Word: czars
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Lermontov himself comes into direct conflict with the Czar and must choose whether to run off or to stay for a fixed duel which will make it obvious that he is being killed by the Czar, thus following in Pushkin's footsteps...
...major figures in Russian literature and lived in the first part of the nineteenth century. The first part of the play shows Pushkin's involvement with the Decembrist uprising of 1825, an attempted revolution in which the intellectuals tried to gain more control by placing their own candidate for Czar on the throne rather than Nicholas I, and Lermontov's "radicalization" or at least politization upon watching the death of Pushkin. Both men's problems with women are also important elements of their lives, portrayed in the first scenes. Pushkin dies in a duel with a favorite of the Czar...
Shea concentrates on and sometimes interprets certain elements in the lives of Pushkin and Lermontov that stress their roles as political actors and as outsiders to the system. Pushkin was the descendent of a Negro slave to the Czar and was dark himself, a fact not commonly known. In this play, he is portrayed by a black actor, mainly to stress his sense of difference and his antipathy toward the Czar. In Lermontov's life, too, the political acts are highlighted: his eulogy to Pushkin at Pushkin's funeral (based on the real Lermontov's poem), dangerous because Pushkin...
...overcome the staging problems, Burt and Shea have come up with a number of tricks, some more successful than others. The film clips of the Decembrists being busted and Pushkin being shot, and Bekhmetyev's slide-show for the Czar, ease the action over places where words would have been too bulky. Similarly, the projected title for every scene is of great aid in following a very complicated plot...
...other figures that crowd about Lermontov-Pechorin, the most striking are Czar Nicholas and Bekhmetyev, the head of his Secret Police and Varvara's husband. James Burt makes the Czar a clever and proper bastard, and an amusing one. Jason Kanter, as Bekhmetyev, manages to create the figure to which, in some ways, Lermontov aspires, a man who lives by "intellect alone," devoid of emotion, manipulating and destroying the lives of others with absolute control...