Stardate: 11/12/2007 Theater: Shouts and jeers, bold colors, opera divas, and golf clapping.

We had a very theatrical weekend. Puppet Theater. Maddy and I went to the Kharkiv puppet theater on Saturday at 1pm. The puppet theater is in the government square (I think) in a building with a gorgeous mosaic of puppets on the top front. Inside the building, it was a bit run down. I think that it has seen better days or more funding in the past. We did the traditional coat check thing; they don’t charge for the coat check here. I love that. Then we climbed one flight of stairs in the shabby lobby and entrance areas to the auditorium. Our seats were in the back left in this smallish theater. I estimate it sat maybe 50 people. It was a shade nicer in the theater than in the lobby (which had peeling plaster, missing stair runners, and gouges in the uneven stone floors), but only marginally.

I don’t know what the show was about, because it was all in Russian, but the performers were pretty good. There were 5 of them: 2 young men and 3 women. Of the women, one was youngish and the other two were older. They were very enthusiastic and animated. They had big facial expressions, smiles, and lively gestures and dance moves. It wasn’t like a puppet show I’ve ever seen before. It was like actors who sang and danced and interacted while they worked the puppets. The puppets were characters with them.

But you could see the actors moving the puppets. The actors/puppeteers were quite practiced at moving the puppets to bring them expertly to live. They had life-like movements, but you could always see the puppeteers hands moving them. It wasn’t like the Muppets or anything. I mean the Muppets are amazing! I still want to know how they made Kermit ride a bike and Elmo dance…. Anyway…

The singing was lip sync but the music was okay. It was heavy duty Russian, of course. The dancing was great. The puppets were various and cute. There were mice, potatoes, a goose, a fox, and a little old lady and man.

Basically, what I could make out was that it was a series of little fables. The first one was kind of like the goose that lays the golden eggs. The second was about a weird little potato, which I couldn’t understand at all. The third was like the fox and the raven? Bird? The fable that reminds us we cannot trust the fox.

The most memorable part of the puppet theater was the colors. The costumes were vibrantly colored in orange, purple, blue, gold, green fabrics that moved and shimmied with the actors. The fabrics bumped and bounced and were like a Disney psychedelic fantasy.

The children in the audience were writhing with curbless enthusiasm and energy. They laughed loud and long at all the puppets’ and performers’ tricks and jokes. They yelled out things to the puppets along the lines of “Look out!” They were fun to watch. Maddy was mesmerized and sat upright on my lap and stared fixedly at the stage.

Maddy and I tried to take some pictures/videos, but this heinous, matron ticket taker/usher kept sniping at me. So, I gave up. I did happen to take a shaky and short video that’s on youtube.com now under Puppet Theater, I think. We left shortly after the third episode, because Maddy was super tired.

Opera
Sunday evening at 6:30pm, A, V, V, Pat and I navigated on foot slowly through the downpour of heavy and wet snow, which was more like slush, on our way to the Kharkiv Opera House. The Opera House is actually close by in regular weather, but the snow coupled with our best clothes (high heels) made us proceed slowly the ½ a mile from our apartment building to the Opera House.

The Opera House itself is located just south of Shevechenko Park and across from the colorful mountain that Maddy calls “Moose of the Mist” because it sprays mist as one of its interesting transitions. The Opera, unlike all the other opera houses I’ve ever seen, like the ones in Paris and London, is ugly. It’s a misconceived, poured, tan concrete mixture of horizontal and vertical lines with gauche metallic lights that came right out of 1970. Uugglllyy. The instant impression of this building is that the top of it is pushing, or falling, down on the bottom, like an avalanche. The people here think it is ugly, too. They try to hide it behind giant advertising posters of upcoming events. The inside of this building is not much better. There were cheap and tacky looking portraits of former singers and more glaring, tasteless metallic lights. Furthermore, they don’t heat the lobby. I was expecting something a bit grander when going to the opera, frankly. Most people didn’t even change from their jeans to something nicer.

Of course, like all public places in Kharkiv (and I think in Ukraine), there was a coat check. And like most things here there was an unspoken pattern—You were only supposed to bring your coat to the crowded coat check area. The other ones were open and attended, but they only accepted coats and belongings in some sort of order. So, we huddled with the throng of others disrobing and obtained our coat check tokens. We had enough time prior to the commencement to stand in the frigid lobby and discover that they didn’t have any hot tea available. We made the best of it though, because A, V & V were hosting us. Pat and I put the best face possible on and made the most of it.

The interior of the building was curtained at entranced with heavy velvet curtains in rich raspberry. Every time I went through these curtains, I felt as if I was entering the presence of royalty. Perhaps there is something to that in terms of diva sopranos. The interior was not as offensively tacky as the outside. It wasn’t attractive or comfortable, but it wasn’t obnoxiously disappointing either. It did have excellent acoustics. The interior was decorated in tans and browns, but the stage had these gorgeous tapestries of medieval knights, crusaders, religious imagery, etc. The tapestries were about four feet wide and 25-30 feet tall. At times during the performance, I fantasized about breaking into the opera and stealing them. ;-)

The opera, Prince Igor, started with several players coming to the edges of the stage and standing motionless directly in front of the tapestries. The story was a Ukrainian one about a King who goes and fights a war in western Ukraine against some Turkish looking fellows. There is a bad omen (an eclipse) prior to his departure and the queen begs him not to go. Talk about diva, the queen clearly put the D in diva. They sang a song, “Slava,” which I think is about Slavs. According to Wikipedia, the word slava could be translated as "glory" or "praise." The King goes to war, loses the battle and is taken prisoner with his son. Meanwhile, an evil man is trying to take over his kingdom and woo his wife. She refuses his advances and encourages the citizenry to continue to withstand the enemy’s advances (there were faux fires in the background). I thought that she was going to lead her people to fight the enemy and bring her husband back, but that didn’t happen. The sets in the first acts were fabulous. The second act was in the Turkish camp which has basically huts, but they were good as well. There were belly dancers and men with scimitars. In this act, the prince falls in love with the fattest and oldest princess I have ever seen. She was such a diva though! The prince wasn’t much of a catch either. Patrick said it was like watching two piggies twist and turn in the mud while snorting musically. ;-) The third act was one in which the King is freed by the hand of a Turkish traitor, and escapes. But the Prince is captured trying to flee, but his life is spared because the princess intervenes on his behalf. The King returns to his city and they all rejoiced. The singing was basically really excellent, the music provided by a live orchestra was impeccable, and the sets were top notch. The costumes ranged from highly impressive to colorfully cheap. The dancing was wonderful and probably the part I enjoyed the most. All in all, I was very glad A, V, and V took us. Besides, I’d never been to an opera before.

During intermissions, we fought the crowds to get to the paperless toilets. Pat, being Pat, found the bar. The bar had hot tea, wine, beer, etc as well as delicious snacks. During the second intermission, we were lucky enough to get there early and had time for a drink and a quick bite. We were all thirsty and hungry. We treated to these snacks to thank them for the tickets. Although, we have no idea how much they cost, it may have been very expensive, but they refused our payment offers.

Intermittently and at the end of the performances, some obnoxious fag hags (guys and girls though) who were sitting directly behind us, were yelling out “Brava!” and wouldn’t shut up. They did it like 4 times. It was embarrassing. At the end of the show, people brought flowers to the performers. Pat said he was sick of sitting and golf clapping.

Afterward, we all slugged our way home in the snow and did our best not to fall on the slick marble walkways in front of the opera house. We did get to see several people take some nasty spills though.