THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
In the week when the theatre world lost Peter Brook here comes a version of Chekhov's eternal classic which embodies so much of what Brook touched on his seminal book The Empty Space.
Here, director Jamie Lloyd gives us the most stripped bare version of the play you’re ever likely to see. Designer Soutra Gilmour envelops the cast in a bulky plywood box which is akin to a soundproofed radio studio and just as oppressively lit. This is a space for work. The cast, barefoot and in the most casual of clothes, wear fully visible lip mics which signals to us that this is going to be all about the voices. And what great voices. They sit on chairs in a line, front or rear, or they convene in a circle, and they enact this tale.
Without costumes, sets or conventional ‘blocking’ the focus goes totally on the actors’ voices and Lloyd has assembled a polished ensemble which holds us rapt throughout. Reassembled, actually, as it first ran for 5 performances before lockdown in March 2020.
They do of course have some of the best lines of dialogue ever written to work with, but the exercise here recalls Louis Malle’s great film of Vanya on 42nd Street where he knew to trust that it’s all there in the dialogue and you just need to get the casting right. Lloyd doesn’t so much impose a concept here as lovingly unwraps the play it as if it’s a treasured gift.
Key to this is Anya Reiss’s very modern adaptation. It’s packed with modern terms and allusions, but they are always apt. When they play charades, the subject is all modern films and books. The piece is very much grounded in today and will no doubt ease a new or young audience into the work who might be daunted by the layers of period trappings they would normally have to negotiate. It’s a dangerous game but Lloyd has a history of, mostly successfully, blowing the cobwebs off classics.
Indira Varma is born to play the beguiling stage star Arkadina, getting to nub of her capricious insecurity. Daniel Monks is heartbreakingly poignant as Konstantin, her tortured, pretentious young son. He needs a hug, but she’s too vain to allow any vulnerability. He’s perfectly matched by Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke as Nina, the object of his obsession. Clarke does wonders with the young woman mangled up in this emotional mess, giving her an acute intelligence, rather than the wounded bird we so often see. Tom Rhys Harries is a young Trigorin (her love object), but it works, especially for the scene when he spills his soul. They’re more a match.
Mika Onyx Johnson makes the hard-done-by school teacher Medvedenko compelling in his own right, rather than a pathetic fool to be teased, and Jason Barnett reinvents the character of Shamrayev, making him more of a fearsome shop steward than a kindly estate manager who goes on a bit.
Shamrayev's wife Polina (Sara Powell) has had a lifetime affair with Dorn, the dashing local doctor, and Gerald Kyd has the faded matinee idol suavity to totally convince in that role. Sophie Wu both amuses and pulls our heart strings as Masha. With her crunched shoulders she’s a warped coil of disappointment, bordering on clinically depressed, having settled for a loveless marriage.
If you like your Chekhov with French windows, through which ladies in chiffon and chaps in boaters saunter in exuding an air of jaded ennui, this is not for you. All those emotions are present, but Reiss and Lloyd have stripped it back to its essence. They know that Chekhov’s forensic analysis of the human condition in all its delusions, stoicism and fears never dates and hopefully here a new generation can get to see why he matters.
