“Inventive Lover” returned to the stage of the Ashgabat Pushkin Theater
The premiere of the restored play “Inventive Lover” took place at the Drama Theater named after Alexander Pushkin in Ashgabat. The Spanish passions of the temperamental comedy by Lope de Vega, a funny and touching story for all times, focused on a loving woman, ready for anything to obtain her happiness, ran high with renewed vigor.
- We decided to arrange a celebration for ourselves and for the audience, Olga Volkova, Honored Artist of Turkmenistan says. - We have long wanted to offer our public something like this - a funny and light pleasure.
Having restored the performance, which was successful with the public several years ago, the directors gave the contemporary actors an opportunity to deal with the classics of the comedy genre. The main focus in the production is on youth and radically different from the previous version. Maybe the artists also lack professional experience, but as they say “the first step is the hardest”.
A young Spanish girl named Fenisa (Adelina Nazarova) loves the son of her neighbor Lucindo (Kerim Atayev). The comedy begins when the father of Lucindo (Mikhail Rogov) makes a proposal of marriage to Fenisa, and the cunning lover sees this as an excellent chance for getting closer to the old man’s son. Love affairs and intrigues are awaiting for the play heroes at every step, and one will not immediately guess (if you do not know the play) how events will develop further.
- My heroine is a surprisingly smart girl. You can’t say that she is insidious, most likely, she is far-sighted, Adelina Nazarova, leading actress, says. - Fenisa calculates her each step beforehand - like a grandmaster in chess, but at the same time remains a sweet, naive creature. It’s not easy to play such a character trait, and at first I doubted whether I could? But there were still points of contact with the image. I’m close to the musicality of my heroine, her grace and how she, making her way through “thorns to the stars”, finds the way to the heart of her chosen man.
The performance, a celebration and a masquerade, stirred up spectator feelings and emotions. The dramaturgy of Lope de Vega does not require magnificent scenery and costumes, and the creative dedication of artists is one of the main components of success in its stage performance.
Another feature of the play, published four hundred years ago, is that it was written in poetic form.
- It is very difficult to say in poetry, and this is exactly what we worked on most, Olga Volkova continues. - In childhood, we better learn the melody of the verse, and with age we switch to prose. It is also difficult for many spectators to perceive the rhymed form by ear. However, the play was and will remain timeless. Lope de Vega, competing with Calderon, saturated it with a large number of intrigues, touched upon the topic of unequal marriage. It offers something to laugh about and something to think about.
- We try not to miss a single performance, pensioner Svetlana Lazareva says. - We are very glad that we got to the first performance of this famous comedy. Not only me, but also my friends admire the talented actors. I would like to wish them success in their work. May they continue to entertain us with modern remakes of “old” productions!
