Ivanov
It’s a distance of 100 years from Chekhov’s pre-revolutionary Russia to Germany’s post-Communist Berlin, yet the astounding performance troupe, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, bestrides the century in its rendering of the title character in Ivanov, a name Chekhov chose for its ubiquity. No matter what purists may say, the Volksbühne’s version – a loosely knitted collection of scenes and reminisces from the play; some in no particular order – is in keeping with the playwright’s incessant search for just the right tone. Chekhov revised his first substantial hit seven times from 1887 to 1901.
Ivanov examines melancholy, a loss of meaning in life. Rather than solve the riddle, however, Chekhov wanted to expose the preoccupation of Russian Romantic writers who preceded him as a sham. In addition, he was in search for a new method of writing that could reveal inner truth as never before.
In the Volksbühne’s production showcased in UCLA Live International Theatre Festival, Chekhov’s creation, Ivanov (performed by Germany’s premiere actor Samuel Finzi), represents a well-educated, upper middle-class land-owner lacking the necessity of working for his living and therefore susceptible to incessant ennui. In the tradition of the Romantics, he is adored for his very lack of volition. His dying wife, Anna Petrovna, (Almut Zilcher), adores him although he spurns her. He is sought after by the foppish Ledbedev (Wolfram Koch), and chased by the willful teen-ager, Sascha (Nele Rosetz). Just as energetically, he is despised by his wife’s young doctor, Lvov (handsome Max Hopp), while a host of six more actors represent the languid country society.
What might have been merely the competent transcription of an interplay of destruction and desires transforms through the alchemy of Bulgarian director Dimiter Gotscheff’s concept, Sir Henry’s whimsical musical arrangement, Katrin Le Tag’s tradition-busting costumes and Katrin Brack’s stage design – a towering scrim surrounding an empty space occupied only by a debilitating fog out of which emerges the mannered, waltzing gentry of the plot.
The Volksbühne carries an impeccable avant-garde pedigree with which to tackle this material. Founded by Bertolt Brecht’s mentor, Irwin Piscator, in 1914, the theater employs classical epic theater techniques of alienation. Played entirely without properties, tables or chairs, the characters revolve around each other in a dance of conversation by Chekhov, juxtaposed against the often grotesquely exaggerated intentions of each character vis á vis the others. One of the most vivid scenes involves Max Hopp as Lvov sympathizing with Almut Zilcher’s Anna Petrovna. The two grapple and undulate on the stage floor while conducting a very respectable doctor-patient conversation.
Standing in the center of kaleidoscopically revolving scenes of country life is always Finzi’s magnificent creation, Ivanov. The Volksbühne’s production is elevated by his fulsome sense of stillness at the eye of the storm. Finzi’s characterization connects the birth of Russian realism to its disintegration during our times, and reminds us that we have not changed.
In the end, and after Ivanov’s destruction, Ledbedev self-referentially recites the lines from a completely different play to declare that the story we’ve just witnessed is as if in a book that, when he read it, made him fall asleep. As he admonishes, “Everyone lives for himself in a fog.”
Ivanov was part of UCLA Live’s Seventh International Theatre Festival which ends with Andrew Dawson performing Quatre Mains and Space Panorama from December 17 – 21, 2008 at MacGowan Little Theater on the UCLA campus in Westwood. Tickets vary. Phone (310) 825-2101 or online at www.uclalive.org.