by Eamon Kelly
Except for the visit to St Isaac’s, this was a short tour and we viewed the outside of well known buildings like the Winter Palace and the Hermitage (which we were to visit the following day). We were shown the Stock Exchange, which is a university now and proper order! At one stop for photographs the company settled into throwing snowballs, much to the amusement of passing Russians.
We rehearsed that evening at the Bolshoi Drama Theatre. The rehearsal room was fitted with a real stage, and had been since 1910! There was even a revolve – but maybe that hadn’t been there since 1910. Glasnost, the Soviet Union’s department of openness to outsiders, took care of our entertainment.
Next morning we were taken by coach to the Hermitage, only to find long queues outside; but as ever ‘Intourist’, that magic word, got us to the head of the line. It was a place, indeed a palace, to boast about. The very floors were works of art. Felt overshoes were provided to save the inlaid surfaces. There were massive, ornate ceilings and boulle doors of bulging beauty inside their ogee architraves. It was a tribute to the European art on display that it more than held its own in those luscious surroundings. Inlaid, veneered and carved articles of furniture vied for notice with malachite urns of the most exquisite workmanship.
There were so many items on show here, Olga our guide told us, that if one spent a minute looking at each item it would take seven years of one’s life to see them all. But I think one treasures in the mind’s video for replay time and time again just one item, and for me that was Van der Helst’s picture of The Family Pig Killing. There the dead animal hangs by the hind legs down a ladder, its snout just touching the ground. Its waistcoat has been opened from tail to throat and its vitals removed. Already the children are blowing up the pig’s bladder to play football, which we kids did in Kerry when Pat Murrell, the townland butcher, dispatched our pig, and for whose bloody death we children shed tears, all to be forgotten as we relished the fresh pork steaks and black pudding the following day.
We went to the Bolshoi Drama Theatre for the first showing in Russia of Tom MacIntyre’s The Great Hunger. The cast of The Field assembled backstage and had coffee while waiting to be seated. Seemingly, there were no seats booked for us, and as the bell went for the start of the play we were ushered around the auditorium to any empty seats that were left. Maura and I were put sitting at the very front and we had no more than impressed our modest behinds on the seats when a gentleman and lady came to say that we were sitting in their places. What else could they have been so excited about! Fortunately, before both sides ran out of body language, an official came and took us to another part of the auditorium.
After many speeches – mercifully short, but long enough as they had to be translated into Russian – the play began. There were earphones. I put these on and there was Natasha, that gifted lady we had already met at rehearsal, interpreting the proceedings in Russian. There is much mime in The Great Hunger, and her task was easier than it would be in The Field. Tom Hickey and the cast, under Patrick Mason’s splendid direction, weaved and strutted and brought to life wondrously the country people of Kavanagh’s poem.
The Russians liked it and that night they gave it a standing ovation. The following evening we went to the opera at the Kirov, Russlan and Ludmila, a wonderful evening of music, song and a little dance, with delightful costumes and stunning scenery. Behind the dress circle was a space the size of a small theatre, a beautifully proportioned, high-ceilinged hall where patrons walked about. Boys and girls, all those good looking young people, linked and strolled, or stood and chatted under the bust of Lenin. Sainted hour, that man was everywhere, like ‘that little yellow idol forever gazing down’!
We had the next day off. The stage was being set up for The Field. We went sightseeing to the Summer Palace of Catherine the Great. This palace, with the exception of a few rooms, was restored with infinite patience and skill after the devastation of Hitler’s bombers. One never realised the full horror of the German invasion of Russia until one heard Olga, our guide, talk about the nightmare that was the siege of Leningrad. Hitler’s hatred for Lenin and the Communist system was unleashed with brutal ferocity on the city and on its people. To many of them the angel of death was a welcome visitor after the demons of disease, hunger and mutilation had wreaked their worst. When I see the skeleton on the Derry coat of arms, I think of the siege of that city and I have a vision of a man frying a rat on a fire of broken furniture. Rats were eaten in Leningrad, and to survive did the people stop at that? God bless the mark. I looked into the faces of men older than myself in the streets of Leningrad and dared not think the dark thought.
Later that night we taxied to the Leningrad Hotel, a new western-type establishment with English signs everywhere. In the lettering little liberties were taken. The Russian ‘C’ is pronounced ‘S’ and restaurant appeared as ‘rectaurant’. Having lived in Leningrad for four days and nearly mastered the intricacies of the Russian alphabet, I sort of resented these English intrusions as I might English signs in the Gaeltacht.
On stage were the Georgian dancers, and we saw the most energetic folk dancing: high kicking of a spirited nature from the men, but the women were demure and graceful in their movements, and at no time did the men or women touch or dance in very close proximity. I can’t understand why people are always praying for the conversion of Russia!
At a late dinner I had two healthy measures of vodka. Oh so smooth! But a deceptive thief; I was nearly on my ear.
Early next morning we went out for a long walk in the city. There were crowds everywhere and the footpaths were as wide as the streets. There were few cars and the architecture could be seen in relation to the human figure. The people were well fed and well dressed for the weather. They had a hankering, I was told, after the western style. Macdara Ó Fátharta exchanged a pair of shoes for a fur hat one night. There was no litter in the streets. Hundreds would stand in a queue and when they moved (queues formed and disappeared at the drop of a hat) the street would be clean. We went to a bakery, got some lovely bread and bought milk. We made tea in our room, with bags from home, and invited Niall Tóibín in for a cuppa. He loved it, the best drop that had passed his lips since he had left Dublin. He got the radio going.
The big day arrived. We travelled by bus to the theatre at 1 p.m., settled into the dressing-rooms, donned our costumes and walked the set. We did a combined technical and dress rehearsal which went very well. It was a commodious place backstage, and there were plenty of spaces with seats where lines could be looked at. There was a full canteen service throughout the day, so there was no need to leave the theatre again.
The show started and we listened on the tannoy. That dear and gifted lady called Natasha spoke over the actors’ lines and must have been near enough to the bone for the reaction was very good. Our cue coming up, Maura and I were in the wings. Cue came. We were on! I knew from the moment we hit the light that we were on the ball. The scene worked like a dream. When I burst into song at the end I transposed a line. I hope I didn’t throw Natasha. It was a great night.
Afterwards the Irish ambassador came on stage. Journalists, photographers, television and radio people crowded in. It was very exciting. In high spirits we adjourned to the Hotel Europe for dinner. We had quite a night and towards morning there was a potted preview of the reviews.
On Sunday morning I went with Maura to Mass in an old church in a quiet street. It was a pre-Vatican II Latin Mass. The celebrant’s back was to us – ‘féach anois mé, m’aghaidh le balla’, as the poet says – and he gave a very long sermon. The church was very full, with many people coming and going out of curiosity. Old women concerned for our comfort found seats for us. The courtesy of the people and their warmth were not like anything I had seen in a foreign country before. There were many teenagers there and children – a Russian’s love for his child is pleasant to watch. With the crowds it was a bit stuffy so I went outside for a whiff of fresh air. Standing on the steps was a lady of indeterminate age who, w
ithout any preliminaries whatsoever, tried to make up to me – all very courteous and graceful, but even with the inclination, and considering my age, it wasn’t the time or the place, so I took refuge within the holy walls. John Finnegan of the Evening Herald – older than me – told me he had had a similar experience. What these ladies won’t do to get to the West!
After Mass there was a procession around the church with the Blessed Sacrament and Our Lady on a litter. Attendant children dressed in white scattered what looked like flowers in the path of the Host. As they passed, old women picked up the flowers and put the petals in their prayer books.
On the second night of The Field it really took off, and we got a tremendous reception at the curtain. The goodbyes to the Leningrad crew were very touching, with warm handshakes. The Russians are a shy people and we Irish are reserved, so there were no bear hugs.
On Monday morning we took the coach to the airport. The plane to Moscow was packed and it turned out to be a bumpy flight. The folding table kept falling down on me. There was hand luggage everywhere, and enormous Russian winter coats bulged from the overhead racks. We were in the air for an hour, and when we landed there was another hour’s delay for luggage, but while the third hour was still young we were on our way to the city. There was deep snow everywhere. Trees thrust themselves out of the white plain, and in tiny groves and copses gentle birches claimed the attention, very demure and seemly in their winter nudity.
We approached the city. It was so different from Leningrad, which had been architecturally ordered. Moscow sprawled. There were plenty of open spaces. In small parks full of trees, birches again showed their pale limbs. Europe was behind us now, as we saw before us against the clouds the little domes of a cathedral looking as if an invisible angel were holding a hank of onions in the sky.
Our destination was the Russia Hotel, a modern building, part of which rose to twenty-one storeys. It was reputed to have four thousand bedrooms and it was plonked down within an ass’s roar of Red Square and the fairytale-like Kremlin. Around the hotel there were many small and very lovely church-like buildings, and it seemed to me that many more must have been demolished to make room for what in this visitor’s humble opinion is a monstrosity. A ground to first floor ‘fly-up’ roadway swept within feet of one of the picturesque churches.
In the hotel there were four entrances and reception areas, and many shops and eating places. When we got to our room, a change from Leningrad, there was so little space because of the two large beds that one of us had to remain in blanket street in the morning until the other had dressed.
That evening Mr Dara MacFhionnbháir, first secretary of the Irish embassy, gave a reception for the Abbey Company and the visiting journalists at the Godanka Restaurant. The food was excellent and my simple vegetarian requirements posed no problems. Groups of musicians entertained us, and actors and press contributed to the general hilarity. It was a great evening and a great welcome to Moscow. Ambasáid na hÉireann, míle buíochas!
There was a press conference at the theatre at 3 p.m. next day. Vincent Dowling came over from Dublin for the Moscow opening of The Great Hunger. Vladimir Cheranyean from the Ministry of Culture was there and we received a warm welcome. Vincent and Vladimir spoke, and it was mutual admiration nationwise. We heard something about the Russian theatre and especially the famous Stanislavsky Theatre we were in, but when all was almost said, there was a rift, not between the two nations, but between the Irish. A section of our press wanted to know from Vincent why these two plays had been chosen for the Abbey tour of Russia. Why not O’Casey? Or Synge? But surely Dublin, in the long months leading up to the Soviet visit, was the place to thrash this out, rather than seem to devalue what we brought in the eyes of the Russians. (If I may go into brackets for a moment, I was under the impression that the two plays we brought were the choice of the Russian Ministry of Culture, and if people ask for tea you don’t give them coffee.) And one press man – the same gentleman who started the other questions – wanted to know why the plays were put on in the order in which they were presented. So much to be talked about, and time was taken up arguing as to why the football was put on before the hurling. We were embarrassed and would have welcomed a hole in the floor into which we could fall!
Mr Charles Whelan, the Irish ambassador, threw open his house to us that evening, and a fine place it was. I got a whiff of home in the shape of some reproductions from the National Gallery on the walls. My favourite was there, The Goose Girl by W. J. Leech, as well as a representative number of modern Irish paintings, including Noel Sheridan’s Chair. This was a happy occasion. We met people from Aer Rianta who were there on duty-free business, and a Russian Orthodox priest, a fine figure of a man, stood radiating charm, as did the figure of Fr Senan at the Kerrymen’s meetings when I first came to Dublin.
The next day turned out to be very interesting. A guided tour brought us to a lovely park where the wooden palace of Peter the Great’s father once stood, and where he lived while his stone palace was being built. There were tent-roofed churches and buildings which housed exhibitions of artefacts from cathedrals and palaces, an amazing collection of man’s skill in wood and metal. On the way into the park there was a functioning Orthodox church where a service was in progress. We mingled with the faithful, were made welcome, and enjoyed the music, hymns, prayerful intonation, incense, gorgeous vestments and flickering candlelight. We added to the illumination by lighting long tapers at the shrines. I was informed afterwards that it was a wake. A line of women in black like Spanish widows were asking for alms and, I supposed, praying for the dead as the old women used to do at the holy wells when I was young.
One day I fell victim to a ‘foreign tummy’ and nearly conked out. After taking some tablets Vincent O’Neill had brought from Dublin for such an emergency, I found some relief. I spruced up a bit later and went to the Kremlin. The diesel they used in the tourist buses had a vile smell. Black-blue smoke poured from the exhausts, permeated the interior and made a bad tummy worse. We parked outside one of the main gates. There was a long queue at the first palace, which housed yet another museum. There were icons by the score, which were very lovely, but like the Italian triptychs I had seen in American galleries, they were very much out of place away from the altars and churches for which they were first painted. We saw vestments inlaid with pearls and jewels, copes, mitres and croziers of a religion of yesteryear. It was like a theatre wardrobe storing costumes of a show that was not going back on stage again.
Having looked at the royal carriages that bore the tsars, I decided that as far as museums were concerned I had reached saturation point. I took leave of the party and went out in the fresh air. Two cathedrals stood within a stone’s throw of each other, one of the Assumption and the other of the Annunciation. Quite near, and closer to the outer wall, was the great bulk of the CCCP government building which housed the Supreme Soviet and the Parliament of the Soviet Nations.
How beautiful the two cathedrals looked, and how varied in size, arrangement and colour those lovely domes can be in that kind of architecture. Like the icons of a while back, to me those two churches seemed a little embarrassed in their new role of museums. They missed, I would say, the incense, the chant and the gentle rhubarb of prayer. But as we had seen the other day, religion is practised in Russia. There are two kinds of churches, those that are functioning and those that are being restored. Nothing of importance is allowed to fall into disrepair. Restoration goes on apace. In fact walking the streets one notices far more reconstruction than construction. Heritage is vital in Russia.
Within the Kremlin a line not always clearly defined separates the public and government sectors, and to overstep this line brings a sharp reprimand from the police. It was my misfortune to do just that, and I have never in my life been spoken to so severely and with such venom.
I escaped to the hotel, and Des Hickey and Seamus Hosey called for me to do an interview for RTÉ radio. What better place than Red Square, and th
ere we went and talked in the shade of Moscow’s showcase piece of architecture – St Basil’s Cathedral. I don’t think there is a more beautifully proportioned pile anywhere in the world. And as in the story of our own Gobán Saor, who went to build a palace for the King of England and was threatened with death, the man who fashioned this church, we are told, had his eyes put out so that he wouldn’t build a better.
Snowploughs, with a great scoop in front and revolving brushes behind, kept the open space clear of snow. Red Square is a sacred – I don’t know if that’s the right word – place. You can’t smoke there and, like the streets of Moscow and Leningrad, it was immaculately clean. There were no hoardings or advertising of any kind. No neon signs at night, just one massive red star revolving on its turret on the Kremlin wall.
Saturday was the last day for spending our roubles. We had a daily allowance from the Russians, and very grateful we were, but it had to be spent there. The time was short so an early morning shopping spree was organised. We bought what we could lay hands on while the money lasted. In the frosty street an army officer helped Maura over a slippery patch to the safety of the footpath, which was being cleared of snow by elderly women.
The Moscow Arts backstage was as big as another theatre. There were stage lifts and the stage floor tracked left and right into the wings and upstage, so that in our case after the first scene, the ‘pub’ set glided left and the ‘field’ set came in from the right. If we needed a third set, the ‘field’ could move right and another scene could roll in from upstage. All this equipment, together with the flies, made for what must be a director’s dream. But what impressed me most was the space. I love space, having worked in the most awful cramped conditions touring around Ireland.
There was a hint of nerves on opening night, but despite this the piece played well. Natasha had made her own of the text, and the reaction right through was just as if we were in Dublin. To sit in a Russian audience, as we did on our nights off, and to be part of their involvement in what goes on on stage was an experience. Soul, as it were, reached out to soul. We were lucky to experience that total involvement from the other side of the footlights. What must it have been like for the actors and the spectators when the great Chekhovian plays were first presented in this hallowed place.
