Chekhov meetings

Yalta’s elderly residents and its many visitors remember the decrepit state of the Yalta Theater, which for many years was a terrible eyesore in this Crimean resort city. Despite its former days of glory, when the stars of the Russian and Ukrainian theaters performed there and Anton Chekhov himself personally greeted his favorite actors from the Moscow Art Theater, the building was utterly neglected for nearly 10 years. It was only this year, 125 years after the original theater opened on this site, that the present theater’s majestic facade with snow-white classical pillars was restored.

Located in the vicinity of the Yalta promenade, the Lesia Ukrainka Museum, and the sculptural composition Lady with a dog, the theater is now poised to become the artistic hub of this resort city.

DIALOGUE WITH THE AUDIENCE

The Chekhov Theater decided to mark its new era by organizing the First International Chekhov Theater Festival, which was held during the off-peak resort season. The organizers, headed by director Mykola Rudnyk, who is also the manager of the Chekhov Theater, opted for a wider program than just Chekhov’s works. The program, entitled “Chekhov and His Milieu,” included plays from the international repertoire that are worthy of the great playwright.

Nine theatrical companies from Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus participated in the festival. The Lesia Ukrainka National Theater of Russian Drama staged Leonid Maliugin’s legendary, frequently-performed play Nasmeshlivoe moe schastie (My Mocking Happiness) which is based on Chekhov’s correspondence. (This play concluded the program, and the troupe then left on its tour of Yalta.)

The Moscow-based theater U Nikitskikh vorot took part in the festival competition with its Doctor Chekhov, which kicked off the program. This is a long-running theatrical fantasia based on Chekhov’s short stories. It has been performed non-stop for a quarter of a century, witnessing historical changes together with its audiences and reflecting the twists and turns in the lives of people and countries.

The plot, woven together from several key Chekhov stories, has not lost its humanistic bathos, which is embodied in the writer’s seemingly unsophisticated sketches of everyday life. Long ago we became used to the fact that Chekhov was primarily a writer rather than a doctor, but in this play director Mark Rozovsky emphasizes that he was a doctor of human souls. The jury, headed by Nelli Korniienko, member of the Art Academy of Ukraine, awarded the company the Legendary Play prize for its 25th-year-long dialogue with theatergoers.

Chekhov’s words also resounded in the play Swansong staged by the Ivan Turgenev Orlov Academic Theater. In this work the playwright offered the actor the wonderful opportunity of playing several parts from several well-known plays. In this kind of performance the actor can show himself or herself in various artistic profiles, which is interesting from the point of view of stage direction. Although the performance did not offer a modern reading, it followed Chekhov’s words in a traditional and consistent manner, winning an honorary diploma “For Preserving the Traditions of the Theatrical Benefit Performance.”

In contrast, the Yanka Kupala National Academic Theater (Minsk) produced an innovative reading of Chekhov. In its performance of SV, initials that could mean either “sad vishniovyi” (cherry orchard) or “spalnyi vagon” (sleeping car), Liubov Ranevskaia, a character from Chek­hov’s play The Cherry Orchard, is returning from Paris. Chekhov’s language is not heard but seen, convincingly expressed through dance, the language of plastic movements.

The director succeeded in expressing Chekhov’s intonations with the language of movement, facial expression, and expressive gesticulation. The experiences of the people living in a manor that has a cherry orchard are made more acute and intense through music and the perfection of the staging. The tragicomic performance proves that Chekhov’s message can be conveyed in any genre. The Belarusian company won two prizes: one for “Original Theatrical Language in a Contemporary Interpretation of Chekhov’s Heritage” (director Pavlo Adamchikov) and “Best Male Role” (Dmitri Yesenevich).

A BROKEN STRING

The Anatolii Lunacharsky Sevastopil Russian Drama Theater staged Chekhov’s play Ivanov, which was written before his most famous plays Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull, and is not performed as often. The performance was devoted to the 120th anniversary of the play’s first staging. In the painful inner drama of protagonist Nikolai Ivanov lies the author’s crucial task: to throw light on the labyrinth of the human soul, its driving forces, and the roots of its sufferings, and to determine what makes it feel out of place and torment itself and others.

Ivanov is a powerful character with strong passions; the role is not easy to play. In my opinion, director Grigorii Lifanov did not succeed in reaching the heights of that typically Chekhovian clear note of panic and desire coupled with the inability to sort things out and find mutual understanding with other people. He replaced the tense atmosphere of disintegrating relationships and dying love with a primitive, flat, and hackneyed presentation of the plot, creating the bustle that is more typical of the plays of Nikolai Ostrovsky or Nikolai Gogol (Hohol). Watching the repressed sufferings of Ivanov (Oleksandr Poryvaiev), I felt like shouting Konstantin Stanislavsky’s famous phrase, which Chekhov must have heard too: “I don’t believe it!”

The Sevastopil Theater performed on its own stage, so the home audience responded with great enthusiasm. Its performance netted the Audience Choice award, while the company’s premiere actress Liudmyla Kara-Hiaur, who played Avdotia Nazarovna, was awarded the diploma for her “significant contribution to the theatrical culture of Ukraine.”

Oleksandr Mardan’s play The Awaited Letter, staged by the Maksim Gorky Dnipropetrovsk Theater of Russian Drama, received the diploma “Audience Recognition,” even though its production (director Oleksandr Holubenko) and the actors’ performance in this modern story of love and betrayal story (despite its romantic flare) are questionable.

The Molodyi Theater of Kyiv came to Yalta with the famous play Uncle Vania and an absolutely surprising choice of actor for the main role-Oleksii Vertynsky, who is a wonderful artist but still carries the aura of a comic from his earlier roles. It was fascinating to watch him as he tried to overcome the audience’s stereotypical perceptions.

Vertynsky does not resemble the typical Uncle Vania who has been seen on numerous stages. He is supremely natural and true to life. He suffers in a realistic fashion and the revelation he experiences, the shattering of his hopes and life, is terrible. His revolt is like the symbolic sound of a broken string-it is meaningless, joyless, and hopeless. Sonia puts braces, like a straitjacket, on Uncle Vania’s arms (“You have to work”), but his entire appearance conveys the picture of a broken, lost man who embarrasses others with the power of his emotions.

Vertynsky surpassed himself in this role, proving that he has sufficient talent to play the entire psychological gamut. In his interpretation Chekhov resounds with a new and poignant nuance of human emotions. The message of director Stanislav Moiseev is that you need to bear your cross throughout life, no matter how difficult or thankless this may be.

The image of Sonia (Rymma Ziubina) was the most vivid one in this context. The actress showed the entire richness and range of her character’s traits: she is tender, loving, and diffident, but also calm and meek. She bears her cross with more assurance than anyone else, and she believes.

The final scene with Sonia and Uncle Vania reaches truly tragic heights. Ziubina is so convinced that she will see a “diamond-dotted sky” that the sympathetic audience, perfectly aware of her naivete, obediently agrees with this dictum. Ziubina was awarded the diploma for “Best Female Role in a Chekhov Play,” while the “Best Set Design” award went to production designer Andrii Aleksandrovych-Dochevsky.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL DUEL

The performances of two other actresses were honored with “Best Female Role” awards, but this time for modern plays. The Republican Theater of Belarusian Drama (Minsk) presented Nikolai Rudkovsky’s play Zhenshchiny Bergmana (Bergman’s Women; director Valerii Anisenko). The play portrays the clash between memories and reality. Imaginary life loses out to real life, which is much crueler. The story is about the life of a female singer whose glorious days are in the past. She has lost her voice and ended up in a hospital, where she is taken care of by an evil nurse, who is angry at the world and decides to vent her anger on her patient.

The singer (Tatiana Markhel) wins this psychological duel thanks to her mercy, noble heart, and understanding that the nurse is in even worse shape than she is. Following the playwright’s instructions, the singer does not utter a single word in the performance, yet she turns out to be the most eloquent of all the characters.

Similar willpower is required of Faina (Olena Hall-Savalska) in Aleksandr Obraztsov’s play Dva serdtsa (Two Hearts; directed by Serhii Pavliuk), which was staged by the Mykola Kulish Music and Drama Theater of Kherson. This character is the prototype of the famous actress Faina Ranevskaia. She is shown at the end of her life, when old age and solitude erect a wall of oblivion separating her from life. Through her character, Hall-Savalska seeks to make certain generalizations about the lives of lonely, old people.

Faina is a big, capricious child, unprotected and confused in the face of grim reality. The performance conveys hope for human warmth, which the actress was lucky to find in her final days. Sorrowfully, the audience watches Faina Ranevskaia whose portrait in the finale takes its place among the portraits of prominent figures of our age. Hall-Savalska was awarded a diploma for “Best Female Role.”

RE-READING CHEKHOV

The highest marks and the Grand Prix of the festival went to the play Perechytuiuchy Chekhova (Re-reading Chekhov) staged by Lviv’s Maria Zankovetska Ukrainian Drama Theater. Director Alla Babenko created this chamber performance as a theatrical interpretation of two Chekhov stories, “Ionych” and “Ariadna.” Two pairs of actors-Oleksandra Liuta and Yurii Chekov, and Albina Sotnykova and Andrii Snitsarchuk – recount their love stories in a poignant, frank, and anguished way. The stage is empty except for two white chairs, and red and yellow maple leaves strewn on the floor. Life is at an end, but the desire to taste more happiness is great. Alas, it is not to be. No matter how much the lovers reprove each other, and how many past feelings they evoke, it is all over now.

The actors have unmistakably sensed Chekhov’s intonation and play between the lines. They have conveyed the most characteristic intonation in Chekhov’s story: one thing is said, but something else is implied; one thing is heard, but it is not the same as what is uttered. The clash of moods and the man’s and woman’s attitude to love and life’s situations are vivid and vibrant. They react completely differently to a remembered scent: she smells lilacs, while he smells fried onions. They cling to their memories; they are simply glued to them. Life has passed by so abruptly; they have just made up their minds to live, but now their lives are about to end.

This play could be subtitled “A romance of unfulfilled happiness.” It is filled with light, airy nuances, elusive as a sigh and the sound of a possible kiss. The characters become increasingly more entangled in the web of their feelings; they want to break free using their memories, but instead they pull the intangible threads even tighter. Nothing can be restored. Is this the only thing they have left in their lives-to rise up in hope and catch the grey autumn leaves that are swirling in their fanciful dance and falling in order to die until next spring?

The festival ended on its highest emotional note. It immersed the audiences- admirers of Chekhov’s talent-in the marvelous atmosphere of art, creatively linking the past and present and forming the illusion that the writer, wearing his charming pince-nez, was passing through the bamboo grove near his house. It made you want to go through the restored rooms of Chekhov’s villa and wander through the front garden, stepping on the first fallen leaves of autumn, stand gazing into the blue expanse of the Black Sea as it merged with the sky at the horizon-and re-read Chekhov again.