Better crazy and happy than healthy and bland. This is how Chekhov’s novella “The Black Monk” can be summed up in one sentence. In 1893, Anton Chekhov transformed this formula for self-assertion used by all artists who despair of the normality of their environment into a strongly personal story, in which he even foresaw his death from tuberculosis in 1904. And in which he described himself as a “genius”, which probably no reader could accuse him of being vain, after all his main character Kowrin, profession: genius, was only recognizable as an alter ego for those who knew him well.
The blood-spitting, overworked, sleepless writer of freedom prose who flees to the country to live with simple people to escape the stress of the big city, who has visions there that declare him a powerful changemaker, this is Chekhov talking about Chekhov. A year earlier he had bought the Melikhovo estate near Moscow, cared for poor people and a garden there. This garden, a place whose thriving depends on fixed rules and the gardener’s cleverness to outwit the vagaries of the climate, is both a yearning and an antidote to Chekhov’s dream of happiness. And a political metaphor for the director.
Because Kirill Serebrennikow, who was surprisingly allowed to fly from Moscow to Hamburg at the beginning of the year after five years of state harassment, after trials, house arrest and a travel ban to complete his production of “The Black Monk” at the Thalia Theater on site, likes this character also mirror. The narrowness of a morally restricted world without imagination, which threatens all artistic freedom, corresponds to today’s Russia under autocratic rule 130 years ago. But Serebrennikov does not formulate this parallel confrontationally. Rather, he hides his message in a course that leads from Chekhov’s life theme, boredom, into a pathetic oratorio of hopeful imperatives: Be a genius! Be happy! Step out from the flock and be happy!
In the cosmos of Kirill Serebrennikow: The Russian director also designed the stage set for his production in Hamburg.
(Photo: Krafft Angerer)
This is sung by a convent of black monks as the optimistic finale to the production. The power of the director to have emerged unbroken from state discipline is increased towards the end of the jubilee. And that didn’t fail to have an effect on the audience, who almost all stood up to applause and cheered the ensemble of Russian, German, American, Armenian and Latvian actors and actresses as well as Serebrennikov’s show. Perhaps to the amazement of the rest. Because in a geopolitical situation in which another Russian attack on Ukraine is to be expected, this celebration of individualistic happiness may seem strange.
But this odd euphoria is just one angle of Kowrin’s story. In four narrative perspectives, Serebrennikov repeats the content of how the disturbed artist first seeks relaxation in stable family structures, then with his delusional image of the monk, who praises him as an exceptional person, thinks he has found his destiny, only to be finally cured of this delusion in a madhouse – with what his life spirit also dies. In a tough first sequence around three wooden greenhouses (stage: Serebrennikow), which herself cannot free herself from the boredom of the ruminating country life she describes, the story is told from the point of view of Kowrin’s foster father, the passionate orchardist (Bernd Grawert ) told for the first time.
It is also overwhelming theater – with church choirs, dervish dances and lecherous ballet
After these folk theater-like scenes that evoke some prejudices about village people to be decent but ordinary, the first iteration of the story opens up an exciting perspective. Obstgärtner’s daughter Tanja, who marries Kovrin in the mistaken hope of finding peace, tells a story of female hurt. Gabriela Maria Schmeide as the “older” Tanja (the young one is played by Viktoria Miroshnichenko as a naïve village beauty) dissects the vanities of the men with an analytical eye, which all lead to misfortune. Harsh, but fair, this Tanja delivers the only truly modern commentary on Chekhov’s genius story about the egocentric man – who, however, is allowed to expand bizarrely again in the next repetition.
Three Kowrins – Mirco Kreibich, Odin Biron and Philipp Avdeev – meet the monk (Gurgen Tsaturyan) and eleven duplications for the first time in version three. After popular theater and critical realism, Serebrennikov now switched to choreography. Madness is outlined as an expressive way of life in three temperaments in front of dark images that serve to juxtapose the masses and the individual. However, it remains unclear whether the self-absorbed wildness of the three geniuses serves to justify their inability to live or is a criticism of their selfishness.
And so the task of interpreting the artist’s schizophrenia between norm and vision is assigned to the fourth act. In front of the fallen garden houses, the monk’s perspective on what is happening in the theater of overpowering unleashes itself. The great black instigator of difference brings thunderous beats and church choirs, dervish dances and lecherous ballet, swirling lights and mad-grimacing big planets to portray the psychic cosmos of a genius. And the black monk, as a good advisor, sends a summary of good news into the world as the last sentence: Don’t be afraid! Does that really help?