ABSURDITIES OF PASSION WIND UP A TORRID SUMMER
This is by Turgenev, revolutionary in his time (banned for a while), now adapted with mischief and appreciation by the late Brian Friel and directed – with even more mischief but a redeeming humanity – by Lyndsey Turner. Like the later Chekhov masterpieces it’s there to remind us that a country estate household is both potential idyll and terrible trap: Moscow, as ever, mentioned in the background as both potential escape and source of emotionally troubling visitors. Ah, we’ve all been there.
So Leslie Travers designs a great suspended cage of thick foliage, sometimes rising to reveal a garden or interior, sometimes falling balefully around them all. Before the start a woman’s face peers through the leaves at us, hopeful or cautious. Its Sophie Okonedo, my favourite Cleopatra: a strong -boned, defiantly handsome face, beauty past the prime but aristocracy unchallengeable, her moods and games dangerously expressive. This is Natalya, wife of Arkady and lady of the estate where he buffles around enthusing about weirs and winnowing machines. It is her electrical personality which will dominate the next two and a half wickedly enjoyable hours in old Russia.
She has her work cut out to dominate it , because for all Natalya’s Okonedo magnetism this is a cast of twelve: each with distinct comedic chances and talents , each given at least one memorable two- or three-handed scene with the sort of strong-flavoured, never-wasted tragicomic intensity which makes you think “YES of course! this is the way to write a play! Why doesn’t everybody?” The very opening effortlessly shows us Natalya’s boredom, being read to by a family friend who adores her, tje devoted Michel (Alister Petrie, memorably helpless, subtly drawn). But behind them runs a card game evoking the whole big household and its frustrations: her bossy mother in law (Susan Brown, who should get a whole sitcom to herself), sullen companion Lizaveta fighting a snuff habit, and Mark Hadfield as an outrageous comedy German professor forever afloat on malaprop mistranslations and rural outings (“I go to apprehend fish”). Add a simmering potential love affair between two servants, and another between Dr Shpigelsky and the fed-up Lizaveta. Then feel for the innocent foster-daughter Vera ( a very sweet, honestly played Rachelle Diedericks) . And all the time be electrically aware of course the glamorous invader: the unseen kid’s tutor, a boyishly Irish Aleksey (Patrick Gibson).
With him, naturally, Natalya falls in love, deeply envious of his romping friendship with young Vera and therefore tempted by the embittered peasant-bred doctor to marry the kid off to Bolshitsov (another little comic masterpiece by Michael Hodgson, goodness they’re all having fun, no boring walk-ons in this play).
Poor old Michel sees all this, being the least deluded of them all and knowing he’s stuck in friend-zone forever with Natalya. Arkady sees hardly anything at all until late on, since the winnowing-machine is malfunctioning and takes up his attention. Sometimes internal struggles are expressed by audible voices from within Natalya or Michel: filmically odd but effective.
It is all wickedly entertaining (sometimes verging on Jilly Cooper for social observation and inappropriate desires), and played beautifully, broad helpless audience laughs alternating with real sympathy (“Am I unhinged?” cries Okonedo more than once) . There’s a real kite. And every shade of human love: erotic or familial, habitual and tolerant, dominating and manipulative, irrational and gloriously transformative, discreditable, from the tutor starstruck bonkers. And, from the doctor to the snuff-sniffing spinster Lizaveta, an excellent down-to-earth growl about sometimes just making the best of it all , settling for a “bitter angry crawling peasant” rather than a bossy madam. Glorious. Get in!
donmarwarehouse.com to 4 October
rating 5
theatreCat 