The Green Ring () is a four-act play by Zinaida Gippius written in January 1914 and premiered at the Alexandrinsky Theatre on 18 February 1915, directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold. The Moscow Art Theatre production, directed by Vakhtang Mchedelov, opened on 7 December 1916. The play was first published in Petrograd in 1916 by the Ogni Publishers.Arzamastseva, Irina The Three Souls of a Russian Provincial Gymnasium Girl // Три души провинциальной гимназистки (пьеса З.Н. Гиппиус «Зеленое кольцо»).
Background The Green Ring, a play about 'fathers and sons' of the new generation, was written in January 1914. In 1933 Gippius remembered: "It was about the pre-War youth, the teenagers of the time. The concocted storyline aside, it all came out of my own communication with the young people of Saint Petersburg, the ones who attended my 'Sundays'."
As the director Vsevolod Meyerhold and the Alexandrinka cast started to rehearse the play, the major setback occurred. The play had to be taken through the Theatrical Committee. "Since Merezhkovsky was a member of it in Saint Petersburg, we sent it anonymously to its Moscow department. To our utter amazement the local old geezers, while praising its literary merits, refused to accept it as 'immoral', on the grounds that children there read Hegel and behave without proper respect to their elders," Gippius wrote in her 1933 memoirs. "This was scandalous. The director instantly wanted to see this joke of a protocol, we started to think of how to appease these old men with as little fuss as possible. Then the War broke out, everything turned upside down, I stopped even thinking of plays," she remembered in her Blue Book of memoirs. "...Then, before Christmas, something extraordinary happened. Savina who'd read my play (which Meyerhold had sent her) decided she was eager to have a part in it!.. There was not much to play for her in it, the part of an ageing youngish mother was small and confined to just one single act, although it was hardly an easy one... But whatever the queen of Alexandrinka demands, is hers for the taking! And the whole thing has got a re-start."Zinaida Gippius. The Blue Book. 29 April 1914.
Savina insisted upon meeting the author and, much to Gippius surprise, subjected her to detailed questioning as to the nature of her character. "Apparently Gippius' play had awakened in her deep memories of the youth spent in a dysfunctional family, with her own mother, no dissimilar to Elena Ivanovna," the theatre historian Irina Arzamastseva suggested. Gippius enjoyed these conversations a lot. In her memoirs on Savina she remarked how off-stage the actress was so much more intriguing and exciting than even when actually acting.Zinaida Gippius. Meeting Savina // Гиппиус З. Встречи с Савиной // Возрождение. 1950. № 7.
The Green Ring was not the first Russian play to feature troubled teenagers. Its 'spiritual' predecessor was considered to be Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind, staged and directed in 1907 by Vsevolod Meyerhold. Later critics found parallels in it to Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country, in which the very young Savina excelled as Verochka, notably in her 1879 benefit showcase. Not only did Gippius' play look like a development of Turgenev's ideas concerning the right of the youngsters to make their own decisions in life, but it was also close to it stylistically, having been described as the psychological drama with elements of satire and featuring fragments written as if they were pieces of prose. Also, the play's storyline echoed those of the Christmas tale "Young Heroine" (Маленькая героиня) by the children's author Alexander Fyodorov-Davydov, as well as, to some extent, Netochka Nezvanova by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, both featuring a 'strong schoolgirl' who arrives into the adult world to bring to it radical change.
Plot summary
Finochka, an emotionally disturbed 16-year-old expelled from a gymnasium for violent behaviour, lives in Saratov with Elena Ivanovna, her neurasthenic mother, slowly recuperating after a botched suicide attempt.
She arrives at Moscow (with her mother who needs medical treatment) and visits her father Vozhzhin in his place which he shares with a middle-aged journalist friend Uncle Mika. The latter has no place of his own, "has lost interest in life" and now seeks solace in co-hosting a circle of schoolchildren, friends of Seryozha (the son of Vozhzhin's female partner Anna Dmitriyevna who lives next door) and his own niece Rusya, calling themselves The Green Ring. Finochka arranges for her parents' meeting, Vozhzhin is determined now that the girl should live with him.
Finochka, shaken by the scandal given her by jealous Elena Ivanovna who hates the idea of being left alone (and whose 'suicide' now appears to be more like a 'botched fake', intended to draw sympathy from her ex-husband) is eagerly accepted by the Ring. Its members are now keen to help out of the domestic hell the girl who is now in such a bad way that she steals her mother's revolver, even if still being unsure, apparently, as to how she's going to use it. More distress is caused when Vozhzhin tells Anna Dmitriyevna that he is through with her, while the girl is shocked to learn that her father has a lover who lives next door.
Finally, the Ring hits upon a radical solution for Finochka's troubles: she is to enter the marriage of convenience with Uncle Mika, her father's flatmate. This way she will be able to stay with her dad, attend regularly the meetings of the Green Ring (which she's turned dependent on, too) and bring her own mother in too, so that she won't be left alone.
Uncle Mika, slowly succumbing to his young friends' scheme, is torn by conflicting emotions. Marveling at how his teenage friends have decided his fate for him, he still wonders if this new generation of 'idealists' whom he'd been doting on (and always expressed his desire to be 'useful' to), haven't turned a bit too pragmatic for his liking, by inventing for him such a peculiar 'use'.
Characters Uncle Mika, Mikhail Arsenyevich Yasvein, a journalist, known among his young friends as "the man who lost all interest in life" Hyppolit Vasilyevich Vozhzhin, an engineer, Uncle Mika's friend and flatmate Elena Ivanovna, Vozhzhin' ex-wife Anna Dmitriyevna Lebedeva, Vozhzhin's close friend, living next door Seryozha, her son, the gymnasium student Finochka (Fina, Sofina), the daughter of Vozhzhin and Elena Ivanovna, who lives with her mother in Saratov Rusya, the gymnasium student, Uncle Mika's niece Nike, her brother Valeryan, Petya, Lida, Vera, Andrey and several others, the members of the Green Ring Mathylda and Marfusha, women servants
Production history
The play premiered at the Alexandrinsky Theatre on 18 February 1915, directed by Vsevolod Meyerkhold. The premiere, according to Gippius, was "nothing out of the ordinary. Some were raving with delight, others spat hatred, and the press got berserk. Gippius, Meyerhold, Savina! - what's not to get mad over, especially when the censorship is so fierce, there is little else to write about?.. Savina played of course her own heroine, not mine, but did it brilliantly." The author (like many reviewers) noted the extraordinary Second Act with its masterfully staged 'youth assembly'.
According to Arzamastseva, a host of hidden conflicts and undercurrents marked this rather troubled Alexandrinka production. The part of the 16-year-old Finochka was somewhat inexplicably given to Alexandrinka's second prima, Ekaterina Roshchina-Insarova, who was 32 at the time. It was her interpretation of the part, bearing strong resemblance to Savina's 1880s Verochka from A Month in the Country, that upset the critics most, who hated the "horrid theatricality" of some scenes.
Savina was a renown actress in Russian theatre during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was also the legendary 'Turgenev's last true love'.Бриллиант, оправленный в хомут. Мария Савина и Иван Тургенев She was known for her personal connection to Ivan Turgenev and attempted to join Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) during the 1900s, making much of her 'Turgenev connection'. Her having the Elena Ivanovna's part in the Alexandrinka's production promised to become a statement of defiance and provide the final chord to her artistic career. Indeed, this happened to become the final part for the actress, who died in November 1915.
Gippius too, apparently, had her own old 'unsettled scores' with Stanislavki in mind. In 1904, as Anton Krainy, she panned both Alexandrinka and Moscow Art Theatre for what she saw as their 'overdramatized' attitude towards Russian classics. She chose the Stanislavski-directed Cherry Orchard as an example, concentrating on this play's young characters. The Green Ring for Gippius looked like an attempt to finally implement her own views on how the new generation of young people should be portrayed on stage. "In this respect Finochka looks like the lost child of Chekhov's last dysfunctional loafers, a daughter of 'the eternal student' and the degraded landlady [Ranevskaya]," the critic argued.
This, as well as a host of smaller matters, gave the press a lot to insinuate about. More ominous and significant, bearing in mind the political context, was the 'German factor'. In the days when another wave of anti-decadence campaign (and Gippius's reputation of a 'decadent' lingered on) coincided with the wave of jingoistic feelings, with calls being given in the press to throw all ethnic Germans out of Russia, the play by Gippius (who was half-German) looked close to Wedekind's Spring Awakening which Meyerhold (another German) directed in 1907. The attacks from the 'patriotic' camp continued throughout the play's run in Alexandrinka. The final straw was provided by the article in Novoye Vremya by Viktor Burenin who, while ignoring the play as such, launched a personal attack on the Merezhkovskys and Filosofov.Буренин В. Торжество провала // 1915. № 14044. Новое время. 17 (30) апреля. After that the play was performed only once, on 22 April.
In her Afterword to the 1916 Ogni edition Gippius described The Green Ring as a "dream play", consciously 'underwritten' so as to provide little more than guidelines "for actors yet unborn..." According to the author, "Meyerhold totally understood [this], while Savina perceived the play as nothing more than a chance to grab this precious part and create another beautiful character to add to her gallery." In Alexandrinka, the director failed to build anything 'revolutionary' out of this material. Instead, it flourished in the Moscow Art Theatre's Second Studio production, where the directors and young cast used its sparseness to the full extent, according to the (then) art critic Lev Vygotsky.Lev Vygotsky Notes on Theatre // Sobkin V.S., Mazanova V.S. Comments on L.S. Vygotsky's Theatrical Reviews. Cultural and Historical Psychology 2014. Vol. 10, no. 3
The Green Ring in Moscow Art Theatre On 7 December 1916 The Moscow Art Theatre Second Studio opened with the premiere of The Green Ring, directed by Vakhtang Mchedelov (Stanislavki conducting several final rehearsals), featuring Alexey Stakhovich as Uncle Mika, Alla Tarasova as Finochka, Sofia Holliday as Zoya, Nikolai Batalov as Petya, and Nina Litovtseva as Elena Ivanovna, among others.
The inclusion of it in the repertoire was itself a controversial decision, for the material differed radically from two other children's play that it had, Firebird and Tom Sawyer. The Mchedelov-directed project in which all the teenagers' parts were to be played by real teenagers, looked from the start like a doomed affair. All the more astounding was its enormous success.