An Adventure Gone Bad

The 1920s went down as one of the richest decades for dramatic writing in Soviet history. Following the hard years encompassing the Revolution and Civil War, there appeared a fresh generation of writers who spoke a new language and explored new kinds of heroes and problems. The highest achievements of the time, the plays of Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Erdman and Mikhail Bulgakov, are still performed throughout Russia and the world 80 years on.

But there was a multitude of popular playwrights pumping out new works for theaters in those days. The names now may not say much to anyone but specialists, although they still carry the flavor and the echoes of an entire era: Alexander Afinogenov, Alexander Bezymensky, Vladimir Bill-Belotserkovsky, Sergei Tretyakov and Boris Romashov, to mention just a few.

And then there was Alexei Faiko. Judging by the extant photos and portraits, Faiko was born with worry on his brow. His lucid, sad-sack gaze hardly changed from the 1920s, when he was around 30 years old, to the early 1960s, when he had just a little over a decade left to live. His face, soft and round as the moon, made a fitting frame for the wide, circular lenses of the glasses that he wore from earliest childhood and that invariably made his knowing, thoughtful eyes seem even bigger than they were.

Faiko penned some of the most talked-about plays of the 1920s: "Lake Lyul," "Bubus the Teacher," "Yevgraf, Seeker of Adventure" and "The Man with the Briefcase." He touched on themes that were crucial at the time -- the collapse of old social orders, people struggling to make new lives in unfamiliar times, intellectuals seeking to apply their talents in a rapidly changing society, shysters striving to make hay while they could. The success of these plays was no mean feat -- four hits of varying magnitude in relatively quick succession between the years 1921 and 1928. And, yet, eventually, every one of them disappeared beneath the obscuring layers of dust that passing time deposits.

Enter Tatyana Akhramkova, who is currently finishing her first season as the artistic director at the Stanislavsky Drama Theater. On the 80th anniversary of the premiere of "Yevgraf, Seeker of Adventure" at the Moscow Art Theater II -- a playhouse that occupied the building now housing the Theater of Nations on Petrovsky Pereulok, near Pushkin Square -- Akhramkova blew the dust off of Faiko's play and buffed it up for a new world and a new century.

Perhaps against all odds, "Yevgraf" emerges as a remarkably stageworthy piece of writing. In many ways it is an actor's dream -- its dialogues are clever, natural and dynamic. They give a performer plenty of room to move at the same time that they provide him or her with a strong structure and good dramatic support. I had never seen this play produced and I hadn't read it in two decades, so as I watched Akhramkova's production I was struck by the fact that the exchanges often sounded like something straight out of the classics. Faiko built this play to last, and, it would seem now, it has done just that.

We're not talking flawless, of course. The enormous number of characters coming and going can make your head spin. Faiko imagined more than 40 people surrounding his title character, a ne'er-do-well whose dreamy personality gets him in more trouble than he can handle; Akhramkova cut that down to under 30. Most are episodic figures, and, indeed, the action bounces forward relatively energetically from episode to episode. But as short as some segments are, the production could benefit from even more cutting. As we wend our way toward the finale some 3 1/2 hours down the road, there occasionally is a sense that we have taken in more than we can digest.

But whatever the individual flaws and shortcomings, this play, and Akhramkova's production of it, seem nothing like an old forgotten shoe. It has the feel of something we recognize because we have known it all along.

The sensitive and ambitious Yevgraf (Yevgeny Samarin) works in a barbershop but doesn't know much about cutting hair. He's just biding his time until a better opportunity comes along. That occurs when he hears a circus dancer needs to have her hair coifed before a performance. He arranges to do the job himself and begins dreaming about escaping with the circus. His dreams become doubly effervescent when he senses that the perky dancer Betty (Cecile Plaige) might be open to his attentions, in part because her boss, Oskar (Vladimir Sazhin), is such an abusive brute. Before that nebulous relationship has a chance to develop, however, Yevgraf finds himself slipping slowly into the cruel grip of fate.

A temper tantrum he throws one day at the barbershop catches the cynical eye of Rudenko (Viktor Kinakh), a bored man looking to entertain the jaded members of his high-society salon, which includes the fanatical filmmaker Zazorny (Vladislav Golk), the clueless writer Rafalchik (Alexander Miloserdov), the wealthy and arrogant Abram Matveyevich (Mikhail Remizov), his extravagant sweetheart Dina (Diana Rakhimova) and a couple of floozies. Rudenko invites Yevgraf to his next party and the naive barber ends up reciting his amateurish poetry to the bold guffaws of the guests.

It is an affront the thin-skinned adventurer cannot forgive. And when the shadowy Oskar reappears with a plan to rob Abram Matveyevich's apartment, Yevgraf is caught like a fish on a hook. The robbery naturally goes awry, leading to murder, chaos and the end of Yevgraf's innocent, poorly conceived dreams.

Akhramkova stages the end of Yevgraf's road as a kind of mini-marathon of the sweetest, most pungent dreams a man could imagine. All of the women from his life gather around his prone body and fuss over him with gentle caresses and lulling voices.

In this production, Yevgraf emerges as a tragic figure, a creative, if undisciplined, soul who runs up against the crass realities of greed, cruelty and indifference. As played by Samarin, he is a rare flower waiting to be trampled underfoot. The actor gives his antihero just enough of a justifiable sense of hope and purpose to make his ultimate fall all the more painful. But as created by Faiko, Yevgraf is not merely a wistful romantic. And Samarin is equally good at coloring in his character's darker, less admirable sides.

There are a number of impressive and intriguing characterizations besides Samarin's. Rakhimova's Dina is larger than life, a real treasure trove of witty feminine wiles. Remizov's Abram Matveyevich is deceptively ambiguous at the beginning and convincingly malicious when he begins pushing Yevgraf beyond the limits of his patience. As Olga Ivanovna, the barbershop cashier who is hopelessly in love with Yevgraf, Natalya Pavlenkova several times strikes crystal-clear notes of despair and spiritual resilience.

Akhramkova's resurrection job on this long-forgotten play must be counted as one of the most unexpected and pleasant surprises of the season. Once lost, now found, Faiko's "Yevgraf, Seeker of Adventure" is still quite capable of communicating something of value to an audience eight decades after it was written.

"Yevgraf, Seeker of Adventure" (Yevgraf, Iskatel Priklyuchenii) plays June 29 at 7 p.m. at the Stanislavsky Drama Theater, located at 23 Tverskaya Ulitsa. Metro Pushkinskaya. Tel. 299-7224, 299-7621. www.teatr-stanislavsky.ru. Running time: 3 hours, 25 minutes.