Young Chekhov
Playwright: Anton Chekhov, in a new version by David Hare Director: Jonathan Kent Olivier, National Theatre, London SE1 (020-7452 3000) Until 8 October Running times: Platonov: 2hrs 45mins; Ivanov: 2hrs 30mins; The Seagull: 2hrs 30mins
When my friends heard I was watching three Chekhov plays in a day, their reaction was “one of sympathy”, said Jane Shilling in The Daily Telegraph. They assumed I was in for “an eighthour gloom-fest”. Thankfully, they “couldn’t have been more wrong”. Jonathan Kent’s production of Chekhov’s early dramas won high praise at Chichester Festival Theatre last year, “and it has lost none of its precision and nuance in the transition to the Olivier”. I’ve enjoyed many all-day theatre sessions, said Michael Billington in The Guardian, “but none quite as powerful” as this. The combination of the three plays, translated by David Hare, is exhilarating.
The dramas (which can also be seen separately) emerge “like a piece of music”, said Sarah Hemming in the FT: “similar themes in different movements”. Platonov – which Chekhov wrote aged 20, and which was never staged in his lifetime – is “rough, warm and painfully funny”. The title character (“outstandingly played” by James Mcardle) is a lothario “who loathes himself for seducing women – but not enough to stop”. It’s a tad “sprawling”, but has a “real edge of comic despair”. The second instalment, Ivanov, is far darker, said Matt Wolf on Theartsdesk.com. Centred on a depressive (Geoffrey Streatfeild) who takes out his anti-semitism on his fatally ill Jewish wife, it features “all manner of class hatred, bigotry and misogyny”. Though it’s probably the weakest of the trio, Ivanov is a vibrant affair with “treasurable turns” from the ensemble cast.
The recurring theme of “feminine desolation” comes to a “devastating climax” in The Seagull, said Sam Marlowe in The Times. The relationship between Nina (Olivia Vinall) and Streatfeild’s “silkily predatory writer” is “so clearly doomed that it makes you want to scream out a warning”. Star of the show is the “majestic” Anna Chancellor as the ageing actress Arkadina. “Wily, wilful, and vampirically hungry for admiration”, she flounces around as her brother sits dying in a wheelchair. “It’s the stunning finale to a triumphant theatrical event.”