"Studying me like a painting": Porgina about relations with Yuri Yakovlev Lyudmila Porgina revealed relations with Yakovlev

Lyudmila Andreevna, how was your summer?

- Excellent! When you are 77 years old, your health is normal because I support it. Seriously, I feel really good, swimming in the pool, doing massages, but also taking care of my pets. I have dogs, cats, parrots, I do all these things, and I want them to live in my rhythm. This summer, I didn’t go anywhere but Moscow to see the performances. This season I will often visit the Gogol Theatre to see all the productions of the talented director Anton Yakovlev.

- Do you like his work?

- I'm shocked by his work. Anton just turned my soul over with the play Crime and Punishment. The audience was crying! This is my favorite work of Dostoevsky, but I have never seen such a reading as Anton’s. Extraordinary! Anton is an extension of the pope. He took a piece of his father's soul that analyzes a person. He looks at you and creates an image. Subtlely catches the other person's feelings.

Did you personally know Yuri Yakovlev?

- Of course! My Kolya admired him. We visited the Yakovlevs and saw Anton grow up. We were met by the wonderful wife of Yura Irochka, who worked in the administrative part of the Vakhtangov Theater. The family had a tender relationship. Yura was an extraordinary person, attentive, caring. We also met at the birthday of Andryusha Mironov in Leningrad at the Mironov Theatre. At the end of the solemn part, they sat in a cafe, chatted, drank, snacked! He and Kolya joked, sometimes ironically and sharply. And it was a joy to communicate with Yura Yakovlev, who had a different attitude than ordinary people. We talked to him about how to visit a scientific audience. I was impressed by his knowledge in many areas. He always looked at me carefully, studied me as a painting. It was as if Yura had studied a million people, their behavior, how they talk, how they communicate, and so his roles were so rich and his characters varied. Each performance with his participation was a blow to the soul, he seemed to discover something new in a person with his roles. “Yes, yes, yes,” Kolya and I enthusiastically reacted when we called from the Vakhtangov Theater, and said – come to the play, Yurochka Yakovlev will play.