PLATONOV. To 18 March.
London
PLATONOV
by Anton Chekhov adapted by Lev Dodin
Barbican Theatre To 18 March 2007
Mon-Sat 7.15pm Sun 5pm
Runs 3hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7511 (£2 transaction fee)
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 March
The title’s not Chekhov’s; the script has huge cuts; the result is compelling.
However you expect over three hours of Chekhov in Russian to start, it’s not with a jazz riff. But that’s how Lev Dodin begins his version of this play for his company, St Petersburg’s Maly Drama Theatre, and it fits. There’s something of the spontaneity, improvisation and mix of structure and apparent shapelessness jazz can possess to this piece. It is a mass and a mess, and Dodin has made of it something less massive and apparently random; tantalisingly like, yet unlike, familiar Chekhov.
The early manuscript emerged after Chekhov’s death. There are motifs looking forward to his famous dramas, but none of their shape, even after Dodin cut the lengthy script to present proportions. There’s hardly a beginning, just characters emerging and talking. There is an end, but it’s one where the silence of sudden death co-exists with life going on, while rain falls to wash away the dirty complications of the past - something the Sonya of Uncle Vanya would recognise.
The magnificent Maly company create life’s vivid normality, driven by desires that itch strongly but have little external significance, by plans and hopes, and above all by human failings. Platonov may be a teacher, but he has no qualifications (formal or otherwise) and muddles through his life.
On a balcony and sand-covered forestage, with an amply-used pool of water behind, life, unavoidably, continues. Undivided into anything as formal as acts or scenes (it’s quite surprising when lights go up for the interval, or down at the start of either half), this apparent randomness drifts daily on, while desire seems to stretch ahead for ever, and apparent melodrama suddenly intrudes.
Characters recur like figures in a narrative tapestry, caught in the weft of events. Guns and knives threaten. Water serves for attempted suicide, escape from monotony, and for the sole act of love, where naked bodies join in a waterborne waltz accompanied by the brass ensemble effectively formed by this acting company. It’s Dodin’s triumph to match the blazing theatricality of lights, music and fireworks with the rhythm of life in its often uneventful, repetitious, occasionally ecstatic cycle.
Anna Petrovna Voinitseva: Tatiana Shestakova/Tatiana Rasskazova
Sergey Pavlovich Voinitsev: Oleg Dmitriev
Sofya: Irina Tychinina/Ksenia Rappaport
Mikhail Vasilievich Platonov: Sergey Kuryshev
Alexandra Ivanovna: Natalia Kalinina
Maria Yefimovna Grekova: Elena Kalinina
Porfiry Semenovich Glagolev: Igor Ivanov
Kirill porfirievich: Oleg Gayanov
Abram Abramovich Vengerovich: Sergey Kozyrev
Timofey Gordeevich Bugrov: Alexander Zavyalov
Osip: Igor Chernevich
Modest: Alexey Devotchenko/Adrian Rostovskiy
Servants: Voladimir Seleznev, Vladimir Zakharyev, Oleg Ryazantsev, Vitaly Pichik, Danil Lavrenov, Konstantin Belodubrovskiy, Viktor Gorodkov
Director: Lev Dodin
Designer: Alexey Porai-Koshits
Lighting: Oleg Kozlov
Costume: Irina Tsvetkova
2007-03-14 08:54:57