What do you do with Chekhov's unwieldy first play, written when he was just 21? In 1984 Michael Frayn brilliantly turned it into a much tidier Gogolian farce called Wild Honey. David Hare's new version sticks closer to the original, acknowledges its inconsistencies, and yet still demonstrates why Chekhov is one of theatre's great dramatists. Chekhov does two extraordinary things in this early work. The first is to take a literary prototype, Don Juan, and recast him in Russian terms, so that he becomes a 27-year-old provincial schoolmaster, Platonov, who is "slightly married" but immensely attractive to other women, including a widowed landowner, her young stepdaughter and an earnest chemistry student. The Chekhovian irony is that Platonov is an essentially passive figure - the pursued rather than the pursuer, the superfluous man as sex object and, as he himself confesses, one of the living dead. Chekhov's point is that only in a world of quack doctors, land-grabbing merchants and rapacious horse thieves would Platonov acquire such fatal attraction.
But the play is also an experiment with form. There is none of the symphonic realism of Chekhov's later plays. Instead he throws in everything he can think of: love affairs, shootings, attempted suicides, summer parties. And he starts with a hugely crowded canvas, like one of WP Frith's Victorian genre paintings, and then gradually focuses on the characters who really matter. The technique is wasteful but yields one great later scene, when the drunk, dishevelled Platonov is cornered in his schoolroom by the erotically ardent widow, Anna Petrovna. Two desperations collide over the vodka bottle, and the result is that fusion of comedy and tragedy that was to be Chekhov's greatest contribution to world drama. The intimations of genius are there, even in this sprawling, overcrowded work. But the real star of Jonathan Kent's admirably fluid production is designer Paul Brown. On the wide, open space of the stage he creates an epic vision of rural Russia, complete with towering sunflowers, birch trees and river. The magical moment when picnickers return in gathering twilight stirs poetic memories of Peter Stein's staging of Gorky's Summerfolk. But Brown also captures Platonov's schoolhouse confinement: a child's toy train stands by the local railway track, evoking both domesticity and possible escape. Aidan Gillen's saturnine Platonov is faithful to the play's vision of the hero: inward, brooding, somnambulistically seductive. But I was even more taken with Helen McCrory's impassioned, tragically isolated Petrovna, Adrian Scarborough's perkily bumptious local doctor, and Camilla Power's bespectacled chemistry student, who sees Platonov's insults as a form of sexual advance. And the real joy of the evening is one of discovery, seeing Chekhov's first play at last presented in all its wild, prophetic and glorious imperfection.
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АРФЫ И СКРИПКИ (1908-1916)
"Свирель запела на мосту..." "Душа! Когда устанешь верить?..." "И я любил. И я изведал..." "Май жестокий с белыми ночами!..." Три послания Встречной Мэри "Усните блаженно, заморские гости, усните..." "Я пригвожден к трактирной стойке..." "Не затем величал я себя паладином," "Часовая стрелка близится к полно'чи..." "Старинные розы..." "Уже над морем вечереет..." "Всё б тебе желать веселья..." "Я не звал тебя - сама ты..." "Грустя и плача и смеясь..." "Опустись, занавеска линялая..." "Мой милый, будь смелым..." "Не венчал мою голову траурный лавр..." "Покойник спать ложится..." "Уж вечер светлой полосою..." "Здесь в сумерки в конце зимы..." Через двенадцать лет Утро в Москве "Как прощались, страстно кля'лись..." "Всё на земле умрет - и мать, и младость..." На смерть Коммиссаржевской Голоса скрипок На Пасхе "Когда-то гордый и надменный..." "Где отдается в длинных залах..." "Сегодня ты на тройке звонкой..." "В неуверенном, зыбком полете..." "Без слова мысль, волненье без названья..." "Ветр налетит, завоет снег..." "Шар раскаленный, золотой..." "Сквозь серый дым от краю и до краю..." "Есть минуты, когда не тревожит..." "Болотистым пустынным лугом..." Испанке "В небе - день, всех ночей суеверней..." "В сыром ночном тумане..." Седое утро "Есть времена, есть дни, когда..." "Я вижу блеск, забытый мной..." "Ты говоришь, что я дремлю..." "Ваш взгляд - его мне подстеречь..." "Натянулись гитарные струны," "Ты - буйный зов рогов призывных..." "Как день, светла, но непонятна..." "Петербургские сумерки снежные..." "Смычок запел. И облак душный..." "Ты жил один! Друзей ты не искал..." "Превратила всё в шутку сначала..." "Та жизнь прошла..." "Была ты всех ярче, верней и прелестней..." "Разлетясь по всему небосклону..." "Он занесен - сей жезл железный..." "Пусть я и жил, не любя..." "Протекли за годами года..." "За горами, за лесами..."
КАРМЕН (1914)
"Как океан меняет цвет..." "На небе - празелень, и месяца осколок...
