I accidentally came across this article by Grigory Zaslavsky, published on March 14th, 2011. You may read it in full on the website of RIA 'Novosti', but I only wish to quote a fragment.

Grigory Zaslavsky. The place where last year there was ‘A Miracle’

I heard it in the subway: the musical ‘An Ordinary Miracle’ was closing for the season, playing only until March 27th, and here I was still getting around to going to the premiere. I kept getting around to it, but never got to it, even though I knew that it was put on by Ivan Popovski, a student of Peter Fomenko, famous for his plays that are put on stage at his teacher’s ‘Workshop’ and at the Theater on Kamburova. Oleg Glushkov was choreographer, and he was also famous for setting to dance Valery Todorovski’s movie ‘Hipsters’. He also had performances at the Strastny theater center in Moscow, as well as at the School of Dramatic Art. Now he and Mark Zakharov were finishing work on ‘Peer Gynt’ at the Lenkom — this premiere is scheduled for the end of March. Among those performing were to be Irina Lindt, Yuri Mazihin, and, by the way, many of those who worked on ‘Nord-Ost’.

And that is what this is all about.

The building on Melnikov Street, I knew it back when it was the Palace of Culture for SBF #1, that is, the State Bearing Factory. Some sort of an anthropomorphic, humanoid construct of bearings still stands on the ground floor there. Once I went there for a concert while still in music school. I either sang or maybe even played the violin, very badly, and another time I remember I just read some verses from Mayakovsky. One day our class came back for a concert, I remember a performance by Vyacheslav Spesivtsev, who back then was artistic director of Theatre-Studio on Krasnaya Presnya, back when you could never get tickets. He did a pantomime: sort of leaning his body forward, portraying a man pressed into a doorbell… In 2001, they started putting on ‘Nord-Ost’, a musical based on Kaverin’s novel ‘Two Captains’. It was a good show, written by two former KSP students: Georgi Vasilyev and Alexei Ivashchenko (the famous ‘Ivasi’ duet), and with good actors: playing ‘Nord-Ost’ were Yuri Mazihin, Yekaterina Guseva (she sang so well that since then she has recitals at the House of Music).

The life of the musical, and, worse, of 130 persons ended in October 2002, when Dubrovka was seized by terrorists, and about 900 people taken hostage… Back then I had a daily broadcast on ‘Mayak’ and, based on my radio talk show, Olga Mikhailova and Elena Gremina asked me to participate in ‘Teatre.doc — Nord-Ost, the forty-first day’. I invited three people whose stories turn out happily. Rada Novikova was one of them: she did her film dissertation at the gay club in that same building. Around ten o’clock at night — about an hour and a half after the terrorists captured the building — security forces broke into the club and made everyone lay on the floor. They were questioned for a long time, and then released. Oleg Klenin was another: he was an administrator and he and some others locked themselves in a room on the first floor and sat there for over a day, since the (hostage rescue) headquarters would not allow them to leave the building until it was clear that the terrorists were not in control of the first floor. Later, on the news, it was reported that these people were rescued during a special operation. The third person I asked was Oleg Golub, an actor at the Moscow Council Theater. He played Romashov, and was among the hostages who sat for three days on the balcony to where the actors were driven. When they let loose gas into the building, it did not work on Golub, and the security forces brought him various people with a single question: terrorist or not? If the answer was affirmative, it was followed by a shot.

It so happened that all three remembered some amusing, even funny scenes, probably out of natural feeling of self-preservation. So much so that back then one of the foreigners in the audience said that the tragedy had turned into a cabaret. I did not want to talk about blood and death from the very outset, since the theater, in my view, is still no place for such conversation. As you know, instead of blood in the theater it is cranberry or beet juice…

A few years later Ivashchenko decided to put a new musical on at Dubrovka, ‘An Ordinary Miracle’.

First off, they even thought up a new name for the square – ‘Art Voyage’ — and invited me there. Where is it? Dubrovka Street, Melnikov #7. After some time they returned to their previous, more intuitive, and familiar name of Dubrovka.

They invited me and I promised to come, but never did. I could not. Later I even started wondering: but why? Am I really scared? I thought about, and answered myself honestly: yes, I am.

And here, when I learned that the play was about to close, and quite possibly forever, I finally got around to it.

… The whole show I was tense, and when we went outside — I went with my daughter and her friend — I at last quietly sighed. The first thing I saw was a plaque listing the names of all who were killed.

The performance was excellent. It was remarkable, but, in my opinion, doomed from the start. Touring shows by the Lenkom, for example, or any other theater could still be put on, but getting the audience to come here every evening, in my opinion, is impossible. For now. While they still remember. After all, a lot of things happened on Red Square, all sorts of horrors, even cannibalism, but that was 400 years ago, meanwhile here the weeds have not yet grown back. By the way, Ivashchenko and Vasilyev, so far as I know, did not intend to revive ‘Nord-Ost’, but when they entered the theater center two weeks or a month after the terrorist attack, there were already laborers hard at work in the building, and contracts for new seating and other repairs had already been distributed among well-known Moscow companies, and so they really had no choice.

Ivashchenko now says that, in the end, even if they never find the money to come back next season, they did their thing. Next year, whoever comes back here, they will be able to answer all questions with: this is where last year they put on ‘A Miracle’.

It is worth the time and the money. It is not worth a life.

PS. I often hear stories about how the Russians are a lot more spiritual than Europeans or Americans, but in reality there is nothing to confirm this: ‘over there’ the way they relate to the memory of the victims and the victims’ families cannot even be compared to the desire we have ‘over here’ to forget it all (already by the 41st day). To forget in order to stop being afraid, and like ostriches hide our heads instead to demanding from the authorities effective measures to protect civilians and prevent terrorist attacks.

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