Veniamin Smekhov in Antwerp. Forward - to the "cursed past"! 21 September 2025

Veniamin Smekhov in a new poetry program "Forward to the "damned past!"".

In 2025, Veniamin Borisovich Smekhov will be 85 years old. The age is solid and requires summarizing some results. The witness of the "cursed past", caught red-handed, talks about the world that can no longer be returned, and about the people who are no longer around. And also about why "protection by previous hopelessness" helps to live, why "poetry saves monotone" and why "to go with your back forward" (Peter Fomenko's call) means to go to the goal.

In the program "Forward to the "damned past" sounds favorite poems and stories about their authors. Some of them, such as David Samoilov, Alexander Mezhirov, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Vladimir Vysotsky, Veniamin Smekhov was lucky to know personally. Others, and above all Vladimir Mayakovsky, the actor has been reading for so many years that they too have passed into the category of close ones.

Smekhov played in performances and the Taganka Theater, and Gogol Center, plays at the Theater of Nations and in the "Practice". Today's theater is an important part of the new program.

When Smekhov's name is mentioned, the image of the noble Athos from the cult Soviet film "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers" immediately comes to mind for those who are not familiar with Moscow theaters. Therefore, it is not a sin in a nostalgic program to recall with humor that distant but still popular past, especially since the narrator recently traveled to the places of life of the real Athos.

The page "The East is a delicate matter" is dedicated to the love for the East, from which the fairy tale "Ali Baba and 40 Songs of the Persian Bazaar" was born. Lines from the fairy tale and Hafiz's poems that influenced it will fill this page.

As always, Veniamin Smekhov concludes with a story about Nikolai Robertovich Erdman. Everyone remembers the movies "Merry Guys", "Morozko", "Cain XVIII", filmed from Erdman's scripts. Some know his plays "Mandate" and "Suicide". Veniamin Smekhov was lucky to be friends with the great playwright. The actor is grateful to fate, which in his youth helped him to meet with the legend of the 1920s, and considers it an important task to return to modern life the name of Nikolai Erdman. The actor assures that there will not be a single person in the audience who will not laugh while listening to the lines of the remarkable author.

"Forward to the "cursed past" - a program about poetry, about theater and cinema, about friends who have gone, but remained in memory. It is a conversation about what it would be good to remember, to know and what it makes sense to believe in.

Come!