IVANOV GETS THE SHORT END

Chekhov’s despair survives the cuts, but
the production struggles to connect the pieces

Sam Adegoke and Sam Underwood

It is difficult to make depression theatrically vivid when its essential symptoms are misery, inertia, and the absence of purpose rather than anything visually dramatic. That is the particular challenge of Chekhov’s Ivanov, and I have already reviewed New American Ensemble’s production in March, praising its simplicity and spark. I am not generally inclined to review the same play twice within a few months, but this new production caught my attention because it is a shortened adaptation, written and directed by Laura Strausfeld, a scholar of Chekhov.

William DeMeritt, Soph Metcalf, Sam Underwood, Sam Adegoke, Spencer Aste, Elijah Guo, Jordan Lage, Sarah Long, Amelia Mason, and Kimberlee Walker

Presented by Initiative Productions, The Real Ivanov runs at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater, starring Sam Underwood as Nikolai Ivanov, a mid-30s, financially ruined landowner who has fallen into depression. Ivory Aquino plays Anna, his terminally ill wife who has sacrificed her inheritance and family for him, while Sam Adegoke plays Mikhail Borkin, the agitated estate manager whose schemes to make money provide the needed comic relief. But, from the beginning, the characters rarely seem to feed off one another, as though three talented actors had wandered onto the same stage from three different plays. Underwood is too intensely inward, Aquino too angelically resigned to death, and Adegoke too amiable and clownish. The problem is not the contrast but the absence of any dramatic chemistry between them, as if they did not belong in the same realm.

Ivory Aquino and Sam Underwood

The minimalist stage configuration by set and lighting designer Jiyoun Chang doesn’t help. With so little physical environment to engage with, the actors spend much of the production standing and delivering their lines. The sparseness should create a sense of emptiness, appropriate to Ivanov’s emotional state, but instead it makes the action feel static, with the dialogue rarely generating much dramatic momentum. Costume designer Ella Matza and sound designer Brandon Bulls also stay within the minimalist trend.

Soph Metcalf, Amelia Mason, Spencer Aste, Sarah Long, Sam Underwood, Jordan Lage, William DeMeritt, and Kimberlee Walker

Jordan Lage stands out as Count Shabyelsky, Ivanov’s older, sardonic uncle, who lives with the unhappy couple. Together with Spencer Aste as Lebedev, Sarah Long as his wife Zinaida, and Amelia Mason as Sasha, their daughter, he brings a welcome sense of ensemble to the production, which disappears as soon as the other characters walk onstage. Elijah Guo, as Dr. Lvov, is, once again, completely disconnected from the rest of the cast. A young physician of fierce conviction and one of Ivanov’s sharpest critics, Lvov should be a source of moral and dramatic tension, yet he seems to have little real relationship with either his dying patient or the man he condemns.

Soph Metcalf, William DeMeritt, Kimberlee Walker, Sam Adegoke, Jordan Lage, Sarah Long, Sam Underwood, Spencer Aste, and Amelia Mason

William DeMeritt as Kosyk and Soph Metcalf as Avdotya are given so little stage time that there is hardly an opportunity to get to know them, even though both represent facets of the Russian society surrounding Ivanov, as do all the other characters. Kimberlee Walker, as Babakina, brings a ray of sunshine, but even her warmth cannot rescue this profoundly “atomized” play because its characters seem to exist in separate emotional orbits, rarely influencing, provoking, or even truly registering one another. Maybe Strausfeld has focused so closely on the text that the staging has been left to the actors, as though their talent alone could supply the theatrical dimension the production lacks.

Sam Adegoke, Sam Underwood, Amelia Mason, and Spencer Aste

Ivanov is crushed by financial problems and guilt, and everyone has an opinion about him; Anna is dying; Sasha is the emotional EMT and wants to save him; basically, nobody is okay and nobody minds their own business. Even as a young writer, Chekhov filled the play with the social attitudes of his time, including the kind of gossip that still shapes the way many people think about depression. How many of us have tried to help a depressed friend by dispensing little pills of wisdom like “take walks in the park,” “join a gym,” “stop blaming yourself”? How many have secretly wondered whether it was really depression at all rather than simply a bad patch, an excuse to avoid responsibilities, or even a bid for attention?

Amelia Mason and Sam Underwood

Chekhov finished Ivanov nearly 140 years ago, when “major depression” did not exist as a formal diagnostic term. Most academic and psychiatric texts classified it under the umbrella of “melancholia,” curable with prolonged warm baths, strict diets, opium tinctures, and “rest cures” involving total isolation. Chekhov’s understanding of depression and social judgment remains remarkably contemporary; this production feels less timeless, and I suspect the problem is primarily one of direction rather than talent. What’s missing is a richer physical world, with more interaction between the actors and their surroundings.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

photos by Russ Rowland

The Real Ivanov
Initiative Productions
Lynn F. Angelson Theater, 136 East 13th Street in Manhattan
Mon.–Fri. at 7; Sat. at 2 & 8
ends on September 19, 2026
100 minutes, no intermission
for tickets (from $49), visit The Real Ivanov

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦