic
heroes who are caught in a prank of some kind all
belonged to Oleg,"
explains Kurochkin. "He had already decided
on the title when I came to meet
him."
Work on giving flesh to Menshikov's ideas was long and arduous.
Officially
commissioned in the summer of 1999,
the first draft was delivered late --
and rejected -- only in the winter. Plans to open
the show in January 2000
were repeatedly pushed back as Kurochkin did
rewrites. Even after the show
opened nearly a year later than planned, Menshikov,
for months, continued to
demand rewrites, fine-tuning and cuts.
"'Kitchen' was constructed on the principle of a Roman city,
where we built
everything on the ruins of previously abandoned
ideas," declares the author.
This process naturally led to differences in opinion, although Kurochkin
ever remained the team player, fighting for his own
ideas only until
Menshikov convinced him changes were inevitable. However, when the
public
finally reads the version Kurochkin plans to
publish soon, the play will
look quite different in parts from the production of
it.
"The published text will be something of a polemic with
Oleg's staged
version," the author admits. "I would
like the tragic theme to be clearer.
And I will restore my own finale, which is very important to
me."
In this excised scene, the lawyer, a slippery character who plays
something
of a devil's advocate from beginning to end, has a
crowning monologue that
ends with the words, "Nothing ever indicated a
tragedy was in the making!"
In other words, says Kurochkin, the lawyer lies through his teeth,
something
no audience could miss.
For Kurochkin, the publishing of the play and the closing of the
production,
will provide him an opportunity for a new beginning.
He recently finished
writing a new play with the working title of
"Tsurikov," about a man going,
literally, to hell and back, and next fall his
major adaptation of George
Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" -- pushing the story back
into the 19th century
-- will open in
"I know the danger that lies ahead if I continue to live and
breathe
'Kitchen'," he explains. "I could easily get caught up
in a whole 'How I
Worked With Oleg Menshikov' industry. In
fact, when I'm writing now, I am
extremely careful to cut anything that echoes the
intonations of 'Kitchen.'"
One story he could tell was how a drunken binge finally got him
over a
debilitating case of writer's block.
"I would wake up in the morning and think, 'My God! I'm
writing a play for
Oleg Menshikov and nothing is working!' I couldn't get that out of
my head
until I went out and got dead drunk one night and
blew the cobwebs out. The
next morning I sat down and wrote the
prologue."
Make no mistake, however. Despite his almost gallant reverence for
Menshikov
and his reputation, Kurochkin knows the value of
what he has done. "One way
or another, I expected some sort of 'Kitchen' to
happen in my life," he
declares. "But what a joy it has been that
it happened as it did. I believe
Oleg lost nothing by taking the chance he did on 'Kitchen.'"
Is Kurochkin sad to see the play closing?
"Of course. As a person I'd love it
to go on forever. But you also have to
know when to cut things loose. I'm happy the show is
bowing out in good
working form. My task now is to go out and show
that 'Kitchen' was a
promising debut and not a dubious end to a
career."
***The final two performances of "Kitchen" (Kukhnya), a
production of the
814 Theatrical Agency, take place Mon. and Tues. at
Theater, 16 Bolshaya Sadovaya Ulitsa. Metro
Mayakovskaya. Running time: 3
hours, 15 minutes.***