Fiametta’s Four Dead Men by Nikolai Evreinov

Dramatic pantomime, shaped in large part by Vsevolod Meyerhold’s 1910 production of Columbine’s Scarf at the House of Interludes, held a modest yet meaningful place in the repertoire of the Crooked Mirror Miniature Theatre (St. Petersburg). Nikolai Evreinov’s Fiametta’s Four Dead Men, the theatre’s first commedia dell’arte pantomime, premiered in 1911 and, as theatre historian Vadim Shcherbakov notes, grew out of this same experiment. The premiere was preceded by Alexander Kugel’s programmatic essays on pantomime in Teatr i Iskusstvo [Theatre and Art] and by several small-scale exploratory productions, including a staged adaptation of The Tale of the Six Beauties Who Were Not Like One Another. This article analyzes the narrative motifs of Fiametta’s Four Dead Men and their relationship to Columbine’s Scarf. The article also examines the étude in one act, An Hour of the Decameron: A Love Tragicomedy about Zeppo di Mino, staged at the Crooked Mirror on 24 January 1911. The conclusion briefly surveys other pantomimes produced at the Crooked Mirror, including Evreinov’s Columbine of Today. Keywords: Alexander Kugel, Nikolai Evreinov, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Crooked Mirror Miniature Theatre, Fiametta’s Four Dead Men, Columbine’s Scarf, Columbine of Today, dramatic pantomime

Dramaturgy · Narrative · Performance art · Repertoire · Tragicomedy · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies · Theatre and Performance Studies