Word: chekov
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Ivanov is a stunningly beautiful work of art. Though he was only 27 when it premiered, Ivanov shows all the subtlety and tenderness that would only grow in Anoton Chekov's later, more famous works. The new production of Ivanov now running at the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) is also astonishingly gorgeous. Directed by Yuri Yeremin, one of Russia's most respected directors, the A.R.T. production unfolds like a visual symphony. Were the play acted in the original Russian, it would still be a joy to watch. Unfortunately, this beauty is the downfall of the A.R.T.'s Ivanov. The subtle...
...innovative team of theater technicians, and they're usually over-eager to flex their muscles. Ivanov is certainly not without its own bag of tricks. But Yeremin never lets these tricks develop into a full-fledged side-show. And how could they? Yeremin's staging and visual landscaping of Chekov's play is so breath-taking that we cannot be distracted from it. In Yeremin's hands, Ivanov on stage becomes as lush as Dr. Zhivago on film. The degree of unity that Yeremin orchestrates on a sensory level is downright astonishing. Scott Bradley's sets are a work...
...therein lies the problem of the A.R.T'.s Ivanov. Yeremin may want his actors to fade like tiny points of light into the world around them, but Chekov's text is meant to act as a magnifying glass, to make the world of social conventions and thinly veiled subtexts appear larger than life. Chekov is the great playwright of the strained relationships humans have with themselves and with one another; looking in Chekov for the larger metaphysical themes of man in landscape that Yeremin's visuals try to evoke is a lost cause. Yes, Ivanov is about loneliness and isolation...
...young landowner now made tired and obsolete by the failures of the liberal reforms of Czar Alexander III. Ivanov is sick of his life, sick of his wife now dying of tuberculosis, sick of his entire milieu. He is bored with his very existence. The insight and sensitivity that Chekov shows for his characters and their problems comes across in whispers and unsaid words, in the meanings that we hide underneath meaningless social conventions. For Yeremin, though, Chekov's characters must be as grand and deliberate as the sets. Arliss Howard's Ivanov is endlessly and openly angst-ridden...
...center of Yeremin's production simply cannot hold. Yeremin turns the speeches Chekov meant his characters to address to one another into performance pieces directed at the audience, turns moments of quiet, embarrassed emotional confessions into visual spectacles. Gone is the intimacy that makes Chekov brilliant and the nuance that makes him profound. Ivanov the play is too beautiful a play to be treated so harshly. And Ivanov the production is too gorgeous to engage in such a struggle. Chekov and Yeremin are both brilliant, but their brilliance is not of the sort that can be reconciled...