AISLE SAY New York

IVANOV

by Anton Chekhov
Directed by Timofey Kulyabin
A Production of TEATP
Presented by the Cherry Orchard Festival
City Center

Reviewed by David Spencer

June 15, 2018

This has to be a quick-and-dirty midnight review, because the show in question has only three more performances to go: imported to City Center by the Cherry Orchard Festival (more about them at this link), it's the TEATP (Theatre of Nations) production of Anton Chekhov's first produced play, Ivanov, in Russian, with subtitles.

It features a cast that would be considered by Russians (native and transplanted to New York, and the latter filled the large theatre) to be stars and notables, and it's easy to see why. Like any US cast of similar octane, each performer brings to the table a sense of lived-in persona, informing their character work, which is likewise well-rounded.

Directed by Timofey Kulyabin, it starts off low-key, as the anti-hero of the title (a haunted Evgeny Miranov) begins his depressive trajectory quietly, almost randomly, and with perverse self-awareness, leaving toxicity wherever he goes. But rather like a pinball in an old arcade game, he builds up steam, pinging from one to the other that tries to save him and instead just gets caught up in his misery. In a contemporary setting, this kind of behavior is even more acutely pathological and works almost as a modern psychology case study of subject/sufferer and victims. Redeemed as drama, of course, by Chekhov's senses of character eccentricity, humor and irony. That said, Ivanov is also a somewhat sketchier play than his later ones, most of the characters representing tropes and personality-types he'd develop more fully in later works. But this lends itself to the stripped down modern presentation too (streamlined set and costume design by Oleg Golovko).

I should pause here to note a dramaturgy credit accorded Roman Dolzhansky; my guess is, the plan behind how modern settings are used, and how the text is adapted to it without being much (if at all?) altered, was devised by him. The result comes off with a kind of timelessness that helps both anchor the proceedings in their updated reality and yet keep them floating and as remote as any of the country estates that appear in the likes of Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters.

Anyway, it's quite bracing by the end; and as these imported things often are, a vicarious mode of travel to another land and another culture, to see things from their eyes, via their prominent artists. Time and money spent doing that is never wasted.

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