CHEKHOV BEFORE THE MASTERPIECES

A lean, lucid revival reveals Ivanov as an early, electric
study of burnout, longing, and emotional paralysis

Zachary Desmond, Paul Niebank, Casey Worthington, Maya Shoham,
Maude Mitchell, Alexandra Pearl, Mike Labbadia, Ilia Volok, Mary Bacon

In Anton Chekhov’s greatest hits album, Ivanov is the track you usually skip to get back to The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, or The Cherry Orchard. That is precisely why it’s such an intriguing play to see, and the current production at the West End Theater, artfully translated by Paul Schmidt and cleverly directed by Michael DeFilippis for the New American Ensemble, is a model revival.

Zachary DesmondMaya Shoham, Mary Bacon, Alexandra Pearl

The basics: the play was written in 1887, when Chekhov was 27 and still figuring out the particular blend of melancholy, absurdity, and social observation that would later define his major works. The story centers on Nikolai Ivanov, played here by Zachary Desmond, who heroically stands motionless on stage for at least 20 minutes while the audience is seated. Ivanov used to be the kind of man who had plans—a reform-minded landowner full of energy and ideals. Now in his early thirties, he is emotionally, morally, and spiritually exhausted, largely because he is financially ruined, something he does not like to acknowledge. He is increasingly alienated from everyone around him, who treat him like a puzzle they would very much like to solve.

Mike Labbadia, Zachary DesmondIlia Volok, Alexandra Pearl, Mike Labbadia, Mary Bacon

Desmond’s performance avoids slipping into passive melancholy, instead offering a nervous, electric portrayal that reveals the character’s youth beneath the gloom. Chekhov was writing about a class of people—the declining Russian nobility—who felt their lives were ruined, but he ended up with one of the earliest portraits of clinical depression. Ivanov has not simply become lazy and immoral; he has somehow lost access to the joy of life and the drive that once defined him. His wife is sick. His friends are meddling. A younger woman seems to represent the only possibility of a different life, but even with her he cannot shake his passivity.

Zachary Desmond, Maya ShohamPaul Niebank, Maude Mitchell, Ilia Volok

Desmond is supported by a finely calibrated ensemble. Quinn Jackson is Anna, Ivanov’s wife of five years. Tender-hearted and principled, Anna abandoned Judaism for love, but now she faces tuberculosis in isolation, stuck in the country and cut off from her family while her husband sinks into despair. Jackson, like Desmond, breathes vitality into an otherwise static role. Mary Bacon is Zinaida Lebedeva, a practical and financially astute moneylender; her husband Lebedev, played by Paul Niebanck, is Ivanov’s loyal friend and Chairman of the rural district council. Both actors make having fun look like serious business, blending pragmatism with every toast and sly glance. The Lebedevs’ daughter, Sasha, portrayed by Maya Shoham, radiates youthful excitement that serves as a foil to the gloom, and Shoham captures the intoxicating intensity of first love.

Lambert Tamin, Casey Worthington, Maude MitchellQuinn Jackson, Zachary Desmond

Mike Labbadia, as Borkin, the steward of Ivanov’s estate, brings a commanding, sometimes volatile energy, fitting seamlessly with his role as a schemer and opportunist. He is trying to convince Martha (Alexandra Pearl), a young wealthy widow, to marry Count Shabelsky (Ilia Volok), the elderly uncle—a buffoonish aristocrat. Pearl and Volok make a perfect pair of airheads, delightfully ludicrous. A sharply funny Maude Mitchell as Avdotya speaks the truths everyone else tiptoes around, while Lambert Tamin plays Lvov, the pompous young doctor with a conscience; both deliver laughs every time they step on stage. Casey Worthington rounds out the ensemble as Kosykh. It is the kind of large cast Chekhov loved and later replicated, because nothing amplifies a person’s private misery quite like a room full of friends and relatives observing and commenting on it.

Alexandra Pearl

Scenic designer Ashley Basile avoids clutter, focusing on interpersonal dynamics and selective realism—an intimate world slightly frayed at the edges. Costume designer Adeline Santello leans into a shabby-chic provincialism, a clever mix of rigid Victorian structure and the somewhat disheveled reality of country living in late 19th-century Russia. Sarah Woods’ understated, elegant lighting scheme emphasizes mood and texture, while sound designer Stan Mathabane employs a restrained approach that never interferes with the text.

Maya Shoham

Ivanov’s problem—a burnout so complete that it feels like a personal moral failure—is one many contemporary audiences understand all too well. DeFilippis’s direction maintains a steady rhythm, never allowing the play to drift into inertia. He emphasizes Chekhov’s dark humor and emotional contradictions: characters are absurd and heartbreaking, their follies inseparable from their suffering. Chekhov here feels awake, electric, and fully in command—see it to believe it.

Maya Shoham, Lambert Tamin

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

photos by Bronwen Sharp

Ivanov
New American Ensemble
The West End Theater, 263 W 86th St.
2 hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission
Tues–Fri at 7; Sat at 2 & 7:30; Sun at 5
ends on April 5, 2026 EXTENDED to April 12, 2026
for tickets ($45+), visit New American Ensemble

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Quinn Jackson