THE FOREST
Alexandr Ostrovsky

Director Egon Savin

Premiere: 27 December 2005, Main Theatre
Duration of performance: approx. 1h 55', interval included

Cast

Raisa Pavlovna Gurmyzhskaya
Aksinya Danilovna (Aksyusha)
Evgeny Apollonovich Milonov
Ouvar Kirillovich Bodayev
Ivan Petrov Vosmibratov
Pyotr
Aleksey Sergeyevich Bulanov
Gennady  Neschastlivcev
Arkady Schastlivcev
Karp
Ulita

Svetlana Bojković
Vanja Ejdus
Dubravko Jovanović
Vlasta Velisavljević
Mihailo Janketić
Miloš AndjelkovićMarko Janketić
Radovan Vujović
Nikola Djuričko
Boris Milivojević
Miodrag Radovanović
Milica Mihajlović

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Alexandr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (1823-1886)
Ostrovsky grew up in a Moscow merchant suburb. As a young man he was employed at a Moscow court as a clerk. He wrote about fifty plays, the majority of which devoted to the ‘dark tzardom’(A.N. Dobrolyubov) of the patriarchal and conservative merchant class (It’s a Family Affair, We’ll Settle It Among Ourselves; Poverty Is No Disgrace; The Storm), to the life of the Russian civil servants (The Lucrative Position; No Dowry), and to the fate of the artists (Talents and Admirers; The Forest). His treatment of the characters of the Russian noblemen is especially ‘dark’: (The Crazy Money; The Forest). He wrote a number of historical plays (Minin-Suhoruk; The False Dmitry). His ‘spring fairy tale’, The Snow Maiden, based on folklore, served as a libretto for the opera of N. Rimsky-Korsakov. Ostrovsky created the realistic national repertoire of the Russian theatre. He had a major influence on the development of the Maly (‘Little’) Theatre.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Egon Savin
He graduated from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of Belgrade. Soon after graduation he was employed as Assistant to Professor Dejan Mijač. Egon Savin currently works as Professor of Directing at the FDA and at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at Cetinje.
Egon Savin has directed plays in almost all significant theatres of the former Yugoslavia, and has directed guest performances staged in Nancy, Paris, Warsaw, Tel Aviv, Vienna, New York etc.
He has received a number of awards for directing plays by domestic and foreign writers, several Sterija awards, as well as Bojan Stupica Awards.
He has successfully worked on all Yugoslav production models, starting with the performance of Good bye, Judas in mid-seventies, which gathered a group of young actors-conspirators who formed one of the possible models of off-scene. Then followed performances at nationally significant institutions – the Belgrade National Theatre, the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, the Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica.
He has successfully staged works by domestic and foreign classics, such as Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Rostand, Goncharov, Singer, Kiš, Aleksandar Popović, Vaclav Havel, Ljubomir Simović, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Dušan Kovačević, Sam Shepard, Edward Bond etc, in which he finds concrete traces of the essential power of the theatre of his time. Both these works and their authors are connected with the concrete area and time of the plays’ origin, avoiding vulgar politicising and banality.
At the Yugoslav Drama Theatre he has directed Gospel According to Živojin (Muke po Živojinu) by Radoslav Pavlović, On Holiday by Maksim Gorky, and The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.

REVIWES

Everything in the play emanates clear and powerful existential truthfulness. The palpable connection with the perception of the modern audience has been found in the simple and definitive character of both relationships and situations according to the model used in the shaping of the material of the FAIRY TALE. ...It is clear that Raisa Pavlovna Gurmyzhskaya is the mistress of the house (her part is played by Svetlana Bojković). Being older than many, she makes it clear that she does not take her age for granted, but, in the rebellion against the transience of things, fights for the young lover... That is to say, she does not so much fight as pay for him... Pays well and much and squanders that money to distraction... Here are also true ACTORS, artists void of greed but fond of both eating and drinking... The parts of the two buffoons and jesters, almost as if written by Becket, when they are painfully sad, painfully alone or unhappy, are played by two excellent, although young, actors. Nikola Djuričko plays the great tragedian Neschastlivcev, and Boris Milivojević plays the part of the not less great comedian Schastlivcev. The acting of these two is truthful and precise, with a great promise to develop further, since there is both where and how. In this performance the theatre has once again realized its own self, and in the only way it can do so – by acting, and by self-affirming understanding of itself that is quickly read by the audience and and that activates everything the audience possesses – experience, knowledge and feeling. Very appropriate. Congratulations!
Goran Cvetković, Radio Belgrade, II Chanell

In Contrast To It All
The YDT premiere performance of The Forest at the end of last year showed, among other things, a possible way of reading a classic play. Similarly to some earlier adopted techniques, director Egon Savin skilfully accelerates the course of the play, directing the audience’s attention towards the two main characters, Raisa Pavlovna and Gennady Neschastlivcev... Raisa Gurmyzhskaya, the very creator of The Forest and the relations governing it, is a real and at the same time symbolic representative of the decaying age of  land-owning power. When this exemplary and horrible lady (played by Svetlana Bojkovic with a due sense of proportion), feared by the entire province, seizes the very boy she herself has chosen for her poor relation, having yielded to his beauty, it will become obvious that the greenhorn himself is so corrupted that he does not care who he marries, the old woman or the young one... The character of Gennady Neschastlivcev, the impoverished actor, is in contrast to it all, and still more tragic. He so much yearns for the stage that he does not distinguish between acting and living. As is authentically shown by Nikola Djuričko, he rather plays the part of generosity than believes in it, even when it affects his own sister. This horrible world full of horrible failures is also represented and defended by Boris Milivojević (Schastlivcev), Miodrag Radovanović, Vanja Ejdus, Dubravko Jovanović, Radovan Vujović, and Vlasta Velisavljević.
Željko Jovanović, Blic

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