WILD HONEY. To 18 October.

Pitlochry.

WILD HONEY
by Michael Frayn from The Play Without A Name by Anton Chekhov.

Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 18 October 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 18 October 2pm.
Runs 2hr 55min One interval.

TICKETS: 01796 484626.
www.pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 1 October.

The beards have it – and they’re welcome to it.
Chekhov might have called his unfinished early work The Play Without A Name but others know it as Platonov, after its serial philanderer character who causes havoc among women on a country estate. Many Chekhov motifs are here – country life, wasted lives, a drunk doctor, gunshots – the dramatic wildness tamed by Michael Frayn into something like a Frayn comedy of disorder on a Russian estate.

There’s an early scene where a minor character, Marko, brings letters (apparently summonses) to one character after another. Its comedy works well in John Durnin’s Pitlochry production, because it depends on external action. Where this evening goes seriously off the rails is when any understanding of character depth or motivation is called for.

So, the third act’s farcical in-and-out of characters among the cornstalks is neatly handled; but why everyone’s chasing each other never seems important. The final act’s particularly afflicted; a series of arrivals to Platonov’s room where all he wants is to remain alone and drink – or shoot himself. The culmination of over two hours’ inter-relationships means little when everyone’s been played simply as figures in a comic action.

There are birch trees and growing crops aplenty in Adrian Rees’s design. It can all look extremely pretty under Ace McCarron’s lighting, which also accommodates a firework display. But a similarly external approach to character is signalled in the profusion of beards – this must be the decade’s most whiskery show. Males are bearded to excess; Joel Sams’ murderous Yakov to the point of near-facial extinction, while Martyn James Colonel seems to be compensating for his lack of a generalship by the forest on his face.

The women are bare-faced, and prettily attired. But all are induced to give stagy performances which diminish personality and, therefore, the vital motivations behind the action. The result is a growing tedium over a long-evening. It’s all wrong for Chekhov, of all writers, with none of the bruised lives the great Maly Theatre production of the original brought last year to the Barbican.

Still, Pitlochry provides a couple of moments’ excitement in the significant arrival and departure of trains.

Dr Nikolai Ivanovich Triletsky: Richard Stemp.
Yakov/Peasant: Joel Sams.
Anna Petrovna Voynitzeva: Sarah Stanley.
Porfiry Semyonovich Glagolyev: Richard Addison.
Sergey Pavlovich Voynitzev: Grant O’Rourke.
Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Triletsky: Martyn James.
Sofya Yegorovna Voynizteva: Esther McAuley.
Marko/Peasant: Robin Harvey Edwards.
Marya Yefimovna Grekova: Luissa Prosser.
Mikhail Vasilyevich Platonov: Greg Powrie.
Alexandra Ivanovna Platonova: Claire Dargo.
Gerasim Kuzmich Petrin: Dougal Lee.
Osip: Christian Edwards.

Director: John Durnin.
Designer/Costume: Adrian Rees.
Lighting: Ace McCarron.
Sound: Ronnie McConnell.
Fight director: Raymond Short.

2008-10-06 00:14:00