Students of the Odessa Theater and Art College (under the guidance of Oleg Shevchuk and Vlad Kostiki) presented a play at the theater «Na Chainiy» (Otonovskiy Lane, 2), for the first time brought to the audience.
Young future actors and experienced Daniil Savchenko, under the directorial concept of Vlad Kostiki, took on the performance of the dramatic play by contemporary Irish playwright Martin McDonagh «The Beauty Queen of Leenane». If you are going to learn, then from the best examples!
The tragicomedy, titled «The Beauty Queen,» contains profanity and reproduces all the motives of the author. Director’s fantasy did not go unnoticed: the Ukrainian translation by Oleksiy Negrebetsky with swearing, vulgarisms, and even Russicisms (to emphasize the backwardness of the environment) was used to enhance this line. The play impresses with the accuracy of the actors’ performances, as they were trained in the «teapot» theater college. This is the real style!
What is the play about? Some will see in it the problems of misunderstandings between generations of parents and children, but in our view, it is primarily about the powerful and dreadful mental force of a woman. Female happiness is a rare bird that is hardly found in rural areas, and the hanger on the wall directly indicates the area of residence of Catholics. Does religion care about a woman’s happiness? A religious woman must be obedient and patient. This goes against the very nature of women, and the main character Morin (who received the title of local beauty queen 20 years ago) has been patient for too long. She has no life of her own, her older sisters got married, and she was left with her 70-year-old selfish mother, Meg, who drives her crazy.
It is just a wonder how 18-year-old Alina Knyazeva and Halyna Tsybulina play the roles of daughter and mother. The age of the characters attracts to them, the unkempt mother scatters paper napkins everywhere, chewing as if she had already lost her teeth (once the actor Alexander Yarema already explored the topic of urinary bladder infection with Meg, the entire play sat not on the couch, but on a bucket). But it is such that the comical old woman is easier to play for the young actress than the forty-year-old woman. Alina Knyazeva makes the audience not think about her beautiful fresh face, but see in Morin’s eyes the longing, it is a rose, already killed by the frost.
