Pryazhko Challenges Mainstream With 'Life'

Pavel Pryazhko is anything but a household name. But the playwright from Belarus has turned plenty of heads. It's enough to note that at last week's opener of his latest play, "Life Is Grand," three major Moscow playwrights were in attendance in the tiny hall at Teatr.doc. They can smell it when something is beginning to happen.

It would be hard to imagine "Life Is Grand" ever breaking into the mainstream. Its language, its characters and its plot -- to the extent that there is one -- are not the kinds that masses are going to clamor to see. Before the beginning of this show, which is produced jointly by the Playwright and Director Center and Teatr.doc, co-director Mikhail Ugarov warned the audience that there were more obscenities in this play than in any other he has seen. "Just look at it as if it were a necessary stylistic device," he urged the spectators with an ironic smile.

The device, indeed, is probably unavoidable, since the four characters are young, aimless drunkards and ne'er-do-wells. And you almost have to wonder if this, the questionable moral makeup of these people, is more off-putting than their language. Four people off the wall, with absolutely no idea of what they are doing or where they are going -- drinking, fighting, getting married, cheating, getting divorced and drinking and fighting some more. On the surface, anyway, it's all pretty basic and trite.

But, you see? That's where art comes in.

Ugarov and co-director Marat Gatsalov found a very simple, but very effective, way to bring out the best in Pryazhko's play. The performance begins as a play reading, with the actors sitting in chairs on stage, reading their parts -- including the stage directions -- out of scripts. Almost imperceptibly, this "reading" turns into an actual performance. The chairs lined neatly in rows by designer Ksenia Peretrukhina are shuffled around and bunched into groups. Words begin jumping up off the page. Characters become real people.

The biggest reason for this transformation is the quartet of actors. Their superb, ironic, light-hearted performances keep afloat what might otherwise be a heavy play. Anna Yegorova plays the 18-year-old schoolgirl Lena with a blushing face and a ready smile. Alexandra Rebenok is Lena's classmate, the enigmatic but generous Anzhela. Daniil Vorobyov is something of a loose cannon, a phys-ed teacher named Vadim, who has no qualms about chasing both his students. Konstantin Gatsalov is Vadim's older brother, also a phys-ed teacher who wants to marry Lena but whose real passion in life is to drink.

How do you play people slumming around and making a mess of life -- their own and everybody else's? In this case, you do it with affection, understatement, understanding and humor. By leaving out physical representations of bloody fights and sexual assaults and representing them by having the actors read the author's descriptions, directors Ugarov and Gatsalov pulled off a major coup -- there is nothing naturalistic or realistic about this performance. It seems to hang somewhere above reality, above the earth, on which the characters walk.

A fifth actor, Nikita Yemshanov, plays a trio of roles: a minibus driver, an old lady passerby and the brothers' mother. He handles all three roles exactly the same -- with a deadpan face and a buoyant but almost monotone voice. This blur of sameness, apparently, is what the rest of the world looks like to the four people heading for a crash.

In time, the remnants of humanity still left in these alcohol-ridden losers begin shining through. Whether or not you ever go so far as to care about them, or even sympathize with them, is surely a personal matter for every spectator. If backed into a corner, I would probably admit that I couldn't care less about them. Aren't these about the biggest cliches you can imagine? Crude, clueless, uncouth slobs not only accepting but wallowing in all the ignorance and destructive escapism of their age?

But that, surely, is one of the strengths of this production. Thanks to subtle directing and superb and seductive acting, it encourages us to take a second look at what we would prefer to ignore. And that's never a bad thing.

If your idea of theater is "The Sound of Music" or Neil Simon, do yourself a favor and stay away from "Life Is Grand." If your tastes tend to lead you off the beaten path, don't miss it.

"Life Is Grand" (Zhizn Udalas), a co-production of the Playwright and Director Center and Teatr.doc, plays April 8 and 28 at 8 p.m. at Teatr.doc, located at 11/13 Tryokhprudny Pereulok, Bldg. 1. Metro Pushkinskaya. www.cdr.theatre.ru. www.teatrdoc.ru. Tel. 499-795-9282. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.