Russia (bbabo.net), - "Christmas Festival" in Novosibirsk - the oldest art show in the Siberian capital. Invented and conducted by the Globus Theater since 1995, over a quarter of a century it has changed its format more than once, expanded its geography, but still invariably attracts Novosibirsk residents and guests to performances, concerts, exhibitions and lectures. Inside the festival, now held every two years, there is a program called "Novosibirsk Case" - it presents new productions of theaters in the city, famous for its rich cultural life.

Twelve drama, puppet and musical groups participated in the 2021 case. The three leaders are, of course, the hosts of the festival, who presented three performances on the big and small stages, and the Old House and Red Torch theaters, which showed two performances each. Some of them are already known in other cities for touring shows and are nominated for the "Golden Mask" of the last season, like "Time Out" of the Red Flarers and "Dancing in the Dark" in the "Old House". Both performances were staged by invited directors, and despite all the difference in themes, artistic solutions and creative manners of the creators, they reveal a common denominator - the figure of Lars von Trier as the scriptwriter in one case and the creator of the Dogma aesthetics in the other.

Pyotr Shereshevsky staged Marina Krapivina's play as a gaze into the unremarkable fate of an ordinary middle-aged woman. Luda is a social worker, a single mother, the one on whom everyone rides - from the capricious elderly wards to her own daughter and married lover. The stage is divided in half horizontally: the lower half is the cramped rows of the supermarket, where actors and cameramen move among empty shelves, the upper half is a screen where close-ups of the characters and angles are broadcast, in which details of the props and parts of the scenery turn out to be apartments, public places, etc. etc. This game of documentary, the virtuosity of building the frame and the psychological accuracy of the actors' work in it explode with musical episodes, when the ensemble, the heroine, and gigantic projections of significant figures for her appear on the stage - the boss or the pop artist with whom Luda is in love. The most interesting acting works are those of Irina Krivonos (Luda), Oleg Mayboroda (her impudent blunt lover) and Denis Ganin, who changes his face from an old man to a pop star.

In the chamber work of Elizaveta Bondar in the Old House theater, there is a concentrated melodrama of Trier's plot - a blind immigrant orphan Selma, a single mother with a sick child, works hard to save up for eye surgery, was robbed by a neighbor policeman, slandered and sentenced to death - served with maximum dryness, hardness and detachment. The director puts the action in an iron bunker; clanking instead of music, monotony of intonations and memorized gestures of the characters - everything seems to be in the grip of the roles assigned by life, no one can jump over their determinism. In addition to Selma - Vera Sergeeva plays her wretched, skewed, with an idiotic smile, shuffling dancing - this last of the people turns out to be the strongest of all and the only one who makes fate turn in its own way, albeit at the cost of life.

Another significant work in the "Old House" is "Anna Karenina". In the version of artistic director Andrei Prikotenko, Anna (Albina Lozovaya) and Vronsky (Alexander Vostrukhin) are perfect, like angels, sinless in their love, intended for each other and separated by circumstances and surroundings. Walking along a long narrow stage like on an apron, they are doomed from the very beginning. The most complex and controversial figure is Karenin (Anatoly Grigoriev), a tormented tormentor, a domestic manipulator, a statesman who does not have the will to control himself. Some semantic incongruities in a radically modernized interpretation are redeemed by the mentally naked existence that the actors of the troupe possess.

In Globus, the most interesting new works were shown on the small stage - Boys by Artyom Terekhin, who staged the story of V. Krapivin, and The General and His Family by Alexei Kriklivy based on the novel by T. Kibirov.The recollection returns the adult Gena (Vladimir Derbentsev) to the circle of courtyard friends of his post-war childhood, and this recollection, the playing (in the literal musical sense - on stage, musicians accompany the action) of the plot of a piercing childhood friendship turns out to be the main event of his life. This concert presentation becomes a way of distance - not only for the adult hero in relation to his childhood, but also for the spectator of the 21st century, far from the romantic myth of courtyard fraternity, kites and wind as a metaphor for freedom. The naivety of the Krapivinsky world in the play is even more removed by a pair of carpet-bearers - bearded actors (Alexei Arkhipov and Alexander Petrov) play babies, immediately turning childish babble into a subject of comic pseudoscientific analysis. The Krapivinsky Boys take to the stage, which looks like a sports ground covered with green grass. Young actors Alexander Lipovsky, Stanislav Skakunov, Alexey Kornev and Denis Vaskov play without a shadow of travesty, and this is a possible idea of ​​the early adulthood of the then schoolchildren. "To become a man" - for an adult hero, the mantra of the elders turns out to be a trick - he and his friends were just a man in their maximum degree of loyalty, courage and indifference in childhood.

"The General and His Family" is a new text for the theater; in the play by Alexei Kriklivy, Timur Kibirov's novel turns into a fairy tale about a distant northern garrison. The intensity of life here with its passions, deep interests and the true humanity of the heroes is equal to its brilliance - and the capital in the last part of the play loses to the town lost in the snows, presenting itself as a gloomy citadel where heroes are extinguished both externally and internally.

Karine Bulgach dressed the stage and the characters with sly simplicity: movable plywood partitions with rare objects of Soviet everyday life are turning into a barracks and a library, into an apartment and a club, into a river and an airport. Provincial retro costumes are far from literal - they are bright stylizations reinforced with thick thicknesses, exorbitant mustaches, eyebrows, noses, eyelashes, etc. The subtle and precise proportion of eccentricity and psychologism, the stylistically sustained existence of the actors in a very bold comic drawing and at the same time in complete psychological reliability makes the performance an event not only of the festival, but also of the season. The depth and at the same time the caricature of all the characters make the audience either laugh or swallow a lump in their throat. The harsh general Bochazhok (Ilya Pankov) over and over again overturns the anecdotal ideas about the perfect Soviet soldier, which he allegedly initially produces. His hero turns out to be loving, empathetic, courageous and intelligent, at his best in every situation in which life puts him. There are three more brilliant works in the play - Anastasia Belinskaya as the spoiled daughter of General Anechka, Svetlana Ganina as his wife Traviata, and Ekaterina Bobrova as Anechka’s friend Mashka. The scattering of roles - from human to canine - makes Arthur Avdotchenko unrecognizable in everyone. Here they argue about poetry and history, talk about love and live love, lose loved ones and sacrifice themselves - and all together they add up to a three-hour scenic portrait of the country, both recognizable, and nostalgic, and grotesque.

There is no doubt that the generous theatrical soil of Novosibirsk will bring equally interesting results to the next festival.

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