Check? Off!

I’m having a kind of Chekhov Festival of my own at the moment. Nothing over-the-top or fancy, just a little bit of respec’ for the man. Because for a long time I’d been, like Mr. Darcy, labouring under a misapprehension.

And the misapprehension was this: Chekhov was rubbish.

He was boring, aloof, unconvincing, cloying and, ironically, self-consciously theatrical in his attempt to be naturalistic. I had obtained this view after sitting through a particularly smug production of The Cherry Orchard a few years ago. It was well-reviewed in mainstream media, contained many stalwarts of the Australian theatre scene and was directed by an internationally renowned artist.

So what went wrong?

As something of a personal gripe, I find it frustrating when classical texts are updated into pseudo-contemporary vernacular. This particular adaptation appeared to contain a wild desire to ‘ockerize’, ‘cork-hat’ and ’sheep-shear’ the language away from its roots. As if everything was HAPPENING IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

I would have thought that most audience members don’t need a play that is quite clearly set in another time and place to be transferred (and, it seems, purely linguistically transferred) into the modern. If the production had shifted the location, context, character names, costumes – anything to suggest we were not in the world of Chekhov’s original – then perhaps there would have been a clearer, overarching design to the whole piece. I enjoy the possibilities that updating classics gives to all those involved in the process, but The Cherry Orchard struck me as a production that didn’t fully realise the potential of such an update. It felt just plain wrong that these characters, so firmly rooted in a physical sense of place, were so detached from a linguistic sense of place. It doesn’t seem right for characters to speak in a way that separates them so completely from their costume, hair, their turn-of-the-century chairs, not unless there is some very clear raison d’etre behind this kind of juxtaposition, evident in the production as a whole. (I’m trying to sound like a proper reviewer now, throwing in French for good measure…)

If they were going for a more contemporary vibe, why not reflect the changes to the text in the physical world of the production too? In the process of this particular transformation, or de-mystification of the classic text, the original urgency and vitality that brought that particular work to life was lost. The text was stripped back to a bare centrality, which could, I think, have been the base of a very good adaptation; but unhelpful layers were added, to the point where a well made, thoughtful piece of theatre became ornamental. Something uncluttered was cluttered all over again.

I couldn’t help feeling that each of the actors had entered the stage from a series of completely different productions running simultaneously. Some played high comedy; others low tragedy; a few seemed totally unaware they were on stage at all. For this, a gesture needs to be invented, a secret-code between actor and audience. A visual cue, something that says I know you’re on stage and you’ve probably rehearsed that particular move a hundred times but do you have to keep sweeping your arms about like that every time you speak?

Maybe if Chekhov listened to Waltzing Matilda he would have written something different but the fact is he didn’t. If there is a strong desire to make clear the Australian experience on stage, then why aren’t these theatre companies reviving Australian plays (and by that, I don’t mean thinking David Williamson is sufficient to fill the quota) instead, or at least alongside works from the European canon? I don’t see the need to manufacture certain elements of The Cherry Orchard, or any other classic, to reflect Australia. Surely the fact that it’s being put on tells us enough about its relevance. If we push too much toward the obvious, we run the risk of losing the ability to see ourselves in any art that doesn’t immediately announce itself to the audience as being about us.

***

A year or so after The Cherry Orchard, I organised to see the Maly Theatre of St. Petersburg’s production of Uncle Vanya (directed by Lev Dodin) at the Sydney Festival. I hoped that, being performed in Russian by an internationally-respected company, Uncle Vanya stood some chance of proving the reason for Chekhov’s place in the pantheon of theatre greats.

That performance was something of a revelation: Chekhov, I finally understood, was brilliant, alive, funny, sad, sweet, wonderful, and now. He was not, as that production of The Cherry Orchard taught me, turgid, slow, and humourless, despite the audience applause suggesting the contrary. Back then I could barely pat my hands together, like a seal without the nearby incentive of fish. I looked at the floor, audience members opposite me, the lighting rig on the ceiling – anything, in short, that was not the stage itself. I could have saved my money and spent the night wandering in the nearest Display Home with my iPod rolling through some Tchaikovsky instead. In fact The Cherry Orchard was, in my mind, not really Chekhov at all, but rather Cheek-orf, his rather unsightly antipodean brother who besmirched the family name after a few drunken years trawling the sea for scrap metal and who was now to be found in some Californian bungalow out Mascot way. All subtlety was lost – I couldn’t wait to hear the first sounds of the orchard being cut down.

The production of Uncle Vanya meanwhile was about stripping back the ornamental aspects of so many performances of Chekhov and releasing the emotional core of the narrative. Perhaps that production of The Cherry Orchard strove to do the same thing, but the results couldn’t have been more different. I’d write more about the Maly Theatre production of Uncle Vanya but I think the best thing to say is that, if you ever have the opportunity of seeing that fine company’s work, don’t miss it. It was, quite simply, one of the best nights at the theatre I have ever had.

As an aside of sorts, after criticising the ‘ockerisation’ of Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard, I’m wondering now what the alternative would have been:

• Attempting a pseudo-Russian accent?
• Going for an RP accent (English, received pronunciation)?

Or maybe not…
I suppose classic plays performed in England are generally done in English accents (or the regional accents of the actors). Ibsen is not generally done with a Norwegian lilt, however tempting. So maybe the choice was right, in the end.

But what happens in a production if some actors go for the whole RP phrasing and others don’t? Brothers and sisters in the same on-stage family can end up sounding alternately like children of Home and Away and the Royal Shakespeare Company. When so much time is spent on the period detail of the furniture and the costume, it is okay for the actors to just ‘do their own voice’ (or their approximation of their own voice), or go for their ‘acting voice’ (which is often different again)? If this is a directorial choice, shouldn’t it be evident in the production as a whole?

But that the whole accent/dialect thing wasn’t the only problem I had with The Cherry Orchard. I found the performance emotionally distant, mainly full of showboating performances where everything was very breathy and heavy, as if the actors were physically weighed down with all that literal meaning they were carrying around on their pin-tucked shoulders. Chekhov is the master of naturalism, they say; sure, but the acting ain’t.

I’m interested in how a similar problem might be used to advantage in Sam Mendes’ latest theatre venture, the aptly titled Bridge Project. Billed as an ensemble of British and American actors (the brilliant Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall, Ethan Hawke, Richard Easton and more…) the Bridge Project should, given its pedigree, be a hit.  It’s currently playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  For anyone interested I recommend Ben Brantley’s review of their production of The Cherry Orchard over at the New York Times, which discusses this issue of accents/competing voices – interestingly Brantley appears to heap more praise on the British actors…is it just the accents?

The Cherry Orchard (credit: Sara Krulwich, New York Times)

The Bridge Project is doing a selective world tour before ending up at London’s Old Vic (currently having problems of its own, if the reviews of Complicit and Richard Dreyfuss’ earpiece are anything to go by…)

I have to say, even though I’ve never have the fortune (or misfortune?) of seeing anything at the Old Vic, I’m pleased by their engagement with emerging theatre artists, particularly in their Old Vic New Voices scheme. There is also a particularly good resource on their website with plenty of information about new writing in the UK (PDF file here).

And, Matthew Warchus’ production of The Norman Conquests (Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy) is, according to whatsonstage.com, to be transferred to Broadway this year, complete with its original cast from the Old Vic (Stephen Mangan, Amelia Bullmore, Jessica Hynes, Amanda Root, Ben Miles and Paul Ritter).

The Norman Conquests (credit: Tristram Kenton)

After Complicit at the Old Vic there’s a new production of Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, starring Andrea Corr (from band The Corrs), Niamh Cusack (of the Cusack acting clan), and a number of other theatre stalwarts – Michelle Fairley, Simone Kirby, Finbar Lynch, Susan Lynch, Peter McDonald and Jo Stone-Fewings.  Sounds like a pretty exciting cast to me.  Playbill has more info here, as does the Old Vic site itself.

Dancing at Lughnasa (Old Vic cast)

Well, it’s sort of Chekhov, isn’t it?