Anton Chekhov and broadway

[random person 112]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 3:21pm

could someone tell me why chekhov's plays are so rarely performed on broadway the only one, the seagull performed with any regularity. why is this?

[Kad]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 3:27pm

There is a council of people who decide what plays to arbitrarily not perform.

[mallardo]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 3:39pm

While you're at it, what about Ibsen? Strindberg? Anyone from the 19th and early 20th centuries apart from Shaw and Wilde?

[dramamama611]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 4:43pm

Plain and simple: producers don't think they'll make any money on it. All of the authors mentioned are performed like crazy at the college level.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 5:22pm

Not too many productions the past ten years or so, but not that many productions of Williams either in that period.

But, overall, with the exception of Shakespeare, it would be hard to come up with a playwright produced more often on Broadway than Chekhov (see link).


chekhov on broadway Updated On: 8/28/11 at 05:22 PM

[goldenboy]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 5:42pm

Very little happens in a Chechov play.
It is a slice of life and so called realism from Czarist Russia.
Very hard for an American audience to relate to.
Chechov fares better in England.

That being said, there are plays and movies that work for modern audiences and remind one of Chechov.

The Sisters Rosensweig comes to mind on stage.
Hannah and her Sisters on Film.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 6:55pm

Actually, if done right, Chekhov is not realist in the sense we usually think of (although it is all too often played that way and suffers for it). Rather Chekhov done well is playful, provocative and outrageous; a slice of life, yes, but turned on its head.

[random person 112]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 9:23pm

On another subject how did meryl streep and her company fair in the seagull or vanessa redgrave as lyuba i always thought of vanessa when i was reading the play and thought she would be perfect. Even laura linney and the revival she was in on broadway i thought she must have been great by was puzzled by her pairing with tyne.

[Simon4]

Posted: 8/28/11 at 9:32pm

^^"Very little happens in a Chechov play."

"People are sitting at a table having dinner, that's all, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being torn apart."

[AC126748]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 6:50am

Chekhov is hard. There are not many actors who can achieve both the poignance and the necessary underlying humor of his plays. And while Chekhov isn't on Broadway very often, his plays are produced in New York almost constantly. The Classic Stage Company is currently doing a Chekhov retrospective, one play a season: THE SEAGULL (Dianne Wiest, Alan Cumming, Kelli Garner) in 2008; UNCLE VANYA (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Denis O'Hare, Mamie Gummer) in 2009; THREE SISTERS (Gyllenhaal, Sarsgaard, Jessica Hecht, Juliet Rylance) this past year; and this fall, THE CHERRY ORCHARD with Wiest (who seems horribly miscast on paper) and John Tuturro. There was a sensational production of THE CHERRY ORCHARD at BAM two years ago, in the inaugural season of The Bridge Project, starring Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall, Ethan Hawke, and Josh Hamilton.

Honestly, the last few Broadway revivals of Chekhov plays have been pretty weak, in my opinion. I found the Scott Thomas SEAGULL terribly overrated and the 2000 UNCLE VANYA, with a cast that looked amazing on paper (Linney, Derek Jacobi, Amy Ryan, Roger Rees) a chore to sit through.

[ooblogway]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 9:34am

Considering that Chekhov only wrote five full-length plays, the number of Broadway and other productions is quite astounding.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 1:17pm

Good point, Ooblog, also, they tend to have relatively large casts.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 1:45pm

Yeah, the 80s was the only decade to almost entirely ignore Chekhov. Personally, I'm not a Chekhov fan and never have been. Seen a few productions and played Tutzenbach in Three Sisters (Mamet translation). I'm more into the melodrama of Ibsen.

[Simon4]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 2:04pm

random person - Streep was a delight as Arkadina, but I thought the overall production was less than the sum of its talents. Nichols didn't really bring his actors -- all with different acting styles -- into a coherent whole, and Portman was a weak Nina, which undercut the arc of the play.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 2:23pm

I actually thought Natalie Portman was a sublime Nina...until the final scene. She just didn't have the experience yet to pull that off. To be fair, I've never seen a fully satisfying final scene between Konstantin and Nina. It's a brutal thing to pull off well.

One of the problems with doing Chekhov well is, not only does the company of actors have to find the inner pacing of the play, they also need to find the inner pacing of the company itself. I was once blessed with the opportunity to work on a production of The Seagull for over six months (mounting the show three times). By the last run of the show, the cast was so in tuned with each other and the text, the show just crackled. We found laughs we never expected, and it was an absolute thrill to play the show. Unfortunately, there are few productions in America that would allow that kind of time for exploration.

[3bluenight]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 2:32pm

For me, and this could be a terribly unsophisticated opinion, but...
I find that many people misinterpret 'slice of life' and realism. They're not reality. they're representations of reality. when i see a director or production mount a chekhov piece (or any piece really) with no understanding of the metaphoric nature of the theatre, i immediately begin to worry. it's not real life. Nor do i think that that was ever the intention with the pieces. when i read about that time in history - the development of the moscow art theater, "expressing reality" doesn't seem, to me, to be the goal. It's about finding efficient ways to express the ideas at play. without all the clutter and posing and unnecessary gesticulation. but are they attempting to put real life on stage? i don't know.

I couldn't agree more that finding the humor and the pathos are incredibly difficult with Chekhov's big five. But for me, if there isn't an idea at play that these characters or this piece can express, I generally find it lacking.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 3:44pm

3bluenight,

I don't think that's unsophisticated at all. 'Realism' is something I associate with kitchen-sink drama, not Chekhov. I think a better word (though I'm sure there's an even better one) is 'naturalism'. You're right about the Moscow Arts Theatre eschewed the clutter and posing and such. They explored natural behavior in order to best present the truth at the center of a play. But naturalism doesn't necessarily mean 'small.' There are times we as human beings behave in ridiculous ways that are completely natural to us. It's that balance that is difficult to find with Chekhov. It was the hardest thing to find when we were working on The Seagull. Our first run of it, we all were working hard at expressing natural behavior. The work showed. By the final run, we had all spent so much time with each other, our choices became woven into the fabric of the company. And because there was an enormous sense of trust amongst us, we were able to find things that were much 'larger' than we thought was appropriate. But they were also truer and, blessedly, funnier.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 4:00pm

"Very little happens in a Chechov play."

I don't know.

Duels, suicides, employers cheating governesses, novelists seducing ingenues, multiple unrequited loves, revolutionary rhetoric, betrayals of significant others, proposals, heartbreaking scenes built around proposals which never happen, card tricks, swindlings of property which might or might not be swindlings because they are actually sanctioned by the landlady (depending on the director's vision), unhappy newlyweds, unhappy oldyweds, mourning ones own life, brother threatens brother at gunpoint, a brash doctor loves his dying Jewish patient whose ne'er do well husband - who will eventually kill himself - is romanced by the hottie from the manor next door, horrifying descriptions of stagefright, bitchery disguised as charm, charm disguised as bitchery, deforestations and bird murders.

And a whole lot of vodka.

[AC126748]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 4:44pm

To be fair, I've never seen a fully satisfying final scene between Konstantin and Nina. It's a brutal thing to pull off well.


Carey Mulligan and Mackenzie Crook knocked it out of the park--the one truly luminous moment in a production that I found otherwise unsatisfying. Mulligan was the PERFECT Nina and proves that one can be relatively young (I think she was 23 when she did it in New York, maybe 21 in London) and still completely understand that character.

Blythe Danner and Frank Langella are also both pretty freakin' extraordinary in the Broadway Theatre Archives production, which is readily available on DVD.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 4:49pm

"people are having dinner.. and at the same time their happiness is created or destroyed."

sounds like any night I have dinner at Joe Allens!

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 5:33pm

AC,

I saw that production. I strongly disagree about Mulligan and Cooke's version of the scene (though I think they are both supremely talented). But there was very little I liked about that SEAGULL...mostly due to the translation. Was not a fan.

I agree that Nina should be relatively young. And I think there are young actresses that could pull it off. Mulligan is one, I just was not a fan of the direction or the translation. I think Allison Pill would be the person I'd most like to see tackle Nina.

[goldenboy]

Posted: 8/29/11 at 7:12pm

I have yet to see an American Production of a Checkhov play that i found satisfying
Perhaps American Actors just don't get it.

I did enjoy Wild Honey years back at the National Theatre with Sir Ian McClellan which Michael FRayn adapted from a Chekhov play.

I have seen The Seagul too many times with American Actors.
"I am a Seagull.. no that's not it. I am an actress."

No that wasn't it either.
Oy.

[AC126748]

Posted: 8/30/11 at 6:22am

But there was very little I liked about that SEAGULL...mostly due to the translation. Was not a fan.


Most Chekhov translations are terrible. I've come to accept that. Hampton's was pretty bad, but not as bad as the translation (Paul Schmidt's, I think) used in the Dianne Wiest SEAGULL at Classic Stage. (When bandaging Konstantin's head, Arkadina asked him if he was "gonna go bang-bang again.") I like Stoppard's translation, the one used in the Park production, though it's nowhere near as good as his CHERRY ORCHARD, which was used at BAM and is now my go-to for a translation of that play.

I'd actually love to see a production of THE SEAGULL using the cast of that CHERRY ORCHARD: Cusack as Arkadina, Russell Beale as Trigorin, Hall as Nina. Did anyone hear see Romola Garai's Nina at BAM?

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 8/30/11 at 11:34am

AC, although I liked the last BAM production also, I'm curious if you shared my opinion that the "Act I" curtain with the hovering throng outside the estate was heavyhanded and cheap?

My favorite Cherry Orchard was Peter Brooks' '88 production which innaugurated the BAM Harvey with Natasha Parry, Brian Dennehy, Erland Josephson, Zeljko Ivanek and Linda Hunt, very starry but a lot of fun. Rebecca Mailer and Rebecca Miller - very strange stunt casting - weren't all that good, especially Miller, but Dennehy, Josephson and Hunt were unforgettable.

[AC126748]

Posted: 8/30/11 at 1:38pm

Henrik, I felt like that particular moment was pulled straight from THE COAST OF UTOPIA--it was didactic and incongruous, but it didn't have much of an effect on my enjoyment of the production as a whole. I think Stoppard's translation overall is excellent and refreshingly free of the colloquialisms with which new versions of THE CHERRY ORCHARD or THE SEAGULL are often bogged down. And, of course, the acting from the whole cast was a dream.

Not to nitpick, but I think you mean Kate Mailer, Norman's actress daughter, as he didn't have a daughter named Rebecca. I wish I had been old enough to see that production; I remember reading Frank Rich's rave in his book HOT SEAT and thinking it sounded sublime.