Anton Chekhov

Consequently, the two greatest directors of this period turned to the farces when they directed Chekhov. Vakh­tangov prepared an evening of one-acts, The Wedding, The Jubilee, and a dramatisation of the short story 'Thieves' for the Moscow Art Theatre Third Studio in 1920, reviving them at his own theatre the next year. His work began with the question, 'How are we going to portray Chekhov's characters, are we to defend them or condemn them?' Essentially, he chose the latter course, and, in The Wedding, the characters were portrayed as a collection of vulgar grotesques. Only the 'General' contri­buted warmth and cheer, and when he rushed out crying 'Chelove-e-ek! Chelove-e-ek!' (both 'Man' and 'Waiter!') the audience was so shattered it could not applaud. The author's nephew Michael Chekhov who had guffawed throughout could, at this final curtain, whisper only 'What a horror! What a horror!'⁴

Vsevolod Meyerhold as a tyro director had staged facsimiles of the Moscow Art Theatre productions in the provinces and did not return to Chekhov until 1935, the 75th anniversary of the playwright's birth. Then he presented three farces, The Jubilee, The Bear, and The Proposal, under the collective title 33 Swoons, computed by Meyerhold to be the number of fainting-fits that occur in the plays. To the cast, he announced that these swoons constituted the leit-motivs of the performance, a series of theatrical games; to the world at large, he proclaimed that the swoons exemplified the neurasthenic legacy of the pre-Revolutionary intelligentsia. Overcharged with innumerable props, complicated pantomime and sight gags, the vaudevilles proved broadly funny at times, but were condemned by critics for directorial exhibitionism and heavy-handedness.

The first important re-interpretation of Chekhov in Russia came from Nemirovich-Danchenko. Directing a Cherry Orchard in Milan (1933) with an Italian troupe headed by the emigree actress Tatiana Pavlova, Nemirovich was able to discard some Moscow Art Theatre traditions and bring Ranevskaya and Trofimov closer to what he believed had been Chekhov's intention. Returning to Russia, he set about to revitalise Three Sisters, whose characters he saw not as futile and trivial, but as fine minds 'longing for life,' fit to be acted in a style of 'virile strength.'⁵ Everything from uniforms to dressing-gowns was made beautiful, everything cold or degrading was eliminated. The sisters became a musical trio, set off against the raucous Natasha (Stanislavsky's wife Lilina had played Natasha as sickly sweet; here A. Georgievskaya made her a monster of crassness). The final hymn to the future was performed without Chebutykin's ironic counterpoint.

The French director, Michel Saint-Denis, who saw this 'affirmative' revision in 1940, remarked

It was a production of a very high standard, but it was Chekhov simplified both in style and meaning. The simplification of the out-of-door set for the last act was welcome but lacked unity. The play had been speeded up in tempo . . . The poetic values had been damaged in favour of a more optimistic, more clearly constructive meaning. Nostalgic melancholy, even despair, had given way to positive declarations.⁶

Chekhov underwent another eclipse in the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War, and not until 1944 did The Seagull receive an innovative production. Aleksandr Tairov, the waning director of the Kamerny (Chamber) Theatre, staged it as a concert reading, with a sound Marxist line that man's capability could overcome all obstacles through belief in his own potential. Nina, played by his wife Alisa Koonen, thus became the leading character.

A more influential breakthrough was made by Georgy Tovstonogov's Three Sisters at the Bolshoy Dramatic Theatre in Leningrad (1965), which found a way to bring out the play's contemporaneity without discarding the

Moscow Art Theatre model entirely. His designer, S. Iunovich, kept to a black-white-grey palette and provided stage islands which jutted out into the audience to create the theatrical equivalent of the 'close-up' for a public brought up on movies. The tone of the production was epic, showing the wind of history blowing through the charac­ters' lives, their hopes shattered by the passage of time.