IVANOV at the Olivier Theatre, National Theatre - Earlier Early Chekhov

After enjoying Jonathan Kent's production of THE SEAGULL I wanted to see how he approached Chekhov's earlier drama IVANOV. especially as he was using the David Hare translation that was the basis of his starry production at the Almeida nearly 20 years ago where Ralph Fiennes was an impassioned anti-hero.

Geoffrey Streatfeild, who had been a very urbane Trigorin in THE SEAGULL, here played the tormented lead character, a hard part to play as nothing makes him happy - and by extension, potentially the audience too.  Since Ralph Fiennes I have also seen Kenneth Branagh play the role, well... half of it.

It was in 2008, in the balcony of the Wyndhams Theatre, during Michael Grandage's production when I started to feel strange... was I going to faint, be sick, both?  More importantly, was I going to do it sitting dead centre in a long row?  I could not have negotiated my way along the narrow leg room in the dark, half way through the first act.  So I sat it out, staring at the chandelier which was on eye-level, daring not to look down at the stage in case I toppled forward with the vertigo I was experiencing.  God it seemed to last forever, all the time enduring Branagh's whiny performance.  The interval came and I left...

Ivanov is on the edge of the financial abyss; his acres of farmland are failing thanks to the progressive methods he championed when younger - a fact that his unctuous land manager never fails to mention - and his creditors are getting louder.  More troubling, he has fallen out of love with his Jewish wife Anna who is also succumbing to consumption.  Ivanov had expected to inherit her family's fortune but her father disinherited her when she not only married a gentile but also changed her name.  The town's thinly-veiled anti-Semitism is beginning to infect Ivanov too.  Anna's strait-laced young doctor Lvov hates Ivanov for his negligence and also delights in telling him.

There is one last chance for financial escape; Sasha, the daughter of his sympathetic friend Pavel Lebedev and his hard-hearted but wealthy wife Zinaida.  Every night Ivanov goes to their house to be belittled and patronized by their boorish friends but also is succeeding in wearing Zinaida down.  Sasha is bored living with her parents and is eager to be married to Ivanov but what of Anna?

Oddly I remember Kent's Almeida production as more light-hearted despite the moments of anguish for Ivanov and Anna but here the sombre tone is more prevalent.  The overall gloom is signalled by Streatfeild's Ivanov, rarely varying the pitch of his performance even when romancing Olivia Vinall's Sasha.  For once I liked Vinall's performance, her usual overly-declamatory style matched the character's nervy desperation to be married to her beloved older man.

Kent certainly showed the division between the two households: the depressive air at Ivanov's house and the boorish clamour of the Lebedev parties - at the former Des McAleer was delightfully awful as the overseer Borkin, James McArdle impressed as Doctor Lvov, whose high-minded self-righteousness takes no prisoners, and Nina Sosanya was a gentle Anna Petrovna, blazing into an anger that consumes her.

The excruciating Lebedev household featured fine performances from Brian Pettifer as the dull gambler Kosykh, Beverley Klein as the ghastly widow Avdotya, Debra Gillet's steel-hearted Zinaida and Emma Amos as the predatory widow Marfusha although I kept looking through her down the years to see the late and very great Diane Bull who played the role at the Almeida, an indelible stage image was Bull picking her nose with boredom then trying to get rid of the evidence on her black dress when spoken to.

There was also fine performances from Peter Egan as Ivanov's emotional uncle Shabyelski who agrees to marry widow Marfusha for her money - echoes of Ivanov and Sasha - but has the good sense to back out at the end, something the ever-vacillating Ivanov cannot do.  Possibly the performance of the evening however was Jonathan Coy as Lebedev, saddled with a penny-pinching wife but unable to get angry at his friend Ivanov; the scene where he offers a dejected Ivanov money to pay some debts was beautifully played: Lebedev's embarrassment at offering it meeting Ivanov's rigid mortification at being offered it.

Tom Pye's set seemed to have more seamless transitions than when we saw THE SEAGULL so were all the more effective as were Emma Ryott's lived-in costumes; Mark Henderson's lighting illuminated the stage wonderfully, visually linking to the characters' inner turmoil.

Rufus Norris is to be applauded for giving the Chichester Theatre's season of early Chekhov plays a wider audience and a home in the Olivier Theatre.

THE SEAGULL at the Olivier, National Theatre - David Hare meets Chekhov...

Can it really be 19 years since I saw one of my favourite plays?

Yep Constant Reader, it looks like I last saw Chekhov's THE SEAGULL in 1997 at the Donmar in a production by the English Touring Theatre. That is far too long bearing in mind the regularity I see other plays so the news that the acclaimed Young Chekhov season was transferring from Chichester to the National Theatre had me leaping to see it.  Would it be worth the leap however?

It didn't start well when one of my favourite lines - the downbeat Masha is asked why she always wears black and replies "I am in mourning for my life" - does not appear in David Hare's adaptation so I was thrown by that.  However Tom Pye's set design diverted me from my opening shock, a flooded Olivier stage brings the lake where Konstantin and Nina stage their avant-garde play right into the middle of the action although the walls of the country estate's rooms seemed to be causing trouble when we took our seats for the second half - always interesting to see a phalanx of stage techies and the sound of banging and drilling coming from behind a wall!

It's not often I say this but I think the Olivier was the wrong stage for the production - everyone seemed to have do an awful lot of travelling to get into position.  Once it is established that Olivia VinalI's Nina lives on the other side of the lake, her every appearance was made splashing noisily through the water.  She'll have trenchfoot by the end of the run. I think the more traditional Lyttelton would have been better fit. 

Although Hare's version is a bit colourless I still found much to enjoy in Chekhov's tale of wasted lives and lost opportunities for happiness.  I guess I was spoilt by my first exposure to the play: I saw a benefit performance for the Socialist Worker-funded Youth Training Centres in 1982 which starred Vanessa Redgrave and Ian Charleson in various readings and scenes, one of which was the final heartrending confrontation between Konstantin and Nina, both their lives shattered by others.

Vanessa was revisiting Nina - a role she had played onstage at the Queens Theatre in 1964 co-starring Peggy Ashcroft and Peter Finch as well as in Sidney Lumet's 1968 film version - and in 1985 I saw her again revisit THE SEAGULL at the Queens Theatre, only this time playing Arkadina opposite her daughter Natasha Richardson as Nina and Jonathan Pryce as Trigorin.

Jonathan Kent's direction had his usual clarity and unfussy dramatic through-line although I would have liked to have seen some more vivacity in the playing, the performers all seemed to play the ensemble card when there are roles in the play that come alive with some (controlled) barnstorming.  Mark Henderson's lighting is as excellent as ever.

Anna Chancellor was a commanding Madame Arkadina, almost unknowingly wanting to be the centre of attention at all times; her boredom at Konstantin's attempt at play writing all too palpable.  She came into her own with the morning-of-departure scene where Arkadina has to go from solicitation to anger to desperation to comedy: she starts being motherly to Konstantin as she changes the bandage of his 'accidental' head wound but they argue after he accuses her of financial and artistic greed, she then goes on the attack with Trigorin pleading for him to remain her lover when she realizes he wants an affair with Nina, then - secure in his agreement to stay with her - she resorts to type in making sure the servants are aware that the ruble she gave one of them is to be shared among them all.

The always dependable Geoffrey Streatfeild was a fine Trigorin, particularly in the scene where he tries to explain to the adoring Nina how it really feels to be a writer who probably will never be the top rank but whose life is still ruled by the need to write, it's a scene where you can really discern the hand of David Hare.

On the whole I liked the sulky petulance of Joshua James' Konstantin but Olivia Vinall was too over-the-top as Nina which left her nowhere to go at the end when Nina reappears as a broken-spirited regional actress, still mentally-scarred from the death of her child with Trigorin.  Peter Egan was surprisingly effective as Arkadina's  brother Sorin, forever bemoaning his life in the provincial backwaters.

The supporting cast were all okay but as I said earlier, none were particularly memorable which was slightly surprising as characters like Masha, Medvedenko and Doctor Dorn give you ample opportunities to shine.

Would I recommend it?  Yes I would but as I said, it could do with a bit less ensemble-performing and more actors taking advantage of the opportunities that Chekhov has given them.

Last week it was time to meet again the tortured and torturing inhabitants of Anton Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD showing up again at the National's Olivier Theatre, ten years after Trevor Nunn's production starring Vanessa Redgrave.

The production reunites the team behind last year's re-discovery of Gorky's THE WHITE GUARD, director Howard Davies, adapter Andrew Upton, designer Bunny Christie, lighting designer Neil Austin and actor Conleth Hill. The production certainly has it's merits but for once Howard Davies' signature painstaking thoroughness doesn't quite suit this play.

Andrew Upton's version keeps poking you in the ribs with clunking modern terms - it certainly was a surprise for Lopakhin to blurt out "Oh bollocks" - but he didn't seem to bring much by way of insight.I have seen THE CHERRY ORCHARD a few times although it's not my favourite of Chekhov's handful of classic plays. All the components are there and there are certainly a remarkable number of roles for actors to get their teeth into, but somehow it doesn't quite engage me fully - although it features enough great Chekhov moments to make one seek it out again.

For me the problem is the dreaded second act when after a number of expositional conversations between characters, the act comes to a juddering halt when Trofimov, the eternal student, rails at the family and hangers on of Madame Ranyevskaya for their indolence and willful ignorance of the lives of the lower classes. It just goes on and on and on. And on.It's a production that probably would have worked better in the Lyttleton - there seemed to be an awful lot of stage to cover for the cast getting around Bunny Christie's faded dacha and this expanse of stage rather dissipated the tension that should grow during the third act party which culminates in Lopakhin's drunken appearance to announce to the stunned Ranveyskaya that he now owns her beloved Cherry Orchard. However despite these mis-steps, the great moments of the show worked their magic.

Most of these involved the heartbreaking character of Varya - in a lovely performance by Claudie Blakely - Ranyevskaya's older, practical daughter who has run the family home while it's fortunes have dwindled to zero and who has a wary but quiet affection for the equally shy Lopakhin. The painful fourth act scene when these two potential lovers attempt to voice their true feelings under the guise of small talk only to let the moment vanish for ever was profoundly moving. Their were fine supporting performances from Sarah Woodward as Charlotta - of the family, but not one of it - whose loss of security and home makes her one of Chekhov's most haunting figures, Kenneth Cranham's decrepit, tragic Firs, Tim McMullan's cadging friend of the family Simyonov-Pishchik and James Laurenson's permanently bewildered Gaev.

Conleth Hill and Zoe Wanamaker were both potentially exciting choices for Lopakhin and Ranyevskaya and while they both gave interesting performances neither banished memories of Roger Allam and Vanessa Redgrave in the 2001 production. In particular Zoe Wanamaker, so adept at playing clear-eyed, practical characters, seemed at times an odd fit for Ranyevskaya who simply refuses to see the woods for her cherry trees.

Amid the ballyhoo over the called election was the news that Corin Redgrave died today aged 70.

Much is made of sister Vanessa's politics and the effect on her acting career but Corin's promising acting career in the 1960s was the one that took the biggest knock as he concentrated more on outside interests, working for the Worker's Revolutionary Party and later taking on the care of his father Michael when his Parkinson's Disease became more advanced.

His early work on screen always seemed a bit colourless, a bit unformed. In the 1970s his screen work slowed down during the decade and in the 1980s he only appeared in two films and two tv projects. But with Michael's death in 1985 and the fading away of the WRP, he found a new interest in performance and slowly started to re-emerge as a strong stage actor - particularly in late-Shakespeare roles - and also carved out a new career as a character actor on screen, ironically usually as upper-class roles. He was of course still a political activist, passionate on the rights of political prisoners and in attempting to get Blair impeached for the Iraq War.

I was lucky to see a few of his stage performances. Among his regular appearances at the Young Vic and National Theatre I saw him at the former in Ibsen's ROSMERSHOLM with Francesca Annis and at the National I am remembering his unfaithful husband opposite Eileen Atkins in HONOUR and the brutal prison warden in the early Tennessee Williams play NOT ABOUT NIGHTINGALES which won him the Olivier Award and a Tony nomination in New York.

He also appeared at the National in a revival of Pinter's NO MAN'S LAND as a supercilious Hirst and at Greenwich in a revival of Clifford Odets' THE COUNTRY GIRL in the role of the alcoholic leading man that his father had originated in the London premiere in 1952.He also appeared twice with his older sister in recent years - at the National he was a masterly Gayev, pampered and snobbish, opposite Vanessa's Ranyevskaya in Chekhov's THE CHERRY ORCHARD and at the Gielgud, they played the combative ex-lovers in Coward's SONG AT TWILIGHT. His performance as Hugo Latymer, a man made to confront the memory of his dead gay lover, was marvellously nuanced and ultimately very moving. It must have been strange to play the role bearing in mind he knew that Coward and Redgrave had been lovers when they were younger.

Corin had been aware of his father's bisexuality for many years and while the secret was still kept when he helped write Michael's autobiography, after his father's death he wrote a memoir of their life as father and son as well as making a powerful Omnibus profile on their relationship. It revealed Corin as a man seemingly at ease with himself and the legacy that had passed to him and this I think informed his performance.
Like his father, his later years were filled with cameos and supporting roles in films - he was particularly effective as the pompous Sir Walter Elliott in Roger Michell's 1995 adaptation PERSUASION and as the icy interrogator in Jim Sheridan's IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER.

Corin had suffered a serious heart attack in 2005, coming a few years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer and the last time I saw him - in 2008 at an early evening talk being interviewed with Vanessa about their family on the stage of the Lyttleton Theatre - he was still obviously frail. He appeared for the last time on stage last year at the Jermyn Street Theatre in a play about blacklisted Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo at the same time as his niece Natasha Richardson was killed. His last screen role was in the television adaptation of Henry James' THE TURN OF THE SCREW which was broadcast last Christmas. Again ironically, Michael had appeared in the 1961 screen version THE INNOCENTS.

Corin's generous and humanitarian spirit will be missed both on and offstage.