MOSCOW THEATRE FESTIVAL

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20860, 16 October 1937, Page 16

MOSCOW THEATRE FESTIVAL

CHOICE OF PROGRAMMES LESSONS FROM EXPERIENCE Visitors to the fifth Soviet theatre festival held in Moscow said they benefited by the criticism and suggestions of those who attended earlier festivals. For the first time, visitors are not being held to a fixed programme, but are permitted to choose between two performances almost every evening. This arrangement pleases those who are especially interested in the work of particular theatres. In previous festivals, the Moscow Art Theatre and the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theatre were represented by single performances. This year the Art Theatre has arranged three prpductions for the festival; a revival Of A. L. Tolstoi’s “Boris Godunoff,” shown for the first time; last spring’s notable dramatization of “Anne Karenina” and the popular contemporary drama, Trenev’s “Lyubov Yarovaya.” The Bolshoi Theatre, with its affiliate, is showing a new opera, “Soil Upturned,” by the youthful composer Dzhershinsky; last spring’s revival of Glinka’s “Ruslan and Ludmilla”; a

revival of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, “Sleeping Beauty,” and a new children’s ballet, "Little Stork,” staged by the members of the Ballet School.

The Vakhtangov Theatre is showing its time-tried favourite, Gorky’s “Yegor Bullchev,” and in addition its strictly routine version of "Much Ado About Nothing,” whose faithful adherence to tradition is in striking contrast with this theatre’s earlier “revolutionary” version of “Hamlet.” The century-old Maly Theatre, whose reputation is based largely upon its production of the numerous plays of the classical dramatist Ostrovsky, will show Ostrovsky’s “In Every Wise Man There’s a Bit of the Fool”; and in addition a contemporary drama, Gusev’s “Glory.” Single performances also will be given by the Jewish and the Gipsy theatres, the Red Army and the Realistic theatres, and two children’s theatres.

Those who visit Leningrad after the Moscow festival closes on September 10, will see the Pushkin State Drama Theatre’s version of Ostrovsky's "Forest”; two operas, Rimsky-Korsakoff’s "The Tsar’s Bride” and a new Soviet opera, "Cruiser Potemkin," composed byChlsko; a new ballet, Asafvev's "Partisan Days,” and a children’s play.

The Ukrainian torn', which is offered as an alternative to the Leningrad tour, will visit three cities, Kiev, Kharkov and Rostov-on-Don. The programme includes two Ukrainian musical melodramas, “Natalka Poltavka” and “Taras Bulba,” a play by the con-

temporary Ukrainian dramatist Shevchenko, Maeterlinck’s “Blue Bird” and Griboyedov’s classic comedy, “Woe to Wit.”

The veteran regisseur Vsevelod Meyerhold is ommitted for the first time from the festival. Once the prime favourite of the Soviet regime, Meyer - hold has not made his peace with the Communist Committee of Arts which now dominates the Soviet theatre. Last spring he indulged in outspoken critisism of the committee’s severe censorship and its persistent interference with the work of all Soviet repertory theatres.

Meyerhold, it will be recalled, suggested after the revolution that the existing "bourgeois” theatre be destroyed and a new “revolutionary” theatre be erected on its ruins. It is a curious commentary upon this suggestion, which once was seriously considered by the Communist authorities, that Meyerhold himself is now in the shadow, while the “bourgeois” Moscow Art, Maly and Bolshoi theatres, founded and subsidized by the Tsars or by "bourgeois” patrons, are to-day the favourites of the Soviet regime.