MASCHA SLOËVA

DAS GROßE FEUER

"It is an art of pure form, without a social agenda, without a new and old ethics. Without interpretation". Tatiana Kuzovchikova, Teatrologia

"This darkness cannot be described in words...". In the concert performance of The Great Fire, the text by the contemporary German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig enters into a complex, monotonous relationship with the musical passages. At the piano, Peter Laul plays Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert. On stage is Maria Lopatina: a fragile Pierrot with broken plasticity in a golden jabot. A soft voice weaves a tapestry of pastoral lace about two families separated by a river. But the idyll is short-lived: good neighborliness cannot withstand poverty, and natural disasters and human intolerance are reflected in each other like the banks of a river. The empty space, lit only by polychrome halogen lamps, is both carnivalesque and sinister: at the mention of Mass, the cheerful lights suddenly make the audience shy away. The play is written in a poetic, unbroken line, and the director, Oleg Eremin, has arranged the words on the stage in a symphonic, syncopated rhythm. The actress is a virtuoso in a flamboyant and extravagant set, where the expression of the dance suddenly interrupts the melodious sound of the voice when the darkness can no longer be described in words.