Russian drama king still rules at riverside theater
( 2002-10-23 14:49 ) (7 )

For half a century, the name of Russian theater director Yuri Lyubimov has been a byword for irreverent, subversive drama.

But the silver-haired Lyubimov -- now 85 and still hard at work at his riverside Taganka Theater -- is not about to retreat into the wings, even after outliving the Soviet regime he challenged, stunned and shocked.

"I try to express my opposition to totalitarianism in all my productions, even today," said Lyubimov, who was born only weeks before the Russian Revolution of 1917 and has been dubbed by some critics as the greatest director of the 20th century.

"I suppose the regime is gone, but habits remain with you for a lifetime," he said in his office above the theater, crammed with mementos, portraits and covered in thousands of scrawled names -- from Arthur Miller to Laurence Olivier.

Lyubimov began his career as both a stage and film actor, with parts in countless Soviet films, including the classic "Cossacks of the Kuban" about love on the collective farm.

But, he says, throwing on his trademark red scarf, theater chose him over film.

"Fate is like that. They invited me to play a few parts, and I did quite a few. But what I really wanted was to work in theater."

A student at the Moscow Arts Theater Academy, where the techniques of method acting were pioneered in the 19th century, Lyubimov soon moved on to the capital's top drama companies.

But it was not until he founded the Taganka Theater during the thaw that followed Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of the horrors of Stalinism that he jolted stagnant Soviet theater. The tiny venue, in an old Moscow district forgotten by the drama crowd, soon became a symbol of moral and social opposition.

Lyubimov, whose own family was a victim of Stalin's repressions, was finally forced into a five-year exile in 1983.

"In 1964, with my students, I staged (Bertolt Brecht's) "The Good Person of Szechuan,"" he said. "I thought the artistic world was without a future, a quagmire caused by the aesthetics of socialist realism."

It was, he says, a grass-roots movement, a cooperative.

"We began the theater with students, I was not appointed by any administrator, by the authorities. We grew from scratch," he said. "My main task is to keep my actors happy. I must think of the repertoire, of the actors -- are they bored?"

"MASTER AND MARGARITA"

But the Taganka -- where people once lined up for hours to see the latest play -- never lost its dissident flair. Bard Vladimir Vysotsky, whose haunting voice sang of the torpor of Soviet life, chose the theater as his home until his death in 1980.

In 1977, four years after the full version of Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita," banned for four decades, was first published in Russia, the theater presented a stage version of the book.

A testament to the longevity of Lyubimov's drama, the play is still sold out every month after more than 1,000 shows.

Lyubimov says, the theater whose red and white tickets were once known as "greenbacks" purely because of their scarcity, should continue to challenge.

"When theater, opera becomes a museum, and music becomes locked in tight rules of costumes, props, then it hinders the art, the music," he said.

"Look at the Bolshoi Theater -- it is archaic, they need modern musical leadership."

Lyubimov's own versions of Russian classics -- Modest Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov," and his minimalist version of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" -- made considerable waves.

Lyubimov, exiled in 1983 while on tour in Britain, spent five years traveling across Europe and taking in English theater -- "strong under the protection of its patron saint Shakespeare."

He returned as a hero in 1988, during the heady days of perestroika reforms, after refusing to accept British citizenship and protection from the British Home Office for fear the Soviet authorities would take revenge on his family.

He then weathered a second storm -- splitting his theater after actor and former Soviet Culture Minister Nikolai Gubenko left to form the Community of Taganka Actors.

Lyubimov, who dismisses the group as "thieves," refuses to even mention the divide, essentially a political disagreement between the leftist Gubenko and the anti-communist Lyubimov.

PAVING THE WAY TO DEMOCRACY

At least his relationship with the Kremlin has improved.

For his 80th birthday, the wife of then-President Boris Yeltsin dropped in for a visit. For his 85th, celebrated last month, he was invited to the Kremlin, where President Vladimir Putin -- who has visited the theater -- offered his best wishes.

"Theaters like Taganka paved our way to a democratic society," Putin said at an earlier meeting with Lyubimov.

For Lyubimov, social problems are no longer at the fore of his theater's issues.

"Social goals? Perhaps, but the most important mission is aesthetic, artistic, stylistic. Theater is not a newspaper."

But the concerns have not been forgotten, he says with a laugh: "Freedom of speech has changed, but the people are the same. We cannot change our habits."

The biggest worry now, he says, is television.

"We keep our plays short. Audiences won't sit still for three hours any more," he said. "Our biggest enemy is the box. It is so much easier not to bother."