After
Shakespeare’s, Anton Chekhov’s plays are perhaps the most human. Literary
critic James Woods believes Chekhov’s characters “act like free consciousness,
not as owned literary characters, [that they] forget to be Chekhov’s
characters,” such is the way the playwright allows them simply to be. Both
Shakespeare and Chekhov, as playwright David
Hare writes, “respected the absolute complexity of life [and] never allowed
their creations to be used for any other purpose than being themselves.” Not
only a humanist, Chekhov was also a political writer, as socially and
specifically pointed as Tolstoy, Gorky, Shakespeare. But while everyone
celebrates Chekhov’s mastery in his four most well-known works – the plays The
Seagull, Uncle
Vanya, The
Three Sisters, and The
Cherry Orchard – his short stories are also exceptional, as are his
rougher earlier plays, Platonov and Ivanov.
The story of a group
of young idealists with the whole world ahead of them, Platonov – like so much of Chekhov, as in life – is about love,
relationships, the people who get under our skin, and the extraordinary lengths
we go to rid ourselves of feeling too much. Specifically, it is about Platonov,
a provincial schoolteacher, “who faces up to the implications of being
irresistibly attractive to four different women.” Presented here by MopHead and Catnip Productions in conjunction
with ATYP Selects, this Platonov
is bursting with passion, sexual energy and desperation, and in Anthony
Skuse’s adaptation it explodes across the ATYP Studio stage in a riot of
colour, emotion and drinking.
Written when
Chekhov was just twenty (or twenty-one; some accounts propose eighteen), Platonov shows all the now-trademark
signs of ‘a Chekhov play’. But where his later plays have intricately-plotted
structures, and are focused on reactions rather than actions, here Platonov is seemingly filled, in Hare’s
words, with a “wildness, a sort of feverish ambition, a desire, almost, to put
the whole of Russia on the stage, while at the same time focusing comically on
one of its most sophisticated victims.” Often called ‘Fatherlessness’ after its
possible Russian title ‘Bezotzovschina’,
it is a giant scream of a play about the rift between the young and old, the
distinction between history and tradition, and the present and immediate
unrelenting Here and Now. Unlike the later plays, it’s hard not to read
Chekhov’s own thoughts and feelings in these characters’ mouths, to hear “his
own passion, his own emotional confusion and his own political despair show
uncensored and unmediated.”
Nothing in the
world of Platonov is fixed.
Characters fall in and out of love at the drop of a coin, they make up and
break up, they fight and bicker and argue and flirt and mourn and burn each
other up with their passions and pains. The characters and the play are in a
constant state of flux. Chekhov, still very much a young man here, is unafraid
of a mix of dramatic styles – direct address, monologue, farce, tragedy,
comedy, tragicomedy… - so long as they all help him tell his story. And what a
story. Staged on a traverse set eerily similar to that seen in STCSA’s Seagull,
it features two dozen chairs of varying styles, shapes and ages, used and
abused as required by Skuse’s mellifluous direction. As in other Skuse-directed
productions, the cast barely leave the stage as observers, becoming a kind of
collective ghostly presence in the half-dark at the end of ATYP’s Studio, and
there is a rough kind of theatrical magic that happens here. There are no
distractions, no moving set-pieces or anything complicated other than a moving
light, a string of coloured globes, and various bags, bottles, knives and props
brought on as required. It is beguiling, and all-too-simple, but it focuses the
attention squarely on the characters – the people – which breathe and feel in front
of us.
From the opening
moments of the ensemble singing a Russian folk song, to the various
introductions, tussles, meals, parties, elopements, fights and confessions,
right through to the climactic ending and the frenzied singing in the eventual
blackout, there is a sense of community here. While they are Chekhov’s
characters, they could very well be us, today, now; as Skuse says in the
director’s notes, “time and place are sketched very lightly.” It is laddish and
robust, muscular, rough; it feels as though at any moment it could break free
from its surrounds and career through the streets on its way to its inevitable
conclusion. Working from Laurence
Senelick’s translation, Skuse’s adaptation remains faithful to the
original, yet seems to hum and fizz with an immediacy and forthrightness which
has nothing to do with the occasional language peppered throughout it. It all
comes down to the style of the production, to Skuse’s attention to the lives of
these characters, to the way it is played; there is an immediateness, too, to
each actor’s performance, that makes it seems as if it is all happening now,
that they are living now.
Charlie Garber as
Platonov is a curmudgeonly guy, an angry frustrated bored hipster, a kind of
Russian Hamlet, consumed by jealousy, indifference, grand ideas and an almost bathetic
air of ambivalence about him that makes him almost un-Chekhovian and quite
repulsive. It is a wonder, sometimes, how so many women managed to fall for him;
there are scenes, however, where we see Platonov the romantic shine through,
little brief glimpses, and perhaps that is – if not enough justification – as much
as we need to see that he isn’t perhaps as bad as he seems, that he is capable
of better. Geraldine Hakewill’s Sofya is graceful, and there is an innocence
and naiveté about her which is beguiling and occasionally frustrating; you wish
Sofya would just do something, though the play’s conclusion proves that she is
capable of indeed such a thing, that she is stronger than we at first expected.
Suzanne Pereira’s Anna is perhaps older than the others though by how much we
don’t know, and there is a directness but also a vulnerability to her which is
intoxicating – for Platonov and for us. Matilda Ridgway’s Sasha, Platonov’s
long-suffering wife, is earthy and grounded, a close cousin to her Nora in Sport
for Jove’s The
Doll’s House earlier in the year, and there is a determination in her,
playful and fiery by turn, that is refreshing and harrowing to watch. Eloise
Snape’s Mariya, a chemistry student and the last of Platonov’s set-upon lovers,
is initially uncomfortable by his actions and presence, and eventually
threatens to sue him for harassment, although she realises it could do more
damage than good and that was not her intention.
The rest of the
cast shine in their own moments of grace and humanity. Jason Perini’s Burov is
gruff but humble, a decent fellow beneath the wild exterior; Gary Clementson’s
Porfiri is stubborn and headstrong; Amy Hack’s Katya is graceful despite being
teased and the frequent butt of everyone’s jokes; Terry Karabelas’ Petrin is
cruel and harsh, but not without his reasons, and he is all-too-human like the
rest of them. Graeme McRae’s Nikolai, Sasha’s brother, is one of Platonov’s
best friends, though even he cannot understand Platonov at times, and though he
perhaps becomes careless when drunk, he plays the end with dignity and
compassion. Sam O’Sullivan’s Isak is quick to anger, but he too has his
reasons, finds he cannot bring himself to waste energy on Platonov and thus
takes his leave with dignity. Dorje Swallow’s Osip, the local ruffian, thief,
and horse-rustler, is not so much a villain, but a temptation in the opposite
mould to Platonov’s; he is beguiling and repelling in turn, though he is not
without heart and kindness, as Sasha learns. Sam Trotman’s Sergei, Sofya’s
husband and another of Platonov’s friends, is eager, flighty and capricious,
and takes the ending hard, finding solace and comfort in his fellow citizens.
Skuse’s production
is well-lit with warmth and ingenuity by Chris Page, and Alistair Wallace’s
sound design is subtle and effective; in many respects, the cast and technical
aspects mask an unevenness which comes though the playwright’s youthfulness.
While Chekhov’s play, written when we was twenty or so, is undeniably rough, it
is not without its own charm and charisma. The first act is a conglomeration of
entrances and exits as everyone is introduced, almost at once; the second act
is a series of two-person scenes, “a Godot-like
meditation between two lost souls,” in Hare’s words. The third act is another
series of two-person scenes, all featuring Platonov, while the fourth is the
inevitable conclusion which must come at a price. While understandably whittled
down from a youthfully unwieldy five hours, Skuse has perhaps filleted slightly
too much out, and some of the relationships and beats are unclear, especially
at the end of the second act. The pacing also seems slightly skewed, with much
of the first half rushing by in a long and mesmerising one-hundred minute
stretch, full of exuberance and energy and, despite its politics and social commentary,
a good deal of humour. The second act, on the other hand, seems to drag on
without much of the humour so prevalent in the first, and it seems weighed down
by all its seriousness and ethical preoccupations, seems more concerned with visible
plot development than that of its characters.
Like Platonov
himself, you kind of love and hate the play’s ratbaggish structure, and don’t
mind spending an evening in its company because, truth be told, it is an
engrossing and captivating piece of theatre. While it might not be as polished as
some of Skuse’s – and Chekhov’s – other work, it is still undeniably beguiling,
and as the barrelling wave of self-pity, misery and loathing breaks at the end
and the aftermath crashes down around them and us, a voice starts singing in
the stillness, and the ensemble joins in, building to a sudden frenzied
crescendo before stopping, stunned; charged. It’s powerful and emotional stuff,
and it’s a rare chance to see one of the masters of dramatic form in his
earlier days, before he was ‘Chekhov’. (It will be interesting, too, to see The
Present, Andrew Upton’s adaptation for Sydney Theatre Company next year,
and see whether Upton
There are few
things which scream ‘summer’ more than three hours of Chekhov, under the wharf,
with your friends.
*
The ‘neopredelyonnst’ Michael Frayn
talks about in his introduction to Wild
Honey, his 1984 adaptation of Platonov
for the National Theatre of Great Britain.
Theatre playlist: 72. She is of the heavens, Dario Marianelli
No comments:
Post a Comment