{"id":813,"date":"2019-05-28T20:18:13","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T20:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/?p=813"},"modified":"2022-02-06T20:03:29","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T20:03:29","slug":"drunks-dreamers-and-dancers-by-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/drunks-dreamers-and-dancers-by-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Drunks, Dreamers and Dancers by the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u0399an Herbert<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Viafest, Varna, Bulgaria, 1-11 June 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The poster of the latest edition of Varna International Festival<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Viafest is the shorthand title for the International\nTheatre Festival Varna Summer, now in its 27th edition. For eleven busy days,\nat the beginning of June, the popular Black Sea resort welcomed a varied\nprocession of theatre, music and dance from Bulgaria and abroad. Its main\nprogramme consisted of performances from leading Bulgarian theatre companies,\nincluding a specially chosen showcase selection. A smaller international\nsection brought examples from Italy, Belgium, France and North Macedonia, plus\na couple of filmed shows from Russia (Timofey Kuliabin’s Onegin<\/em>) and\nGreat Britain (Simon Godwin’s Antony and Cleopatra<\/em>). Viafest visitors\ncould also benefit from Intermezzo, a selection of shows in the Varna\nInternational Summer Music Festival, including the Metropolitan Opera’s\ntransmission of their Aida<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An Attempt at Flying<\/em>. A production of Sofia\u2019s National Theatre. Photo: Stefan N. Shtereff. Courtesy of Varna International Festival, 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The main programme began with Sofia’s National Theatre\nproduction An Attempt at Flying<\/em>, by Yordan Radichkov (1929-2004), one of\nthe most important Bulgarian playwrights of the last century, equally known for\nhis short stories, many of them set in the small village where he spent his\nearly years before it was destroyed to build a dam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radichkov featured further in Viafest, thanks to the\nSfumato theatre laboratory from Sofia. Their process is to devote a year’s\nresearch to a particular playwright or topic. Radichkov was their subject in\n2003, when Sfumato’s two directors, Margarita Mladenova and Ivan Dobchev, each\ndeveloped a show based on his stories. Last year, they returned to Radichkov. Mladenova\nchose to revive her original show, Crazy Grass<\/em>, now more primly titled Herbs\nof Madness<\/em>. Her energetic cast built and rebuilt their village from a\nrandom collection of trestles, weaving in and out of them as they told their tales\nin the shadow of its impending destruction. Dobchev used many of the same\nstories (one of them repeated in a dozen different versions) in New Bible<\/em>,\nhis new look at the author’s work, more realistic in its setting and costumes\nbut less successful in conveying the rustic poetry of Radichkov’s texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Herbs of Madness<\/em>, a Sfumato theatre laboratory production. Photo: Yana Lozeva. Courtesy of Varna International Festival, 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere in the main programme, the selectors have\nchosen largely crowd-pleasing, boulevard work featuring favourite actors. The\nBulgarian Army Theatre from Sofia offered Yasmina Reza’s Bella Figura<\/em>,\nwhile Sofia Theatre itself had Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s The Libertine. <\/em>Vazrazhdane\nTheatre showed a Hungarian hit, Zsolt Pozsgai’s Because That’s How Mum Likes\nIt<\/em>, directed by my favourite Bulgarian director, Liliya Abidjeva\u2014sadly,\nafter I left Varna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yasmina Reza’s Bella Figura<\/em>, presented at the Festival by The Bulgarian Army Theatre from Sofia. Photo: Ivan Donchev. Courtesy of Varna International Festival, 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Theatre 199’s Pleasantly Scary,<\/em> Yana Borisova’s\ngently fantastical study of burgeoning friendships brought back again in Galin\nStoev’s 2010 production, was certainly a crowd-pleaser. Staged in a setting\nthat was not much more than a few rostra, it involved more than a little\ndirectorial showing off, with odd interludes of song and dance\u2014even a\ndemonstration of ribbon-twirling\u2014breaking up the dreamy musings of its star\ncast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vyrypaev’s The Drunks<\/em>. Photo: Simon Varsano, Pavel Chervenkov. Courtesy of Varna International Festival, 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I was very dismissive of Ivan Vyrypaev’s The Drunks<\/em>\nwhen I saw the original version in Moscow. Watching a bunch of sharply dressed\nMuscovites drink themselves into oblivion, while complaining loudly that life\nis shit, had little appeal. Javor Gardev’s production for the Little City\nTheatre \u201cOff the Channel\u201d changed my view. Gone was the air of elegant boredom;\ninstead, we saw ordinary people in scruffy casual costume bringing depth to\nVyrypaev’s pessimism. His other thesis, that we have lost touch with spiritual\nvalues, was no longer fashionable cant but a truly moving critique of our\nvacant, godless lives. Like several other shows in the festival, it used\nminimal scenery: because of the difficulty of bringing it to Varna, or a sign\nof austerity in today’s Bulgarian theatre?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brain Store Project’s Made for Happiness<\/em>. Photo: Courtesy of Varna International Festival, 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I doubt that Vyrypaev’s drunks would have benefited from\none of the more curious items in the Varna showcase, Brain Store Project’s Made\nfor Happiness.<\/em> Entering Varna’s Puppet Theatre, we are presented with\nsqueezy stress balls, one of the many paths to happiness demonstrated at\ntedious length by Iva Shvestarova and Willy Prager. They plant flowers, drink\nchampagne, attach themselves to electric tension-relievers and spend much of\nthe show’s hour emitting toe-curlingly robotic, forced laughter. A karaoke\nsession was their last offering, by which time most of the audience were seriously\nunhappy. The final invitation to throw our stress balls at the actors was met\nwith enthusiasm\u2014I had been restraining that impulse for some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more successful attempt to relate to festival-goers was Christian Bakalov’s Eternal<\/em>, last in a trilogy of installations he has been developing since 2009. Blindfolded visitors are led by gentle, guiding hands through a maze of light and fabric, with soothing music helping to achieve a sense of relaxation. Half an hour passed pleasantly enough, but the five hours planned for the entire trilogy might be a little too long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Video 1<\/h6>\n\n\n\n