Fomenko Fascinates With New Stage Opening

Pyotr Fomenko’s latest production, “Triptych,” is as much a showcase for the director’s spectacular new theater overlooking the Moscow River as it is for the actors he has worked for two decades. It makes sense that he would christen his new small stage with a key group of the performers who came to him as raw material in the late 1980s, studied under him as students in the early 1990s and then were with him to found his now-famous Fomenko Studio in the mid-’90s.

But, although the company opened a new venue two years ago, the small stage had not yet been unveiled to the public. Now, with the premiere of “Triptych,” based on works by Alexander Pushkin and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, this stage is revealed to have glorious potential.

As one would expect of Fomenko, he is subtle about his use of the space. When we enter the theater, we find that much of the foyer is roped off. Just beyond the barriers lie a handful of odd items, including, say, a black, feathered Spanish hat. If you think that someone merely forgot to pick it up after the last rehearsal, you are underestimating Fomenko. This director wastes no gestures.

Still, the first of the three segments unfolds relatively routinely. This is Pushkin’s “Count Nulin,” a poem about the encounter of a bored woman from the provinces and a dashing, unexpected visitor while the former’s husband is away on a hunting trip.

Fomenko’s cast, fronted by Karen Badalov as the traveling count and Galina Tyunina as the wife-at-home, plays the piece for as much irony, even burlesque, as they can muster. Badalov hobbles around on what appears to be a wooden leg that repeatedly makes a nuisance of itself in a phallic sort of way. Tyunina is all flutter and satire as her character tests the notion of infidelity but is delivered from that disgrace at the last moment.

Hovering over them on an aerial platform is Kirill Pirogov with a curly wig on his head, a glint in his eye and an old-fashioned quill in his hand. He looks suspiciously like Pushkin, a notion supported by the fact that he usually knows the words that the actors speak before they utter them.

Fomenko and his designer Vladimir Maximov make use of a high balcony around the stage and small auditorium to give us a sense of expanded space.

But it is the second piece, Pushkin’s “The Stone Guest,” here titled “O, Donna Anna!” where bits of magic happen. The back wall of the small stage is drawn open and the expansive, two-tiered foyer, with all its stairs and balconies, suddenly becomes a part of the theatrical setting. This allows for action to take place obscurely in the distance — such as the Spanish profligate Don Guan’s excursion through the crypt where one of his victims, the husband of Donna Anna, lies buried — while some scenes are played out right before our eyes.

The shifting perspectives strongly affect the atmosphere. The close-ups are warm and intimate; the scenes played in the distance are colder and abstract.

The close-ups, visually inspired by sumptuous Renaissance genre paintings, mostly feature Don Guan (Kirill Pirogov) visiting his good-natured former lover Laura (Madlen Dzhabrailova) and the more mysterious and unforgettable Anna (Tyunina). These are beautiful vignettes of love as a game, love as entertainment, love as passion and love as a spiritual entity that cannot be eradicated.

Dzhabrailova is fetching as the wise and lively Laura. Pirogov and Tyunina make an achingly tender pair of star-crossed lovers.

Part Three enacts excerpts from Goethe’s “Faust,” with Pirogov playing the scholar in search of knowledge and Badalov playing his tempter Mephistopheles. The cutting, ironic picture of romance in “Count Nulin,” and the sensuality of “O, Donna Anna!” are recast in this culminating segment as sarcasm bordering on mockery. Innocence and passion are dispensed with, leaving crass cynicism and a vaguely alluring but feeble sense of memory about idealism and purity.

The “Faust” section is dominated by grotesque figures from beyond the grave outfitted in ghoulish costumes designed by Maria Danilova. So much so, in fact, that these scenes surely are less reminiscent of a philosophical drama than of a comic book or graphic novel.

At 3 1/2 hours with two intermissions, “Triptych” makes for a long evening. But it is fascinating to see what Fomenko does with that beautiful space of his. And those fleeting moments that Don Guan shares with his lovers seem downright eternal.

“Triptych” plays Sun., Feb. 6, 10, 16 and 27 at 7 p.m. at the Fomenko Studio, located at 29 Naberezhnaya Tarasa Shevchenko. Metro Kutuzovskaya. Tel. 249-1921. Running time: 3 hours, 30 minutes.