For Larry: Спасибо, Башлачёв, палата №6
His songs are like Russian soul itself, the soul that never changes through years and centuries. He bound all the epochs of our history together and showed they are all the same when it comes to ordinary people with their typical Russian simplicity, compassion and generocity, along with our tendency to live by feelings and emotions more than by logic or common sense. "Гуляй, Ванюха!" - this call makes Bashlachev similar to Vysotsky and Yesenin, and not in vain he is often compared to them. Our century is very different from the Soviet times when Bashlachev lived and way too different from the Slavonic times which some of his songs transparently remind of, but still all his stories can find response in our hearts, they're close to us. The actress who played Bashlachev's friend in one of the sketches nearly cried, and so did I, as the story described there was really touching and I had experienced those feelings myself. Actually, the actors were so good that they managed to trigger various emotions in us. Sometimes we laughed at the way they presented the story, and sometimes we just smiled recalling something of our own. It seemed like they were not playing - they were living inside the stories. As Nastia said, the actors looked as if they were drunkards of Perestroika times themselves, so good they fitted into their images.
That performance was the first time when I realised what I had lacked in Bashlachev's songs before: the visual image. Each of his songs contains a story that is good to listen to, but is still better to watch. I believe that if SashBash could see the play, he would appreciate it a lot. Maybe he would even decide to write further, to create more stories to be fulfilled on stage, maybe he would find himself in playwriting and didn't leave so early, at the age of 27. My friend and I have been to the cemetery in Kovalevo where he is buried. There is a spreading birch-tree growing on his grave, decorated with numerous handmade bracelets, and there are little bells everywhere, as the Time of Bells has finally come for him.
But to me, the performance is worth seeing even if you are not familiar with his works as the actors really put all their heart in it, and if you do something with love, it is always worth noticing.
That performance was the first time when I realised what I had lacked in Bashlachev's songs before: the visual image. Each of his songs contains a story that is good to listen to, but is still better to watch. I believe that if SashBash could see the play, he would appreciate it a lot. Maybe he would even decide to write further, to create more stories to be fulfilled on stage, maybe he would find himself in playwriting and didn't leave so early, at the age of 27. My friend and I have been to the cemetery in Kovalevo where he is buried. There is a spreading birch-tree growing on his grave, decorated with numerous handmade bracelets, and there are little bells everywhere, as the Time of Bells has finally come for him.
But to me, the performance is worth seeing even if you are not familiar with his works as the actors really put all their heart in it, and if you do something with love, it is always worth noticing.