Stone Cold Poetry

Marina Tsvetayeva is one of Russia's greatest poets and most enigmatic playwrights. She is the author of eight plays, almost none of which have had a life, let alone success, on the stage. Although one suspects that Tsvetayeva believed these works could be stageworthy, you can't help but admire the hubris of the director who resolves to take one on. In these dramas, the laws of poetry, language and literature clearly take the upper hand over the laws of theater, action and spectacle.

This did not frighten off Igor Yatsko, who, for his second production at the School of Dramatic Art and now in the position of the theater's chief director, chose to stage Tsvetayeva's "The Stone Angel." This relatively swift, stylized piece leaning toward the neoclassical aesthetics of the 18th century tells the tale of a young woman whose capacity for divine love is tested by life. Very little actually happens in the play, with most of the turning points occurring only in the words that are spoken.

Yatsko embraced the static nature of Tsvetayeva's script by creating a visually gorgeous work, almost a series of tableaux that can be appreciated for their intrinsic painterly or sculptural value. Igor Popov, who created the simple but beautiful set centered around a rocky pond, and Vadim Andreyev, who designed the richly detailed costumes, laid the foundation of the production's visual qualities. But it was Yatsko who put the pieces together, using actors as pictorial elements in evolving illustrative compositions.

He also made full use of the capabilities of the unique tubular space of the Globus stage -- bringing down a richly carved statue of a stone angel from on high and lowering the floor of the stage by two meters, compelling spectators to lean over the railings in front of their seats and stare down at the action from above. This means that the actors are often fully visible only when lying down, although the rock pond, with a working fountain filled with bright red rose petals and white swirls of smoke, takes on the qualities of a beautifully arranged collage.

Aurora (Olga Bondareva) is a young woman who attracts the attention -- perhaps even the jealousy and ridicule -- of others by declaring her undying love for a stone angel that stands in the city square. It is a challenge that Venus (Lyudmila Drebnyova) cannot ignore. She vows to transform Aurora's abstract adoration for the inanimate angel into a more earthly desire for a trickster and imposter known as Cupid (Georgy Fetisov). It probably goes without saying that the experiment is a rousing success, and it probably also goes without saying that Aurora is called upon to atone for her moment of weakness and re-establish her connection with her true faith.

Tsvetayeva does not present any of these events as unexpected or complex. They are givens around which the author weaves her meaty, muscular poetry. Yatsko, too, delivers each of the incidents befalling the characters as hermetic, self-contained scenes that represent single concepts such as fidelity, seduction or awakening. His actors speak the text in a ritualized, inflated manner, flatly denying any attempts to perceive any of this as a realistic portrayal of common people in ordinary circumstances.

The child Aurora bears Cupid, for example, is brushed aside entirely by both author and director. Tsvetayeva has one of her characters -- Mary, the mother of Jesus, no less -- declare with an indifferent shrug that "many children are born into the garden." Meanwhile, the baby basket carried by Aurora in this production is visibly empty. This is not at all a tale of conventional social mores.

Yatsko's use of 16th- and 17th- century music, as collected and performed by Pyotr Aidu, purposefully breaks this production into discrete segments. Not only is the performance stopped from time to time so that Aidu can take his place at an instrument to perform a composition, but even the curtain calls are interrupted to make way for a small concert performance on the lute.

"The Stone Angel" is not a production that evokes an emotional response, nor does it intend to. Instead, it is an attempt to create a theater of poetry, a performance of words and images that appeal to our sense of aesthetics and our intellectual curiosity.

"The Stone Angel" (Kamenny Angel) resumes performances in December on the Globus stage at the School of Dramatic Art, located at 19/27 Ulitsa Sretenka. M. Sukharevskaya. Tel. 632-9377, 632-9344. www.sdart.ru. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.