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Chekhov cut down to size
Safety in liquor: Jack Laskey (left) as Mischa Platonov. Pictures: Simon Annand Sons Without Fathers Coventry Belgrade ***** FIRST impressions
are not invariably right. Entering the Belgrade's beautifully appointed,
Swan-like Studio Theatre (Belgrade 2) for the start of Chekhov's updated
play Sons without Fathers,
one was struck, even offended, by the confused
melée:
the stage looked a mess. Would the production be, too? Then almost as
instantly, one got it: this was Chekhov. Here is a playwright who exults
and excels in mess, in the tensions and futile hopelessness of a
quasi-feudal, outdated class society, its struggling scions and doomed
landed gentry, imploding on itself and cantering towards the
non-solution of 1917.
Scarcely out of his teens, Chekhov shows in
Sons without Fathers distempered heads. And the distempered,
littered stage, all higgledy-piggledy seating, clumsy utensils, green
plastic child's potty, caught that pretty perfectly. Formerly and usually known as Platonov (when it was rediscovered in 1921, it lacked a title page), this play Chekhov wrote aged 20-22 (possibly earlier) - never staged in his lifetime, but released by his family and officially archived shortly into the Soviet era - has acquired various titles along the way. Hard-hitting, it ran to some six hours – almost
as long as the Austrian Karl Kraus's The Last Days of Mankind;
and as you might expect from the mature Chekhov, Gogol or others, it is
just as pithily satirical as its early 20th century German opposite
number. The director, Helena Kaut-Howson, whose work I
trace back to a scintillating Carl Nielsen Maskarade at Opera
North in Polish-born, she has returned to Warsaw, Kraków
and Wrocław – centres of theatrical genius all - collecting a Polish
Grand Prix at the last; Israel is another of her haunts. Her A Tender
Thing (Ben Power's daring Romeo and Juliet retelling) was
recently seen at the RSC's Swan Theatre, one of several times she has
paired up with the wonderfully wayward Kathryn Hunter (including as
King Lear). Was she an inspiration for
Kaut-Howson's other recent work for the Platonov (1878-9, or 1880-82; not staged
in Russia till 1957 under Khrushchev, three years before the UK; world
premiere in Germany, 1928) is like a set of notebooks for almost every
theme Chekhov would tackle in the later years up to The Cherry
Orchard in 1904, the year he died. Dvořák
died in 1904 too, and the Czech composer's Second Symphony is a similar
kind of youthful notebook, ideas on the march, tumbling out, being
sorted, not yet pigeonholed, a sort of pile of paper on the floor. If all roles, without exception, were nicely
acted - although the director might beneficially have rendered their
moves and gestures and facial tics a bit more specific - a few stood out
instantly. Jade Williams as the gloriously little-girl like,
easily put-downable, nobody-likes-me Maria Grekova, delighted instantly.
Like other characters in Chekhov, the world is hurting her. She is
impotent, desperate. Perhaps she will find a way out in Communist
fanaticism. You meet this flailing character in Russian films, often
aged a mere 12 or 13. On the way, but to what?
Amy McAllister made heart strings ache as the
uncontrollable Platonov's unselfish, unlikely (and here definitely
not plump) young wife, Sasha: patiently mopping up and keeping a
hopeless house in order, patently loved yet unashamedly cheated upon,
and not understanding, rather than not minding. Beneath her
subservience, hunger for a class change, perhaps, which will not come to
her, but might to their (unseen) child.
Susie Trayling, who trails huge Shakespeare (plus
Euripides) credits in her wake, and was Manchester Evening News
award-winning star of Anna Karenina at Bolton Octagon (where
Kaut-Howson has also directed), excelled. As the seductive, moneyed,
amoral yet new-era defining Anna Petrovna, always popping up as if her
horse had just happened to go lame beyond the hedge, eager for a lusty
shag but perhaps something rather more, she gave the show extra
momentum.
Actually, it was amazing how this staging, especially early on, got through so much concentrated stuff at a lope or a gallop. No flagging except on perhaps two occasions: not bad, in Chekhov. An amiable, if fatal, schemer, forever working on some new wheeze – and Trayling did have the facial and gestural variety – Anna Petrovna was a bit of a winner in this show, even while she is another of its numerous losers in life (an enduring Chekhov theme, still going strong with Gaev and Ranevskaya). The attendant unpredictability in the characters'
sex lives, or the concessions and rebounds they entail (think of Varya
and Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard; a pity Chekhov couldn't throw
his light on gay issues and Tchaikovsky-like angsts), is another
way the playwright uses to point up those wider societal shifts and
uncertainties.
Platonov's ultimate demise hangs on all this: Lenin's early regime (1917-23) may almost have preached free love, in some's eyes, but Chekhov has already mapped out the disasters that await it: the wraiths (like Sasha), or moppers-up (like Simon Scardifield's medic, Dr. Nikolai Triletsky, an incipient commentator on unfolding disasters, who may have suffered from the cutting floor). 'Jack Laskey's Platonov was almost entirely impossible to fathom' Scardifield didn't impact on me to start
with; he does have those little facial tweaks and ticks,
incipient gestures and artful finishes, self-adduced rather than
directorial, and not all convinced me.
But he won through. Not exactly an Astrov
(Chekhov himself, remember, was a medical student), still naïve, but
with the outsider's perception; though cuckolded, potentially wise
before his years, though not yet; still incapacitated by doubts,
inactive, holding back. The characterisation was a good one, from an
actor whose features might make you think he had a Russian granny too.
Chekhov in Hell at the Soho Theatre features, as it happens,
among Scardifield's credits. Here he offered us his Triletsky in Hell,
inspiringly well. To render a six-hour play less than three-
requires compromises and skill. Perhaps by the end one was just wearying
of these fretful, often self-indulgent, semi-competents, relieved when
the gunshot enabled us to go home;. Yet in a way, it could be the six-hour version
that holds not just added, but crucial interest. A major sub-plot, even
co-plot, was sacrificed, along with the many characters sustaining it.
This worked, even increasing the claustrophobia; but even for a
Chekhov-savvy audience, it risked the repetitive, and even the
hackneyed.
Still, David Hare and Michael Frayn have both
offered palatable trimmings of the play to half-length. It would be
churlish not to suggest Kaut-Howson, who also adapted, has not made a
good and above all consistent attempt here. What of the supposed ‘update'? In almost three
hours I noticed just one allusion to post- Great Patriotic War Conversely, what did work was that the smutty room, with its sordid funishings, became timeless. The overvaunted ‘update' simply didn't matter. I'm sure plebeian nurseries looked pretty much the same in 1880. Designer Iona McLeish, however, whose all-purpose
shambles I praised at the start, and whose costumes were just fine for
the piece, comes up with some beautifully evocative colour photos in the
programme, exploring the idea of ‘corrosion' via a recent Hungarian
toxic catastrophe (trees smeared rust-red, etc.) – not just an
interesting but a brilliant correlation. But then produced an aluminium sheeting backdrop
(‘factory' ‘corruption', etc.) that, mirror effects apart, made scant
impact and little contribution at all. German theatrical experimentation
is, or tends to be, a bit like that. Concept design needs to bring
something meaningful with it. Mark Jax (with impressive credit list, Stephen
Joseph, Scarborough and Edinburgh to Salisbury Playhouse and Exeter; but
above all, the RNT) as the elderly, or older, ultra gruff Osip (‘seen it
all') impinged increasingly on the plot, though again seemed
less-defined, less-directed and worked upon, than he deserved. One
rather liked the two retainers, Yakov and Vassily, who sneaked in from
time to time, spared the cutter's scissors or invented to cover the
chair moving.
Tom Canton and Marianne Oldham, closest friend
and friend's pining wife, added to the mix: he, almost tediously benign
but saved by a posh white suit; she quite splendidly flirty (yes,
another) in pursuit of Platonov. Both roles, he especially, felt
over-cut, their full raison d'être reduced. But it is she who,
spurned, wields the fatal knife, or barrel.
The shooting interpretation here emerges as rather feeble echo of The Killing or Morse I'd have preferred Laskey's Platonov to be run over by a train (as, I gather, in the original), which would – surely? - have provided a far more effective, cogent finale (bolstered by sound effects), not tying it all down to womanizing and Ruth Ellis-style piqued revenge. In the original, wandering in confusion, buffeted
by circumstance, he is taken away by circumstance. In a sense, by the
vast Russian elements. The sort of comic-ironic death one might expect
to befall someone like Simeonov-Pischik. That would also have provided appetising
possibilities for Sound Designer Paul Bull, and for Bolesław Rawski's
music, which I thought pretty good, bearable, and unobtrusively
beneficial throughout. Possibly he and Kaut-Howson worked together in And what happened? Well, as a well-worn
actor of copious talent, who could have taken almost any of these
Platonov roles (above all the title role) effortlessly, and his
teenage actor son reminded me in the bar, in Chekhov nothing is
supposed to happen.
But it was a lousy idea – though increasingly
common these days – not to include any substantial plot summary in the
programme, which needn't have given away the dénouement. For many I rather like the comment on Arcola's website:
‘shines a light on this band of disaffected thirty-somethings – too old
to move with the times, and too young to let go of their dreams'.
Perhaps that partly does the job. The 19th century's late
twenties/early 30s are perhaps our upper teens and early 20s: it's as if
there's not just one Trofimov in this play, bumbling through a
meaningless education, but half a dozen of them. It could have been set
in a Brideshead Oxford with little problem or loss. Actually the one who is the Trofimov,
Oliver Hoare's Isaac Vengerovich, is one of the most successful
performances. The student does know where he's going, does
despise the ineptitude, lack-a-daisical manner and endless
procrastination of those around him; will, perhaps, fit into the Soviet
society that will soon emerge (or in this reading, has already emerged).
He has energy; he is trippable, but has the nous to recover. He is almost a one-man official opposition in
this floundering, meandering household. He looks and sounds as if he
would gladly throttle them all; but he is, just possibly, the one who
might be able to save them. Hoare, still young, trained in Jack Laskey's Platonov was almost entirely
impossible to fathom. And that, arguably, was his impressive strength.
From the comic turns, almost Richard III jollity and teasing at
the start – a sure-fire prelude to disaster in Chekhov & co. – he runs
through sinister trysts with old girlfriends, resisting or not resisting
seduction, heartless husband, incompetent breadwinner (we never see a
whisper of his work; Chekhov's invariable idlers are often idle only
because he chooses to present them incomplete), a sort of Mr. Punch one
can easily imagine battering the baby. Never once did Laskey, a young actor able –
possibly unlike Rupert Everett, whom he may resemble in manner more than
looks - to make himself seem older than the rest, not make us
feel uneasy. A wreck of a man in this so-called ‘wreck' of a play, a
nervy, clever-clogs, risk-taking, cuckoo near-psychopath (Jack
Nicholson, surely?), he almost revels in exuding endless threat. It is
the ultimate irony, and inevitability, that he will be the one to
succumb to it. Roderic Dunnett
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