A Long Time Ago (play)

A Long Time Ago
Original titleДавным-давно
Written byAlexander Gladkov
Date premiered1941
Original languageRussian
GenrePlay

A Long Time Ago (Russian: Давным-давно; alternative title Pets of Glory, Russian: Питомцы славы) is a play by Alexander Gladkov, written in 1940 and first staged in 1941. It is a heroic comedy in verse.

The play has been translated into many languages and has been staged for many years in various theatres. Director Aleksey Popov received the Stalin Prize in 1943 for his stage production of the play. It was adapted for film by Eldar Ryazanov under the title Hussar Ballad (1962).

History of creation

The author himself wrote about the creation of A Long Time Ago as follows:[1]

When my brother and I were little, our mother read aloud to us over two winters The Children of Captain Grant and War and Peace. The power of a child's imagination is such that afterwards it often seemed to me that I remembered the year 1812 itself. Not the book, not the novel, but precisely the year 1812 with its people, colours and sounds. I remember it, see it and hear it as something that actually happened in my life. Therefore when in the autumn of 1940 I conceived the idea of writing a play about 1812, earlier impressions of The Children of Captain Grant and War and Peace somehow merged in my imagination, and I understood that I wanted to write a very cheerful play. <…> During the work I had my own "working epigraph". It appeared on the title page of the play, but when the play went to the distribution department and into print I removed it. This epigraph was two lines from poems by Denis Davydov: "Indulge, joyful crowd, in lively and brotherly freedom!" As it seemed to me, they expressed very precisely the spirit of A Long Time Ago, its imagery and harmony, but the war began and shifted the emphasis of the play.

At first the play was titled Pets of Glory.

There is an opinion that the prototype for Shura[a] (Shurochka)[b] Azarova was the "cavalry maiden" Nadezhda Durova. Alexander Gladkov himself denied this.[1]

Plot

The action takes place in 1812. Young Shura, the ward of the retired major Azarov, is engaged in absentia to poruchik Dmitry Rzhevsky. He arrives at the major's estate for the seventeenth birthday of his fiancee, but is not pleased about the forthcoming first meeting with Shura, imagining her in advance as a spoiled and affected fashionista. At a masquerade held for her birthday she puts on a hussar uniform, and the lieutenant takes her for a young officer.

Taking advantage of the situation, Shura introduces herself to her fiancé as Cornet Azarov, supposedly her own cousin. Rzhevsky speaks frankly with the fellow hussar, and in this way Shura learns what her fiancé thinks about his bride and about the forthcoming wedding. She later appears before the lieutenant in women's clothing, pretending to be affected and thus confirming his worst expectations. During a ball, couriers arrive at the house with news that the war has begun. The lieutenant, like all military officers, quickly departs to return to his regiment. Shura does not intend to remain at home doing needlework and that same night runs away from home in a cornet's uniform to fight for her country. She rides boldly and shoots accurately, activities she has always preferred to playing with dolls. In the army Shura again becomes Cornet Azarov. In winter, in a partisan detachment, she encounters the lieutenant, and soon afterwards a quarrel breaks out between them which is expected to lead to an inevitable duel.

Authorship controversy

In his memoirs, Eldar Ryazanov recounts that while preparing the film adaptation of A Long Time Ago (1962) he had a conversation with Yury Shevkunenko, at that time a well known playwright and director of the Second Creative Association at the Mosfilm studio. Shevkunenko had participated in the play's production in 1942 as an actor of the Red Army Theatre. According to him, it had then been noticed that Alexander Gladkov avoided all requests to make even the smallest revisions to the text of the play: "During rehearsals in our theatre, then in Sverdlovsk, everyone formed the opinion that Gladkov had not written the play".[2]

While writing the screenplay for the film Hussar Ballad, Ryazanov asked Gladkov to add several small episodes. Gladkov promised to do so and then disappeared for several months. Long persuasion brought nothing except new promises, and Ryazanov eventually had to write the verses for the screenplay himself.

In his book Ryazanov expressed the opinion that Gladkov was not the author of the play and suggested that "Gladkov received this play in prison from a man who never left prison alive".[3] The claim that Gladkov had been imprisoned before the war has been disputed by Sergey Shumikhin.[4] In a 2009 interview Ryazanov reiterated his belief that the real author of the play was not Gladkov.[5]

Productions

Notes

  1. ^ In Russia, Shura is one of the diminutives of Alexandra.
  2. ^ In Russia, Shurochka is a diminutive form of Shura.

References

  1. ^ a b "Александр Гладков. Воспоминания". Archived from the original on 2022-03-14. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
  2. ^ Ryazanov 2005, p. 136.
  3. ^ Ryazanov 2005, p. 146.
  4. ^ Shumikhin S. (2012-10-24). "Преданный мастер". Редакционный портфель. Наше наследие. Archived from the original on 2012-10-24. Retrieved 2024-03-14.
  5. ^ "Поэзия — сплошной обман… Эльдар Рязанов снял необычный фильм". Archived from the original on 2011-11-16. Retrieved 2013-02-27.
  6. ^ 100 лет со дня рождения драматурга Александра Гладкова
  7. ^ "«Гусарская баллада» полвека спустя". Archived from the original on 2009-05-31. Retrieved 2009-07-23.
  8. ^ Тихон Хренников
  9. ^ Гусарская баланда. «Давным-давно» в Театре Российской армии // Kommersant No. 194, 14 October 2005, p. 21.

Literature

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