Realistic Absurdity

I am very familiar with Uncle Vanya. For an acting class last year, I read it twice, performed a scene from it, and watched "Vanya on 42nd Street," essentially a taping of a stage performance. However, I had not seen it live until the performance by the Tabakov troupe at MXAT (THE Moscow Art Theater). I generally felt that it was a very good piece of literature, but interminably boring to watch.

Traditionally speaking (in the U.S. at least), productions of Chekhov are kept as 'straight' as possible. Commonly, the dramaturg is given the final word on the production, making it as academic and 'factual' as possible. This approach does ensure the main themes of the text are communicated, but it also increases the chances of the production being long and boring for both the actors and the audience.

As with most American productions as well, the text is kept intact, for better or for worse. As an artist, I find this a difficult subject. On the one hand, it is the creation of the author and, as a piece of art, it is nobody's prerogative to just decide it's bad in some way. On the other hand, the production is the creation of the troupe as well, and they should have the opportunity to make their art just the way they want it. In the case of Chekhov, I feel that the fact that he's dead makes this less of an issue, so long as credit is given or not given for whatever creative decisions the troupe makes. I would tentatively say that this applies to all productions, but it's not a subject to just pass judgement on. After all, if I decide to become a director I'll feel one way, and if I decide to become a writer I'll feel the other, and I don't want to be responsible for rash pronouncements made in my youth :p

This production of Chekhov took some cues from the American approach, but it also had some novel aspects which kept and even strengthened the Chekhovian themes of disillusionment and a wasted life.

In my opinion, the production took a lot of staging cues from the absurdist style of the 40s-60s. The repeated opening and closing of the windows for no reason showed the pointlessness that the characters felt in their lives. The music cues--always the same plodding, odd and repetitive song--were another example of repeated actions, this time from the tech booth. This motif of repeated actions is very common in theater of the absurd.

Another common device is pointless actions. The mother had a gag with a hammock in the first act in which she finds some fleeting pleasure in its novelty, only to revert back when the hired help sees her acting differently from the norm. The hammock then is taken down and does not reappear for the rest of the play. Besides this, the characters had pointless actions throughout the play, but it came off as absurdist and not a bad directorial choice because of the specificity of said actions. The characters were searching for something to occupy their minds and save them from soul-crushing boredom, but ultimately only added to their misery.

The repetition of actions and pointless actions helped in a practical way as well. Further reinforcing the static lives of the characters, there were very few exits and entrances from the stage using the wings--almost all were through the house, excluding the hired help. However, this meant that the characters were on stage for long scenes which they weren't in. The solution here was to have them continue their daily lives in the background, eating, drinking tea, sitting in a rocking chair, etc. Nothing they did was fulfilling or had any variety, which made the staging realistic, boring and interesting all at the same time.

Partly due to the staging and partly due to the script, there was also a certain amount of the "humor as a release valve," again, from the absurdist canon. The mother's interaction with the hammock served this purpose as well, and she in fact was the main source of the humor in the show. She was very good at eliciting a reaction from the audience simply with a look or a grunt.

All this said, the production was still three hours long, and had I not been so interested in the acting, I think that I would have lost interest after about 1.5 hours. Is this a bad thing? On the one hand, if you bore your audience to tears, they will not take anything from it, and you will probably erase the possibility of future audiences. On the other hand, the point of this text is lost if you make the production too glitzy or pander to the audience too much.

So was the production successful? I think the troupe achieved their goal. The text itself is concerned with the same ideals as in theater of the absurd, so using techniques from this genre was a very powerful and creative way to express it. I believe this was their overarching goal. For the general audience, however, there was very little to keep our attention. Unfortunately, this seems to be a trend in Chekhov performances: if your play is about being bored, how can you possibly not bore your audience?