Enemies who love each other: Golenko staged his first play at the Zankovetska theater in Lviv

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Not even six months have passed since Maksym Golenko headed the Lviv Zankovetska National Theater. However, now there is no rush to the theater – tickets have been bought for almost all performances until the end of the year, the team has prepared 20 premieres, and Golenko himself – his first directorial production on this stage.

On November 23 and 24, the first premiere screenings of director Golenko’s play “Enemies. The Story of Love” took place. This is a dramatization of the novel by Nobel laureate Yitzhak Bashevis Zingera according to the script of another (like Golenko once) “exit” from Kyiv’s “Wild Theater” Oleksiy Dorychevskyi. Yuliya Zaulichyna worked on the scenography, and Oleksiy Busko worked on the choreography.

I visited “Enemies”. Maryana Semenyshyn and prepared for UP. Life review.

“Enemies” is the fifth premiere in the theater since the beginning of the season, and Maksym Golenko and his team do not plan to stop there. “I see before me the goal of completely reformatting the theater, so that within a year it will work in a new capacity. The theater has every chance for a renaissance story,” – says the director of the Zankovetska theater.

The team’s plans are only growing – if in the summer the Zankiv team announced 15 premieres in the season, now there are almost two dozen. Changes in the repertoire are the result of audience research.

“Of course I study my viewer. When I worked in Odessa, I researched what the people of Odessa needed. And here (in Lviv), already in the first month, I thought about what would be interesting to the viewer, and what would be dosed shocking, but necessary, and what he would accept. We consider each title. And while it works,” – says Golenko.

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Starting the season with “Earth” by David Petrosyan, the premieres of Natalka Sivanenko, Igor Bilitsa, and Vyacheslav Zhukov appeared in the theater. Golenko himself planned to stage 4 plays in the theater during the year, but the choice of “Enemies” for his directorial debut was somewhat unexpected.

“KWhen I was offered to lead the theater, I found the material “Red Ruta”, a film script by Natalka Vorozhbyt, with which I wanted to start my work in the theater. But the production was postponed for some time.” Golenko recalls. By the way, “Red Ruta” will appear in the theater’s repertoire next year.

Then he justifies his choice of “Enemies” as follows: “I wanted to take what would be in time. Before the full-scale invasion, I staged anticipating the war, in the first year of the war I tried to stage plays that give hope, and this material gives an understanding of how we will live after the war. It is sharp , angry, ironic, there is a philosophy, there are incredible images.”

Maksym Golenko decided to embody these images by combining both “native Zankivians” and guest actors on stage. Rimma Zyubina, Anastasia Yevtushenko were involved in the production, and for Yuri Khvostenko, the performance became the premiere after returning to the theater at the beginning of the season.

The performance “Enemies. A love story”. Photo: Ruslan Lytvyn

“I was worried. I understood that this was new for the theater, but it is worth giving credit to the people of Zankiv – they very warmly received everyone who joined. And they, in turn, gave some other energy, uncharacteristic of this theater. And it seems to me that the play took place thanks to the combination of different acting schools.”

Symbolically, the performance begins with the appearance of Yury Khvostenko in the role of Herman Broder: he calmly paces the stage, as if returning home after a trip, sits down and begins to read one of the books carelessly piled up everywhere. Focused reading calms a noisy hall. After another moment, the book storage of Broder’s apartment appears before the audience.

Herman is a former Talmudist, but now occasionally writes articles for Rabbi Lampert (Orest Garda) in New York and sells, but reads more books. He managed to survive the Holocaust, after the war moved from Poland, where his first wife and children died at the hands of the Nazis, to the United States. He himself was saved from death by his former servant Yadviga (Anastasia Yevtushenko), they got married and now live together in Brooklyn.

He, emasculated by the war, tries to learn to live anew. Jadwiga – fanatically wants to become a decent Jewish wife. Books for Broder are not only a connection with the past, but also a cover – he has an affair with Masha (Diana Kalandarishvili), who also miraculously survived the Holocaust. It is with sudden business trips that he explains to Yadviza his long absence. Suddenly Herman learns that his first wife Tamara (Rimma Zyubina) survived and after wandering in the Stalinist camps got to New York. Herman Broder is faced with a difficult choice.

The performance “Enemies. A love story”. Photo: Ruslan Lytvyn

However, the tragicomic vicissitudes of Herman’s relationship with his wives (he eventually marries Masha) are only on the surface of the play. Behind them are the stories of people who survived the Second World War and are now setting up a new life: who can do what. Herman, despairing of God and himself, creates his own storehouse of books, which should protect him both from new disappointments and from the hustle and bustle of an overly busy married life. Jadwiga desperately tries to understand her husband, changes her faith, thinking that she will become closer to him. Masha, who only at first glance appears to be a carefree spinster, harbors deep-seated fears of war inside. Tamara, having passed through the mixture of two totalitarian regimes, carries a Nazi bullet as guilt for not protecting her children.

In the performance, Maksym Golenko reflects on questions that have either already become, or will very soon become, urgent for Ukrainians: it includes the theme of shelter-home-shelter, acceptance and “competitiveness” of various traumatic experiences, the guilt of survivors, and, ultimately, the search for a common of the future

The performance “Enemies. A love story”. Photo: Ruslan Lytvyn

And indeed: Hermann Brodeur goes to America in search of a home, but he cannot get rid of obsessive memories of the past, he is consumed by fear and devastating despair. In search of his own “new Jerusalem”, he connects himself with new relationships. Relationships with Tamara, Jadwiga and Masha create the illusion of a home, where women and he himself are the pillars on which Broder’s fragile self rests.

Therefore, it is not easy for Herman to make a choice, because his house, which he built on sand, will collapse. As if feeling the impermanence of this construction, Brodeur plunges into the world of books, which fence him off from real life. The shelves of the book store, like the walls in the apartments of Ukrainians, give at least some hope for peace and salvation.

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Brodeur throws himself into the whirlpool of relations with Masha, because she understands his despair and desolation, she, like him, passed through the crucible of the Shoah. These painful relationships are reminiscent of psychotherapy sessions, and it is not clear who is pouring out his soul to whom: both Herman and Masha hold each other, because they feel an almost subconscious kinship of survivors. This connection contrasts with Herman’s attachment to Jadwiga, because she, also deeply traumatized by the war, finds it difficult to understand those who became half-dead during their lifetime. However, Herman, immersed in his own experiences, is not too concerned about the feelings of his wife, who, risking her own, saved his life.

The performance “Enemies. A love story”. Photo: Ruslan Lytvyn

Tamara, the protagonist’s first wife, is not the only one who questions the exceptionalism with which Herman perceives his own trauma. Their dialogues turn into duels with injuries: whose will be greater. While figuring out their relationship, they heal their wounds, but they can’t stop retraumatizing each other. This relationship seems to emphasize its non-accidental nature: both Herman and Tamara understand that despite various traumatic experiences, betrayals and the loss of children, they need each other.

Despite its paradoxical nature, this quadrangle of relationships gives each of the characters what they long for. Herman, Tamara, Jadwiga and Masha understand their dependence on each other in a foreign city and country and find a formula for love, no matter how strange it may seem.

This tragicomic story seems to remind us that after victory, the long road to understanding and acceptance of oneself and others is just beginning. Having defeated the enemy, we should be ready for a difficult conversation about what kind of future we see in front of us, how and with whom we will build it, whether we will be ready to make compromises and what values ​​we will be guided by.

The performance “Enemies. A love story”. Photo: Ruslan Lytvyn

The kaleidoscope of relationships is incredibly conveyed by Yulia Zaulichna’s set design: the scene constantly rotates, transferring the characters between reality and memories, the world of the living and the dead, the past and the present. The uncertainty of the characters’ states is complemented by musical polyphony. This variety and repetition of visual and musical constructions reinforces the sense of the cyclical nature of life: no misfortune lasts forever.

“Enemies. The History of Love” is a play primarily about the fact that, despite our different experiences, we are in this fuzz together: in Celano’s fuzz of death, in Singer’s fuzz of life.

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