A striking, elegant adaptation of two of Chekhov’s most iconic works; the psychological insight in these plays will leave you reeling.
I have always had a personal fascination with Anton Chekhov’s works, having first sought them out as a teenager. While I must admit that much of their subtle brilliance was lost on my limited adolescent consciousness, there was nevertheless something in them that I connected with. Each vivid story with its array of mercurial characters, whose inner lives so often conflicted with the suffocating tedium of the world around them, felt both strange and yet startlingly familiar to me. For this reason, I was intrigued to see Dmitrij Turchaninov’s imagining of ‘The Lady with the Dog’ and ‘The Bear.’
The double bill opens with ‘The Lady with the Dog,’ which begins in the sleepy seaside resort of Yalta, where we meet Dmitri Gurov (James Viller) and Anna Sergeyevna (Anna Viller), the eponymous ‘lady with the dog.’ Dmitri is a self-assured yet dissatisfied man in his late thirties from Moscow, while Anna is a high-strung young woman from a provincial town who is never without her white Pomeranian dog. Both are unhappily married and holidaying in Yalta alone without their spouses. When Anna catches Dmitri’s attention he resolves to seduce her, hoping to enjoy a brief summer fling before returning to his humdrum family life in Moscow. Both assume they will never see one another again once they return home, but of course matters of the heart are rarely ever that simple.
Union Theatre certainly struck me as the ideal space for this performance, as the modest size of the auditorium enabled the performers to establish an easy rapport with the audience. The decision to intersperse the dialogue with actors narrating the plot from a more detached standpoint was an inspired one, as it not only enabled the actors to really revel in the glorious prose of the original short story, but also served to highlight the disparity between their inner and outer lives. The keen sense of time and place was also notable. The balmy Black Sea coast was established through dreamy meandering piano music in conjunction with silent films of Yalta from the early 20th century projected onto the back wall.
I was left deeply affected by Anna Viller’s portrayal of Anna Sergeyevna. She imbued the character with such a degree of youthful awkwardness and emotional fragility that it was impossible not to feel for her plight, especially given the obvious power imbalance between her and the much older Gurov. James Viller gave a fascinatingly nuanced performance, expertly navigating Gurov’s journey from self-absorbed philanderer to reckless romantic. A highlight for me was the moment when, peering through lorgnettes, the lovers lock eyes across a crowded opera house and an absurd chase sequence ensues that has them capering around a hatstand like characters in a silent film.
In the second half Anna Viller and James Viller return to the stage in ‘The Bear,’ another two-hander, but vastly different in tone and atmosphere to ‘The Lady with the Dog.’ Where the latter might resemble a slow-burning flame, the former feels more akin to a firecracker. Since becoming a widow, landowner Elena Popova has become a recluse. Shrouded in black from top to toe, she has barely left her house in months and spends her days languishing in bed, eaten away by grief and anger. When Grigory Smirnov turns up at her house and aggressively demands that she repay a debt owed to him by her deceased husband, a brutal power struggle ensues between two fiercely stubborn, deeply wounded people. Through their sparring – and an aborted attempt at a duel – they gradually realise they have more in common than they initially thought.
Some aspects of this play might strike a contemporary audience as troubling, as the character of Smirnov is virulently misogynistic. Not only does he go on an extended tirade against women but also repeatedly attempts to intimidate the widow Popova through verbal abuse and threats of violence. However, on the night I attended, in the moment when Smirnov bellows “Will you stop shouting, please!?” at Popova without a hint of irony, a great peal of laughter erupted in the audience, and within an instant Smirnov’s boorish behaviour became not so much frightening as utterly ridiculous.
I believe one of the hallmarks of Chekhov’s work is the thinly drawn line between love and hatred, melancholy and absurdity, tragedy and farce. Let it suffice to say that actors James Viller and Anna Viller not only knew exactly where that line was but managed to dance on it with sustained finesse for the duration of the evening. I look forward to seeing what they will do next.