vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #156 / Arts and Ideas / Reading article...

I can’t decide if my favorite part of the Gorky Theater’s rendition of Ivanov, by Anton Chekhov, was when I realized that the man in back of me wouldn’t stop talking with his wife throughout the performance or when the audience, believing the play was over, clapped too early and ruined the play’s tragic ending.

Despite all the distractions, the play itself was entertaining. The actors have performed the show repeatedly over last few years, but there was no aura of boredom around them, or any sense that they were merely walking through the paces. They were clearly professionals, and made their roles believable and fun to watch.

The limited scenery, consisting mostly of an imitated birch forest, was haunting in its austerity. It was a refreshing departure from stifling, cream-puff Disney musicals in the U.S., and I felt I was experiencing something artistically pure and almost mythical; despite Vladivostok’s economic and political problems, here was some genuinely good theater which turned financial need into power.

Yes, the play was a little melodramatic. But that was unavoidable with Chekhov’s script, concerning the tormented Ivanov’s relationships with his tuberculosis-suffering wife and the young girl who later falls in love with him despite the many debts he owes her father.

I was willing to tolerate the mildly overacted anguished cries, desperate embraces, angry accusations, and stentorian monologues because the actors shone at times.

Still, I couldn’t shake a feeling that the play and the audience never connected. The crinkling candy wrappers and whispering spouses were only a minor annoyance, but people in the crowd seemed generally detached from the proceedings.

A similar unease crept into my impression of the actors. Their force never projected out from the stage, and sometimes it seemed like they weren’t taking audience into account.

When the curtain finally dropped and the cast came out to bow, they seemed frustrated and generally displeased. They didn’t seem to be there.

The audience gave them a standing ovation, but I couldn’t believe I was the only one who thought they looked at us somewhat scornfully for it.

Were they mad that turnout was so low? That most of the audience began its applause twenty seconds too early - spoiling the final and most dramatic part of the play? Or just genuinely disinterested?

The general discomfort I felt could have come from a number of reasons, not the least of which that I didn’t understand some of the Russian dialogue.

It may have been that the theater really was only half-full. But I’ve been to plays under similar circumstances before, and have been absolutely knocked out by them.

Ivanov ended up as a strange contradiction. The acting was excellent, but I didn’t feel a part of the emotion at all. Did Chekhov want us to feel like voyeurs? Was my discomfort a testament to the actors’ excellence?

Whatever the intended result, I partly wanted to run up on stage and disrupt the show, flapping my arms and whooping like a deranged baseball fan.

It’s a desire, I think, that stemmed from a cold loneliness, a feeling that the separation between actor and observer had rarely been so pronounced.