RURALITY AS A METAPHORICAL STRATEGY IN CHEKHOV: CHECK
Deconstructing two Anton Chekhov short stories with a series of post-hip Director’s Theater flourishes, Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson are presently touring the 75 incredibly long minutes of Man in a Case. Familiar Chekhovian themes are investigated: of backwoods stultification, of falling to the level of one’s community, of the impossibility of love without self-respect. Despair and regret, moral lassitude, and unearned irony squirt from the joints of this show. There is a little acting; there is a little dance. Why there’s a sound effects man onstage who sort of but not really takes part in the action; why the characters occasionally speak into microphones or video cameras; why the adaptors chose to half-stage these particular stories (“Man in a Case” and “About Love”), not the richest mine for drama: answers to these questions are, in the staging, hard for the directors to articulate. I sympathize; none of it seems quite worth the effort.
The academically-minded show seems to have been mounted primarily as new evidence that, yes, almost every single Chekhov production displays the same provincial appreciation of its source material. The performances run from warm immediacy (Tymberley Canale and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who also produces) to a kind of stylized neutrality (Jess Barbagallo, Chris Giarmo, Aaron Mattocks). Some of the storytelling is pretty. Some of its technical and performance elements do not harmoniously join. All of it is trapped in the amber of a laborious and uninteresting production very much of its era – an era that directors Parson and Lazar have done much to help curate. That it feels instantly dated is, to me, an encouraging sign.
photos by T. Charles Erickson
Man in a Case
Big Dance Theater and Baryshnikov Productions
in association with ArKtype
Broad Stage in Santa Monica
scheduled to end on May 10, 2014
for tickets, call 310.434.3200
or visit www.TheBroadStage.com
tour concludes at MCA Chicago on May 18, 2014
for more info, visit www.arktype.org