Five roles in one performance! Chulpan Khamatova amazed the Riga audience

Two days ago, in the capital of Latvia, at the New Riga Theatre, the premiere of Post Scriptum by the famous Latvian director Alvis Hermanis took place, in which Chulpan Khamatova played all the roles. The performance was based on Anna Politkovskaya's texts about "Nord-Ost" and on the chapter "At Tikhon's" from the novel "Demons" by Dostoevsky. Novye Izvestia publishes some of the comments on this event that appeared on social networks.

Journalist Tatyana Fast describes the reaction of the audience to this unusual premiere:

“After this performance, the audience was asked not to applaud. Everyone just got up and quietly, silently left the hall. The Great Hall in the New Riga Theater is high up. And while the stream of viewers flowed either from the 4th or 5th floor, there was silence on the stairs too. Each carried his own lump in his throat. Thus ended the premiere of Post Scriptum, staged by Alvis Hermanis, in which 5 roles at once (priest, rapist, teacher, girl and author) were played by the amazing Chulpan Khamatova. You can’t even say “played”, she lived them. One on stage all 1.5 hours. It turned out powerful and scary. Chulpan trusts Alvis for a reason. His director's antenna always catches the point. Today she caught the soul of the devil…”

Theater critic Nina Agisheva pays special attention to one of the scenes of this performance :

“In this performance, everything is on the verge of the possible, everything consists of contradictions and a combination of the incompatible. How to combine the famous chapter "At Tikhon's" from Dostoevsky's "Demons", banned by the tsarist and Soviet censorship, and Anna Politkovskaya's texts about Nord-Ost? How can Chulpan Khamatova play three roles at once - two male, Nikolai Stavrogin and Tikhon, and one female - teacher Nadia, who lost her husband and son during the terrorist attack on Dubrovka? She does not just cope: it becomes obvious that right now - in a period of suffering and despair - it is vitally necessary for her to play this. For herself, for the audience - both understanding and frankly unprepared to descend into that abyss, where she herself has been staying for more than three months. But you can't be silent. (...) Chulpan Khamatova is least of all interested in philosophical empyreans - she makes the tragedy of Matryosha visible and tangible. The scene of rape - instead of a girl, a pillow from which Stavrogin violently tears off a pillowcase - the fearlessness of the actress and director is unparalleled.

This performance gave journalist Sergey Nikolaevich a reason to think about the outstanding role of Khamatova, played for the entire modern Russian theater:

“In the fact that the performance of Alvis Hermanis “Post Scriptum” took place, I see some kind of higher will and plan. It seems that three months ago no one even thought about it. About this woman on the couch with the TV always on. About this modest "odnushka" with a carpet on the wall somewhere on the outskirts of Moscow. About her tragedy that happened twenty years ago, which so strangely intersected and coincided with the forbidden chapter "At Tikhon's" from Dostoevsky's novel "Demons", where Stavrogin confesses to a terrible sin - the rape of a poor little ten-year-old Matryosha. (…)

Today I think about all these amazing women played by her over the years. About these sisters, according to a common fate, to carry on their shoulders the heavy burden of endless sorrows, which the 20th century did not stint on for them, and now, as we see, the 21st century.

And Anna Frank, and Lara from Doctor Zhivago, and Masha Mukhina from The Naked Pioneer, and Patricia Holman from Three Comrades, and Zuleikha, and Gitel in Two on a Swing, and Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva, and now Nadya…

“Give Life” is not only the name of the most famous charitable foundation in Russia, which Chulpan created together with Dina Korzun in 2005.

This is her program of action, but, if you like, also the motto of the Russian acting school. Yesterday everyone was convinced of this again at the performance of Alvis Hermanis "Post Scriptum".