BORIS

This new production of Dmitry Krymov is based on Pushkin's tragedy “Boris Godunov”. However, the  well-known text only occasionally appears in the script written by Krymov for this production. The plot is simple: Boris (suspiciously resembling the current Russian president) is about to ascend the throne. His entourage is preparing a concert defile that will present to the audience the typecasts of modern Russia: modern boyars (the officials), “priests” of beaux arts (pianists and singers) and a holy fool (a bohemian poet, as one would expect). The defile is over when Boris’s reign meets its tragic end. 
The premiere of this ironic theatrical collage was performed at the premises of the Museum of Moscow, which also provided the production with artifacts from the times of Ivan the Terrible and Boris Godunov. History becomes tangible and, I would even say, olfactory: right after Pushkin's phrase “Now let us go, bow to the coffins / The reposed rulers of Russia”, real coffins are brought onto the stage, and the nobles hold their noses to avoid the bad smell. But for Krymov, much more important than bringing together stinking antiquity and the foul-smelling reality of today is the meeting of authentic museum items with obvious theatrical dummies. Sometimes you have a feeling that the director wants primarily to teach us to distinguish the real from the fake and to unmask the many simulacra of the reality of Russia today. In BORIS Krymov both deconstructs the classical text and disowns attempts to establish a direct continuity of the current governance of Russia with its imperial past, as well as all the myths on which Russian identity now rests.