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‘Crooked Jimmy’ and ‘Limping Joe’: Russian Theatrical Satire in the 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Anthony G. Pearson
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Extract

With the opening in the year 1908 of the Bat theatre (Letuchaya Mysh') in Moscow and the Crooked Mirror (Krivoe Zerkalo) in St Petersburg, intimate theatres of ‘small forms’ made their first commercial appearance in Russia. Inspired in part by the cabaret theatres and caféschantants of Paris, Berlin and other Western capitals, these new theatrical undertakings soon established themselves as an alternative to the regular dramatic and operatic theatres. Beginning as tiny chamber theatres intended primarily for the bourgeois intelligentsia, the Crooked Mirror, and to a lesser extent the Bat, developed into genuine aesthetic theatres of parodox and wit. The Crooked Mirror in particular sought to entertain by satirizing and parodying stale conventions and stultifying routine prevalent in society and in the arts. The repertoires of these theatres consisted entirely of miniature forms – a combination of one-act plays and separate variety numbers with music and dancing. One important innovation to which both theatres contributed was the introduction to the Russian stage of the figure of the ‘conférencier’ or compère who, like his French predecessors, had the task of linking the various items of an evening's programme by means of witty, topical dialogue, innuendo and spontaneous asides. Nikita Baliev, the founder of the Bat, made a speciality of this.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , May 1979 , pp. 214 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1979

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References

Notes

1. Kuznetsov, E., Iz Proshlogo Russkoi Estrady, M. 1958, p. 269.Google Scholar

2. Kugel, A. R.', List'ya s Dereva, L. 1926, p. 100.Google Scholar

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6. ibid.

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8. ibid., p. 87.

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13. ibid., p. 66.

14. Zolotnitsky, , op.cit, p. 182.Google Scholar

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19. ibid., p. 82. In practice it was the Provisional Government of Kerensky, rather than tsarism, that found itself the subject of satire.

20. Vestnik Teatra i Iskusstva, L. 1921, No. 9 (6/12), p. 3.

21. Zolotnitsky, , op.cit., p. 180Google Scholar. Some ambiguity can occasionally accrue from the fact that the Russian word for ‘variety’in this sense – estrada – can also mean ‘platform’ or even ‘stage’.

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26. Kryzhitsky, , Dorogi Teatral'nye, op.cit., pp. 195–6.Google Scholar

27. ibid.

28. Kryzhitsky, , Rezhisserskie Portrety, op.cit., p. 65.Google Scholar

29. Vestnik Teatra i Iskusstva, 1921, No. 9, op.cit.

30. See issues of the weekly theatre journal Ermitazh, M., 13 May –22 Augest, 1922.

31. Shcherbakov, S., ‘Teatral'naya Segodnya’, Zrelishcha, M. 1922, No. 1, p. 12.Google Scholar

32. ibid.

33. Ermitazh, 1922, No. 2, p. 12.

34. Foma Diafuarus, , ‘Dzhimmisti’, op.cit.Google Scholar

35. An almost untranslatable Russian Proverb without an exact English equivalent. Literally – ‘if the claw is struck, it's the end for the whole bird’ – it means that one only needs to get started on some reprehensible course of action in order to be unable to extricate oneself. Slovar' Russkykh Poslovits i Pogovorok, 2nd ed., compiled by Zhukov, V. P., Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, M., 1967, p. 185.Google Scholar

36. Shcherbakov, , Zrelishcha, op.cit.Google Scholar

37. Ermitazh, 1922, No. 9, p. 19. Vampuka, Printsessa Afrikanskaya, first published in Novoe Vremya, 1900, No. 8812, 8 September , under the signature of Anchar Mantsenilov (pseudonym of Volkonsky).

38. Alekseev, 's play is reviewed in Ermitazh, 1922, No. 12, p. 10.Google Scholar

39. Alekseev, , Ser'eznoe i Smeshnoe, op.cit., pp. 184–92.Google Scholar

40. The Krivoe Zerkalo (Crooked Mirror) took its name from the title of a volume of parodies and skits published by Kugel, A. R.'s Teatr i Iskusstvo publishing house, St Petersburg, 1908Google Scholar – Izmailov, A. A., Krivoe Zerkalo, parodii i sharzhiGoogle Scholar. This book carries Gogol's famous inscription to Revizor:

‘Necha na zerkalo penyat’

Koli rozha kriva'

(It's no use blaming the mirror when it's your mug that's crooked.)

41. Shcherbakov, Zrelishcha, op.cit.

42. Zolitnitsky mistakenly puts the opening at 27 September 1922 (see p. 279), taking his information from a published interview with Evreinov in Zrelishcha. Although the opening was originally scheduled for this date, notices in the next issue of Zrelishcha indicate that there was a week's delay

43. Alekseev, , Ser'eznoe i Smeshnoe, op.cit., p. 172.Google Scholar

44. Zrelishcha, 1922, No. 5, p. 6.

45. Alekseev, , Ser'eznoe i Smeshnoe, op.cit., pp. 164–5.Google Scholar

46. Zolotnitsky, , op.cit., p. 279Google Scholar. See also Shcherbakov, , Zrelishcha, op.cit.Google Scholar

47. Moreover, Evreinov told Zrelishcha (No. 4, pp. 17–18) that he had to return shortly to Petrograd to complete work on an elaborate three-year project involving a series of operas at the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Petrograd. The series, aimed at the artistic reconstruction of the theatre of the mid-eighteenth century, consisted of Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail by Mozart, Axur, Salieri, Didon, Piccini and Iphigenie en Tauride, Gluck. Only the first in fact was ever completed.

48. See the memoirs of Evreinov's widow: Kashina-Evreinova, Anna, N. N. Evreinov v mirovomteatre XX veka, Paris, 1963, p. 16Google Scholar. See also Moody, C., ‘Nikolai Nikolaivich Evreinov 1879–1953’, Russian Literature Triquarterly, Ann Arbor, Michigan, No. 13, (Fall 1975), pp. 689–90Google Scholar. I am also indebted to Anna Kashina-Evreinova for the sight of an unpublished article of hers written in 1976 about the extraordinary life of Mikhail Razumny.

49. Zrelishcha, 1922, No. 4, op.cit. describes the latter as a new play but it was in fact a re-worked version of Kukhnya Smekha (The Kitchen of Laughter) which was first performed at the Crooked Mirror in 1913 and subsequently revived in 1921 at the Free Comedy Theatre, Petrograd under the title Mezhdunarodnyi Konkurs Ostroumiya (An International Competition of Wit).

50. Aleks, ., Zrelishcha, 1922, No. 7, p. 23.Google Scholar

51. Al(eks), ., Zrelishcha, 1922, No. 9, p. 13.Google Scholar

52. Ermans, Viktor, Zrelishcha, 1923, No. 21, p. 18.Google Scholar

53. Alekseev, A. G., ‘Dzhimmi o Dzhimmi’, Zrelischa, 1922, No. 6, p. 16.Google Scholar

54. Pir, , ‘O Krivom Dzhimmi’, Zrelishcha, 1922, No. 15, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

55. Ermans, , Zrelishcha, op.cit.Google Scholar

56. Zrelishcha, 1923, No. 25, p. 20 and No. 28, p. 18.

57. Alekseev, , Ser'eznoe i Smeshnoe, op.cit., p. 184.Google Scholar

58. Zolotnitsky, , op.cit., p. 279.Google Scholar