Theater behind the fence

"I will have a quartermaster at my house. A small evening based on Vertinsky's songs. If you come up, then you need to dial me, the gate is usually closed there... It will be a very intimate, home performance. With excellent musicians - Sasha Muzytov (piano) and Artem Atrashevsky (theremin). I don't need to invite anyone else, because I don't have a lot of space at home..."

It is very pleasant to receive such an invitation from Svetlana Ben. And here is a rainy Friday in the spring of 2021. On the rain-soaked street, I approach the closed gate. After the call, they let me into the courtyard of a private house. Katya, the same happy guest, holds a dog by the collar. "She doesn't bite, but she can get her paws dirty..." I go inside. A small cozy room, a piano, a theremin, a projector with slides (they were kindly provided by photographer Maxim Shumilin). Sofa, several chairs. I understand that very few viewers are planned. The guests are slowly gathering. "I don't know how to get you to start drinking wine," says Svetlana Ben. "Imagine that it's the 1960s or 1970s and we got together to listen to Vertinsky." "And we're hiding here from the KGB..." I couldn't resist putting in.

But now the guests have gathered (it is more correct to write the audience, but let it remain so), everyone has taken their seats ("It will be well visible from the stairs there, but you can sit on the pillows in the first row"). Svetlana suggests: "Let's imagine that the lights went out, the artists appeared and the performance begins..."

Ben takes a piece of paper out of a small locker and reads out, literally, a fragment of Vertinsky's memoirs. Then the song follows. Everything is done very simply, but either the magic of the place and circumstances works, or something special really happened in the fate of Vertinsky for us now, hiding in a small room from big events.

The mood of the whole concert is set by the episode where the angel on duty reports to the Lord God about "Brother Piero, a former cocaine addict" who made thirty-five thousand bandages on an ambulance train in the First World War. "Give him back in applause," says the Lord in response. In this naive passage, ethics and aesthetics are intertwined in a bizarre knot. Ugly and beautiful coexist in this world, through acutely experienced misfortune we resolve this paradox. Not to remain indifferent in this grief, in the war, not to be disappointed and not to abandon yourself, your art, that's what Svetlana Ben found in Vertinsky, that's what she admires.

Wonderful accompanist Alexander Muzykantov finds a dramatic move for each passage. In the song dedicated to the death of the mother, the rhythms of the funeral march sound, at every mention of death, the notes slip into atonal chords. Artem Atrashevsky finds a theremin at the very moment when it already seems impossible to endure the beauty of this world.

Svetlana Ben is diligently looking for something to enliven every phrase, every thought of a song or diary entry. He tries to use the whole arsenal of his means from artistic babble to hammered rhythmic rigor. All together, it creates an amazing feeling in which vulnerability to the big world is combined with paradoxical inner strength and confidence in one's truth. I sit a little to the side and see the faces of the other guests of the apartment, with what tremulous attention they look at what is happening

It has become difficult to organize independent screenings in Belarus. It is unlikely that Vertinsky's concerts will be banned soon, but already now many performances and concert programs can be safely adapted to this "chamber" format. Perhaps it is worth concentrating on it even if the universal resolution of everything will come soon. Because a touching joint experience of the graceful beauty of this world in a home setting seems almost the best therapy for all this madness that is happening behind a carefully locked gate.