A Chichikov For Our Times

It is a testament to Gogol that, on his 190th birthday, the themes of Dead Souls still resonate in Russia. This is particularly true in Lenkom Director Mark Zakharov’s new play, Mystification, based loosely on Gogol’s novel, and written by playwright Nina Sadur.

Mystification’s modern Chichikov (played by Dmitry Pevtsov) is one of the most honest ever. Perhaps because Zakharov sympathizes with the new Russian businessman, with whom the character shares important traits. “For all their ups and downs,” he said “they are the ones who can get things done.” And for them, like for Chichikov, everything is legal which is not illegal.

“Before staging the play,” Zakharov said, “I consulted with legal experts. There was no fraud in Chichikov’s actions [of buying up dead souls]. He didn’t commit a crime punishable under the penal code, just some morally incorrect things.” As Pevtsov said in an interview with Itogi weekly, “He is a young man who, without killing anyone, without breaking the law, decides to earn some money in this country.”

“I thought to myself,” Zakharov said, “if you are poor, if you live on the brink, in our society you will evoke certain positive attitudes, you will be respected for your poverty ... But if you start making money and want to provide for your family by working 16-18 hours a day, and on top of that start using a mobile phone or, worse, switch to some second-hand foreign car, well, you will look like a scoundrel, a bastard. And if someone reads in the press that you got killed, they will say, ‘He asked for it’...”

In Zakharov’s interpretation, the idea of buying up dead souls is suggested to Chichikov by the seductive heroine Pannochka, who Sadur borrows from another Gogol story, Viy. Chichikov, like contemporary sons of White Russian émigrés, returns to Russia from abroad, to rediscover his homeland. And it is through Chichikov’s horrified eyes that we see Zakharov’s view of modern Russia. In one of the surrealistic highlights of the play, the stocky landowner Sobakevich pulls out corpses of his dead peasants, tossing them to Chichikov as if they were chips of wood. And when Chichikov begins his elevated phrase with the words, “The Russian state ...” Sobakevich abruptly interrupts by asking: “Where?!”

In another kafkaesque episode, the miser Plyushkin refuses to recognize a young officer as his son, for fear he will ask Plyushkin for food.  His trenchant line, “Our officers always ask for food!” draws loud applause.

The stylishly dressed Chichikov fails to find a common language with the Russian landowners who suffer from neurotic laziness (Manilov), alcoholism and aggressiveness (Nozdryov), or boorishness and xenophobia (Sobakevich). For, according to Zakharov, unfortunately Gogol’s works show that the Russian character has changed “very little, too little ... we are not like the Spaniards or the Germans who changed considerably after emerging from totalitarian regimes ... We are very slow in changing our mentality. These chimeras which Gogol noticed in our life and mentality are amazingly alive. We pin too much hope on our largesse and our so-called soulfulness and spirituality, which we brag about so much ... but we don’t really know how to get things done.”

Zakharov readily admits that Dead Souls is merely a literary background employed to share his thoughts on contemporary Russia and Russians. In a touch of Gogolian humor, the theater program lists among its sponsors the now bankrupt pyramid schemes MMM and Chara-Bank.

Ironically, Mystification was staged contemporaneously with the Hollywood-style Kremlin premier of Nikita Mikhalkov’s new film Barber of Siberia (see page 7). Appropriately, in the program for Mystification is a pertinent quote from Dead Souls, “On presentations:”

“... It is hard to say why it is — maybe because we are just such a people — that we succeed in those venues which are designed for carousing or having lunch ... We create some charity societies ... The goals are noble, but then nothing comes of it. ... For example, having established some sort of charity society for the poor and having donated considerable sums, by the same token we invite all the VIPs of the city to a lunch, needless to say spending half of the donations on this; the remainder is spent on a gorgeous apartment for the charity committee — with heating and security guards — so much so that only five rubles, fifty kopeks are left for the poor, with members of the charity committee arguing over how best to spend even this sum.”

Many contemporary VIPs, ranging from Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin to  Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov have attended Mystification. And it did not take too critical an eye to notice that some of the jokes were destined for “mystifiers” like them. Thus, the aggressively drunk Nozdryov confesses he doesn’t go to bed without a fight — his way of battling with insomnia ... And Pannochka, in proposing that Chichikov make “big money” on dead souls, observes that, in Russia, the death rate is high “but accountability is low.”

As if to justify its name, Mystification may have been touched by the whimsical hand of fate. Zakharov discovered Anna Bolshova, Lenkom’s promising 23-year-old star who shines as Pannochka, at Moscow’s Gogol Theater. “It is ... proof that Nikolai Gogol is friendly to our play and understands it,” Zakharov quipped. “Along with Bulgakov, Gogol is known to interfere in the fate of his works...”

– Mikhail Ivanov