People's Palace.--"Dubrovsky" by Napravnik and "Demon"
by Rubinstein.
Zamoskvoretzky Theatre.--"Groza" by Ostrovsky and
"Meshitchane" by Gorky.
Popular Theatre.--" The Miracle of Saint, Anthony" by
Maeterlinck.
Komissarzhevskaya Theatre.--"A Christmas Carol" by
Dickens and "The Accursed Prince" by Remizov.
Korsh Theatre.--"Much Ado about Nothing" by
Shakespeare and "Le Misanthrope" and "Georges Dandin"
by Moli=8Are.
Dramatic Theatre.--"Alexander I" by Merezhkovsky.
Theatre of Drama and Comedy.-- "Little Dorrit" by Dickens
and "The King's Barber" by Lunacharsky.
Besides these, other theatres were playing
K. R. (Konstantin Romanov), Ostrovsky, Potapenko,
Vinitchenko, etc. The two Studios of the Moscow Art
Theatre were playing "Rosmersholm" and a repertoire of
short plays. They, like the Art Theatre Company,
occasionally play in the suburban theatres when their place
at home is taken by other performers.
I went to the Great State Theatre to
Saint-Saens' "Samson and Delilah." I had a seat in
the box close above the orchestra, from which I could
obtain a view equally good of the stage and of the house.
Indeed, the view was rather better of the house than of the
stage. But that was as I had wished, for the house was what
I had come to see.
It had certainly changed greatly since the
pre-revolutionary period. The Moscow plutocracy of bald
merchants and bejewelled fat wives had gone. Gone with
them were evening dresses and white shirt fronts. The
whole audience was in the monotone of everyday clothes.
The only contrast was given by a small group of Tartar
women in the dress circle, who were shawled in white over
head and shoulders, in the Tartar fashion. There were many
soldiers, and numbers of men who had obviously come
straight from their work. There were a good many grey and
brown woollen jerseys about, and people were sitting in
overcoats of all kinds and ages, for the theatre was very
cold. (This, of course, was due to lack of fuel, which may in
the long run lead to a temporary stoppage of the theatres if
electricity cannot be spared for lighting them.) The orchestra
was also variously dressed. Most of the players of brass
instruments had evidently been in regimental bands
during the war, and still retained their khaki-green tunics
with a very mixed collection of trousers and breeches.
Others were in every kind of everyday clothes. The
conductor alone wore a frock coat, and sat in his place like a
specimen from another age, isolated in fact by his smartness
alike from his ragged orchestra and from the stalls behind
him.
I looked carefully to see the sort of people who fill the stalls
under the new regime, and decided that there has been a
general transfer of brains from the gallery to the floor of the
house. The same people who in the old days scraped
kopecks and waited to get a good place near the ceiling now
sat where formerly were the people who came here to digest
their dinners. Looking from face to face that night I thought
there were very few people in the theatre who had had
anything like a good dinner to digest. But, as for their
keenness, I can imagine few audiences to which, from the
actor's point of view, it would be better worth while to play.
Applause, like brains, had come down from the galleries.
Of the actual performance I have little to say except that
ragged clothes and empty stomachs seemed to make very
little difference to the orchestra. Helzer, the ballerina,
danced as well before this audience as ever before the
bourgeoisie. As I turned up the collar of my coat I reflected
that the actors deserved all the applause they got for their
heroism in playing in such cold. Now and then during the
evening I was unusually conscious of the unreality of opera
generally, perhaps because of the contrast in magnificence
between the stage and the shabby, intelligent audience. Now
and then, on the other hand, stage and audience seemed one
and indivisible. For "Samson and Delilah" is itself a poem
of revolution, and gained enormously by being played by
people every one of whom had seen something of the sort in
real life. Samson's stirring up of the Israelites reminded me
of many scenes in Petrograd in 1917, and when, at last, he
brings the temple down in ruins on his triumphant enemies, I
was reminded of the words attributed to Trotsky:- "If we
are, in the end, forced to go, we shall slam the door behind
us in such away that the echo shall be felt throughout the
world."
Going home afterwards through the snow, I did not see
a single armed man. A year ago the streets were deserted
after ten in the evening except by those who, like myself,
had work which took them to meetings and such things late
at night. They used to be empty except for the military
pickets round their log-fires. Now they were full of
foot-passengers going home from the theatres, utterly
forgetful of the fact that only twelve months before they had
thought the streets of Moscow unsafe after dark. There
could be no question about it. The revolution is settling
down, and people now think of other matters than the old
question, will it last one week or two?