October 1st. Evening. A carpet path leads to the entrance to the Rossiya Theater on Pushkinskaya Square, not simple, but magical - blue, sparkling with lights. It feels like a starry sky is laying under your feet
And people walking along this path to the Moscow premiere of the musical “Cinderella” are ready for miracles on stage, because the plot of the tale is familiar to everyone from deep childhood and everyone knows what to expect.
It turned out that those who believed that everyone knew in advance were mistaken. Such a "Cinderella" in Russia has never been seen before.
Of course, the general outline of Charles Perrault's tale has been preserved, but that’s all. Characters, plot twists - everything turned out to be new, unexpected. After the production, the audience came out full of vivid impressions and rested. So say numerous enthusiastic reviews.
What is so amazing about Cinderella? Firstly, the image of the main character. We all remember a frightened girl in a dirty dress, meekly fulfilling the inadequate demands of her stepmother and her daughters, and in the rare moments of rest, quietly sitting in the far corner in anticipation of a handsome prince who will come and save. But not like Cinderella in the new musical from Stage Entertainment.
With a traditional Cinderella, a kind heart is in common with her. Otherwise, the heroine is completely different: active, fighting, with firm views on the development of the state (yes, our Cinderella is politically literate!) And wants to remake the world.
If at the same time she manages to marry the prince - well, but that is not the main goal. And at the ball Cinderella does not go to look for the groom or have fun, but to open the eyes of those in power to the fact that everything is not right in their kingdom: they strangle with taxes, and the people grumble. In a word, on stage, the audience does not see the humble sacrifice of sad life circumstances, but a resourceful girl with a modern lifestyle, who knows that waiting for happiness, personal and social, is pointless - you have to fight for it.
The second point, which sharply distinguishes the production from the usual fairy tale, is numerous political motives. Did Charles Perrault tell at least something about the public life of the kingdom, where the action takes place? Not. And here we learn about how laws are written and how rallies gather. Of course, adult viewers take it all with a bang. And since the creators of the musical present serious information in a simplified and humorous form, the children also enjoy great pleasure. By the way, a guarantee of high-quality humor is the fact that Alexei Ivanchenko made the translation of the original libretto (Broadway production of 2013).
However, the viewer simply has no time to think deeply about political issues: too much interesting and completely unexpected happens before his eyes. Story twists (and nobody lost a shoe
.), details (the prince kills the dragon from a slingshot), witty dialogs and brightly convex characters of secondary characters, which in the canonical version were just pale shadows with bad intentions, do not allow for a moment to be distracted and fascinate with their relevance and recognition.
So, the stepmother is not just an abstract villain, but a woman with a difficult fate, who does not lose hope of personal happiness. One of Cinderella’s half-sisters is a self-confident fatty who believes that “there must be a lot of a good person” and wonders why not everyone shares this belief. The second sister is a "learned young lady" in pince-nez, in love with a revolutionary and ready to follow him to Siberia
.That is, to the ends of the world - we are in a fairy tale, and not in a Russian history textbook. In general, the “Cinderella” character gallery is a collection of vivid characters, each of which is understandable to the viewer, and therefore arouses keen interest, and not just creates extras.
The design of the performance is also admirable. Costumes, sets, lights, special effects - everything is thought out to the smallest detail and in the complex gives rise to a single fairy-tale world. Although not entirely fabulous. The creators of the Moscow version of the musical considered that it would be more pleasant for our viewers to plunge into the atmosphere of Russia in the first half of the 19th century, which is well known, for example, from War and Peace, and not into the European Middle Ages. With this thought, costumes and decorations were developed, and the plan was realized: not a fairy tale from distant countries was embodied on the stage, but a close and dear history, with a touch of sentimentality, good humor and wonderful transformations.
By the way, the way miracles are visualized is one of the main secrets and an important advantage of the musical. Not only children, but also adults, look at turning the shabby little dress Cinderella into a luxurious ball gown, pumpkins into a carriage, and mice into hot horses with an open mouth: “How do they do this?” An international professional team worked on the technology of transformations (it was decided to abandon the proven Broadway technology), which included specialists with vast experience and awarded more than one prize, so the effect exceeded all expectations.
In general, the production turned out to be original, from its American prototype only music and the libretto were preserved. Everything else was developed specifically for the Russian scene. Of course, the cast and magnificent voices that I want to listen to again and again became important components of success. They are so captivating that, as the audience says, the children who attended the show begin to ask their parents "to find these songs." But, alas, pirated replication of content in our country is not encouraged. But the musical is six days a week. And to see him a hundred, no - a thousand times better than to hear.
You can buy tickets for the musical on the website Parter.ru
