The Moscow Theatre To-day
ABRITISH visitor to Moscow will certainly spend much of his or her time in the theatres. The Moscow citizen regards theatre-going on at least three or four evenings a week as the normal minimum, below which no intelligent citizen should fall. He is extremely proud of his theatres, and of the varied entertainment and instruction which goes on in them, and will see to it that the British visitor is not allowed to- miss this side of the national life.
If, as in my case, that visitor has no Russian, he will find it, of course, quite impossible to come to any clear- cut or fixed judgment on the plays presented. But it is surprising how complete an impression can be gathered of a play in a foreign language if one is accompanied by an intelligent interpreter who will explain the plot in detail beforehand and will then provide a • running whispered commentary on What is taking place on the stage.
The Moscow theatre, just at the moment, is probably in rather an abnormal condition. Following on the tenth anniversary of the Soviet regime, some twenty or thirty special plays on revolutionary and civil war themes were produced, and most of them are still running at the moment. Hence the theatre is probably in a more political and even propagandist mood than it has been for some time. To the foreign visitor, however, the plays of the civil war are intensely interesting. Perhaps the most notable one is The Armoured Train, which has been produced by the First Moseow Art Theatre, the home of Tchekov and the pre-War classics. Indeed, this is the first excursion of the Moscow Art Theatre into revolutionary drama. Previously this great theatre had been accused in Communist circles of not paying enough attention to contemporary life and of ignoring the last ten years of Russian history. The present play has certainly freed it from this charge. It is what we should call a " chronicle play " ; that is to say, it is purely historical in theme, and the scenes have little connexion with- one another, except the thread of contemporary history. They tell a story of incidents in the revolution in Siberia, when the peasants were rising against the White Armies. The chief technical interest of the play was in the extraordinarily successful staging of outdoor events. For example, one scene takes place on the roof of a half-ruined church, which the peasants are using as their rallying point. Another scene depicts a peasant attack on the armoured train as it passes over a railway embankment. Yet another is in the cab of the armoured train itself. One might have thought that such attempts at realism would produce nothing better than the well-known Drury Lane effects. But, somehow or other,. this is not the case ; perfect realism is achieved.
On the other hand, there is little or no drama in the ordinary sense of the word ; simply an extraordinarily ingenious, beautifully acted and, I should think, very faithful picture of Siberian conditions eight or nine years ago, Another famous revolutionary play which was produced some time ago, but which is still running, is Roar China !
This is in the great Meyerhold Theatre, the most revo- lutionary and " progressive " theatre in Moscow. Meyer- hold stands for all that is daring, odd, futuristic, -just as the First Moscow Art Theatre stands for all that is tradi- tional, finished, perfect, and complete in Russian stage life. Meyerhold, himself an active Communist, regards the author's manuscript of a play as delivered to him as " mere plastic material " on which to work as a pro- ducer ; and I am told that the result is often quite un- recognizable by the author. However, in the case of Roar China, at any rate, the result is, in many ways, magnificent. The play is about the revolution in China, and is again largely historical in interest. The scenes alternate between the wharf of a Chinese port and the deck of a British warship which is lying off the town and which is exacting penalties for the alleged murder of an American trader. The scenes on the warship are broad, farcical anti-French, anti-British, and anti- American satire. To the foreign observer they are very interesting. But the coolie scenes were, to my mind, extraordinarily moving and effective, though whether they were true to life or not is more than I can say.
But perhaps the most interesting play which is running in Moscow to-day is called The House of the Turbines.
This has nothing to do with the electrification of Russia, as I thought when first hearing the name, but simply refers to a family called " Turbine," which lived in Kiev during the Revolution. They are an ordinary upper middle class family of -three brothers, a sister, and her husband, - all living together in a big pleasant house in Kiev, and the remarkable thing about the play is that it consists of a decidedly sympathetic account of this family's experiences during the revolutionary years.
I am told that this is the very first play that has been produced in Russia since the War which depicts the Revolution through bourgeois eyes. The young brothers Turbine are all White officers, fighting for the " Hetman," whom the invading Germans have set up as Governor of the Ukraine. During most of the action of the play, it is true, they are fighting not against the Bolsheviks but against Petlura, the quasi-robber, quasi- Nationalist leader who conquered almost the whole of the Ukraine at that period. But what is astonishing Moscow is that each of the White officers is drawn, not as a villain, but as an ordinary human being, with faults and virtues, limitations and gifts, gripped in the vice of circumstances rather than consciously doing ill. The moral of the play is, it is true, orthodox. The " Hetman " is defeated by Petlura and Kiev captured. Months of disorder, robbery, and chaos follow, and the play ends with the sound of the advancing Red Army which is just entering the city. The Turbine family is assembled, - and even the most hostile of them greet the coining of the Reds with tacit relief, since it will at any rate end the chaos which is becoming absolutely intolerable.
But this does not alter the fact that the whole Revo- lution is seen through bourgeois eyes and, on the whole, from the bourgeois point of, view. Such a thing would have been unthinkable, I am told, in Moscow only a few years ago, and a year ago, when the play was first pro- duced, it caused considerable astonishment. The play was attacked hotly in some Communist circles, but M. Lunacharsky, the Commissioner for Education, went to see the play and approved it as free from counter- revolutionary taint. Anyhow, it appears to have been something of a succes de scandale, for it has been running for over a year and its author is said to have made what is for Russia a very large sum of money out of it. I am not suggesting for a moment that the success of -The House of the Turbines has any particular political signi- ficance, but- it shows that the Government has in some respects relaxed the rigidity of the censorship.
There are dozens of other interesting plays performed in Moscow to-day. The well-known Kamerny Theatre plays nightly to crowded houses. Its speciality is light opera, what we should call musical comedy, a very amusing specimen of which, called Sirocco, I saw. This theatre also produces foreign plays. Lately, for example, it has given Shaw's St. Joan and Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms.. On the whole, the Moscow theatre gave me the impression that it was exceedingly alive, that much thoroughly interesting and worth-while work was being done, but that it was not at the moment pro- ducing masterpieces. There is a remarkably high average level and a freedom from commercialism and vulgarity which we do not know in the West, but I doubt whether the new Russia has yet produced a playwright of real
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