After being electrified by Andrew Hilton's Bristol-based company's production of Richard II last year, I jumped at the chance to see their well-reviewed production of Chekhov's last play on its brief run this week at the Rose theatre in Kingston. But it failed to live up to my expectations.
Thankfully, there was none of the gratuitous rewriting and updating which ruined the National Theatre's recent production of The Cherry Orchard. But the transfer from the intimate surroundings of the Tobacco Factory to the much larger stage of the Rose hasn't worked well. It's always an uphill struggle for the actors when only one seat in four in the theatre is occupied, as was the case last night, but somehow the show struggled to make it out of second gear. I can understand that in its original setting, with the audience close to the action, it probably worked much better. Chekhov can work well without elaborate sets, as Cheek by Jowl's stunning productions have shown, but the bare concrete pillars that line the back of the Rose stage create precisely the wrong backdrop and atmosphere for this play. Ranevskaya and her family are being forced to give up a much-loved country home packed with memories, but here they inhabit a bleak industrial space which in reality nobody would wish to stay in a day longer than necessary.
In theory the Rose, with its circular shape, is an exciting echo of the Shakespearean stage. But on closer examination it seems, on the evidence of this play, to be a flawed design. There is an empty space the size of half a tennis court between the front row of the stalls and the front of the stage, which sets up a huge barrier and makes the action seem very distant. It seems this empty space can be used for spectators sitting on cushions, but when they're not there, the effect is deadening. At Shakespeare's Globe the groundlings are the vital bridge between the seated audience and the actors, but at the Rose this essential element is lost. The stage is wide and shallow and appears to me to be an uneasy compromise between the proscenium arch and theatre-in-the-round, with the defects of both and the advantages of neither. Chekhov can work well in the round or on a thrust stage, but his style of naturalism generally works best in a proscenium magic box. So I blame the architect for my dissatisfaction.
It would be nice to balance my criticism with a hymn of praise to the actors and director. But even leaving aside the handicaps created by the space, I felt this show misfired. Hilton rightly sets out to avoid the heavy overacting which is endemic in Russian productions of Chekhov, but while the characters on stage seem human, their comic potential isn't fully exploited. Julia Hills as Ranevskaya stands out, giving full rein to her character's frivolous side, but she lacks any dimension of tragic grandeur. This is a woman who has made many wrong choices in her personal life, but at least she has lived it to the full, in contrast to the priggish inanity of the student Trofimov who proclaims loftily that he and Anya are 'beyond love'. Trofimov isn't priggish enough, Firs isn't decrepit enough, Dunyasha isn't silly enough, Charlotta isn't batty enough and above all Lopakhin the peasant's son isn't vulgar enough. Actors are sensitive souls who are taught to develop acute emotional intelligence; sometimes even the best of them struggle to portray someone who lacks this quality altogether. I feel that is the problem with Simon Armstrong's otherwise excellent performance as Lopakhin, just as it was when Simon Russell Beale played the role at the Old Vic. Lopakhin is a crass boor, and this production makes him too well-mannered and middle class.
Chekhov portrays a society in which the vast gulf between the gentry and the peasantry was still important, even though the barriers were breaking down. That's one of the main themes of the play, and English productions rarely get the Russian class distinctions right. Everyone seems to be on the same level in this production, which leads to whole layers of meaning being lost. Yasha the valet is uppity and above his station, but the impact of him drinking the family's champagne in the final act is lost because we've already seen him lounging on the sofa next to Ranevskaya. There are lots of other little moments where the raw and painful conflict, simultaneously comic and tragic, of one class sweeping aside another should be apparent, but isn't.
Comments