|
For those of us who've read the original Chekhov story Rothschild's
Fiddle is based on, the question is "what about the
music?" The tale is suffused with a music which is
too ethereal to be staged‹every reader would conjure it
differently in the mind, and any attempt to actually write
or play it would fail.
Which is just one brilliant aspect of this disarming, declarative,
arch and argumentative production. You're allowed to bring
your imagination into the theater with you. The set for
this intermissionless adventure of a man facing death,
in more ways than one, is both explicit and abstract‹giant
bare-wood caskets, carved wooden boats, a hollowed-out
tree. The action involves actual sawing and planing of
the wood. And the music? Fleeting snatches of heavenly
fiddle music, never enough to plant a melody in your head.
When the music must be imagined to be believed, it is
symbolically played‹on a musical saw.
|
|
It's
a bold concept, playing out Chekhov's tortured story in
a world of wood, not to mention refusing to ground it
in "real" music or a "full" village.
But the simplicity and directness lead to countless revelation,
which will make you curious as to how splendidly some
more familiar Chekhov works‹The Cherry Orchard springs
immediately to mind‹might play out in this fabricated
forest.
The
legendary Russian director Kama Ginkas, in a rare but
lengthy visit to America which has also yielded productions
of K.I. from Crime at Bard Collage in August and Lady
with a Lapdog at the American Repertory Theatre in September,
both scripted and staged this adaptation, which is so
respectful to Chekhov that it retains its literary, third-person
narrative. The characters oratorically explain their own
actions and feelings, then act them out. If this seems
stilted and forced, there certainly is something stagy
and artificial‹though absolutely not superficial‹about
the contemporary Russian theater style. But what it may
lack in internal emotions it more than makes up for with
a boisterous, grandstanding, majestic energy.
|
|
The mix of somber hangdog sadness and frantic flights
of merriment reminded me a bit of Samuel Beckett, not
to mention silent film. Props include an accordion and
a pickle. The players‹just four of them, playing key
characters in a bustling little village‹dance, dash,
erupt, bringing a continual stream of life and excitement
to something which at first strikes you as plodding
and meandering.
There
are opera-style supertitles so non-Russian speakers
can follow along, and the leisurely pace of the proceedings
means that there's not the usual disconnect which occurs
when native speakers share an audience with translation-readers.
On opening night, everyone laughed at the (rare) jokes
at the same time, gasped at the actors? awesome physicality
together, rose and fell equally with the changing tones
and textures of the play. Then they all stood and applauded
for an awfully long time.
| |
