“Прокол в вечность”. Андрей Белый и трансформация пьесы Сухово-Кобылина Дело в постановке Бориса Сушкевича (МХАТ II, 1928)

This article analyzes the impressions of Russian poet Andrey Bely, who visited the dress rehearsal of the play The Case (Delo), written by Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin and staged by Boris Sushkevich, at the Moscow Art Theater II. Bely shared his impressions in a letter to Razumnik Ivanov-Razumnik, writer, philosopher and literary critic, and a friend and interlocutor of Andrey Bely. In the mini-review in his letter Bely also mentions Leonid Grossman, a specialist in the field of the heritage of Sukhovo-Kobylin. Both Bely and Grossman focus on the play’s protagonist Muromsky. They note the “memory of the character” and they discuss the performance of the actor Mikhail Chekhov.

Archival sources demonstrate the specifics of theatrical memory. Drafts, director’s copies, typewritten inserts, pasted from other publications preserved in the foundation at the Museum of Theatrical and Musical Art in St. Petersburg and in the Russian State Archive of Literature, were brought for the reconstruction of the performance. Analysis of the director’s copy of the script prepared by Boris Sushkevich made it possible to identify the original source with which he worked when adapting it for the stage. It was the publication of the play The Case (Delo) from 1887. A comparison of the transformation of the text reveals common elements in two productions: the plays The Case (Delo) by Sukhovo-Kobylin and Petersburg by Andrei Bely.