Word: platonov
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...plays, mostly light "vaudevilles," Chekhov wrote a total of nine full-evening, four act plays. Of the first two, penned when he was 18, we know only the titles: The Fatherless, and Laugh It Off If You Can. At 21, he wrote the sprawling but remarkable Platonov, which turned up only long after his death, in the Soviet period. In his late twenties, he turned out Ivanov, a flawed but great and vastly underrated work capable of packing a tremendous wallop in performance; and the tentative, transitional The Wood Demon, which later also provided much of the plot of Uncle...
...Platonov and Ivanov, for instance, Chekhov dramatized an individual, and one tremendous performance can bring them off. From The sea Gull on, however, Chekhov was portraying a group; a star or two will not suffice. Here Chekhov has done away with the clear spine that drives through the play from one exciting event to another, from one "sock on the jaw" (Chekhov's phrase) to another; he has turned his back on the technique of say, Ibsen and Strindberg. He has, in effect, turned from the solo concerto with orchestra to the more subtle and contrapuntal interplay of chamber music...
...rest of the evening included a static sports roundup (a ten-minute speech by an athletic functionary, scenes of a factory woman doing calisthenics), a performance of Chekhov's Platonov's Loves, Thirty Minutes with the Hungarian Railway Philharmonic, and a half-hour newscast, with headlines read by a tight-lipped blonde. As with the rest of East European television, Hungary's news presentation carries virtually no film footage, nor even voice reports from foreign correspondents. The lead item usually updates what the satellite networks call America's "dirty aggressive war against the brave, peace-loving...
...soon as it is populated with these freakish characters, the play gets under way, fitfully propelled by Platonov's will-power. "An empty-headed woman-chaser, that's what I am," Platonov admits. By alter-chaser, that's what I am," Platonov admits. By alternating pledges to take up and break off extra-marital escapades, he invites insults, homicide, suicide, and laughter. While the plot thrives on surprise entrances and simultaneous incidents this boobish Casanova slides toward his comic doom...
Dustin Hoffman, expertly leading the light-hearted approach to Chekhov as the tipsy doctor, is the funniest figure in the play. John Lasell manages to capitalize on Platonov's absurdities without making his tragic side incongruous. And Penelope Laughton portrays the simple naivete of Platonov's wife with great subtlety. Unfortunately, the roles of the young fop and the widow's stepson are somewhat overinflated by David Bouvier and Joseph O'Sullivan. And Betsy White, as the widow, proposes sin to Platonov like a lenient mother trying to sell her children on brushing after every meal...