'From Iconoclast

to
Traditionalist:
A Study
of
Anatolii
Efros's Productions
of
Chekhov, Gogol
and
Turgenev. '
by Ros Dixon, M. Litt.
Thesis
submitted
to the University
of
Nottingham
for
the degree
of
Doctor
of
Philosophy, October 2002
pTTINQ
Acknowledgments
First I
should
like
to thank
my supervisor
Dr. Cynthia Marsh for her
excellent
guidance and consistent support, and
the
University
of
Nottingham for
awarding me a
three-year
studentship and
the
Harold Howitt Travelling
Scholarship. In Nottingham I
owe also a
debt
of gratitude to
Dr. Wendy
Rosslyn, Professor Lesley Milne
and
Irina Shlumukov.
In Moscow I
should
like
to thank the theatre
critic
Marianna Stroeva;
the
actors,
Lev Durov, Nikolai Grachov, Viktor Lakirev, Nikolai Volkov;
the
director,
Anatolii Ivanov;
the
playwright
Edvard Radzinskii; Liudmilla
and
Vitalii
Berekov;
the
staff of
the
State Theatre Library,
of
The Russian State Archives
of
Literature
and
Art
and of
the
United City Archives.
I
am grateful
to
many people
for
their
assistance and advice, and should
like
to
acknowledge
in
particular
Dr. Birgit Beumers, Dr. Sarah Smyth, Gary
Cawthorne for his
specialist
knowledge
of musicology, and
Rick Dowling for
his
expertise
in Macintosh
computers; my colleagues at the
National University
of
Ireland, Galway, Professor Kevin Barry, Professor Hubert McDermott,
and
especially
Dr. Adrian Frazier
and
Cliona Carney. I
should
like
also
to thank the
Funding Committee
of
BASSES for
providing me with
funds
to
conduct my
research
in Moscow.
My brother Terry Dixon
provided
invaluable
assistance
in
tracing
American
sources on
Efros; I
also owe a
debt
of
thanks to
Louise Burt
at
the
Guthrie
Theatre in Minneapolis,
and
to the
staff of
The New York Public Library.
I
am
indebted
to the
sage good
humour
of my sister
Corinna
and
brother-in-law
Michael,
and
to the
encouragement of
friends, in
particular
Alex Harrington,
Sarah Young, Anne Elliott
and
Siobhn Miley. This
thesis
is dedicated
to
my
parents,
Sylvia
and
Victor Dixon,
without whose untiring
love
and support
it
could not
have been
written.
Contents
Preliminary Notes 1-8
Introduction 9-17
Chapter 1: Introduction to the Life
and
Career
of
Anatolii Efros 18-81
Chapter 2: The Seagull (1966) 82-110
Chapter 3: Three Sisters (1967) 111-140
Chapter 4: Marriage (1975)
141-181
Chapter 5: The Cherry Orchard (1975) 182-225
Chapter 6: A Month in
the
Country (1977) 226-256
Chapter 7: Road (1980)
257-274
Chapter 8: Three Sisters (1982)
275-297
Conclusion
298-305
Appendix 1: Systems
of
Censorship
and
the
Organisation
of
Soviet Theatres 306-310
Appendix 2: Efros's Productions
on
Stage,
Television, Screen
and
Radio
311-317
Bibliography
318-352
Abstract
Between 1951
and
1987
the
Russian director Anatolii Efros
created seventy-
four
stage productions,
thirteen television
films, four feature films
and
four
radio plays.
His
work made a significant contribution
to the
development
of
Russian
theatre
in
the twentieth
century,
but has
received no comprehensive
study
in Russian
or
English.
This
thesis provides an overview of
his
career
but
concentrates on a central
aspect:
his
response
to the
Russian
classic canon.
It
analyses
in depth
seven
productions created
in Moscow
over some
fifteen
years.
These
are
discussed in
the
context of
his
reaction
to their
performance
history
and as a reflection
both
of changing political circumstances and of
his
own character and
development.
His
response
is
shown
to
have
evolved
from
radical, overtly contemporary,
iconoclastic
re-interpretation
towards
a greater
indebtedness
to tradition and
in
particular
to the
legacy
of
Stanislavsky.
His
productions of
Chekhov's The Seagull (1966)
and
Three Sisters (1967)
were
daring
assertions of artistic
independence. They
were condemned and
banned both
as
irreverent
attacks on the
sacrosanct style of
the
Moscow Art
Theatre
and
for
their overfly political
implications. In 1975, Gogol's Marriage
and
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard,
though
innovative,
were
less
controversial;
though they too
reflected contemporary concerns,
their
messages
were more muted.
Turgenev's A Month in
the
Country in 1977
marked
the
beginnings
of
the change
in his
approach, and
this
became increasingly
apparent
in
the
1980s. At
the
beginning
of a period of
irrevocable
socio-political change,
the
Soviet
theatre
was
in
crisis, and
Efros himself had
serious problems,
prompted
in
part
by
criticism of
Road (an
adaptation of
Gogol's Dead Souls) in
1980. His
second staging of
Three Sisters in 1982
was characterised
by
a
reassessment of
his
earlier
ideas
and an
increasing
concern
for historical
continuity.
Preliminary Notes
2
1) Sources in Russia for
published materials
(books, journals
and newspaper
reviews)
include:
the
State Theatre Library,
the
Russian State Library (formerly
The Lenin Library)
and
the
State Historical Library. Sources
outside
Russia:
New York Public Library,
the
British Library,
the
Hallward Library
at
the
University
of
Nottingham,
the
Berkeley, Ussher
and
Lecky Libraries in Trinity
College, Dublin University,
and the
Library
of
the
National University
of
Ireland, Galway.
2) Archive
sources are as
follows:
The Russian State Archive
of
Literature
and
Art (RGALI), Fond 2079,
section
3,
and
Fond 2453,
sections
4
and
5.
The United City Archives (MGOA), Fond 429,
sections
1
and
2.
In
the
footnotes
unpublished material
taken
from
these
archive resources
is
cited
in
the
following
way:
Title
of
document, (e.
g.
Transcript
of a meeting of
the
Artistic Committee),
MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 796.
In
this
F.
='Do
q
(Fond/Archive),
op.
=
ormcb
(list/collection),
and
del.
=
Reno
(file).
These
archives
house
a wide variety of unpublished material such as: official
documentation
on
the
decisions
made
by
the
state
in
relation
to theatre
productions,
including
those
of
the
censorship
board;
correspondence
between
Efros
and
the
officials of the
Ministry
of
Culture; letters
and
telegrams to
and
from Efros;
transcripts
of meetings at the
Lenkom dating from
the time
of
Efros's dismissal; Efros's director's
scripts with
illustrations for
some of
his
3
films; his final
year
dissertation
work
for GITIS;
transcripts
of speeches;
photographs
from
productions.
3) Visual Material. The
archives of
the
Bakhrushin Theatre Museum
provided
photographs of
Efros's
productions and unpublished material that
originally
formed
part of an exhibition on
his
work
displayed
at
the
museum
in 1993. In
addition
I have
used a video produced
in 1983
of
Efros's
production of
Turgenev's A Month in Country,
and on several occasions
in
the
1990s I
saw
revivals of
his
productions of
Marriage
and
Don Juan
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia
and of
Napoleon I
at
the
Maiakovskii.
4) Taped interviews
on
their
recollections of
Efros's
work were provided
by
the
following:
the
actors
Lev Durov, Nikolai Grachov, Viktor Lakirev
and
Nikolai
Volkov;
the
director Anatolii Ivanov;
the playwright
Edvard Radzinskii;
the
critic
Marianna Stroeva.
5) Other
unpublished source:
Marianna Stroeva, 'Anatolii Efros:
molodost",
(Unpublished
chapter,
Moscow,
no
date),
pp.
270-387,
cited
here
with
permission of
the
author.
The
transliteration
system of
the
Library
of
Congress has been
used
throughout.
There
are
however
some names of persons, plays and
theatres
which may now
be deemed
to
have been
standardised
in English
according
to
a
different
system;
in
these
instances (in
the
main
text) the
standardised
form is
used.
These
include: Chaliapin, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Maxim Gorky, Maly, Meyerhold,
4
Mussorgsky, Nevsky, Stanislavsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tallinn, Tchaikovsky,
Tolstoy, Vanya, Yalta.
In footnoted
references,
however,
spellings
like Gogol', Meierkhol'd
and
Stanislavskii
are used.
Russia's
second city
is
named
St. Petersburg, Leningrad
and
Petrograd in
accordance with
its
appellation at
the
date in
question, e. g.
St. Petersburg in
reference
to
Aleksandrinskii
theatre,
but Leningrad in
reference
to the
Bolshoi
Dramaticheskii.
On
some occasions works are cited which
have been
translated
into English by
authors who
have
used a
different
system of
transliteration.
In
these
instances,
for
the
sake of consistency,
the
Russian
authors' names
have been
transliterated
in
the
main
text,
but
the
names as published
have been
retained
in
the
footnotes
and/or select
bibliography. Names
that
demonstrate
these
differences include:
Anatoli, Anatoly
and
Anatolij (Efros),
Efros,
Alexander Kugel, Alexei Altayev,
Yury Lyubimov, Anatoly Smeliansky (and
also
Smelyansky), Smoktunovsky,
Rudnitsky.
In
some
instances,
when several works
by
a single author are cited,
there
are
variations
in his/her
name as published.
In keeping
with
MHRA
guidelines
these
variations
have been
retained
in
the
footnotes but
are omitted
in
the
bibliography,
where only a single
initial is
used.
The
clearest example of
this
is
the critic
Shakh-Azizova
who
is
cited variously as
Tatiana Shakh-Azizova,
Tat'iana Shakh-Azizova, T. Shakh-Azizova
and
T. K. Shakh-Azizova. Mikhail
Shvydkoi is
also cited as
Shvidkoi.
Similarly, in direct
quotations
from
previous writers any variations
in
the
names
of characters and theatres
have been
retained.
5
In
accordance with academic practice,
the names of critics, actors etc. are given
in full
only
in
the
first instance,
and surnames are used
thereafter.
The
only
exceptions
to this
occur
in
the
rare
instances in
which
two
persons share the
same surname, so
that the
omission of a
first
name might cause confusion.
The
chapters
in
which
this
occurs
include
the
following: Chapter 3, Three Sisters
(1967)
-
Vladimir Dmitriev (a designer
at
the
MAT)
and
Iurii Dmitriev (a
critic);
Chapter 6, A Month in
the
Country (1977), in
which
the
first
name of
the
critic
Nikolai Efros is
repeated
to
avoid confusion with
Efros himself;
and
Chapter 8, Three Sisters (1982), in
which
there
are references
to the
critic
Boris
Liubimov
and
to
Liubimov (Iurii),
the
Taganka director. Similarly in
the
footnotes
the
first
name of
the
scholar
Cynthia Marsh is
used
twice to
avoid
confusion with
Rosalind Marsh.
The
titles
of
the
plays of
Chekhov, Gogol
and
Turgenev
central
to this
study are
given
in English
only.
All
other
titles
of works originally published
in Russian
both in
the main text and
in
the
footnotes
are given
first in Russian,
with an
English
translation; subsequent references to the
same work are
in English
only.
Appendix 2 lists
the
names of all
Efros's
productions
in both Russian
and
English. The
titles
of
journals
and newspapers are
transliterated
but
not
translated.
All Russian
titles
in
the
bibliography
and
footnotes
are transliterated,
but
places of publication are provided
in English. Unless
otherwise
indicated,
all
translations
are
the
present writer's.
The details
of all published materials cited
in
the text
are
listed in full in
the
bibliography. In
the
footnotes,
a
first
reference
is
given
in full, but
subsequent
references are shortened,
either to the
surname of the
author alone or
(in
6
instances
where more
than
one work
by
the
same author
has been
used)
to the
surname
followed by
the
first
word(s) of
the title
in
question.
In
one
instance
where
first
references
have
previously
been
made
to two
authors who share
the
same surname
(i.
e.
Cynthia Marsh
and
Rosalind Marsh),
the
first intial has been
retained
in
a subsequent reference
(to
the
latter).
Abbreviations
The following frequently
cited abbreviations are used:
GITIS (Gosudarstvennyi Institut
teatralnogo
iskusstva). The State Institute for
the
Theatrical Arts. This is
now
known
as
the
Russian Academy
of
Dramatic
Art.
Glavlit. This
organisation when
first
established
in 1922
was called
Glavnoe
upravienie po
delam literatury i izdatel'stv
and
later
changed
to
Glavnoe
upravienie po okhrane gosudarstvennykh tain
v pechati
but
the
standard
abbreviation
for both is Glavlit. This
was
the
government
body
charged with
preventing
the
publication of state secrets.
It functioned
on a wide
basis
as
the
major organisation concerned with
the
censorship of any material
deemed
politically sensitive.
It had direct
control over material published
in
the
Soviet
press and over all
theatrical scripts.
For further details
see
Appendix 1.
GUKiM (Glavnoe Upravienie Kul'tury ispolkoma Mossoveta). The Main
Administration
of
Culture
of
the
Moscow City Council Executive Committee.
This
was
the
principal
body
of
the
Moscow City Council for
the
administration
of cultural affairs.
It had direct
control of
the general administration,
budgets
and repertoires of most theatres
in Moscow (with
the
exception of
the
Bolshoi,
7
Maly
and
MAT
which were under
the
immediate
control of
the
Ministry
of
Culture).
LGITMiK (Leningradskii Gosudartsvennyi Institut Teatra, Muzyki i
Kinematografii),
cited
in footnotes
and
in
the
bibliography
as a publisher.
MAT
The
name of
the
Moscow Art Theatre is
often abbreviated
in English
texts,
either
in its Cyrillic form
as
MXAT
or
transliterated as
MKhAT. The Cyrillic
form
can
be
rendered
in full
as
Moskovskii khudozhestvennyi
akademicheskii
teatr
and
translated as
Moscow Art Academic Theatre. The
word
akademicheskii
(Academic)
was added
to the
name
in 1921
and
later had
a
specific political connotation.
Following
critical attacks on
this theatre
in
the
immediate
aftermath of
the
1917 Revolution,
akademicheskii
implied
that
it had
been
given a protected status and was under
the
direct
control of
the
USSR
Ministry
of
Culture. In
the
1930s
the
word also
became
associated with notions
of excellence when
the theatre
was promoted as an
ideal
model
(explained in
more
detail in Chapters 1
and
2). Since
reference
is
made
to the theatre
both
before
and after
it
acquired
this
newer appellation,
the
abbreviation
MAT (with
the
definite
article)
has been
used
throughout.
RSFSR (Rossiiskaia Sovetskaia Federativnaia Sotsialisticheskaia Respublika).
The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic.
VTO (Vserossiiskoe Teatral'noe Obshchestvo)
cited
in footnotes
and
in
the
bibliography
as a publisher.
Zastoi. The
period of stagnation under
Leonid Brezhnev's
regime
(1964-1982)
is
referred
to throughout by
this transliterated name.
8
The Russian form imeni (named in honour
of), as
in Teatr imeni Pushkina
etc.,
is
not used;
the theatre
is
called
the
Pushkin. Similarly, Teatr
na
Maloi Bronnoi
and
Teatr
na
Taganke become
the
Malaia Bronnaia
and
the
Taganka,
and
Teatr
Leninskogo Komsomola becomes
the
Lenkom. The
word
'Theatre' is
deliberately
omitted
from
these
names.
The Gor'kii bolshoi dramaticheskii
theatre
is
shortened
to
BDT,
and
the
Central Children's Theatre
to
CCT.
Drawing
principally
from Efros's
own understanding,
the
word
'culture' is
used
in
this thesis
in
the rather
loose but
widely-accepted sense
denoted by
the
Russian
word xy. u ypa, meaning
'high
culture', edifying and enlightening.
Its
use,
however, does
not presuppose particular value
judgements
on
the
part of
the
present writer or a
lack
of awareness of
the
ideological
and sociological
connotations
that
use
implies.
9
Introduction
10
Anatolii Efros's
career spanned
thirty-six
years,
from 1951
to
1987. He
worked principally
in Moscow, in four
main
theatres, though
also as a guest
director in
several others.
He
travelled to the
United States
to
direct
at the
Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis,
and
toured to the
Edinburgh Festival, Japan
and
Finland
and
to
festivals in
the
former Yugoslavia. He directed
seventy-four
stage productions,
thirteen television
films, four feature films
and
four
radio
plays.
Efros
made a significant contribution to the
history
of
Russian
theatre
in
the
twentieth century.
He is
widely acknowledged to
have been
one of
the
foremost
directors
of
his
generation, and
to
have had
a seminal
influence
on
the theatre
of
today.
There is
therefore
in Russian
a
large body
of material,
both
published
and unpublished, on
his life
and work.
A bibliographical listing
published
by
the
Theatre Library in Moscow,
though
it includes
only those
materials
published
in Russian by January 1992,
provides
1162
separate entries of works
by
or about
Efros.
l
Analyses
of
individual
productions, as well as some
material on
his
working methods,
have
also
been
published as articles
in
English
and
French. To date, however,
there
is
no comprehensive study
in
any
language. Since his
creativity was prodigious, to
have
attempted such a study
in
the
present
thesis
would
have been
to
court an excessive
degree
of
superficiality.
It
will provide an overview of
his
entire career, and all
his
productions
for
the
stage, cinema, television
and radio are
listed in Appendix 2,
but
clearly not all of
these
could
have been
considered
in detail. In
particular
discussion
of
his
many productions of contemporary plays
is limited
to their
impact
on
his development.
Instead
this thesis
will concentrate on a central and significant aspect:
his
response, as shown
in
seven stage productions, created
between 1966
and
1982
lAnatolii
Vasil'ievich Efros: bibliograficheskii
ukazatel', ed.
by F. Krymko
and
E. Tyn'ianova
(Moscow: Soiuz
teatral'nykh deiatelei Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 1992).
11
at
three theatres
in Moscow,
to the
works of
three
Russian
playwrights
-
Chekhov, Gogol
and
Turgenev
-
seen universally as classics.
The
assumptions
that
underlie
the
use of
the
word
'classic' in
this
study are
founded
on
its
widely-accepted connotations.
These include
the
idea
of
timelessness and
the
notion
that
a classic
is
not only subject
to
but
also
in
some
senses
demands
multiple
interpretations,
concepts which
Efros himself
accepted.
The
timelessness of a classic refers
to
its
capacity
to transcend the
specific
historical
circumstance
in
which
it
was written and
to
be
relevant
to the
lives,
aspirations and
ideas
of a
later
audience.
But if
a classic
has
this
capacity,
it
will
be
subject
to
different interpretations,
which are
informed by
and reflect
its
new context.
In
the
case of a play, once a production
is
created
-
presented
visually and physically
in
the
presence of an audience,
interpreted by
actors,
(often) by
a
director
and
by
a
designer, by
critics and spectators
-
the
written
text
becomes
more
than mere words.
Instead in
this
process, and
from
subsequent productions,
it
garners a wide range of
ideological,
critical and
cultural
layers. In
sum aspects of what might
broadly be
termed
its
performance
history become
encoded within
the
written
text;
subsequent generations of
interpreters inherit
not a single script
but
a series of
inter-layered
and
interrelated
texts.
The
elaboration of a particular view,
based
on
theoretical
studies concerning the
political, social and cultural
factors
which govern
the
inclusion
of a work
in
the
established canon of classics,
is
not
however
a
feature
of
this
study.
Instead
a
central concern
here is
not with
the
formation
of
that
canon
but
with
the
political, social and cultural
factors
which
determined
the
interpretation
on
the
Soviet
stage of works regarded as canonical, and with
Efros's
response
to
them.
12
In
the
course of
his
varied and complex career
he
mounted productions of many
such classic works.
However,
those
drawn from
the
international
repertoire
must,
for
reasons of space,
be
excluded
from
this
study,
but
may
be briefly
reviewed.
In 1952,
soon after completing
his
training,
he directed Lope de
Vega's The Dog in
the
Manger in
a provincial
theatre
in Riazan'. This
production will
be
mentioned,
insofar
as
it
relates
to
his later
work.
Similarly,
in 1957 he directed Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, but
this,
like
several early
productions, was not wholly successful.
That Efros himself
was not satisfied
by his
approach
is
suggested
by
the
fact
that
in 1986 he
planned
to
stage
it
again
at
the
Taganka,
and might
indeed have done
so
had he
not
died
the
following
year.
He directed
three
works
by Shakespeare:
two
at the
Malaia Bronnaia, Romeo
and
Juliet in 1970 (a
production adapted
for
television
in 1983),
and
Othello in
1976,
and
The Tempest
at
the
Pushkin Museum in 1983. The last
of
these
productions,
because
particularly
innovative,
will
be
considered
in Chapter 1.
An
analysis of all
three
might
be
the
subject of a monograph,
but
would
ideally
form
part of a
fuller
study of
the
performance
history
of
Shakespeare
on the
Russian
stage.
Finally, Efros
was strongly
drawn
at
different
times
in his
career to the
life
and
works of
Moli6re. His
productions of
Don Juan in 1973,
of
Tartuffe in 1981
and of
The Misanthrope in 1986,
together
with
his
approach on stage and
in
television to
Mikhail Bulgakov's
play
Monbep (Moliere)
and
to that
author's
fictional biography JKuaub
2ocnoduna
be Monbepa (The Life
of
Monsieur de
Moliere), have
already
been
analysed
in detail by
the
present writer.
2
2Rosalyn
Dixon, 'Efros
and
Moliere', (unpublished M. Litt.
thesis,
University
of
Dublin,
1998).
13
He
also mounted a number of productions of canonical
Russian
plays other
than
those
which are
the
central subject of
this thesis,
but
these
in
various ways are
less
germane
to
its
purpose, and are
largely beyond its
scope.
A
production
in
1957
of
Pushkin's Bopuc roaynoe (Boris Godunov)
will
be discussed in
respect of
its impact
on
his development
and
later
career
(whereas
one of
Lev
Tolstoy's )Kueo
mpyn
(Living Corpse)
at
the
MAT in 1982, because less
significant
in
that
sense, will
be
mentioned only
briefly). He directed Boris
Godunov
again
in 1971, for
television,
but
analysis of
his
work
in
television,
for
cinema and on radio would require
theoretical
discussion
of
those
media and
is beyond
the
scope of
the
present study.
Efros
produced
two
stage adaptations
of
Russian
classic novels.
His first, in 1972,
was
Bpam A.
neusa
(Brother
Alesha), based by Viktor Rozov
on
Dostoevsky's Bpambsi Kapa.
Maaoebt
(Brothers Karamazov). That
adaptation,
however,
although a critical and
popular success,
focuses
almost entirely on the
relationship
between Alesha
and
the children, and
fails in
present writer's view
to
encompass the
complexities
and philosophical
breadth
of
the
novel.
In
essence
it is
an exploration of
the
themes of
'coming
of age' and of youthful
idealism in
the
face
of a complex
adult world
that preoccupied the playwright
in his
own original works, stagings
of which
by Efros
will
be discussed. By
contrast chapter
7 is devoted
to
his
production
in 1980
of
Road,
a play which attempts to translate to the
stage
in
all
its
complexity
the
first
part of
Gogol's Dead Souls. This
production marked a
significant
turning
point
in Efros's
creative
development,
and can
be
closely
related
to
his
staging of
Marriage in 1975. It
therefore
illuminates his
approach
to
Gogol's
work as a whole.
On
the
other
hand,
this study will not
be
concerned with
his
staging at
the
Taganka in 1984
of
Gorky's Ha one (Lower
Depths),
principally
because,
although this
work was written
in 1902, Gorky's
work
is
widely regarded to
be
part of
the
Soviet
classic repertoire.
A discussion
of
this
production could therefore
be incorporated into
a wider study of
Efros's
attitude to
Soviet drama
as a whole.
14
The
thesis
is divided into
eight chapters.
The first
provides, as a context
for
those that
follow,
a chronological overview,
in
seven sections, of
Efros's
career.
It
outlines
his
early
training and
the
development
of
his
approach
to
theatre
and
his
working methods.
It discusses
the
conditions and
his
experience
at several
theatres, especially
the
Central Children's Theatre (1954-1964),
the
Lenkom (1964-1967),
the
Malaia Bronnaia (1967-1984),
and
the
Taganka
(1984-1987). In
parallel,
it describes
the
changing political, social and cultural
situation
in
the
Soviet Union
as
it impacted
on
Efros's life
and work.
The
remaining chapters
discuss in detail, in
chronological order,
the
following
productions:
The Seagull (1966), Three Sisters (1967), Marriage (1975), The
Cherry Orchard (1975), Turgenev's A Month in
the
Country (1977), Road,
an
adaptation of
Gogol's Dead Souls (1980),
and a second staging of
Three Sisters
(1982).
3 Created
over a period of roughly
three
decades,
they
serve
to
illuminate different
stages of
his development,
and
in
most cases
demonstrate
his
exceptionally
innovative
stage-craft and exploration of acting
techniques.
Efros has frequently been
credited, moreover, with a particular capacity
for
sensing
the
mood of
his
times,
and
indeed
each production will
be
shown
to
have been informed by
and to
have
reflected the socio-political situation
in
which
it
was created.
This
study outlines
his
attraction
to
Russian
classic repertoire and
details how in
the course of
his
career
Efros's
staging of such
dramas
changed
from
a radical,
iconoclastic
reinterpretation as a reaction against established approaches,
towards
a greater
indebtedness
to tradition,
which would reflect a growing
concern
for historical
continuity.
Further,
although
the
influences
on
his
career
3Efros
directed
productions of the
same works abroad, and reference
is
made to these,
but for
reasons of space a
full
study of them, together with such concerns as the
issues
of translation
and
intercultural
performance,
is beyond
the scope of the present study.
15
were manifold,
his
training
and early productions were
indebted
to the
ideas
of
Konstantin Stanislavsky. The
thesis also charts
therefore
his
changing response
to the
legacy
of
those
ideas
and
to the traditions of
the
Moscow Art Theatre
(MAT).
The first important
productions to
be
considered are
those
of
Chekhov's The
Seagull (1966)
and
Three Sisters (1967). At
this
period
Efros's decision
to
stage plays
familiar
to
audiences and critics alike can
be
seen on
the
one
hand
to
have
reflected a
desire
to
make
his
mark as a
director by
reacting against
(or
indeed
attempting
to
ignore)
their
performance
history. On
the
other
hand
they
expressed a need
to
see
these
works
in
the
light
of
his
own experience.
After
the
1917 Revolution, Chekhov's dramas had been
rejected as
irrelevant
to
immediate
concerns.
Later, however,
they
were subjected
to
ideologically-
charged socio-political analyses.
In
the
late 1920s
and
1930s
they
were
reinterpreted as critiques of a
bourgeois
past.
Later
still,
from
the
mid
1930s,
under
the tenets
of
Socialist Realism,
the
performance
history
of
the
MAT
was
knowingly distorted
to
support
the
notion
that
it belonged
to
an excusively
realist
theatrical tradition.
Those
of
its
productions
deemed
to conform to this
idea
were promoted as models
to
be
copied, and
the
style of performing
Chekhov
established at
that theatre
came to
be
seen as
'correct'. In
the
1960s,
Efros
was not concerned either
to
document
or
to
critique the
past,
but instead
consciously
'modernised'
these
works
in
order to make
bold
statements about
contemporary realities.
His Seagull
and
Three Sisters
were characterised
by
a
deliberate
rejection of
traditional
interpretations
and generated critical uproar,
earning
their
director
the
appellation of
'anti-MAT. Although he denied
that
his
work was so
deliberately
targeted, these
productions were undeniably radical
and
iconoclastic
reinterpretations that
challenged cherished myths and critical
perceptions of
the
MAT in
general and
the
work of
Stanislavsky in
particular.
They
were
daring
assertions of the
director's independence
and right
to
interpret
16
freely. Efros
attempted to
remove
the
layers
of
those
works' performance
history,
react against
the
imposition
of rigid,
fixed interpretations,
and
indeed
to
break
with
his
own past
in
order
to
create anew.
Although in
the
early part of
his
career
Efros
was most closely associated with
the
work of contemporary
Soviet
writers,
in
the
1970s, during Brezhnev's
zastoi
(stagnation),
there
was a relative
dearth
of
high-quality
modern plays, and
he increasingly
regarded
the
classics as
the
central
focus
of
his
work.
In 1975
he directed his innovative
productions of
Gogol's Marriage
and
Chekhov's The
Cherry Orchard. In
these
productions
he
was able
to
explore
broader
philosophical
ideas, but
without retreating
from
the
modern world.
On
the
contrary,
by
producing works whose classic status made
them
less
subject
to
censorship
than
modern plays,
but
which were open
to
multiple
interpretation,
he
succeeded
in
continuing
to
comment, though
now
indirectly,
on
contemporary concerns.
As
noted above,
however, in
the
course of
his
work
Efros's
approach to the
classics reflected a growing concern
for historical
continuity.
The first
signs of
this
change can
be
seen
in The Cherry Orchard,
and especially
in Turgenev's A
Month in
the
Country (1977). This
production was more clearly
indebted
than
his
earlier work
to the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky,
and represented not a rejection of
but
rather an engagement with
the
play's performance
history.
In 1980 Efros
staged
Road,
an adaptation of
Gogol's Dead Souls. He
never
stated reasons
for his decision
to
direct
an adaptation of
this
novel,
but it
too
formed
part of
his
response to the
established
traditions
of
the
classic canon.
Although he did
not use
Bulgakov's
adaptation of
Gogol, he
was well-versed
in
the
history
of
the
production of
that
work at
the
MAT in
the
early
1930s. In his
own production
Efros
continued
his dialogue
with
Stanislavsky by
reacting
17
against
his
predecessor's reworking of
Bulgakov's
play.
Road
was produced
during
a period of personal and professional crisis
for Efros,
which
in
turn
reflected a growing sense of uncertainty at
the
beginnings
of
irrevocable
socio-
political change
in
the
Soviet
theatre,
and
indeed in
society as a whole.
His
difficulties in
the
early
1980s
were exacerbated
by
the
harsh
criticism of
Road,
and provoked
in him
a
desire
to
return
imaginatively
to the
past, and at
the
same
time to
reassess
his
previous work.
Consequently, he
attempted,
in his
second
staging of
Three Sisters (1982),
to
emulate and
indeed
to
celebrate
the traditional
approach of
the
MAT,
whose style once
he had forcefully
rejected.
Theatre in its
essence
is
ephemeral.
For
the
purposes of analysis
it has been
necessary
therefore to
'reconstruct' Efros's
productions
from
photographs
in
the
archives of
the
Bakrushkin Theatre Museum in Moscow, by
viewing a video
of
his 1983
production of
Turgenev's A Month in
the
Country,
and
by
documenting
-
as well as personally seeing
-those
productions which
continued
to
be
performed or were revived after
his death in
the
repertoires of
the
Malaia Bronnaia, MAT
and
Maiakovskii Theatres. In
addition, several
theatre practitioners who worked with
Efros
provided taped
interviews
of
their
recollections.
Extensive
use
has
also
been
made of
his
own
books
on
his life
and work, which were published together
in four
volumes
in 1993. Archives in
Moscow
provided a wealth of
further
unpublished material, and
the
analysis
that
follows
relies
too on reviews
in
newspapers and on critical commentaries
in
journals
and
books. Details
on unpublished sources
have been
provided
in
the
Preliminary Notes
above, and
the
published material
is listed in
the
bibliography.
18
Chapter 1
Introduction
to the
Life
and
Career
of
Anatolii Efros
19
1. Early Years, 1925-1954
In his
early years,
Efros, born in Khar'kov in 1925, had little direct
acquaintance with
the theatre.
On leaving
school
he
trained
and worked as a
fitter in
an aeronautical
factory,
where
his father
was a
designer
and
his
mother
a
translator of
technical
manuals.
He
seems,
however,
at
this
relatively
late
stage
to
have discovered
a passion
for drama. In his
memoirs
he
recalled
having
seen productions at
the
MAT, delighting in
particular
in
the
work of
the
legendary
actor
Ivan Moskvin,
whom
he
saw
in Tsar Fedor,
and
he
cultivated
an
interest in
the
work of
Stanislavsky,
whose
books he
read avidly.
4
In fact,
he
maintained
that this
early enthusiasm
for Stanislavsky's ideas
was what
had
made
him
want
to train
for
the theatre.
5
He began his
career as an actor at the
Mossoveta Theatre in Moscow,
studying under
Juni Zavadskii,
a
former
student
of
Evgeny Vakhtangov, but from
the
very
beginning he dreamt
of running
his
own company, and
in his first
year
joined
a group of other students
in
establishing a studio at
the theatre,
without
the
blessing
of
its Artistic Director.
An infuriated Zavadskii,
on
learning
of
its
existence, and
interpreting it
as an
unacceptable challenge
to
his
authority, expelled some of
the
group,
but
treated
Efros
with greater
indulgence. Recognising his
student's potential not as an
actor
but
as a
director, he
recommended
him
to
Nikolai Petrov,
who
in 1947
accepted
Efros into
the
second year of
his
course at
the
State Institute for
Theatre Arts (GMS).
4A.
Efros, Kniga
chetvertaia
(Moscow: Panas, 1993),
p.
369. This is
the
fourth
and
final
volume of
Efros's
published writings.
It first
appeared
in
print
in 1993,
when all
four
volumes were published
together
by Panas in Moscow. The
other three are entitled
Repetitsiia
-
liubov'
rnoia,
Professiia:
rezhisser and
Prodolzhenie
teatral'nogo
roman.
The
word
'memoirs' is
used
throughout to
refer
to these
four
volumes.
These
writings
include:
Efros's
notes on
different
plays;
ideas
with which
he
experimented
in
rehearsal; reflections on
his
personal, professional and political circumstances;
his discussion
of various artistic
movements, other art
forms
and media relevant to
his
own work; analyses of
the
work of other
theatre and
film directors;
anecdotes; stories; personal recollections etc.
The
word'memoirs'
is
the most appropriate and convenient to encompass such a
disparate
collection of writings.
It
should
be
noted,
however,
that this descriptive
term
is
one which, at
least in
relation
to
his
first
volume,
Efros himself
rejected.
Repetitsiia,
p.
315.
5Efros,
Kniga,
p.
369.
20
At
this
period
the
Soviet
theatre
was
in
crisis.
During
the
War
many
theatres
had been
evacuated, and
in
the
period of post-War recovery
for
those that
remained open material resources were
limited. As is
well
documented,
moreover,
from
the mid
1930s
the
brutally
repressive regime of
Stalin had
seen
the
silencing and annihilation of such
leading figures
of
the theatrical
avant-
garde as
Vsevolod Meyerhold,
and
from
that
period
the theatre
had
suffered
from
the
deleterious
effects of
the
dictates
of
Socialist Realism. Innovation in
theatrical
form
was repressed,
departures from
realism
by
the
use of
consciously
theatrical techniques
were condemned, and
dramatic
writing was
stultified
by
such
ideas
as
the
notorious
'theory
of no conflict'.
The
patriotism
engendered
by
the
war effort and
the
openly
Russo-centric,
chauvinist policies
of
Stalin,
moreover, not only
had led
to
a consolidation and canonisation of
Russian history,
culture and
literature, but
also
had
generated a pressing need
for
what was
to
become, in
effect, a national
theatre.
As
a result
it had become
necessary
for
all
theatre art
to
conform
to
a particular model.
In keeping
with
this
idea,
the
supposed realism of
the
MAT had been
recast as
the
primary
example of the
Socialist Realist ideal. Its
style of performance
had been
actively
promoted as a model
to
be
copied
in
theatres throughout the
Soviet Union;
6
its
artistic
director had been
elevated
to the status of a
demi
god
by
a process that
had
something
in
common with
the
cults of personality of political
leaders.
It is hardly
surprising
therefore that
at
the
State Institute for Theatre Arts
(GITIS),
the
official
teaching
programme was
dominated by
the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky,
and
in
particular
by
the
active promotion of
the so called
'method
of physical actions'.
This
method,
developed by Stanislavsky in his later
years,
represented,
it has been
suggested, the
director's
modification of
his 'system' in
6In
1939 Solodnikov,
the then
Head
of
the
Theatre Directorate,
addressed
the
first
national
conference
for
theatre directors. He
exhorted
those present
'to learn from
the
Moscow Art
Theatre, for
the
Moscow Art Theatre learns from life itself. N. Velekhova, The Link
of
Time: Directing in
the
Soviet Union', Theater, 3 (Fall 1989), 28-38 (p. 32).
21
keeping
with
the
ideology
of
Stalin.? Efros's
youthful enthusiasm
for
Stanislavsky's ideas bordered
on
the
fanatical,
and
they
were
to
have
an
enduring
influence
on
him. At
this time, although
he
never
knew him
personally,
the
MAT director,
as an
imagined figure, became
something close
to
a mentor
for Efros. He
read and re-read
Stanislavsky's ideas
and
he
and other
students, as
he
recalled, attempted
to
put
them
into
practice
in
their
own work.
8
Influenced,
perhaps unconsciously,
by
the
prevailing political climate,
Efros
expressed a great
interest in Stanislavsky's 'later discoveries'. His instructor
Petrov, however,
wary of
the
political
imperatives behind
the
promotion of
the
'system',
refused
(unlike
other
directors
at
GITIS)
to teach the
'method
of
physical actions'.
As
a result,
Efros
took
classes on another course run
by
Mariia Knebel'
and
Pavel Markov.
As
we shall see, as
Efros's
art matured and evolved,
Stanislavsky
ceased
to
be
his
sole source of
inspiration. In fact he became increasingly
convinced
that the
only way
to preserve
'the legacy
of
Stanislavsky'
was
to
develop it
.9
He
never
entirely abandoned
Stanislavsky's
theories,
and
in his
approach
to
character
consistently aimed at a psychological authenticity that
recalled the concept of
'emotional
memory'.
10
But for him
the
way
forward
would
be
to
develop
an
7Stanislavsky's
role
in
the changing political activities of the
MAT in
the
late 1920s has
become
a
debated
subject
in
recent years.
An investigation
of new
documentation has led
to
the suggestion
that
Stanislavsky's
work
towards the
end of
his life
was complicit with
the
ideas
and
ideology
of
Stalin. A detailed discussion
of
this
contentious
topic
is beyond
the
scope of
this present study.
The
subject was explored
in 1991 by Anatolii Smelianskii,
'Assimiliatsiia', Moskovskii
nabliudatel',
4 (1991), 1-6,
and
by Nick Worrall in The Moscow
Art Theatre (London & New York: Routledge, 1996),
pp.
204-208.
8Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
138.
9Z.
Vladimirova, Kazhdyi
po svoemu:
Tri
ocherka o rezhisserakh
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966),
p.
111.
10'Emotional
memory' was a concept
fundamental
to
Stanislavsky's idea
of the creative actor.
In
the process of training and rehearsals,
it
was necessary
for
performers,
in
responding to
physical and aural stimuli,
to
evoke memories of
their
own
in
order
to
understand more
fully
the emotions and motivations of their characters.
In his
wider concept of actor training
performers were to use conscious means to access their sub-conscious minds.
He
reasoned that
by learning
to
increase
their
capacity to
recapture
their
own emotional memories actors could
stimulate new processes and, as
it
were,
flesh
out the
feelings
they
first
experienced when
approaching a role.
For
a general overview and analysis of
Stanislavsky's 'system', in English
see
David Magashack, 'Stanislavsky', in Eric Bentley,
ed.,
The Theory
of
the
Modern Stage
(London: Penguin, 1968),
pp.
219-278.
22
approach
that
combined
his
early study with a more overtly
theatrical
style of
presentation.
Although it
would
be
some
time
before he
put
his ideas into
practice, and
his fanaticism for Stanislavsky
notwithstanding,
Efros
was
exposed at
GITIS
to a variety of
different
approaches
that
helped
to
determine
his later development. He
was
influenced by his
experiences with
the
maverick
Petrov,
and
by his
own extracurricular activities
in
attempting
to
establish a
studio
theatre with a
fellow
student,
Lev Shcheglov.
The death
of
Stalin in 1953
would mark
the
beginning
of a rejuvenation of the
Soviet
theatre, encouraged
by
the
process of
de-Stalinisation
and
the
relatively
liberal
policies of
Khrushchev's Thaw.
I I
As
early as
1948, however,
calls
for
such reform, and new
ideas
on what was permissible
in
art, were
beginning
to
be heard,
although
initially
these
were expressed
in
theoretical
articles.
In
that
year,
for instance,
the
dramatist Aleksandr Kron launched
an attack on
the
theory of
'no
conflict', which
though
denounced
as
'unpatriotic'
was clearly
expressing
in
print what other
theatre
practitioners
felt in
private.
12
As
Shcheglov
recalled, material
deprivations
notwithstanding,
the
atmosphere at
GTTIS in
the
immediate
post-War period was
infused
with great creative energy,
which gave expression
to this
still
tentative
aspiration
for
greater
liberalisation
and permitted
the
limited
exploration of
fresh ideas. 13
11The
so-called
Thaw
was a period that
lasted for
approximately a
decade from
the early
1950s.
It is beyond
the scope of the present study to
discuss in detail
the policies of
Khrushchev
during
this period.
It is important
to note,
however,
that the
Thaw
was not a revolutionary
movement and should not
be
regarded as a return
to the artistic
freedoms
that
had
characterised
the
immediate
post-Revolutionary period.
It
was
by
no means rapid or consistent, and equally
cannot
be
seen
to
have been
governed
by
a coherent programme on
the
part of
the
Communist
Party
with
the concerted aim of greater
liberalisation. Instead
policy was
frequently determined
by Khrushchev's
strategy of appeasement of
the
conservative and
liberal factions in
the
artistic
and
literary
world, and also governed
by
pragmatic responses to events
beyond
the
borders
of
the
Soviet Union. It is
perhaps useful to
view
the period
less
as a single
Thaw
than
as one of
a series of thaws
and
're-freezes'
which occurred often
in
rapid and confusing succession, or
indeed
almost simultaneously one with another.
In
general,
however, despite
the
unpredictable
nature of many of
Khrushchev's decisions,
and although
the
initial
enthusiasm of the
intelligentsia for
the
Thaw
was tempered somewhat
by 're-freezes',
a spirit of optimism
persisted until
the early
1960s.
12Aleksandr
Kron, 'Replika dramaturga', Tear, 9 (1948), 48-50.
13Lev
Shcheglov 'Gody
ucheby',
in Teatr Anatoliia Efrosa: Vospominaniia, Stat'i,
ed.
by M.
Zaionts (Moscow: Artist. Rezhisser. Teatr, 2000),
pp.
8-19 (p. 8).
23
In
addition
to
his
classes with
Knebel'
and
Markov, Efros
continued to study
with
Petrov,
whose
teaching
was
influenced by his
training
under
both
Stanislavsky
and
Meyerhold. In fact, Petrov's
students,
Efros included,
experienced
their
first
conflict with cultural orthodoxy when
their teacher
was
called
to account
by
the
Institute's Educational Advisory Committee for
introducing
the
ideas
of
Meyerhold,
then an
'enemy
of
the
people',
into his
teaching.
14
Undeterred by
this
attack,
Petrov
continued
to
promote
the
use of
non-realist
techniques,
whose
influence
could
be felt in
the
set and performance
style of
his final-year
production of
Twelfth Night, in
which
Efros
played
Malvolio. Dispensing
with a
box-set, Petrov
placed
benches
around an empty
playing area
that represented an open
inn
courtyard.
He
centred
his
production
on
the
idea
that the play was
being
performed
by
a
band
of strolling players,
who entered
initially from
the
auditorium and
interacted directly
with
the
audience.
Though by
no means new,
these
ideas
were sufficiently out of
keeping
with
the official
teaching
programme to
cause uproar.
The
production
was at
first
condemned
by
some
for its 'formalist'
tendencies;
rumours ran rife
in
the student
body
that
it
would
be
closed and
its
participants refused
degrees.
But
the
performance was eventually permitted, and was
later
to
be
remembered
by
those
who saw
it
as a as an event of signal
importance in
the
lives
of students
at
GITIS. 15
Petrov's
controversial approach
had been
vindicated, and
his
teaching
undoubtedly
influenced his
young and
inexperienced but
wildly
enthusiastic
disciples in
their
own attempts
to
revitalise
the
moribund theatre
of
their
day.
This
was
the
explicit, ambitious aim of
Shcheglov
and
Efros in
a manifesto that
announced
the
establishment of
the
Directors' Experimental Laboratory,
a studio
141bid.,
pp.
13-14.
15lbid.,
pp.
15-18,
and see
Natal'ia Krymova, 'Zhdu
vechera
kogda
my s toboi
doma',
Obshchaia
gazeta,
15-24 April 1999,
p.
16.
24
theatre separate
from
the
official programme,
in
which
they
intended
to
explore
their own
ideas.
16
In
this manifesto, and
in his later discussions
with
his
co-
founder, Efros's
views on
the
actor at
this
early period are of
little interest; his
belief in
the necessity
for
a
'citizen-actor' (ax'rep-rpa
AarHH) was clearly
circumscribed
by
the prevailing
ideology.
'? But his insistence
on
the
need
to
regenerate
the
existing repertoire with new writing,
his
rejection of
the
traditional
box-set,
and more
importantly
the students'
designs for
a
theatre
building,
were radical
in
those
conservative
times.
According
to
Shcheglov, it
was standard practice
in
established
theatres
for
plays
to
run with
three
(or
even
four) intervals, during
which sets were
laboriously
changed
behind
a curtain.
18
In
order
to counteract
this,
he
and
Efros
conceived of a
theatre
in
which
the
action would
be
continuous,
involving
and surrounding
the
audience.
In
this
theatre the
walls
dividing
the
auditorium,
foyer
and cafe could
be
rapidly
removed, providing a
large, flexible
open space with
three
separate platform
stages on which each succeeding act could
be
played.
Any breaks in
the
drama
could
therefore either
be
eliminated entirely or
incorporated into
the
whole as
the
action continued
during
the
intervals. Efros
channelled much energy
into
the
project, and even went so
far
as
to
discuss
the
plans with
the
MAT designer
Vladimir Dmitriev,
who reportedly viewed
the
students'
fantasies
with
indulgence.
19 The
activities of
this
experimental
laboratory
were
limited
to
discussion
and were not
brought
to
fruition; Efros
never
built
such a
theatre.
Nevertheless,
these
unrealised ambitions represented
his first
challenge
to
what
were
then
established practices, and
these
as yet purely
theoretical explorations
sowed
the
seeds of
his later
practice.
16Shcheglov,
p.
10.
17This
term
is difficult
to translate.
In
the political context of the period
it implies
an actor
who
had developed
a socialist socio-political consciousness and outlook.
18Shcheglov,
p.
11.
191bid.
25
On
graduation
from GITIS in 1951, however, Efros's
early
interest
and
training
in
the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky
continued
to
exert
the
greatest
influence
on
his
work.
20
At
this
period
Efros
claimed
that
he knew Stanislavsky's
work
by
heart. He had
read and re-read
Stanislavsky's books in
such
depth
that
he
could
identify
where and when
the
director had
mentioned a given
idea.
21
Indeed his
first
productions
between 1953
and
1954
at
the
Dramatic Theatre in Riazan'
were
to
be deliberately
modelled on
the
MAT's. As he
openly stated:
ToqHO
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ro/ bd, $1
6bIn
IIOJIbHOCTbIO IIOA BJIBJIHHCM CIIeKTBKJIeg
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TeaTpa...
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xoTenocb Co6axy Ha ceae IIOCTBBHTh TBK, KaK IIOCTBBReHa
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(x
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Pf[3aHH)
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IIOBTOpHTb pHCyHOK
Xyjo%ecTBeHnoro
TeaTpa.
22
It
was
later
to
become Efros's
standard practice
to
learn
as much as possible
about
the
performance
history
of any play
he
proposed to
direct. This led him
ZOEfros
had
wanted
to continue at
GITIS
as a postgraduate
but
was reputedly not allowed to
do
so
because he
was a
Jew. (Shcheglov
p.
9. ) Few
accounts of
his
career prior to
his death
mention
his Jewish
origins,
but
there
is
considerable anecdotal evidence that
he
was
the
subject of anti-Semitic attacks.
Vladimir Solov'ev has
suggested that
Efros's
son,
Dmitrii
Krymov (a
set
designer
and
fine
artist) took
Natalia Krymova's (his
mother's) surname rather
than
his father's
to protect
himself from
anti-Semitism.
(Vladimir Solov'ev, 'Istoriia
odnoi
skvernosti',
Vecherniaia Moskva, 12 February 1998,
p.
3. )
Similarly, Natasha Zhuravleva
recalled that
in
the mid to
late 1960s Efros
received vicious
anti-Semitic
hate
mail
from
some company members at
the
Lenkom
as part of an orchestrated
campaign that
would
lead
to
his dismissal in 1967. (Natasha Zhuravleva interviewed by Olga
Fuks, 'Leninu
on
khotel
podarit'
korzinu iablok', Vecherniaia Moskva, 5 June 2000,
p.
3. )
Efros
also changed
his
patronymic
from Isaevich
to
Vasil'evich,
which may
indicate
that
it
was necessary
for him
to
hide his
origins.
The former
name appears on official
documents
such as the
xapaicrepacTHxa
(reference/testimonial)
about
Efros (31 June 1966) in
the
Lenkom
archives
(MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 1054)
and
in his
obituary
in Pravda
on
15
January 1987.
21Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
140.
22lbid.
In
my research to
date I
can
find
no record of
Efros's
production of
A Passionate Heart. It is
not recorded
in
any official
list
of
Efros's
productions, and there
is
no mention of any reviews
of this
show
in
the
bibliographical listing for
works
by
or about
Efros
published
by
the
State
Theatre Library in 1992 (cited
above, see
F. Krymko
and
E. Tyn'ianova). I
can only conclude
that this
may not
have been
a
fully
professional production and was possibly never shown to
the public.
26
to
read
the transcripts
of rehearsals and
director's
notes
for
some of
Stanislavsky's
most
famous
productions.
He
was often to
find
that
Stanislavsky's interpretation differed from his
own, and
indeed he
even
permitted
himself
to
criticise
his idol's
approach.
But he
maintained
that the
study of performance
history
was part of
the
education and
development
of a
theatre
director. This
process,
he
suggested, was analogous
to the
practice of
the
Impressionist
painters who studied
the
Old Masters in
order to
learn from
them
and
to master
their techniques,
but
who
having
absorbed
these
lessons
broke
with
tradition and
forged
their
own styles.
23 Some fifteen
years
in
the
future Efros
was
to
direct The Seagull (1966)
and
Three Sisters (1967). Both
of
these
productions would
be
very
different in
style
from
the
accepted manner
of staging
Chekhov inherited from
the
MAT,
and were
to
be
severely criticised
as unacceptable and
irreverent
attacks on
the traditions
of
that theatre.
In his
defence Efros
would reject
the
very
idea
of copying existing models as an
impossible
and
foolhardy
exercise, and
indeed
as
detrimental
to the
whole
essence of
theatre
as an
interpretive
and creative process.
Given
the
views expressed when
he
was older,
it
might
be
possible to
dismiss
Efros's
early
desire
to
copy
Stanislavsky's
work
to the
last detail
as a mere
excess of youthful enthusiasm.
As
we
have
noted,
however, he
was
to
develop
a style
that
combined an authentic expression of emotions with an overtly
theatrical
style of presentation.
In
this
light Efros's
choice of
Stanislavsky's
productions of
The Marriage
of
Figaro
and
A Passionate Heart
as
the
models
he
wanted
to
replicate
is interesting. Neither
can
be
said
to
have
conformed to the
traditional
performance style of
the
MAT. In fact
they
had been
produced
in
the
mid
1920s,
when
Stanislavsky's
own art was changing as
he
explored new
means of expression.
As Konstantin Rudnitskii
noted, although
these
productions
had
remained
firmly
grounded
in Stanislavsky's ideas
on
the
23Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
123.
27
necessity of authentic emotion,
in
their
style and settings
they
demonstrated
a
marked
influence
of
Meyerhold's
exploration of
the
performance
traditions
of
pantomime and
fairground
theatres.
24
Thus Rudnitskii
could comment,
in
relation
to
A Passionate Heart,
that
it had been Stanislavsky's intention
to
present satire
in
the
form
of a
balagan
and as carnival-like mischievousness,
while never
foregoing
the truth
of
the
characters' psychology.
As
we
have
seen,
Efros had
a
deep knowledge
of
Stanislavsky's
approach, and
his desire
to
use
that
director's
stagings as
templates
reflected
his devotion
to the
MAT. But
his
specific reference
to these two
productions suggests
that
an early
impetus
to
synthesise emotional
truth and
theatricality,
characteristic of
Efros's later
work,
may also
have
come
from Stanislavsky.
2. At the
Central Children's Theatre (CCT), 1954-1964
In 1954 Knebel'
offered
Efros
a position as a staff
director
at the
Central
Children's Theatre (CCT) in Moscow,
and
he
was
later
to
recall
the
decade he
spent
there
under
her
guardianship as a
'golden
period'.
25
His
training
at
GITIS
and
his
endeavours
in Riazan'
notwithstanding,
it
was
here, he
wrote,
that
he felt he
truly
understood
how
the
principles of
Stanislavsky
could
be
put
into
practice.
26
In
rehearsals
he
used
Stanislavsky's
techniques
of
improvisation, but
also
began
to
develop his
own methods
27
This
period also
24Konstantin
Rudnitsky, Russian
and
Soviet Theatre: Tradition
and
the
Avant-Garde (London:
Thames & Hudson, 1988),
p
118.
25Efros,
Kniga,
p.
397.
26Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
139.
27Birgit
Beumers
and
Inna Solov'eva have both
suggested
that
Efros
was
influenced by
the
ideas
of
Mikhail Chekhov. Birgit Beumers, Yury Lyubimov
at the
Taganka 1964-1994
(Amsterdam: Harwood, 1997),
p.
276; Irma Solov'eva, 'Prodolzhenie
teatral'nogo rasskaza',
in
Zaionts,
pp.
332-334 (p. 330).
Chekhov had
emigrated
in 1928
and
his ideas,
out of
keeping
with
the
ideology
of realism,
had
been
suppressed;
his
work was not published
in
the
Soviet Union
until
1986. Efros,
therefore,
had little
opportunity to study these
ideas
at
first hand, but Knebel' had
worked under
both Stanislavsky
and
Chekhov,
and was
to exert a considerable
influence
over
Efros
at this
period; she
had been instrumental in
securing
his
appointment.
Although,
as noted above, at
GITIS
she
had focused in
the
main on the official propagation of the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky, it
is
entirely possible
in
the
more
liberal
period of
the
Thaw
that
she may
have introduced her
young staff
director
to
Chekhov's ideas. Chekhov
too
had been
a student of
Stanislavsky but
had
evolved an alternative system to that of
his
teacher.
Influenced by
the
ideas
of
the
28
allowed
him
the
freedom
to
produce a
total of sixteen plays
in
a variety of
genres,
including his first
productions of
the
Russian
classics, and saw
his
earliest experimentation
in
the
use of consciously
theatrical techniques.
At first, however, he
championed
the
work of
the
so-called
New Realists,
a
group of playwrights whose work
developed in
the relatively
liberal
atmosphere
of
the
Thaw. These dramatists
were no
longer
required
to
extol
the
virtues of
political
leaders
or
to present a one-sided view of
the
glories of war, of
revolution or
indeed
of
increased
production at a
tractor
factory. Increasingly,
the
focus
of
their plays would
be
the
myriad of small events, personal pleasures
and
disappointments in
the
everyday existence of ordinary citizens, and
their
works were characterised
too
by
criticism, albeit muted, of contemporary
Soviet
social realities.
The leading figure
of
this
new generation of writers was
Viktor Rozov,
and
in
1954 Efros's
production of
his B do6pbc
'iac!
(Good Luck! )
generated
widespread enthusiasm
in Moscow
theatre
circles.
It
proved extremely popular
not only with children
but
also with adult audiences.
28
Spectators
and critics
alike were
drawn
to a production characterised
by
a sense of spontaneity
lacking
in
much of
the theatre of
the
day. This
sense of
freedom
was generated not only
Symbolists, his
methods emphasised more
imagistic, intuitively
sensed spiritual resources of
energy over the
historical,
emotional and psychological
details
of
the
actor's experience.
His
ideas
centred on the
'psychological
gesture', as a physical expression of
inner
thought
and
emotion, and
his
approach aimed to
be highly
spontaneous and plastic.
The later influences
on
Efros's
work were manifold, and
he
was
to treat some aspects of
Chekhov's
methods with
caution.
(Efros, Prodolzhenie,
p.
312. ) Nevertheless,
as we shall see,
the concept of the
'psychological
gesture'
had
certain parallels with
Efros's
own
ideas
of
'truth is in
the
feet',
a
concept
he
would
develop
at the
Malaia Bronnaia in
the
1970s,
and therefore the
impact
of
Chekhov's ideas
cannot
be
entirely
discounted.
Mariia Knebel', Vsia
zhizn'
(Moscow: VTO, 1967). For Knebel"s
edition of material on
Mikhail Chekhov,
see
Mikhail Chekhov: literaturnoe
nasledie,
2
vols, ed.
by Mariia Knebel'
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1986). Volume I is
a collection of memoirs and
letters. Volume II
contains
his Ob iskusstve
aktera.
The latter
was also published
in English
when
Chekhov
emigrated as
To
the actor: on the technique of acting
(New York: Harper
and
Row, 1953).
28As
Efros
was
later
to
recall, the
enthusiastic response
from
adults to
Good Luck!
was so
unusual
that
it
was
illustrated in
a satirical cartoon
in
a crenuaa ra3cra
(newspaper
pasted to
a wall) of the time.
This
showed a street scene with a child
holding
a ticket
for
the show and
an adult
lurking
around a corner ready to steal
it. Efros, Kniga,
p.
373.
29
by
the
enthusiasm of a very young cast
but
also
by Efros's
rehearsal methods,
which
first
established
his
reputation as what might
be described
as an
'actors'
director'. Rather
than
adopting a
dictatorial
approach,
he
encouraged
his
performers
to explore
their
roles
for
themselves.
He
also
dismissed
the
idea
of
'round-table' discussion
as
the
first
means of understanding a work as
'literary
chit-chat'
(mrrepaTypxax 6oJrroBHx).
29
Instead, he frequently leapt
on
to the
stage
himself
to
demonstrate
what
he had in
mind, and
directed his
actors to
move almost
immediately into
action and to
improvise
the
dialogue. These
rehearsal
techniques provided the
basis for Efros's later
approach.
Spencer
Golub
characterised
this
as
'acting-on-the-run',
a process
by
which
the text
was
explored
by director
and actors alike, and emotions were expressed not only
through
words
but
also physically.
30
The
production of
Good Luck!
commanded a significance
that
far
outweighed
the play's
literary
and
dramatic
qualities.
Like
much of
Rozov's drama, it is
firmly
grounded
in
realism, and
flawed in
the
naivety of
its ideas,
contrived plot
and weak construction.
Credit for its
success
is due in
part
to
Efros,
whose
ideas did
much
to enliven and enrich
Rozov's
often
insipid
script.
This
production marked
the
beginning
of a
fruitful
and mutually
beneficial
collaboration
between
the playwright and
the
director. Efros
subsequently
directed
six
further
plays
by Rozov.
31
As Efros himself
suggested
later,
Rozov's dramas do
not stand
the test
of
time,
32
but
the timing
of their
appearance
in
the
history
of
Soviet dramaturgy
undoubtedly contributed
to their
popularity.
Since
the
1930s
audiences
had been fed
on a
tedious
diet
of
29Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
139.
30This
phrase
is
taken
from
the title of an article;
Spencer Golub, 'Acting
on the
Run: Efros
and the
Contemporary Soviet Theatre', Theatre Quarterly, 26 (Summer 1977), 18-28.
31At
the
CCT Efros
produced the
following
plays
by Rozov: Good Luck! (1954), B
noucrcax
padocmu
(In Search
of
Joy) (1957), Hepaeibi 6o (Uneven Fight) (1960),
and
Ileped
ywcuuo. u
(Before Supper) (1962). He
also
directed B beHb
ceadbbl
(On The Wedding Day) in
1964
at the
Lenkom
and
Brother Alesha in 1972
and
Cumyac4uL (The Situation) in 1973
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia.
32Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
86. Efros discusses
the various productions of
his fruitful
collaboration with
Rozov in Repetitsiia,
pp.
56-59,86-90.
30
propaganda
dramas:
conflict
had been
eradicated and characters reduced
to
types, and
the
world
had been depicted in
terms of
idealised Soviet
utopias.
The Thaw
audience
in
the
1950s
therefore craved
dramas
which would resonate
more closely with
their
own experience.
Rozov's
plays
do
not challenge
the established order of
Soviet
society or
the
essential paternalism of
the
Party. Instead
they
are gentle, moralising critiques
which suggest
that reform
is
possible
for
a new generation of
Soviet
youth.
Rozov's
young male
heroes,
while not wholly good, are
frequently
seen
to
have
a strong moral sense of right and wrong.
His
plots often centre on a significant
turning point
in
the
lives
of
boys
who,
faced
with
the social
ills
of petty
corruption,
bribery
and
deceit
manifest
in
the
lives
of
their elders, actively seek
a more
honourable
path
for
their own
futures. The
significance of
his dramas
should not,
however, be discounted. They
are
important documents
of
the
psychological
effect of
the
Thaw. They
reflect
the
spirit of optimism
in
which
criticism of
the
system seemed possible, and more
importantly
express
the
widespread
belief
among
the
artists and
intellectuals
of
the
so-called sixties
generation
that reform of
the
Soviet Union
might
be
achieved
from
within.
As
we shall see,
this
was an
idea
cherished
by Efros
and
his
contemporaries.
Later,
under
the
more repressive regime of
Brezhnev in
the
1960s,
the
destruction
of
the
idealism
expressed
in Rozov's
work would
inform Efros's
Seagull
and
Three Sisters.
These
productions would
be
controversial, not only
because
of
their
political
content,
but
also
because Efros
would
dispense
with use of naturalistic
details
that
had informed
the
settings of
those two
plays at
the
MAT in 1898
and
1901
in favour
of more openly symbolic
decor. As
noted above,
Efros had first
rejected naturalistic styles of presentation
in his
theoretical explorations at
GTTIS, but in
the
1950s he began
to
put
these
ideas into
practice.
In
this
he
was
31
influenced by
a second
important development
of
the
Thaw
-
New
Theatricalism. The 1950s
saw a relaxation of
the
censorship
laws,
which
led
to
the
publication of new
translations
of
the
works of previously-censored
foreign
writers.
The Party's
new, more open policy was manifest also, moreover,
in
'posthumous
rehabilitations' of native
Russian
writers and artists whose work
had been
suppressed under
Stalin. This
new policy significantly
included
the
rehabilitation of
Meyerhold, initiating
a process of re-discovery and salvage that
would eventually result
in
the
publication of
two
volumes of
his
collected
letters,
speeches and
theoretical
writings.
33
Access
to the
ideas
of
Meyerhold,
as well as
to those of such
innovators
as
Brecht,
provided
the
impetus for
young
directors
to
develop
their
own new
forms.
One
of
the
earliest of
Efros's
productions
in
which
these
other
influences
could
be detected
was
Pushkin's Boris Godunov
at
the
CCT in 1957. It
represented
one of
his
earliest uses of more openly
theatrical
means of staging, although
this
was not a programmed approach on
Efros's
part
but
rather the
result, very
simply, of
his
poverty of means.
As Efros himself
admitted
later, Boris
Godunov
was not entirely successful,
in
part
because he lacked
sufficient
experience,
but
also
because
the
language
of
Pushkin's
poetry proved too
difficult for
a young audience.
34
The
production,
however,
was
important for
quite a
different
reason.
In his first
attempt at a
Russian
classic,
Efros
established a principle
that
was
to
be fundamental
to
his later
approach: a
rejection of
the trappings
of previous stagings.
Productions in
the
past
had
demanded large-scale
sets and a
luxurious
production style,
informed
and made
33Meyerhold
was officially rehabilitated
by
the
Military Board
of
the
Soviet Supreme Court in
1955. The first
study of
his
work appeared
in 1960,
and was
followed by
a series of
reminiscences
by his
pupils and others who
had
worked with
him. Aleksandr Fevralskii,
one
of
his former
assistants, edited the collection of
his
writings published
in 1968,
and the
following
year
Rudnitskii
published
in Russian Meyerhold
the
Director (Moscow: Nauka,
1969),
the
first
major critical study of
his
work.
The facts
and circumstances of
his
arrest and
execution
in 1940
remained obscure until
the early
1990s. For
a more
detailed
account, see
Edward Braun, 'Meyerhold:
the Final Act', New Theatre Quarterly, 33 (February 1993), 3-15.
34Efros,
Professiia,
p.
145.
32
familiar by Mussorgsky's
opera version.
They had been
typified
by heavy
sets,
decorative kaftans for
the
boyars,
a majestically slow pace and
the
grandiose
style of
high
tragedy.
35
Efros did
away with all of this.
The lofty declamatory
speeches were replaced
by
the
direct
and natural
tones of ordinary voices.
The
actors wore neither wigs nor
beards,
and
the
costumes, while
'period' in
terms
of weight and cut, were made of velvet
in
single
dark
colours, and
had little in
the
way of
brocade
or
decorative
trimmings.
The
set was simple.
There
were
no
front
curtains and
the
space was occupied
by
a single set piece
that
suggested
walls and arches, with an aged
bare-brick face. The locus
of
different
scenes
was
indicated by
a
few
stage properties, which allowed
for
rapid changes.
By
this
means, although
he
retained
Pushkin's
text
in full, Efros
succeeded
in
eliminating
the
laborious
pace of previous productions.
The lights dimmed
only
briefly
as
the
last lines
of one scene were spoken and
the
first lines
of
the
next
came out of
the
darkness.
Simplicity
of setting was also a
feature
of
Efros's
next production,
Eduardo de
Filippo's De Pretore Vincenzo (with
the
new
Russian
title
Hu,
ano
(Nobody)).
This
was staged
in 1958
not at
the
CCT but
at
the
Studio
of
the
Young Actor,
newly-founded
by Oleg Efremov,
and
housed
temporarily
in
the
MATs
own
studio.
This
company
became
the
basis for
the
Sovremennik Theatre,
which
Efremov
was
to
lead
until
1970,
and whose repertoire chiefly consisted of
modern works,
both Soviet
and
Western. Efremov,
with whom
Efros had first
worked when
he
cast
him
as
Aleksei in Good Luck!,
was
if
anything even more
enthralled
than
Efros himself by
the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky. Efros
recalled
how
35The
interpretation
of
Boris Godunov in
the manner of
high
tragedy
was a tradition
inherited
from
productions
like
one at the
Maly in 1937. M. Lenin
as
Boris delivered Pushkin's
poetry
in
a
declamatory
style, and similarly
V. Shchyko's historically
accurate costumes and
monumental setting appeared,
it
was suggested, to
have been'transported from
the
stage of the
neighbouring
Bolshoi Theatre'. The director K. Khokhlov
was criticised
for
a
lack
of
coherency
in
the production, which
had
allowed the sheer grandeur of the
decor
to
obscure the
play's political aspects,
in
particular the
important
role the people
(HapoA) had
played
in
Russia's history (an idea
which other productions of the
1930s
consistently emphasised.
) See
Istoriia
sovetskogo
dramticheskogo
teatra,
6
vols
(Moscow: Nauka, 1966-1971), IV (1968),
pp.
182-183,
and
in
particular, pp.
187-188.
33
the pair of them
had
argued constantly
during
rehearsals about
that
director's
methodology and
its
application
in
contemporary
theatre.
36
Efremov
shared,
however, Efros's increasing
concern with
the
current state of
the
MAT,
which
in Efros's
view
had become
a pale shadow of
the theatre
created
by
Stanislavsky
and
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. The
actors
in
the
MAT
troupe of
his day
expressed emotions outwardly,
but lacked inner
sincerity;
in
this they
were
betraying
the
very principles of what
he described
as
the
'old'
MAT. Efros
at
this period was enthused
by
the
vibrancy and naturalness of
the
phenomenon of
'neo-realism' introduced
to
Russia by
the
latest Italian films.
'Neo-realism'
provided an
illustration
of
the
disparity between
the
authenticity
Stanislavsky had
sought and
the
false
realism
Efros
saw
in
the
MAT
at
this
time.
)I
; IR HCKOTOpb1X TO, MO KCT
6blTb,
j aBao y3Ke
6wio
oTKpbimzM, No Mae
.
iinu
a
Ha9HHaJI0 Ka3aTbCX, tiTO Meatpy HaCTO HI BM
Xyjjo3KecTBeHabtM
TeaTpoM,
KOTOPOMY MU HOKJIOHAJIHCb, H TeM, KaKHM OH TorAa CTaHOBHJICH,
-
orpOMHax
pa3aaIa.
HHorAa
Ka3aJIOCb, iITO B HpaKTEKe 3Toro TeaTpa
6ygTo 6m
ocTanacb TOJIbKO
4opMa
HpaBpui, a calo* Hpangai ne xBaTaJo...
C
aeKoTopo j(ocaj[o a OTHocnmc
K TOMy, 'ITO BOT BNXOABT HTa]IbHHCKHA (pHJIbM, TSKOA ziBOL, TaKOll
HaTypallbHbt*, TaKOlk pe3KH* B CBOe* XR3aeHHOCTH.
14
n jiyta]I: o6Hmo, RTo
Hama MKOJIa HHOrjja HpeBpawwaeTCa B K8Ky1O-TO aKapeMB'eCKyio, CKy9HyIO
TBop'iecKyio Manepy!
37
Under Stalin's
patronage, and confined
to
a narrow presentational style,
the
MAT had
undoubtedly suffered
from
a
lack
of creativity, and
there
was
therefore
some
justification for Efros's
opinions.
His direct
experience of
its
36Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
100.
371bid.,
p.
141.
34
earlier productions,
however,
was
limited. Stanislavsky had died
when
Efros
was
thirteen.
His
views were
founded
therefore on stories, memories of
trips to
the theatre
in his
childhood, and
from his
voracious reading of
Stanislavsky's
books.
Nevertheless he
and
Efremov, in
their production of
Nobody,
openly advocated
the
complete rejuvenation and reform of
the
MAT,
and with all
the
audacity of
the
young chose
to
put
their
plan
into
action on
that theatre's
very
doorstep.
Their
actions were
deliberately
provocative.
As Efros
made clear, they
were
motivated
by love
of
the
old
MAT
and contempt
for
the
new:
Mbz
Bee
6onbme
Bcero na CBeTC nI06HM
MXAT. pI
HHKTO BepowrHo,
onbme
QCM Mbi, He KpHTHKOB JI TorjjaIIIHee cocToflHHe
Xyj(ozCecTBeHHOro
TeaTpa.
Mm
CTBJIH pa6OTaTb B HCKyCCTBe, KaK H8M Ka3amocb, a3 JIIOBH K
MXAT
HB
IIPOTCCTe IIpOTHB Hero, KaKHM OH
UJi
B r0J[bU BO3HHKHOBCHHH
CoBpeMeHHHKa.
38
The
production was an
illuminating
experience, not
least because de Filippo
himself,
while on an official visit
to
Moscow,
made an unscheduled stop at
the
young company's rehearsals.
Rehearsing
several scenes with
them
and playing
different
roles,
he impressed Efros
with
his
ability
to
show
through
very simple
yet precise gestures a particularly astute understanding of
the
characters'
psychology.
39
Nevertheless, Nobody
scandalised many at the
MAT
and
created
divisions in its
company.
Some lauded
the
young
troupe's
innovations,
while others
did
all
in
their
power
to
have
the
production closed.
To
make
matters worse, although
the
actors' character-portrayals were
founded
on an
exploration of psychology and
the
expression of authentic emotion,
the
studio
381bid.,
p.
100.
391bid.,
p.
102.
35
had
to
operate on a very restricted
budget,
and
the
young
director's
solution was
to
produce a strikingly simple, schematic set.
It
consisted of a number of
functional free-standing
set-pieces placed against a
backdrop
painted with an
abstract, representational
design. This decor
was
in
sharp contrast
to the
detailed, historically
accurate
designs
more
typically
seen at
the
MAT. The
model, when presented
to the
MATs
workshop,
drew derisive
comments
from
the
stage carpenters.
At first
they
refused
to
build it
and
later
there
were
demands
that the
abstract
backdrop be
removed.
According
to
Efros's
account,
moreover,
the
final
public
dress
rehearsal was
delayed
and
disrupted by
the
underhand
tactics
of a
hostile faction in
the theatre's
administration, and
although
the
production was supported
by both
the
studio
director
and
the
administrative
director
of
the
MAT itself
a
full
performance of
Nobody
was not
permitted on
its
premises.
40
It is
clear
that
more conservative members of
the
MAT felt
threatened
by
the
presence of
the
studio company
in
their
midst, and
indeed,
quite
understandably, were
insulted by
the
criticism of young upstarts.
Ironically, in
1970, Efremov himself
was
to
be
appointed as the
MAT's Artistic Director,
and
would
be heralded by
many as
its
saviour.
Efros,
on the
other
hand, following
what were
to
be
regarded
by
many as
his heretical
attacks on
the
sacrosanct style
of
the
MAT in his later
productions of
Chekhov,
would earn
the
appellation of
'anti-MAT'. Thus for
some
in
the theatre the
production of
Nobody
would
be
recalled as
his first
misdemeanour.
Efros himself, however,
was
later
to
look
back
on this production with pride and consider
it
a
triumph
in his
early
career.
41
It
marked a
decisive break from
a realist style of presentation and a
new stage
in his
progress towards the
development
of a synthesis
between
psychological authenticity and overt
theatricality.
401bid.,
p.
105.
411bid.,
p.
106.
36
In 1963 he
attempted
just
such a synthesis when,
turning
once more
to the
classic repertoire,
he
staged
the
first
of
his
three productions of
Gogol's
Marriage. As
we shall see
in Chapter 4, in
this
staging
the
synthesis remained
incomplete. Indeed his
whole approach was excessively
tentative
and
his
view
of
the
play
too
narrow.
In fact
the
production was something of an experiment.
He
explored
in it
some
ideas
that
were
to
be
more
fully
realised
in his later
interpretation
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia in 1975,
and
in
a
third,
with an
American
cast, at
the
Guthrie in Minneapolis in 1978.
Efros's
repertoire at
the
CCT,
a
theatre
which catered
for
the
young, was
naturally
based
on such material as
dramatised fairy
stories and popular works
like
those
of
Rozov,
concerning
the
adventures of children and pioneers.
From
the
point of view of
the
cultural authorities, the
repertoire therefore
gave
little
cause
for
concern over
its ideological
content and
Efros
enjoyed considerable
freedom in his
choice of plays, although
his
time
at
the theatre
was not entirely
trouble-free.
42
He
could
decide
to
stage plays
like Boris Godunov
and
Marriage,
which while
in line
with
the
official policy
that
encouraged theatres to
421n
1955 he
and
Knebel' directed N. Pogodin's MbL
empoe noexa zu ua l4enuxy
(We Three
Went Together
to the
Virgin Land),
a play which concerned the
activities of a group of young
people on a
farm
as part of
Khrushchev's Virgin Lands
campaign to open up
the
dry
steppe-
lands
of
North Kazakhstan for
agrarian use.
When
this
play was
later
shown on
television,
viewers
telephoned the theatre to complain that
it
presented that
campaign
in
a negative
light.
The
production was subsequently
dropped from
the repertoire, and an
indignant Efros later
recorded
in his
memoirs the
furore it had
caused.
Efros, Kniga,
pp.
421-422.
His
political credentials were also called
into
question on other occasions;
for instance in 1960
he
was attacked
in
an article
by A. Solodovnikov
of the
MAT. Efros had
spoken at a meeting
organised
by
the
All-Russia Theatre Society,
and
Solodovnikov, interpreting Efros's ideas
as
an attack on the
MAT,
objected
in detail
to what
he
saw as a
lack
of
ideological
commitment
and as evidence of pernicious
Western influences. A. Solodovnikov, 'Poniatnoe i
neponiatnoe
v vystuplenii
A. Efrosa', Teatral'naia
zhizn
17 (1960), 11-12.
Later Efros's film BucoxocHbU
zod
(Leap-year) (released in 1962)
was criticised
for its lack
of
political content.
In
a report
dated 11 December 1961
and
held in
the
RGALI
archives,
Razumovskii,
the then
Chair
of the
Committee
on
Film Production,
though
recommending
that the
film be
shown to the
public, suggested that the absence of active, positive
heroes
considerably reduced the
film's
significance and meaning.
The
same
file
contains a
handwritten
note,
dated 17 November 1961, from
the
film's
script-writer,
V. Panov, in
which
he
stated that
it
was
imperative
that
an episode which
Efros had
cut
be
restored
because, he
maintained, this
episode
linked
the
film directly
with
'our Communist future,
with
the
Programme,
with our
great task.
' (RGALI, F. 2453,
op.
4, del. 670. )
37
produce
Russian
classics as contributions
to the education of
the
young, were
clearly
better
suited
to
adult audiences.
As
we shall see,
Efros
was
later
to
express
dissatisfaction
with contemporary plays and produce
his
more
innovative
work with
dramas from
the
classic repertoire.
His decision
to
stage
Marriage
might
be
seen
therefore
as symptomatic
both
of
how his
work was
maturing and of
the
fact
that
he
was outgrowing
the
CCT. It
will
be
recalled,
moreover,
that
from his days
as a student
Efros had
always
hoped
to
have his
own
theatre.
This
was an ambition shared
by
many
Soviet directors,
and one
which
by 1964 his
contemporaries
had
already achieved:
Georgii Tovstonogov
was
in
charge of
the
Gor'kii bolshoi dramaticheskii (BDT) in Leningrad; in
Moscow Efremov had been
running
the
Sovremennik
since
1959; Iurii
Liubimov had just
established
the
Taganka. The decade
that
Efros had
spent at
the
CCT had
provided
him
with an excellent
training
ground,
but like
these
other
directors he had
now served
his
apprenticeship and
it
was
time to
move
on.
In 1964 he
accepted
the
post of
Artistic Director
at
the
Lenkom.
3. At
the
Lenkom, 1964-1967
Lenkom is
shorthand
for
the
Theatre
of
Lenin's Komsomol,
the
youth wing of
the
Communist Party. This
theatre
had
grown out of
the
TRAM
movement,
which
had been devoted
to the
promotion of
Communist ideals,
using
theatrical
techniques as a means of propaganda.
43
The Lenkom had
retained
this
didactic
purpose.
The
standard
fare
at
the theatre
was either
light-hearted
comedies or
ideologically-uplifting dramas
that
featured idealised,
youthful and patriotic
characters
devoted
to the
greater glory of
the
Communist
cause.
It is
clear,
43The
TRAM
movement
began
as
The Leningrad Theatre
of
Young Workers,
under
the
direction
of
Mikhail Sokolovskii. This
theatre evolved
from
the activities of a
drama
group at
a
factory
social club, and
its
success encouraged the establishment of several others.
At first
they operated on a strictly amateur
basis,
presenting pieces
devised by
the
factory
workers on
social and political topics of
immediate
concern to themselves and their audiences.
The idea
spread to other cities,
including Moscow. State
sponsorship and
the
encouragement of trained
actors,
directors
and playwrights to
become involved
established the movement's professional
standing.
(For
a
fuller
account, see
Rudnitsky, Russian
and
Soviet,
pp.
203-205. )
38
however, from Efros's
successful production of new plays at
the
CCT
that
such
dramas had fallen
out of
favour
with
Soviet
theatre-goers.
In fact, in
the
1960s
the
Lenkom
was experiencing very poor
houses
and consequently
low
morale
amongst
its
staff.
It badly
needed a new repertoire and a
firm
controlling
hand.
S. Marinov,
appointed as
its Artistic Director in 1957, had been dismissed
after
three
years, only to
be
replaced
by M. Tolmozov,
who
had left
two
years
later,
frustrated by his inability
to
bring
about change.
Thus for
the
1962/3
season,
despite increasing demands by
the
Minister
of
Culture
to
re-organise,
the theatre
had had
to survive without any artistic
leadership
whatsoever.
'
Efros's
own
tenure there
was
to
be
similarly short-lived.
In 1967 he
would
be fired
after
just
three
seasons
for failing
to
produce an
ideologically
appropriate repertoire.
His
appointment
in April 1964
came at a crucial
turning-point
in Russian
cultural and political
history. In October
of
that
year, as
he began his first full
season,
the
Thaw
came
to
its
official end when
Khrushchev
was ousted
from
power and replaced
by Leonid Brezhnev,
45
whose regime would
bring
changes
in
cultural policy that
aimed to
crush
dissidence
and
to
eliminate pernicious
Western influences.
Khrushchev's
policy of
de-Stalinisation had
never
been
welcomed
by
all.
46
A
backlash
against the
Thaw had been initiated from
the
very
beginning by hard-
line
members of organisations
like
the
Union
of
Soviet Writers,
and after
Khrushchev's fall
the
campaign against
liberalisation in
the
arts
began
to
gain
increasing
support.
A
resurgence
in
the
propagation of
the
ideas
of
Andrei
Zhdanov,
the
architect of
Socialist Realism, became
a cause
for
concern
in
more
liberal
circles, and
by
the
end of
1965 it
was
becoming
abundantly clear that the
"Undated
Report. MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 1054.
45Brezhnev
initially
shared power with
Aleksei Kosygin but
rapidly overshadowed
him-
461n
a major speech
on
VE Day in 1965 Brezhnev himself
pointedly portrayed
Stalin's
entire
war policy as
beyond
reproach.
A few
weeks
later the widely-used
Handbook
of
Party History
was cleared
for
publication; in
this,
references to
Stalin's
mistakes
before
and after
World War
II,
which
had been included
in
a version published
in 1963,
were eliminated.
39
Party
was now
to take
an
ideologically
orthodox stance
in
the
control of cultural
affairs.
47
At
the time
of
his
proposed appointment
Efros's
political credentials, and
indeed
his
ability
to
fulfil
the theatre's
mission, were considered at
the theatre's
management meetings and called
into
question
by
some of
the
committee.
48
Efros
was never a
Party
member, and although
in
an address
to that
committee
he
played
down
the
difficulties facing
the theatre,
in
an
interview
of
the
same
time
he
spoke openly of
his determination
to
bring
about a major overhaul of
its
repertoire.
49
But
these points apparently
failed
to
sound a sufficiently
loud
note
of warning, or at
least
when
the
question of
his
political credentials was raised
it
was outweighed
by
counter-arguments: that
Efros, having
established
his
reputation
in
youth
theatre
and as a champion of new playwrights, would
rejuvenate
the theatre.
He began by directing
a new play
by Rozov, On The Wedding Day,
and
in
the
space of six months changed
the
repertoire almost completely.
He introduced
the
work of
Edvard Radzinskii
with
104
cmpanuribI npo
j
uo6oeb
(104 Pages
About Love),
and gave
the
first Moscow
performance of
Aleksei Arbuzov's
Moil 6eni,
i
Mapam (My Poor Marat).
50
All
these
won
their
director
wide
470ne
of
the
more celebrated examples of this
was
the
instruction
given
by
the new
head
of
the
Ideological Commission
to
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
that
he
was no
longer
to
write on the
Stalinist
camps.
He
was also
informed
that the publication of
Hepebl
xpya
(First Circle)
was unlikely at any near
date in
the
future. Diana Spechler, Permitted Dissent in
the
USSR:
No
a mir and the
Soviet Regime (New York: Praeger, 1982),
p.
216.
"Transcript
of a meeting of the
Artistic Committee. MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 1799.
49A.
Nilin, Teatr
obretaet
kryl'ia', Moskovskii komsomolets, 13 March 1965,
p.
2.
50Edvard
Radzinskii (1938- ),
a prolific playwright and
historian,
graduated
from
the
Moscow
State Historical Archive Institute in 1960. Following
the popular success of
104 Pages
About Love, Efros
subsequently
directed four
more of
Radzinskii's fourteen
plays.
More
recently
his history books Huxona 11:.
WU3Hb uc eprnb
(The Last Tsar) (1992)
and
CmanuH
(Stalin) (1996) have become best-sellers in both Russian
and
English. See The Cambridge
Guide
to
Theatre,
ed.
by Martin Banham,
revised edn
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996),
p.
901.
My Poor Marat
was translated
as
The Promise in 1965. Aleksei Arbuzov (1908-1982),
an
actor and
director,
was one of most prolific and popular
dramatists in
the
Soviet Union
and
abroad.
An
exponent
of the
so-called
'new lyricism'
of the
1950s, he
used a variety of
consciously theatrical
techniques in dramas
that blended
melodrama, sentiment and
fantasy
and
recalled
Chekbovian
themes
and eccentricities of character.
After
agit-prop skits
for
the
40
critical acclaim, and proved so popular
that
it became
notoriously
difficult
to
get
tickets
for
the
Lenkom,
confirming
for
many
that
Efros had indeed been
the
ideal
choice.
51
Buoyed by his
success,
Efros
spoke of
the
need
to
break
with
the
past and
expand
the theatre's
brief,
suggesting
that
it
should
learn both from
the
practice
of
Soviet
companies
like
the
Sovremennik
and
from
the
West.
52
But he
soon
came under pressure
to
conform and
to
produce
the
kind
of overtly political
dramas
more
typical of
the
Lenkom. Over
the next
two seasons
he
responded
to
this pressure
by
compromising and resisting
by
turns.
His leadership,
moreover, encountered some opposition within
the theatre; the
acting
troupe and
other professionals
divided into factions. These divisions
were
in
part
politically motivated,
but
complaints about
his
repertoire, although couched
in
ideological
rhetoric, were also a means of settling personal scores.
For
instance, he
was called upon
to
defend Rozov's
play against charges
that
it
was
lacking in
political commitment
from
another
director, 0. Remez,
who
had been
rejected
in Efros's favour for
the
post of
Artistic Director.
53
As
a condition of
his
employment,
Efros had
put a series of
demands
to the
theatre's management.
He had
requested
that
its
chief
designer
and associate
directors be dropped from
the staff, and
that
it
should
take on
two
designers
and
several young actors
from
the
CCT.
54
In his
efforts
to revitalise
the theatre
he
Moscow Proletkult, he
wrote
in 1930 his first full-length
play
Knacc (Class),
and
in 1939
the
hugely
popular
TaHR (Tania) (re-written in 1946;
opera version
by G. Kreitner 1954). My
Poor Marat
and
Tania
were
directed for
television
in 1971
and
1974 by Efros,
who also
produced
four
of
Arbuzov's
plays on stage.
See Cambridge Guide,
p.
31.
51Iur
Smelkov, 'Vremia i
rezhisser',
Smena, 22 (1964), 16-17.
52A.
Nilin,
p.
2.
53Efros's
defence
of
Rozov,
and
Remez's
comments, are recorded
in
the transcript of the
Artistic Committee, 8 January 1964, MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 799. The discussion
concerning
the
possible appointment of
Remez is
contained
in
an undated report.
MGOA, F.
429,
op.
1, del. 796.
54Transcript
of a meeting of the
Artistic Committee (undated), MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del.
796.
The designers
were
Valentin Lalevich
and
Nikolai Sosunov,
and
the actors
Anatolii Adoskin,
Antonina Dmitrieva, Lev Durov, Viktor Lakirev, Gennadri Saifulin
and
Bronislava Zakharova.
41
became increasingly
reliant on
this
favoured
group,
but had
also
invited Lev
Kruglyi
to
join
the
company
from
the
Sovremennik,
and was
developing
a close
working relationship with
the
Lenkom
actress
Ol'ga Iakovleva. This
group of
performers would
form
part of a
team
with whom
Efros
was
to
work
frequently
and who would remain
loyal
to
him for
most of
his life. At
the
Lenkom,
however,
they
formed
what was effectively a
troupe
within a
troupe.
As
Anatolii Adoskin later
recalled,
Efros demonstrated
a remarkable
lack
of
diplomacy in his
rejection of other actors with whom
he
would not
(or
could
not) work.
55
This bluntness
of approach, which, as we shall see, would
later
bring him
trouble at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
caused resentment at
the
Lenkom
too.
Older
actors, now
largely
unemployed, added
to the
chorus of complaints about
his
choice of plays
because
they
provided a
disproportionate
number of parts
to
his favoured
performers.
56
His first
reaction
both
to these
difficulties
and
to the
calls
to
produce a
different
type of
theatre
was one of apparent appeasement.
In
meetings and
in letters
to
the
Ministry
of
Culture he
mouthed appropriate sentiments,
indicating
that
he
valued
the
importance
of
the
Party's
role
in
guiding
the theatre
on
its
proper
path
57
These, however,
were couched
in formulaic
rhetoric, and
in
the
light
of
55Anatolii
Adoskin, 'Iskusstvo, kotoroe
ne prekratitsia nikogda',
in Zaionts,
pp.
19-31 (p.
22).
56The
actors at the
Lenkom divided into
two camps, one attacking,
the other supporting,
their
Artistic Director. The
split
is
evidenced, on the one
hand by
the
following
extract
from
an
unpublished
letter from
some members of the troupe to the
Party
administration:
We
should
not
defend
our colleagues,
but instead
censure
them.
We
should not cry
'Hurrah-hurrah,
Welcome! '
at every play
that
Efros
offers,
but instead
we should
think
very seriously about our
repertoire.
We
must
help Efros find
a repertoire
that
is
appropriate to the theatre that
bears
the
name of
Lenin's Komsomol. ' (RGALI, F. 2079,
op.
3, del. 431. ) And
on the other
hand, by
Lev Durov's
statement that
in 1966 be
collected signatures
in
support of
Efros
throughout the
Moscow
theatre community
(my interview
with
Durov, Moscow, 8 June 1997). Durov's
assertion
is
also supported
by Natasha Zhuravleva
who maintained
that
when
Efros's
position
was under
threat a group of the actors wrote
letters to
A. Kashmalov,
an official
in
the
Komsomol. (Fuks, 'Leninu',
p.
3. ) According
to
Adoskin, Kashmalov
attempted to placate
Efros's
attackers
but
was
later
reprimanded
for
conducting secret meetings with
him. Adoskin,
p.
23.
570n
8 January 1964
the Artistic Committee
of the
Lenkom
met
to
discuss
proposals
for
a
new repertoire.
They
outlined plans
for Hapodnan
cxawa npo
Jlenuna (A Folk Tale
about
Lenin),
a work to
be
created collectively, and also
discussed
the possibility of staging
Vishnevskii's Mbt
-
pyccxu napo
(We
are the
Russian People)
and
Ivanov's E4oKaba
(Blockade). Although
Efros
was an active participant
in
these
discussions for
a more
42
the
uncensored views
he later
expressed
in his final book (published
posthumously
in 1993)
there
is little
reason
to
believe
that
his
statements at
the
time
were anything more
than
lip-service.
58
In fact he
clearly saw
the
position of
those
in
authority as an unjustifiable
infringement
of
his
artistic
integrity,
and soon
began
to
register
his
protest
in
angry public outbursts.
As S. Nikulin later
suggested,
Efros's fate
was
inevitable,
given
the tensions
of
the
period, and was
linked
to
political
machinations
beyond his
control.
59
But Efros himself (heroically
perhaps,
but
needlessly) contributed
to
his
own
downfall. His
time
at
the
Lenkom
coincided
with a
'battle' between
the
journals Teatr
and
Teatral'naia
zhizn'.
Teatr,
edited
by Iurii Rybakov,
was noted
for its
support of more controversial
directors like
Efros,
while
Teatral'naia
zhizn', edited
by Iurii Zubkov,
regularly published
negative reviews of
his
work, panning even
those
productions praised
elsewhere.
Teatr
at
this
period was under
fire for its liberal
editorial policies,
politically apposite repertoire, there
is
no
indication
that
he himself
was
to
direct
these plays.
On 11 April 1964 he
signed a
letter
addressed to the censorship
board, in
which
he
assured
them that,
following
their
recent attendance at rehearsals,
their recommended changes to the
script of
Rozov's On The Wedding Day
would
be fully implemented,
and
furthermore
that they
were welcome
to
see any
further
performances.
The
tired and
familiar
phrasing of
this
letter,
and of a
later
report
in
response to a
directive from Zharkovskii,
the
director
of
the
Theatre
Department
at the
Ministry
of
Culture (7 August 1964),
could well
be interpreted
as showing
a
lack
of true commitment.
In
this report
Efros
expressed concern over
the
lack
of
heroic
dramas in
the
repertoire,
but
assured
Zharkovskii
that
'not
a single
day
passes' without a
continuing search
for
suitable plays.
He
also noted
that the theatre staff were
involved in
a
host
of other socio-political activities
in keeping
with
the expectations of
the
Lenkom. These
included:
regular seminars on
Marxist-Leninism;
the organisation
for
the theatre's technical
staff of round-table
discussion
groups on current political
issues;
the creation of a twelve-
member agitkollektiv
(team
of propagandists) to work
in
all sectors of
the theatre; and the
involvement
of the theatre in
the
local
community with
Komsomol
organisations and youth
groups.
(MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 799. ) For
a more
detailed discussion
of
the organisation
of
Soviet
theatres
and the
systems of censorship, see
Appendix I (pages 306-310).
58Efros's
fourth
collection of writings on
his life
and on the theatre was
begun in Helsinki in
1983 but (as
noted above) not published until
1993. In
this,
unfettered
by
censorship,
Efros
reveals
his
true feelings
about the
conditions under which
he
and other
directors had
to
work
before
the
advent of perestroika.
He
registers
his
angry protest on such matters as the
ways
in
which self-interest
could
be
used as means of attack when articulated as
the
Party line,
challenges critics
for basing
their
reviews on
ideological imperatives
rather
than on aesthetic
issues,
and rails at the ludicrous
banning
of
The Beatles,
and at the arbitrary nature of
decisions
by
the
censors that
prohibited the
performance of some of
his
work while allowing
that
of
others to be
shown. Kniga,
pp.
50,223,268-271.
S. Nikulin, 'Komnata
na
Kuznetskom',
Teatral'naia
zhizn',
24 (1988), 8-9.
43
and an orchestrated campaign of vilification would ultimately
lead
to
Rybakov's
dismissal. Efros, however, had
already
become
embroiled
in
the
debate.
On 8 December 1965
the
All Russian Theatre Society
organised a meeting at
which
Rybakov
and
Zubkov
were guest speakers.
The
transcript
of
this
meeting was suppressed and not published until
twenty-seven years
later.
60
The discussions included
the topic of
the responsibility of
theatre
critics and
the
trust
placed
in
them
by
the
public.
The
critic
Boris Poiurovskii
suggested
that
the common practice whereby a critic championed one particular writer over
another
because it
was politic so
to
do
was
both destructive
and
dishonest
and a
betrayal
of
the
very
ideals
of
the
Party
which
those same critics purported
to
uphold.
Poiurovskii
cited numerous examples of such practice and assailed
Zubkov,
whose all-powerful position as editor of
Teatral'naia
zhizn' meant
that
any criticism of
his
opinion was automatically
interpreted
as
disagreeing
with
the
Party line. Zubkov
got up
to
defend his
position and
in
turn
castigated
Poiurovskii,
and
the meeting
broke into
pandemonium.
The Lenkom
and
Efros's
name
had been
mentioned several
times
in
the
meeting, and
this
had
clearly angered
him. In
the
midst of
the
ensuing melde, although
he
was not
one of
the
invited
speakers,
Efros
made
his
way
through the
crowds
to the
stage.
Announcing
that
he
supported every word
Poiurovskii had
said,
he
launched his
own attack on
Zubkov:
Enge 6y
H cTyeuToM, SI IIpHBbIK K TOMy, 'rro BCCX nac yIIHT
3y6KoB. 3aTeM,
CTaB pexmecepoM, x Ha co6cTBenuo mKype HcIIMTan BaIIIH ypoxE.
Tax
o KaKHx
Hte IIop MN BblHy1CjjeHbI
6yeM
BCe 3TO TepneTm?
OT
Koro BBt 3aIIgBUjaeTe
COBCTCKK TeaTp?
OT
Mcmi, OT
Jho6Hl+toaa,
oT
ToscTonoroaa,
or
E4peMOBB,
OT
60Boris
Poiurovskii, 'Protokol
odnogo zasedaniia',
Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, (January
-
March 1992), 239-244.
44
JIbBoBa-Aaoxgua? Tax
Bepb mbi ero s co3AaeM, Heyxcena BM AO CRX uop o6 WOM
He AoragajiHcb!
61
Predictably, Party
officials
disapproved
of
the
proceedings:
the
event was
described
as
ideologically
subversive, and
the
organisers were accused of
lacking
political vigilance.
Efros,
moreover,
had
taken
a very grave risk
by
insulting
such a powerful
figure
as
Zubkov. He
continued,
however,
to
make
his feelings
plain
by
channelling
his
anger and
frustration into his
work,
turning
the
fictions
of others
into
autobiography.
He began
to
select
for
production plays
that
were self-reflective and self-
referential, and whose central concern was
the
freedom
of
the
artist.
In 1965 he
directed
a second play
by Radzinskii, Cxu.
Maemca xuno
(Making A Movie),
which
featured
the
device
of a play-within-a-play, and
in
which
the
protagonist
Nechaev is
a
film director
shooting a
love
story.
Nechaev,
encumbered
by
everything
from bureaucratic
red
tape to the
incompetence
of
his
assistants and
domestic
crises,
fails
to
make
his
projected
film. Efros
clearly saw
this
play as
a portrait or projection of
himself,
and
later
recalled
that
when
he first
read
the
part of
Nechaev it
was as
if he
were
looking
at
his
own photograph
for
the
first
time.
62
For Z. Vladimirova, however,
this
production not only expressed
Efros's
personality
but
also served as a manifesto of
his belief in
the
need
for
artistic
freedom.
63
Later
that
year,
in
the
face
of
increasing demands for
compliance,
Efros beat
a
retreat
by
staging
Sergei Aleshin's KaYcdoMy
ceoe
(To Each His Own),
which
concerns
the
fate
of a young
Soviet
tank
commander
in World War II,
caught
by
the
Germans
and
forced
to
undertake a
dangerous
mission against
the
Russians.
61lbid.,
p.
244.
62Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
43.
63Vladimirova,
Kazhdyi,
p.
147.
45
It has
a very clear moral purpose and a
defined heroic
theme,
but lacks
the
complexity of
ideas
and characterisation
favoured by Efros in his best
works at
the
Lenkom. Nevertheless, To Each His Own
was
the closest
he
came
to
staging an
heroic Soviet drama
there.
His decision
to
direct it
might
therefore
be
viewed as a compromise and
indeed
as an attempt
to stem
the
growing
tide
of
criticism
that
he
was
failing
to
produce politically appropriate plays.
64
But if
some at
the theatre took
it
as an
indication
that their
wayward
Artistic Director
was
finally being
pulled
into line,
they
were mistaken.
In 1966 Making A Movie,
although
it had
proved no
less
popular
than
his
previous
Lenkom
productions, was
deemed by
the
authorities
to
be
too
sexually
explicit, and
its
references
to
censorship were regarded as unacceptable.
When
consequently
it
was removed
from
the
repertoire,
he
started work,
by
way of a
response, on
his
second
'autobiographical'
play,
Chekhov's The Seagull. As
we shall see
in Chapter 2, he
centred
his
production on
the
character of
Treplev,
who was
turned
into
a spokesman not only
for Efros's
own anger and
64Although
Efros
may
have
seen
directing
this play
(and later Iakov Volchek's Cye6Haa
xponuxa
(Chronicle
of a
Trial discussed below)
as a means to save
himself, it is
unlikely
that
he had
a
free
choice
in
the matter.
As
the
director Petr Fomenko has
remarked, at this
period
Efros
was among many
Soviet
practitioners who were often
'persuaded' into
producing
what
he described
as
'RAeonorHgecxoe
y6oxecTSo'
(wretched ideological [pieces]). Petr
Fomenko, 'Derzhat'
udar',
in Rezhisserskii
teatr, ed.
by Anatolii Smelianskii
and
Olga
Egoshina (Moscow: Moskovskii khudozhestvennyi
teatr,
1999),
pp.
437-444 (p. 442).
This
was not
the
only
time that
Efros had
to
direct 'ideologically
appropriate,
heroic'
works.
In 1975, for instance, he
was
to produce
Mikhail Roshchin's World War II drama, 3ucenou
(Troop Train)
at the
MAT. Questioned
about
this production
in
an
interview (published in
English)
with
Spencer Golub, Efros implied
that
it
was not wholly successful,
but
added:
'It is
instructive from
time to time to
deal
with and try to understand material with which you're not
naturally
in
tune.
' Anatolij Efros, 'Energy, Enveneration
and the
Mathematics
of
Intrigue', (in
discussion
with
Spencer Golub) Theatre Quarterly, 26 (Summer 1977), 28-33 (p. 30). Given
the
uncensored opinions expressed
in his fourth book
of memoirs
it
seems unlikely
that this
statement reflected
his
real
feelings. He details bow
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia he
was criticised
for directing 'too
many classics', and therefore
'recommended'
to produce so-called
'industrial'
dramas (contemporary Soviet
works set
in
the workplace).
Kniga,
p.
407. In
addition to those
already cited,
in
the
1960s
and
1970s Efros
produced the
following
works which might
be
legitimately described
as those
with which
he
was
'not in
tune':
Aleksandr Korneichuk
l7..
aamou
Kpeisem (Platon Krechet) (Malaia Bronnaia 1968), Ignatii Dvoretskii Ve.
Roeex co
cmoponbi
(The Man from
the
Outside) (Malaia Bronnaia 1971),
and
lakov Volchek Cunma&4
u
ua3HaueHHbsi
(The Dismissed
and
The Chosen) (Malaia Bronnaia 1974). It
would
be facile
to
suggest that
Efros
should
have
taken
a more
honourable
course of action
by
refusing
to stage
these works.
Faced
with the minefield of
bureaucracy
and the often arbitrary
decisions
of the
Soviet
censorship system, a strategy of appeasement
in
the
hope
of
future
advantage, while
never to
Efros's liking,
was one adopted
by
many
directors
as a means
to continue working.
46
frustration but
also
for
that
of
the
whole sixties generation.
This Treplev
was
aggressive and energised, engaged
in
a
battle
with
those
around
him in
the
defence
of
his
work and
besieged
on all sides.
This
was clearly an
idea
close to
the
heart
of a
director in
the
process of establishing
his
own company and
staging
his first
classic at
the
Lenkom. Efros drew
a
direct
parallel
between
Treplev's
circumstances and
his
own:
OHR
(<cTpeJI$HOTM HM Haupaso H HaJIeBO, KaK TOJIbKO BHW Hepeg co60lk
4
mypy
HeOCHOB TeJlbHyIO H HesecoMyio, ()HTypy HeyCTOAHHBYIO H3-3a
6eCIIpepblBffiaix
IIOHCKOB.
ICI
KorAa KaKOt-JIH6O MOJIOAOlk TeaTp IIpOH3BOj(HT CBOA HOBbIA He
BIIOJIHe yAaBum1tcn OIIblT, OHR TyT KaK TyT.
65
Efros's Seagull
was a radical
departure from
traditional
interpretations
of
Chekhov. It
generated critical uproar, was
interpreted
as a
deliberate
attack on
the aesthetics of the
MAT,
and was condemned as wilfully subjective.
Treplev's
call
for 'new forms'
met with
incomprehension
and
led
to
his
suicide;
Efros's
resulted
in
the
banning
of
his
production.
In 1966 his
position at
the
Lenkom
was
increasingly
precarious, and
he
attempted again
to
appease
his
opponents
by
producing
Iakov Volchek's
Chronicle
of a
Trial. The
play concerns a gang of young
hooligans brought
to
trial
for
their
assault on an
innocent
passer-by.
Set
mainly
in
a courtroom,
it
suffers
from
a weak
dramatic
structure and poor psychological motivation,
but
its
theme
was
in keeping
with
the theatre's
avowed
didactic
purpose.
As in his
earlier
CCT
productions of
Rozov, Efros's
talents
as a
director did
much to
improve
this
inadequate
work.
66
In
this
he
was assisted
by
one of
his
most
loyal
supporters, the
actor
Lev Durov,
who
hoped, it
may
be
supposed, that the
production might save
Efros. It failed
to
do
so.
Chronicle
of a
Trial
opened on
65A.
Efros, Kak bystro idet
vremia!
', Teatr, 2 (1967), 66-70 (p. 67).
66Solov'ev,
'Istoriia',
p.
3.
47
27 May 1966,
and the
official announcement of
the
decision
to
replace
him
with
Veniamin Monakhov
was published on
11 March 1967.67
Efros, however, had
already
begun
work on
his final
production,
the
last in
the
'trilogy'
of plays
in
which
he
explored
the self-reflective
theme of
the Artist
and
Society, Bulgakov's Moliere. His decision
to
produce
it has been interpreted by
Rosette Lamont
as an act of
defiance
which
led directly, by
creating
deliberately
overt political
images,
to
his dismissal from
the
Lenkom:
Seeking
to
distance himself from Socialist Realism, he
staged
Bulgakov's
parable of
the artist's struggle against the power of
the
establishment,
Monsieur Moliere. In
Efros's
production, the seventeenth-century
Jesuits
were masks
for
the
Politburo
and
the
KGB. These
obvious political parallels precipitated
his dismissal in 1967.68
This
view of
the
production,
however
neat,
is
too
narrow.
Efros
saw analogies
between his
own experience and
that
of
both Bulgakov
and
Moliere,
and was
equally aware of
Bulgakov's intention
to
imply
that there
were political parallels
between
the
court of
Louis XIV
and that
of
Stalin's Russia. But
there
was
little
in Efros's
conception, set, or costuming that
suggested such overt
contemporary connotations.
It did
not open, moreover, until
1 December 1967,
eight months after
Efros
was
fired. 69
67Naznacheniia
i
peremeshcheniia',
Sovetskaia kul'tura, 11 March 1967,
p.
4.
68Rosette
Lamont, 'The Taganka
of
Anatoly Efros', Performing Arts Journal, 3 (1978), 96-
101 (pp. 97-98).
691t
seems
indeed highly improbable
that the
production of
Moliere
was a
factor in
the
complex series of events
that
led
to
his dismissal. In
the
first
place
the
public are unlikely to
have
seen
it before he
was officially
fired. Although
previews were normal,
it is doubtful
that
one of
MoliEre
would
have
taken place eight months
before
the official premiere.
True,
representatives of
the
Ministry
of
Culture
attended rehearsals
in Soviet
theatres, and therefore
would
have
seen
the production
before
a public showing.
But had
they
been
seriously
concerned permission would not
have been
granted
for
performances to continue after
Efros had
left,
and
the production would not
have been
taken
on
tour to
Tallinn
and
Tomsk;
nor would
Efros have been
allowed to produce
it
twice more:
for
television
(with Liubimov
as
Moliere)
in 1973,
and at the
Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 1979.
48
In
truth, therefore, the
reasons
for Efros's
expulsion were more complex and
varied.
As
we
have
seen,
he
produced a popular repertoire
but failed
to
find
one
that was
ideologically
appropriate,
70
and
instead had
caused a
furore
with
his
assault on
traditional approaches
to
Chekhov. Furthermore, he had
caused
embarrassment with
his
over-heated outbursts, and
had
made an enemy of
Zubkov. More importantly, it had become
abundantly clear,
towards the
end of
1966,
that the
Lenkom
would not
be
able
to
produce a new work as
its
showpiece
for
the celebrations
in 1967
of the
50th Anniversary
of
the
Russian
Revolution. For
the theatre that
bore
the
name of
Lenin's Communist Youth
this
was an
intolerable
situation71
70This
was
the official reason given
for Efros's
expulsion
in
a report
in Pravda in May 1967.
(N. Ivan'kovich
and
E. Solov'eva, 'Vazhnaia
chast' obshchepartiinogo
dela', Pravda, 12 May
1967,
pp.
2-3. ) Its
authors also attacked
Vladimirova for
what
they alleged was
her
excessively
subjective account of the
Soviet
theatre in her book, Kazhdyi
po svoemu
(previously
cited)
in
which she
devotes
a
large
section
to an analysis of
Efros's
career
(pp. 106-155. )
It
was also alleged that
by 1967 Efros's
productions were
becoming less
popular, and that this
was evident
from
what was reported as the catastrophic
drop in
audiences numbers
for
the
Lenkom
summer
tour to
Kislovodsk. (Larisa Isarova 'Primety
sovremennosti
i iskusheniia
mody',
Literaturnaia
gazeta,
15 March 1967,
p.
8. ) It
remains unclear whether the tour truly
was a
failure. Tours in
the past
had been
good, and another
later in 1967
was reported to
be
successful.
(Report
of a tour to
Sverdlovsk between 4-31 August. MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1,
del. 799; telegram
from Efros
to
Boris Rodionov
reporting on success of a tour of
The
Seagull, Moliere
and
Making A Movie
to
Estonia in February 1967. MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1,
del. 1053. ) Efros himself later
asserted that
it
was as
hard
to
get tickets
in Kislovodsk
as
it
had been in Moscow;
on
the other
hand
the actor
Adoskin
maintained that the
financial
and
popular
failure
of the trip
had
provided the
Ministry
of
Culture
with
the ammunition that
it
needed.
This
tour,
he
suggested,
had
coincided moreover with
the appointment as the
Senior
Inspector
of the
Executive Committee
of the
Mossovet (GUKiM)
of
M. Meringov,
whose
'one
mission was
to remove
Efros'. (Efros, Kniga,
pp.
408-409; Adoskin,
p.
23. )
71The
theatre
had intended
to produce a play entitledJleuuu Hau cxaaan
(Lenin Said
to
Us) for
the
50th
anniversary celebrations,
but it
was not put
into
rehearsal
because
of
its
poor
literary
and
dramatic
quality.
Blame for
this was
laid
at the
door
of the
Literary Department,
which
according
to one report should
have
offered
the play's
inexperienced
writers greater assistance.
A
scapegoat was
found,
the
head
of the
Literary Section, E. M. Skergina,
who was
dismissed.
She
would
later follow Efros
to the
Malaia Bronnaia, from
which she was
to
be fired
again,
having 'failed
to
learn
the
lessons
of the
Lenkom'. Report dated (simply) February 1967.
MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 1053.
One
of
his former
students, who
had
attended rehearsals at the
Lenkom in
the
1960s,
recalled
30
years
later
that
Efros,
at the time
when
the theatre was under
fire for its failure
to produce a
suitable play
for
the
celebrations, was summoned
to a
'high-level
meeting' of the
Party. Here
it
was alleged that the
Lenkom,
unlike other
theatres,
had failed in its duty,
and
Efros
was
called upon
to explain
himself: 'Efros
was asked straight out what
"present" his
theatre
was
going
to give
for
the
Jubilee
year.
Efros
responded:
"I'm
not asking you what
I
should give
my mother on
her birthday,
am
I? " That
was
the end.
He
was subjected
to a storm of threats
that they would take away
his beloved
theatre.
Someone
suggested
that
he be
sent
to
Siberia
for being
so obstinate.
' Anatolii Ivanov, 'Ia
vizhu ego vo sne',
Kul'tura, 1 July 1995,
p.
3.
49
4. At the Malaia Bronnaia, 1967-1975
Following his dismissal, Efros
was given
the
inferior
position of a staff
director
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. But if
this
demotion
was
intended
as a
kind
of
punishment
it brought its
own rewards.
The Artistic Director Aleksandr Dunaev
shouldered much of
the
responsibility
for
the
day-to-day
management of
the
theatre,
and
his
presence also provided
Efros,
whose
first
productions provoked
renewed controversy, with a
degree
of political protection.
Efros
was not
directly
responsible, as
he had been
at
the
Lenkom, for
the
ideological
content
of
the
repertoire as a whole.
72
Dunaev
not only ensured
that
he,
not
Efros,
staged
the
standard political works required
for
official
Soviet
celebrations,
but
also conducted most of
the
negotiations with
the
authorities.
73
In
the
period
that
Efros
worked at
the theatre,
moreover,
Dunaev became
something of a
figure-
head,
while
Efros's
productions
in
what was
in
effect a
'theatre
within a
theatre'
became
the
centre of
the
Malaia Bronnaia's
creative activity.
74
Efros's best
productions were created on
the
basis
of an organic relationship
between
the performers and their
director,
a process
in
which
they
'infected'
one another.
75
He frequently
alluded to the
necessity of establishing a common
language
with
his
actors, which should so unite
them that
each party could work
intuitively but
still
follow
the
same creative path.
76
From his
years at the
CCT,
he had begun
to
gather about
him
a group of actors some of whom, remaining
faithful,
would
follow him from
theatre to theatre
for
most of
his
peripatetic
career.
From
then
on the
establishment of a
troupe
with whom
he
could work
72Efros,
Kniga,
pp.
407-408.
73Antonina
Dmitrieva
and
Sergei Konaev, 'Rezbisser
na vsiu zhizn',
Moskovskii
nabliudatel
,
4 (1998), 14-16 (p. 16).
74According
to the
actress
Vera Glagoleva,
who
later
played
in Efros's 1979 film B
4emeept
u
6oaaue
nuuoeda
(On
Thursday
and
Then Never Again), in Moscow
theatre circles audiences
spoke not of going to the
Malaia Bronnaia but 'to Efros' (no#AeM
x
3(Ppocy). Vera
Glagoleva, 'I bol'she
nikogda',
in Zaionts,
pp.
124-128 (p. 124).
75Golub,
'Acting',
p.
20.
76Efros
discusses
this
idea in Prodolzhenie,
p.
201,
and
in '"Vishnevyi
sad" v
Khel'sinki', in
Russkoe-finskie
teatral'nye
sviazi
(Leningrad, LGITMiK, 1989),
pp.
133-140
(p. 135).
50
continuously
had become
a consistent concern, and at
the
Malaia Bronnaia he
came closest
to
realising
this
ideal. When he
was
fired from
the
Lenkom
ten
actors
followed him
there, and
these
were
to
be joined by
a
further
ten
when
the
Lenkom
slid once more
into decline. This
group
formed
the
basis
of what
he
described
as
his 'theatrical family';
77
having
gathered
them together,
he began
to
develop his
approach
to
rehearsals and
his
own unique style of physical
theatre.
This
style was centred on
two
ideas: his
concept
that
'truth is in
the
feet',
78
and
the
importance
of
the
musical structure of performance.
The
very
title
of
his first book (published in 1975) Penemul4usi
-
Juo6oeb
.i
oa
(Rehearsals
are
My Love) is indicative
that
he
was always as
interested in
the
process of
theatrical creation as
in its final
outcome,
the
production
in
performance.
Indeed his
rehearsals were
in
effect performances.
Though
schooled
in
the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky, he
rejected now
the
idea
that
actors
needed a
'circle
of attention
; instead it became
vitally
important for
their
work
to
evolve
from
a
dynamic interaction
with an audience.
79
Unlike
some other
directors, he
therefore
refused
to
work
in
a closed environment and actively
encouraged acting students, visiting
directors
and other
interested
parties to
attend rehearsals
from
the
very
first days.
77Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
6.
78Golub,
'Acting',
p.
20.
79Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
178.
In Stanislavsky's 'system',
actors created a
'circle
of attention' around themselves,
with a point
of particular attention at
its
centre, as a means to
focus (almost)
exclusively on the
world of
the stage.
Likening
this to a pool of
light,
which could
be
reduced or expanded at will,
he
suggested
that
within
its
circumference
it
was possible to examine objects
in detail,
analyse
one's
inner
thoughts and
feelings,
evoke and experience
intimate desires,
and establish close
communication with others.
He
also
described
the actor within
the circle to
be in
a state of
'public
solitude'.
A
central aim of this
concept was
for
the
focus
of the actor and audience to
become
one.
Rather
than
interacting directly
with the spectators, actors so
focused
their
attention that they
drew
the
audience, as
it
were,
into
this
same circle.
For
accounts
in
English,
see
Magashack, 'Stanislavsky',
pp.
239-241,
and
Constantin Stanislavski: An Actor's
Handbook,
ed. and trans.
by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (London: Methuen Drama, 1990),
pp.
24-25.
51
Though he
spent many
hours
away
from
the theatre, analysing
his
approach
to
a
given production,
discussing his ideas
with
his designers
and working on
models of
the
set,
in
rehearsal
he
was often prepared
to
give
his
actors
free
rein.
As
we
have
seen,
discussion
of
ideas
was
kept
to minimum and
he insisted
that
his
actors should move
freely in
the
performance space.
He frequently joined
them
himself but,
although
he
would
demonstrate
what
he
needed,
it
was vitally
important
that they should explore
their
roles
for
themselves, and
he
was rarely
prescriptive
in
regard
to their
actions.
In his
earliest productions
he had been
particularly
interested in
exploring
psychological motivation.
The
audience,
he
maintained, should always
be
aware of what
he
called
the
'zig-zag'
of
human
emotions and
their
contradictions, which
have
to
be
revealed and expressed on stage.
80
His
metaphor
for
this
was a cardiogram,
in
which
the
jagged
peaks conveyed
the
workings of a pulsating
heart
and only a straight
line
meant
death. At
the
Malaia
Bronnaia, however, he
was now concerned
to
marry
the actors'
inner
emotional
states with
their
outward physical movement, creating a
fluid
stage picture.
The
moments of physical action
had
to
be
carefully
tuned and modulated within
the
context of
the
production as a whole,
in
order
to express as
fully
as possible
the
psychological
and emotional circumstances
that motivated
them.
He described
the actor as a
finely
tuned
instrument
and also as an athlete, and conceived
his
productions almost as
dance, keeping his
performers
in
a state of almost
perpetual motion.
In
an
interview he
explained:
It's important to me that the
actors not only understand
in
an
intellectual
sense my
approach
to a particular scene or action,
but
that they physically enter
into
the action,
the scene, and establish a physical system of associations.
Then
the approach
becomes
practical rather
than theoretical.
Often
people will speak very articulately
80Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
38.
52
about what
they
intend for
a production,
but
when you see the production you
don't
feel it. Everything
of which you speak must
be
expressed physically.
It
must all
come out
in
the
flesh.
8 t
Dialogue, he
suggested, was
like
a
boxing
match:
A
person must either protect
himself from
the
blows
of another or else
inflict
some
of
his
own.
Being
on stage
is like being in
a
boxing
ring.
Only
on very rare
occasions
do I
allow the stage picture to
be
at rest, when circumstances make
it
absolutely necessary.
Tranquillity is
the exception not the rule
82
In 1976 Efros
was
invited
as a guest
director
to the
Guthrie Theatre in
Minneapolis. In
an effort
to
explain
his
approach
to
his American
cast
he
produced a succinct analogy
for his
working method:
'Drama is
a
ballet
with
words'.
83
In ballet,
music
is
the
controlling
factor in
emotions and movement,
and
Efros
was
to
use
individual
pieces of music as
leitmotifs,
to
enhance mood
and
to
create emotional associations,
in
many of
his
productions.
He
once
likened
the technique
of a
theatre
director
to that
of an orchestral conductor, who
is
charged with controlling the
component parts of
instruments
and voices
in
an
ultimately unified performance.
84
But he
also used music
in
a metaphorical
sense
to
describe
a
kind
of silent music
inherent in
the
structure and action of a
81Efros,
'Energy',
p.
31.
821bid.,
p.
32.
83Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
23.
Efros had
some
direct
experience of
directing ballet. In 1976 he filmed
an adaptation of
Ivan
Turgenev's 1872
novella
Beuuiue
aodbI
(Torrents
of
Spring)
under
the title
Oaumaaua
(Fantasia),
with
ballet
sequences
in
which
the
Bolshoi
prima
ballerina Maiia Plisetskaia
danced. He
recalled
discussing her ideas for
a
ballet
version of
Three Sisters
and
later
attended
rehearsals
for her ballet
of
The Seagull
staged at the
Bolshoi in 1980. For his
account of
her
ideas
on
Three Sisters,
see
Professiia,
pp.
307-309; for The Seagull,
see
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
52-
55. Plisetskaia discusses The Seagull in her
autobiography
la, Maiia Plisetskaia (Moscow:
Paritet, 1994),
pp.
396-401. For
an account
in English,
see
Emma Polotskaia, 'Chekhov in
the
language
of
ballet: The Seagull
at the
Bolshoi Theatre', in Chekhov Then
and
Now,
ed.
by
Douglas Clayton (New York: Peter Lang, 1977),
pp.
239-258.
84A.
Efros
and
A. Kuzicheva, '"Bespreryvnoe izmenenie
pri postoianstve...
"', in
Iskusstvozanie i
psikhologiia
khudozhestvennogo
tvorchestvo
(Moscow: Nauka, 1988),
p.
234.
53
given work.
He
was particularly conscious
that
just
such a
hidden
score
underpinned
the
structure of
Chekhov's
plays,
85
and as we shall see
in Chapter
3
constructed
his Three Sisters, his first
production at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
as
if
it
were a symphony, controlling
the
flow
of
the
action
in
crescendos and
diminuendos, harmonies
and
dissonance.
In Three Sisters Efros
again rejected established
interpretations. His
staging
evoked neither
the
sad, elegiac mood of
Stanislavsky's 1901
production nor
the
optimistic spirit of
Nemirovich-Danchenko's in 1940. Instead his
energetic,
fast-paced
production charted
the
changing moods of
the
sisters and provided
moments of comic relief,
but its
overall
tone
was
deeply
pessimistic.
It became
a requiem not only
for
the
unrealised aspirations and
lost ideals
of
the
Prozorov
sisters
but
also
for
all who came
into
contact with
them: the
contemporary
audience at
the
Malaia Bronnaia.
86
It
therefore
caused even more controversy
than
The Seagull. Some
critics welcomed
it
as new
departure in
the
interpretation
of
Chekhov, but
others viewed
it
as an affront
to
a great
Russian
playwright and as a violation of a classic work.
It
was not only seen as
politically subversive
but
also condemned as a
further
attack on
the traditions
of
the
MAT. It
was
banned in 1968.
Efros's
next production,
this time
of a modern work,
Radzinskii's
satirical
comedy about a
latter-day Don Juan, O6onbcmumenb Ko.
no6auuxun
(Kolobashkin The Seducer),
suffered a similar
fate. His
old adversary
Zubkov
condemned
the
work as a parody of contemporary
life,
and
the
censors,
having
first
permitted
its
performance,
later deemed its
subject unsuitable
for Soviet
audiences
(though its
treatment
of sexual morality was
in fact
mild) and ordered
its
removal
from
the
repertoire.
87
In
an effort to
placate
his
critics
Efros
85Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
196-197.
86T.
Shakh-Azizova, '60-e: klassika i
sovremennost',
in Mir iskusstv:
stat'i,
besedy,
publikatsii
(Moscow: RITIS, 1991),
pp.
156-172 (p. 171).
87Iurii
Zubkov, 'Zametki kdtika', Teatral'naia
zhizn,
10 (1968), 10-11, (p. 10).
54
compromised again, and
in November 1968
produced
Aleksandr Korneichuk's
Ilnamou Kpe'sem (Platon Krechet). A Socialist Realist drama first
produced at
the
MAT in 1935, it
concerns
the
plight of a
doctor (an idealist,
with appropriate
party credentials and artistic
leanings
-
he
plays
the
violin)
thwarted
in his
attempts
to
improve
the treatment
of
his
patients
by
a
bureaucrat, Arkadin
Pavlovich. The
production was praised
for its fine
performances,
88
but
can
hardly be
regarded as
Efros's
most
innovative
achievement.
Not
surprisingly
V
Razumnyi,
writing
in Teatral'naia
zhizn', welcomed
the
play's return
to the
Russian
stage, and suggested
that
other
theatres
should
follow
the
example of
the
Malaia Bronnaia in
producing such
'great Soviet
classics'.
89
Efros himself had
other
ideas,
and
in 1969 directed Aleksei Arbuzov's
Ctcacm,
nueb, e
dxu
xec'4acm. nueo2o 'ienoaexa
(Happy Days
of an
Unhappy
Man). In
this
play
the
re-enactment
in
a series of
flash-backs
of
the
protagonist's reminiscences about
happier
times
disrupt
the
conventions of a
linear
plot and also create a
dream-like fantasy
world.
In
a report on
Efros's
production
the
director
of
the
Moscow City Council Executive Committee
(GUKiM), Boris Rodionov,
expressed serious concern about
these
'difficulties'
in Arbuzov's
script, suggesting also
that
he had
raised
'serious
moral
issues'
but failed
to
provide answers.
90
The
company was
initially
permitted
to
perform
the
work once a month,
but in 1972, despite
a written plea
from its
director, further
performances were not allowed
91
The
prohibition of
the
plays of
Radzinskii
and
Arbuzov,
rather
than
isolated
incidents,
were symptomatic of
the
restrictions
then
being
placed on
dramatic
literature. Under Brezhnev's
administration many of
the
more
innovative
88V1.
Pimenov, 'Novyi "Platon Krechet"', Teatr, 3 (1969) 3-5 (p. 5).
89
V. Razumnyi, 'Pokhvaly
v ushcherb pravde',
Teatral'naia
zhizn,
14 (1969) 18-19 (p. 19).
90Cnpasxa
(Licence)
circa
January 1969. MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 1056a.
91L,
etter
from Efros
to
Rodionov dated 1 October 1969. MGOA, F. 429,
op.
1, del. 1152.
55
writers of
the
sixties and seventies were
forced
to
emigrate, and
the general
malaise of
the
zastoi also
took
its
toll on playwrights of
the period.
Traditional
views on
Socialist Realism
continued
to
be
propounded, and
though this
period
did
not see a return
to the
black-and-white
propaganda of
the thirties,
it
produced a relative
dearth
of
innovative
works.
Writers
were actively
encouraged
to produce plays with
industrial
or agrarian
themes,
or else retreated
into
the
more politically neutral
territory of
domestic
realism.
Not
surprisingly,
therefore,
in
the
1970s Efros began
to
express
increasing
dissatisfaction
with
the
limited
plots and excessively simple characterisation of
most contemporary plays.
92
He
sensed
that
audiences were growing
tired
of
this
standard
fare,
and
in him
they
induced 'director's block'.
93
Between 1972
and
1984 he
produced only nine new works
by
contemporary
Soviet
writers,
but
twice that
number of classics
for
the
stage, on radio, and as
television
adaptations.
94
By
comparison with modern plays, classic works,
both foreign
and
Russian,
provided complex characters, greater extremes of emotion and
greater
breadth
of
ideas. But
another advantage was
that the
Russian
classics,
although censored
in
the
past,
had by
now
been fully
accepted
into
the
canon,
and
indeed
the
authorities recommended
that they
should
be
staged.
Even
more
importantly,
they
were
less ideologically
suspect than new
dramas
and not
92Efros,
Professiia,
pp.
14-16,18-19,20-22.
931bid.,
p.
19.
94Efros
himself
suggested that classics
formed
the core of
his
repertoire, especially at the
Malaia Bronnaia. (Prodolzhenie,
p.
144. ) This
assertion, though
in
essence true,
warrants
qualification,
because he did
not
focus
exclusively on classics.
Between 1972
and
1984
while
working
in
several
theatres
he directed
a total of nine works
by
contemporary
Soviet
writers
(eight
stage plays and one adaptation
for
television
-
Arbuzov's Tania, 1974),
with the
exception of the years
1975-1977
and
1981-1983
when
he
produced none.
In
addition
three of
these eight stage plays
(at
the
Malaia Bronnaia)
can
be
said to
have had
classic themes:
Rozov's Brother Alesha (1972)
was
based
on
Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov
and
Veniamin
Baliasnyi's Road (1980)
on
Dead Souls,
while
in 1978 Ignatii Dvoretskii's Beparida
e. 4ecy
(A
Verandah in
the
Woods) (discussed below), borrowed
motifs and themes
from Chekhov. At
this period
Efros's
other productions of contemporary
Soviet
writers consisted of adaptations
for
television of plays
he had
previously
directed for
the stage
(Arbuzov's My Poor Marat
(1972),
staged at the
Lenkom in 1965; Korneichuk's Platon Krechet (1972),
staged at the
Lenkom in 1968,
and
Dvoretskii's The Man from
the
Outside (1974),
staged at the
Malaia
Bronnaia in 1971). At
the
Taganka (1984-1987), he directed
two
contemporary plays.
For
a
full list
of all
Efros
productions,
films
and radio plays, see
Appendix 2 (pages 311-317).
56
subject
to the
same scrutiny.
Efros's
productions
in
the mid
1970s
were
less
overtly
'modern'
than
his
earlier stagings of
Chekhov. Nevertheless, in
turning
again
to the
classics
he
was not retreating
into
a safe
haven
or
failing
to
comment on contemporary
life. In
producing such
'safe'
works,
he
could
both
explore what might
be
termed eternal
themes and make veiled allusions
to
concerns of
the time.
As
we shall see,
this
was a particular
feature
of
Efros's
production of
Gogol's Marriage in 1975.
This
was
his
second staging of
Marriage
and
he interpreted it in
a manner quite
new
to the
Russian
stage.
As
we shall see
in Chapter 4,
under
Efros's direction
this rarely performed work,
traditionally
seen as a
frivolous farce, became
a
complex
drama,
at once comic and
deeply
pessimistic.
The
production earned
Efros
almost unanimous critical and public approbation.
It
remained
in
the
repertoire of
the
Malaia Bronnaia
until
1984,
was revived
in 1987
and
finally
closed
in October 1996
-a
testimony to the
coherence and
inventiveness
of
his
conception and
to the
fine
ensemble performances of
his
troupe.
95
5. At the
Malaia Bronnaia
and elsewhere,
1975-1980
Although he felt
most
'at home' in
the
Malaie Bronnaia, Efros
also worked
in
other
theatres.
In November 1975,
eight months after
the
success of
Marriage,
his Cherry Orchard,
to
be discussed in Chapter 5,
opened at
Liubimov's
Taganka. As
the
first
guest
director
at
that theatre
Efros had
to
work with a
company whose methods and style of performance were very
different from his
own.
The
production was an experiment,
in
which
he
attempted to synthesise
their approach with
his
own
techniques
of physical theatre.
Although
the
attempt
to
unite
the two
dictated its
style,
Efros
also
drew
on
his
own previous
95lnevitably,
over time, the production saw changes
in
the cast,
but
new performers were
rehearsed according to
Efros's directions by Durov,
who
himself
continued to play
the role of
Zhevakin. The
present writer saw the production on
four
occasions
between 1993
and
1996.
57
experience of
directing Chekhov,
and
further
explored
the themes and
ideas
expressed
in his Three Sisters. But,
whereas
that production
in 1968 had
openly expressed
the
despair
of
the sixties generation at what
they
sensed was
their
own
lack
of purpose and
isolation from
their
cultural roots,
in 1975 his
Cherry Orchard
would
be interpreted
as a
lament for
the
decline
of a culture
more refined
than that
of
its day.
In
the
early
1980s Efros
would
become increasingly
concerned
by
what
he
saw
as a
lack
of refinement and cultural values
in
the society around
him. At
the
Malaia Bronnaia in 1982 he
staged a new production of
Three Sisters, in
which
he
not only clearly
lamented
the
loss
of
the
culture of
Chekhov's
era
but
also
sought
to
return
to the
past, and
to
resurrect on
his
own stage
the spirit of what
had been lost. In 1967 Efros had
written an article
in
which
he
criticised
his
own production of
The Seagull. In
this
he had
asserted
that
although
his
'modem'
approach
to the
play
had
succeeded
in laying bare
the
play's essential
emotions,
it had
also resulted
in
a
loss
of
lyricism. He had
suggested
too that
it
was extremely
difficult for
modern actors, whose
life
experience was
less
refined,
to
enter
Chekhov's
world and
to
bring
out
the
play's poetry.
96
This
article was written after
his first Three Sisters
opened and
in
the
midst of
the
heated
critical
debate
over
his
approach to
Chekhov. It
may
therefore
have been
intended
to assuage
the
largely
negative press.
After
all, as we shall see, such
self-criticism would not prevent
him from
producing a radically new
Cherry
Orchard. Nevertheless, Efros's
critique and
in
particular
his
assertion
in 1967
that a
'freer,
uninhibited' approach was
'only
one side of
the
coin' undoubtedly
pointed
the
way
to
his future
change of approach to the treatment of classic
96Efros
'Kak bystro',
p.
69.
Anatolii Smelianskii's
assertion that
in
this article the
director 'criticized (sic) his
work with
Chekhov
more
fiercely
than any of
his
critics',
is
an exaggeration.
Although Efros
criticised
his
own production, unlike many commentators of the time he
was very
far from
condemning
it
outright.
Anatoly Smeliansky, The Russian Theatre
after
Stalin,
trans.
by Patrick Miles
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
p.
65.
58
dramas
97
There
was a
faint hint
of
this reversal
in The Cherry Orchard,
and
its
beginnings
were also
to
be
apparent
in his
staging at
the
Malaia Bronnaia in
1977
of
Turgenev's A Month in
the
Country,
to
be discussed in Chapter 6.
In
all
his interpretations
of classic writers
Efros inevitably
viewed
their
works
in
the
light
of
his
own experience, and
A Month in
the
Country
was no exception.
But in
contrast
to
his
earlier productions,
this
'contemporary'
view would
be
counter-balanced
by his
concern
to
generate
the
atmosphere of
Turgenev's
era.
More importantly
this production, again
by
comparison with
his
previous ones,
was
less
clearly a
deliberate break
with
the
established approach
to the
play.
Although innovative, it
also acknowledged a
debt
to the
past.
Rather
than
severing
the
work
from its
performance
history, it
constituted a
development
of
that
history.
His interpretation
of
Turgenev
would
be distinctively his
own and
in
no sense a
slavish reproduction of
Stanislavsky's in 1909. But
as we shall see
his
production
had
a
lyrical
quality, a sense of
harmony
and an old-world charm,
and also
included
moments of peaceful tranquillity.
In
these
features,
which
had been
almost entirely absent
from his
earlier work,
Efros
was undoubtedly
paying
homage
to a style of
theatre that
he had
once rejected outright.
Anatolii
Smelianskii
saw
his A Month in
the
Country
as
both
symptomatic of, and
influential
upon, a new tendency
in
the
approach to the classics
in
the
Soviet
theatre.
He described
this
new approach as
'quiet', by
which
he
meant
that
those plays were produced
in
a more
traditionally
lyrical
and gentle style.
98
Efros
rejected
Smelianskii's interpretation
on all counts, and also expressed
regret
that
although
his 'dynamic
and passionate' production would eventually
97Efros
'Kak bystro',
p.
69.
98A.
Smelianskii, Nashi
sobesedniki:
Russkaia klassicheskaia dramaturgiia
na stsene
sovetskogo
teatra
70-kh
godov
(Moscow: Nauka, 1981),
p.
147.
59
close,
the
words of
this
critic would remain
99
But in
studying
his development
after
1977, it difficult
not
to agree with
Smelianskii, despite Efros's
protestations
to the contrary,
that
A Month in
the
Country
was
the
first
step
by
Efros
towards a
'quiet'
approach
to the classics.
In fact he
took
another
decisive
move
in
that
direction
with
his
very next
production,
Ignatii Dvoretskii's A Verandah in
the
Woods. Set
on a nature
reserve whose existence
is
threatened
by
plans
to
build dachas
and sink mines,
the action of
this play revolves around an old
family home. Efros
was attracted
to this new work precisely
because it
was written
in
the
style of
Chekhov
and
drew its
material and characters
from
several of
his
plays.
1
He identified
within
it,
moreover, what
he described
as a
'tender
and
tearful old-fashioned
quality', and expressed a wish
to treat
it
as
though
it
were a classic.
101
This
production,
however, bore
even
less
resemblance
than
his A Month in
the
Country
to
his
previous work.
As Stroeva has
observed,
Efros borrowed
heavily from
the early practices of
Stanislavsky:
Pexcaccep
TBOPHT cueKTaxna B Tpagmioauo Ma$epe cTaporo go6poro
MXATa.
Cnosao
He off KorAa-TO cTasan CBOH noneMagecIHe gexoscxae cIIerraKaH.
Caosa
TORKHA, ncaxonoregeciHR aacaM6na, eAasoe napagecxoe aacTpoelae,
Aonrae uay3bI 11 3aMeAneuabie psTMaa.
3a
cnosaMH yragisaeTc cxpbrroe,
uoJeoHoe Te[eaae, aegocicasanue eyscTBa.
102
99Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
264-265.
100Dvoretskii
was
known
as an'industrial' or
'production'
playwright.
His decision
to
write a
play
based
on motifs
from Chekhov
was not
in keeping
with
his
earlier writing of socio-
political
dramas
set
in
specifically
Soviet
environments, and
is
therefore
interesting. It
may
indicate
that at
this
period not only
directors but
also writers were nostalgic
for
the past and
turned to older models
for inspiration. The fact
that
Ludmilla Petrushevskaia, in 1983
was
to
write
Tpu deeywxu
a zoay6o. u
(Three Girls in Blue),
a play with clear echoes of
Three Sisters,
may also
be indicative
of such a trend.
101A.
Efros, 'Interviu
poste prem'ery',
Teatral'naia Moskva, 2 (1978), 4-5 (p. 5).
102M.
Stroeva, 'Vitok
spirali',
Sovetskaia kul'tura, 10 October 1978,
p.
5.
60
More importantly, Efros's
rejection of
Smelianskii's
comments was
to
be
belied,
as we shall see
in Chapter 8, by his
second staging of
Three Sisters in
1982,
and
by
what
he himself
said of
it. This
change of
direction
was neither
immediate
nor wholly consistent.
Instead it
should
be
seen as a general and
developing
tendency.
It
reflected, moreover, a more general
trend
in
theatre at
this time: critics
identified
a similar re-discovery of
Stanislavsky in
the
work of
Efremov's
visually stunning
Seagull
at
the
MAT in 1980,
and a nostalgia
for
the
past
in Galina Volchek's Three Sisters
at
the
Sovremennik in 1982.
But
the
reversal
in Efros's
approach was not simply part of a general
trend.
It
also reflected
his
response
to
difficult
circumstances
he
encountered
during his
final
years at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
which prompted,
to some
degree, his
decision
to
leave
the theatre
for
the
Taganka in 1984. This
period
brought Efros
into
conflict with one of
his best-loved
actors,
Durov,
who
from
the early
days
at
the
CCT had
played pivotal roles
in his best
productions and
had
on occasion
worked as
his
assistant.
In
the early
1980s Durov
was no
longer
content with
this role and
began
to
direct
plays
himself. Since
the
Malaia Bronnaia, in
the
view of audiences and critics alike, was
Efros's in
all
but
name,
this
was a
direct
challenge
to
his
authority.
Relations between
the two
men
became
increasingly
acrimonious and
led (when
several other
leading
actors sided with
Durov)
to
a split
in
the
company.
Although Efros felt
undermined,
he
could
perhaps
have
prevented
the
break-up
of
his
troupe
by demonstrating
greater
diplomacy
and
by
accommodating
Durov. However,
their
difficulties
were
compounded
by
the
appointment of a new administrative
director, Il'ia Kogan.
According
to
Natal'ia Krymova, Kogan
not only sided with
Durov but
also was
instrumental in
securing
the
dismissal
of
Dunaev,
who
had
permitted
Efros
to
work with relative
freedom.
103 After Dunaev's dismissal, Efros
met with
1031{Iymova,
'Zhdu',
p.
16. Krymova,
a well-respected
critic,
is Efros's
widow, and although
the information
she provides
in
this account
is
correct
it is inevitably
written,
by her
own
admission,
from
a subjective view-point.
61
Kogan,
who suggested
that
he
would
be
made
the
new
Artistic Director if he
were prepared
to
join
the
Party, but
after some
deliberation he
refused
to
join.
The
conflicts at
the theatre, the
break
up of
the
'theatrical family'
with whom
he
had
created
his best
work, and perhaps most particularly what
he interpreted
as
Durov's
treachery, affected
Efros deeply. He
was
increasingly
given to
bouts
of melancholia, and more
importantly began
to
doubt his
abilities as a
director.
Although Efros's difficulties
were
'home-grown',
they
appear
to
have been
exacerbated
by his
trips to
America in 1978
and
1979,
when
he
was
invited
to
stage
first Gogol's Marriage
and
later Bulgakov's Moliere
at
the
Guthrie Theatre
in Minneapolis. He
encountered
theatre
practices, and perhaps more
importantly
audience responses, very
different from his
previous experience.
As he detailed in his
memoirs,
he
was particularly
impressed by
the
industry,
efficiency and willing cooperation of
the technical
staff at the
Guthrie,
remarking
(in
an
invidious
comparison with
their
Russian
counterparts), that the
words
'no'
and
'it's
not possible'
did
not appear
to
be in
their
vocabulary.
104
For Efros,
these
working practices were eye-opening.
On
the
other
hand,
struck
too
by
the
material comfort of
American life-styles, he
was concerned
by
what
he
saw as a
disparity between
the
social and
historical
experiences of
Russian
and
American
audiences,
identifying
what might
be best described
as a
lack
of emotional engagement
in
the
latter. Indeed, having
seen what
he
described
as a
beautifully dressed, but 'standardized'
and
insipid
production of
Hamlet, he
questioned whether
its
well-attired audience, who
in his
view
had
been
untroubled
by
war,
famine
or misfortune, actually needed
theatre
at all.
105
Similarly, he had
certain misgivings about
his
cast, who
by
standard practice
had been hired for
a single season.
They
worked with
diligence,
enthusiasm
1(ftfros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
13.
loslbid.,
pp.
7-8.
62
and
technical
finesse,
and
the atmosphere
in
rehearsals was most convivial,
but
Efros left
the
US
with
the
strong
impression
of
having
simply
directed
a
production, rather
than
having
created
it
collectively with a
troupe.
106
It is
important
to
note
that
his
approach
to
his American Marriage
was similar
to the
one
he had
adopted at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
and
that the
production was
in
essence a revival.
107 His impression
of
his American
cast should
be
viewed
in
this
light
and was perhaps
typical of a guest
director in
any
theatre.
However,
the
experience seems
to
have induced
a sense of
doubt in his
own abilities,
which was confirmed
by his
second
trip to
Minneapolis in 1979. His Moliere
was another revival;
he had directed it first
at
the
Lenkom in 1966. It
was well-
received,
but
with
less
enthusiasm
than
his Marriage. One
reviewer suggested
that
Efros
was using
the
same
ideas in
this production as
he had in
the
previous
season, and
that they
had lost
their
sparkle.
108
Efros, however, identified
again
the
different life-experiences
of
American
audiences as
the
root cause of
the
lukewarm
reception.
The Americans, he felt,
unlike a
Russian
audience, whose social
history had been
very
different, failed
to
see
the
links between
the
France
of
Louis XIV
and
the
Soviet Union.
109
His
experience of
American
theatre
was relatively
limited
and
his
remarks may
therefore not
be
entirely
justified. It is important
to
note, moreover,
that
he
recorded
these
ideas in
a
book
written
in
the
mid
1980s,
when censorship was
still enforced.
""
However, he
was clearly
disappointed by his
apparent
t061bid.,
p.
20.
107The
word
'revival' is
used
throughout to
mean a re-staging of a given play closely modelled
on
Efros's
original production.
108M.
Steele, Minneapolis Tribune, 17 August 1979,
p.
7c.
109The
role of
Lagrange,
who
delivers
the
final lines
of the play,
laying
the
blame for
Moliere's death
on the
King's
unkindness and the evil
Cabal,
was played at the
Guthrie by Jon
Cranney. Efros
noted that,
whereas
the
end of
his
production at the
Lenkom had
evoked a
sense of
loss
and tragedy
Cranney
threw these
lines
unthinkingly away.
'Ilpo23HOCHT
amMOxogom, ae s Baacb B CMUCR.
Y
cppaagysos
6btn JlioAoBHK XIV,
y sac
6i
is
xa6aaa, a Tyr se
6wio
as Toro an ppyroro.
' Efros, Prodolzhenie,
p.
136.
110Efros's
third
book Prodolzhenie
was
first
published
in 1985, but
completed sometime
before
this
date,
since
he is known
to
have begun his fourth in October 1983.
63
inability
to
communicate with a
foreign
audience, and on
his
return
to the
Malaia
Bronnaia
reportedly confessed
to
his
actors
that
he had
reached an
'artistic dead-
end'.
Having
staged a show
in
three
weeks
in America, he felt
that
he had
become
a mere
'jobbing' director.
I ll
6.1980-1984
While in
the
US Efros had
expressed a
desire
to
return
to
his 'own'
company
and audiences,
but in
truth
he
was
to
find little
solace
back
at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia.
A further decline
of
his 'theatrical family'
was exacerbated
by his
production
in 1980
of
Road,
an adaptation of
Gogol's Dead Souls,
rehearsals
for
which
had begun in 1978 but
were
interrupted by his
visits
to
America. As
we shall see
in Chapter 7, it
was
by
and
large
a major
failure,
and a
destructive
critique
by Smelianskii
was particularly wounding
to
Efros. The deep impact
of
both is
reflected
less in
what
Efros
wrote about
the
experience
than
in
the
fact
that
he
wrote very
little. In his books he discussed
at
length his
critically-
successful productions of
Marriage
and
Month in
the
Country
as well as
those
of
Chekhov,
which although condemned and
banned had
given
him
great
personal and artistic satisfaction,
but in his
third
(which
runs to
426
pages),
only
11
are
dedicated
to
his
reflections on
Road,
and were clearly written after
it
closed.
112
111Maksim
Andreev, 'Chuzhoi', Nezavisimaia
gazeta,
11 January 1992,
p.
7.
Efros
was
invited
to the theatre
for
a
third time, to stage
Don Juan, in October 1980. It
was
reported
in
the
American
press that
he
cancelled the trip
without providing an explanation.
It
seems more
likely, however,
that
he
was not allowed to travel by the
Soviet
authorities.
Krymova has
suggested that officials
in
the
Ministry
of
Culture,
without consulting
Efros
himself,
responded to
invitations for
work abroad
by informing
the
host
theatres that
be
could
not
travel
because he
was either
indisposed
or
had
other commitments.
Her
assertion
is
confirmed
by
one
letter
written to a
Ministry
official,
P. Demichev, by Efros himself, in
which expresses
his
surprise on
learning from
the
Guthrie itself
that
be
was apparently
'too
busy'
to accept their
invitation. Anatolii Efros, Ustno i
pis'menno',
Moskovskii
nabliudatel',
3-4 (1996), 49-55 (p. 54).
112Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
67-74,280-282.
64
The
setting
for Road
could
be
seen
to
represent a convergence of
different
roads, and
this
image
seems remarkably apposite as a representation of
Efros's
experience at
this
period.
His
response
to
its failure
was
to embark on a quest
for
a new approach which
took
him in
several
different directions. With
characteristic energy,
he
worked
in
other media
(radio,
television
and
film),
staged
The Cherry Orchard in Japan,
and
became heavily involved in
teaching
at
GITIS. Although
these
different
ventures might
be
seen as a series of new
experiments,
his
search was also
fuelled by
emotion.
His
writing at
the
period
is
somewhat ponderous, reflecting concerns over
his
age: although only
in his
mid-fifties,
he
was
troubled
by
a
heart
complaint.
He
worked only sporadically
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
producing only two
new works
in
the
1980-1981
season,
Summer
and
Smoke by Tennessee Williams
and
Bocno.
Munarcue
(Recollection) by Arbuzov. 113
These
productions, though
well received,
lacked
the
daring
and
innovation
of the
past, and
it
was suggested that
he had
chosen
these
plays with strong
female
protagonists as vehicles
for lakovieva,
the
only member of
the
company who was
to
remain completely
loyal
to
its
director. lla
Efros
was clearly
losing
control over
his
troupe,
and
felt
abandoned
by
those
who
had helped him
to
create
his best
productions.
Without
them
his
work
lacked incisiveness,
though this
reflected, to
some
degree,
a general
tendency
in
theatre
of
the time.
From
the
early
1980s,
as
the
disillusionment
produced
by Brezhnev's
zastoi
reached
its lowest
ebb,
the theatre,
so
long
at
the
forefront
of creative activity,
was
felt
to
be in
crisis and to
have lost its
sense of
direction. Many
expressed
regret
that
audiences seemed
indifferent;
themes
and
ideas
once regarded as
fresh
and
thought-provoking
now seemed uninteresting and
insipid. lls
This
113mis
play
is
also MWglajed
into English
WW" the title
The Chance Visitor.
114My
interview
with
Marianna Stroeva, Moscow, 1 February 1997. See
also
I. Vasilinina,
Teatr Arbuzova', Teatr, 6 (1983), 126-135 (pp. 129- 130).
115A.
Vislova, Andrei Mironov:
neokonchennyi razgovor
(Moscow: Isskusstvo, 1993),
pp.
155-156.
65
sense of uncertainty can
be
seen
to
echo an
increasing lack
of stability
in
society
itself. Russia's invasion
of
Afghanistan in 1979 had
prompted a new
crackdown on
dissidents,
and
by 1981
the
political unrest
in Poland
culminated
in
the
imposition
of martial
law
there.
On
the surface
therefore the
Party's hard-
line
position was still strong.
But Brezhnev himself,
already
terminally
ill, died
in 1982,
and
his
replacement,
Iurii Andropov,
was also
dead by 1984. The
very extremity of
the
measures
introduced by Brezhnev (and later by
Andropov116)
indicated
that
an ageing
leadership
was attempting
to
retain power
but increasingly
wielding
less
authority, not only over
the
countries of
Eastern
Europe but
also within
its
own
borders.
"?
In
a confusing present, and with an
increasing
sense of uncertainty about the
future, it is
perhaps not surprising
that
the
Soviet
theatre
in
general
lacked
self-confidence, and
that
Efros
was not alone
in
turning to the
past
for
a sense of stability.
He
consistently
denied, however,
that
he
was
in
crisis, and chose
to
lay
the
blame
unfairly on others.
He
generated
justifiably barbed
responses
in
the
theatre press
by implying in
an article
that
several critics
had
turned
against
him,
suggesting among other
things that they
were often more concerned
to
display
their own erudition
than to
review productions properly.
118
Boris Liubimov
objected
to
his
accusation
that the
critics wished
to
attack
him; Rudnitskii
116Iurii
Andropov, the
former head
of the
KGB, had
a reputation as an
intellectual,
with a
liking for jazz
and
Western
novels, and
it
was rumoured that his
appointment might
lead to a
more
liberal
cultural policy.
But
according to
Rosalind Marsh
such
hopes
were soon scotched.
In fact
as
Chief Ideologue
to
Brezhnev's
government
he
was responsible
for
a particularly
reactionary resolution of
the
Central Committee drawn
up
in July 1982. This hard-line decree
placed a renewed emphasis on traditional
Socialist Realism. It demanded
that
writers
fulfil
the
tasks of
the
Twenty-Sixth Congress,
selecting subjects of contemporary relevance, such as
industry,
agriculture,
the
army and navy, concentrating on
depicting 'positive heroes'
and
inculcating
worthy moral values such as patriotism,
hard
work,
internationalism
and
disapproval
of
'political indifference'
and
'a
consumer mentality'.
Rosalind Marsh, Soviet
Fiction Since Stalin: Science, Politics
and
Literature (London & Sydney: Croom Helm,
1986),
p.
20.
1171n
a country
in
which government met
in
closed session and operated strict controls on the
media,
few
could
have
predicted that
Mikhail Gorbachev
was waiting
in
the
wings,
but
the
beginnings
of change were apparent.
His
rise to
power
in 1985
was not
born in
a vacuum;
the
move towards
unprecedented social and political change effected
by his
policies,
though not
direct
and
far from
predictable, was nevertheless
inexorable
and presaged.
118A.
Efros, 'La
-s,
ekzistans',
Sovremennaia dramaturgiia, 2 (1984), 259-263.
66
implied
that
he
was
in danger
of alienating
those
who
had
supported
him in
the
past.
119
In his
third
book, Prodolzhenie
teatral'nogo
romana
(The Theatrical Novel
Continued), Efros dedicates
a whole chapter
to the
daily
trials
of working
in
theatre.
Among
other
things,
he
questions
the
dedication
and professionalism
of actors and
technical
staff, and complains about
the
difficulty
of working with
a
disunited
troupe,
who
fail
to
love
their
director
and recognise
his
authority.
His
remarks are couched
in
general
terms
and
he
mentions no names,
but his
tone
is bitter
and
he is
clearly reflecting
his
own experience.
120
In fact,
the
overall mood of
the
book is darker
than that
of
the previous two.
As Efros
remarks
in his
preface,
it
outlines not only
the
joys but
also
the tribulations
of a
director,
and
its
title
is deliberately indebted
to
Bulgakov's Theatrical Novel, in
which
the
writer
had detailed
with sorrow,
humour
and
bitter irony his
difficulties in
working at
the
MAT in
the
1930s.
It
also reveals,
however,
that
for Efros
this troubled
period was one of
retrospection,
during
which
he delved into history,
as
though
looking
to the
past
for
guidance
in
the
uncertain present.
He
recalls
that
during
the
difficult
rehearsals
for Road he had found joy
and solace
in
reading
the
letters
of
Nemirovich-Danchenko,
and
devotes long
passages to
Stanislavsky
and
to the
'old' MAT,
celebrating
its
work and values.
121
By
contrast with what
he
sees
as
the
world of
his day,
the
early years of the
MAT
were a period of culture and
refinement,
to
which
he
would
like
somehow to
return.
His
view
is
not
that
of
a
dispassionate
theatre
historian, but
rather
is imbued
with a strong sense of
nostalgia.
Although he is
not entirely uncritical,
his
tone
is
not one of censure
119B.
Liubimov, 'Ne bud' is kritik... ', Teatral'naia
zhizn',
14 (1986), 20-22 (p. 20); K.
Rudnitskii, Nasha
professila',
Teatr, 12 (1985), 113-117 (pp. 113-114).
120EfroS,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
107-122.
1211bid.,
p.
57,
pp.
80-106.
67
but
of admiration
for
the theatre's
founders. He
acknowledges
that they
had
their
differences, but
remarks
that theirs
were
the
quarrels of
'Olympians'.
122
Similarly, in discussing Stanislavsky's
methods
in
rehearsal,
he implies
not
that
the
director
was
too
exacting
but
rather
that some of
his
actors could not meet
his demands.
123 Elsewhere he
speaks of
Stanislavsky's
greatness,
kindness
and wisdom, and expresses regret
in
respect of
his
treatment of
Bulgakov
that
even a
'genius'
such as
Stanislavsky
could not get everything right.
124
He
says
he is
re-reading
that
director's Moss
XU31ib e ucxyccmee
(My Life in Art)
and
Pa6oma
a, cmepa na co6o
(An Actor Works
on
Himsel}),
125
and complains
that though actors of
his
own
day believe
that they
understand
Stanislavsky's
methods,
they
have in
truth
not read
these
works with
due
attention.
126
Stanislavsky's ideas, he
says,
have fallen
so out of
favour
that
actors and
directors
alike are ashamed
to
refer
to them
in
rehearsal.
127
His
celebration of
the
MAT in
these passages
is
not always
founded
on reality,
but
rather
is
coloured
by
negative comparison with
his
present circumstances.
Referring
to
an actor who wanted
to
leave
the
Malaia Bronnaia, he
suggests
that
anyone who
left
the old
MAT
would
have done
so
in
the
knowledge
that they
would
become
a
'nobody'.
128
This
notion
is
pure
fantasy; it fails
to take
account of
Meyerhold, Alisa Koonen
and other notable
'nobodies'.
Efros,
as noted above, was never a
Party
member.
Elena Davydova has
remarked, moreover,
that throughout
his life he
cherished a sense of
'inner
freedom',
as
the
source of
his
artistic
integrity
and self-worth.
129
Further,
as
1221bid.,
p.
80.
1231bid.,
p.
96.
124Ibid.,
p.
95.
125This
is
more usually,
but incorrectly,
translated as
An Actor Prepares.
126Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
100.
1271bid
128Ibid.,
p.
81. This
can
be
taken as a tacit
reference either to
Leonid Bronevoi
or to
Mikhail
Kozakov, both
of whom
left
the
Malaia Bronnaia
as a result of the
difficulties in
the rehearsals
of
Road
129Elena
Davydova, 'Na
gran
ischeznoveniia', in Zaionts,
pp.
385-402 (p. 398).
68
we shall see,
his
challenges
to the
enshrined orthodoxy of
the
MAT in his
productions of
Chekhov in
the
1960s
were acts of political
defiance. In
this
light
the
language he
uses
in describing Stanislavsky is
troubling
because it is
politically reactionary.
His
celebration of
Stanislavsky,
albeit as an
imagined
figure,
echoes
the
cult of personality and virtual canonisation of
the
MAT
director
that
had begun in
the
1930s. In fact,
throughout
his
third
book Efros's
ideas
about
the
MAT have
come
full
circle.
His
writing expresses
the
same
sense of awe
he had felt in his
earliest youth, a
desire
not only
to
revel
in history
but
to return
to
his
own past
-
to
regain a paradise
lost. In 1981 he
was given
the
opportunity
to
do
this
in
practice when
Efremov invited him
to
direct
Tartuffe
at
the
MAT.
At
this time the
MAT had
two
separate stages.
In 1973,
to
celebrate
its
seventy-
fifth
anniversary, a new
building
with a
huge,
cavernous stage and auditorium
had been
constructed on
Tverskoi Boulevard. But
an older
theatre,
off
Tverskaia,
which
had been
part of
the
MAT
since
1902,
and an affiliated space
(Filial MKhATa),
were still
in
use.
At first it had been
planned
that
Tartuffe
would
be
staged
in
the
newer
theatre.
Efros
was glad
to
have
such a
large
playing area.
Since (judging,
as
he
admitted,
from
pictures)
the
Palais-Royal
too
had had
a wide stage,
the
new
MAT, he felt,
was entirely appropriate
for
the
performance of
Moliere. Early in
rehearsals,
however,
the
production was
transferred to the affiliated
theatre.
This had formerly housed
the
Korsh
Theatre, in
which
the
audience could
be
seated on a
level
with, and
in
close
proximity
to,
an apron stage.
Efros's
satisfaction with
the
new
theatre
was as
nothing
to
his delight
at
the
chance
to
direct in
the
older.
130
In
such spaces,
he
maintained,
Stanislavsky's
spirit
lived
on.
131
130Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
286-287.
The
existence of two
buildings
sowed the seeds
for
the split of the
MAT into
two separate
theatres
in 1987. In 1970 Oleg Efremov had been
charged with rejuvenating
the
MAT,
and
in
that same year
invited Tat'iana Doronina,
then
at
the
Leningrad BDT,
to
join him. In 1987 he
relinquished control of the
newer
building
to
her. In 1932
the
MAT had been
named
in honour
69
Tartuffe
was
infused
with a mischievous gaiety, generated
in
the
first instance
by
the
openly-expressed
joy
with which
Efros
greeted
the
opportunity of
working at
the
MAT. Each
time
he
walked
into
rehearsals,
he
wrote, was
like
entering a
fairy
story.
132
His
enthusiasm spilled over,
infected
each of
his
actors and spread
in
a chain reaction
into
the
production as a whole.
It
was
played at
the
lightning
pace of much of
his
earlier work,
fuelled in
the
main
by
the
dynamism
of
the
rotund and
indefatigable Aleksandr Kaliagin
as
Orgon.
Efros
admitted
to a childish excitement
in
working with
Kaliagin,
as well as
with
Sergei Liubshin (Tartuffe)
and
Anastasiia Vertinskaia (Elmira), in
rehearsals
that
were
founded
on
improvisation,
clowning and
impish
good
humour. In fact, he
wished
that the
audience could see not
just
the
finished
production
but
these
rehearsals
too
because
they
embodied
for him
the true
spirit
of
Moliere.
133
As Vertinskaia
wrote, when
Efros
arrived at
MAT he
was
seeking a refuge and
found
one.
134
In
truth, the
contrast
between his
experiences at
the
MAT
and
his
situation at
the
Malaia Bronnaia
could not
have
been
greater.
Tickets for Tartuffe
were
hard
to
obtain;
by
the time-honoured
practice of
Russian
audiences, spectators
lobbied
actors and staff
in
order
to
gain admission.
In
the
past
this
had been
common
for Efros's
productions at
both
the
Lenkom
and
the
Malaia Bronnaia, but
recently,
by his
own account,
his
work
there
had failed
to
produce such a clamour.
135
The intimate
space at
the
MAT
gave
Efros
the contact with audiences that
he
needed,
but lacked
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. But
the
most marked contrast
between
the two theatres
was
the
harmonious
atmosphere of rehearsals, and the
fact
that
at
the
MAT he
was
directing
performers who actively wanted
to
work with
him. Liubshin had
of
Gorky
and the newer theatre
retained
this
name.
Efremov
named
his
theatre,
housed in
the
older
building,
after
Chekhov.
131Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
105.
1321bid,
p.
286.
1331bid.,
p.
321.
134piia
Vertinskaia, 'Master', in Zaionts,
pp.
133-142 (pp. 133-134).
135Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
324.
70
asked
Efros
to
cast
him
and
it had long been Kaliagin's
ambition
to play
in
an
Efros
production.
136
This
close relationship with
his
cast, and
the
loyalty
they
offered
him,
were
like
the relations
he had
once enjoyed with
the
Malaia
Bronnaia
troupe.
The latter,
to
his
mind,
had
abandoned
him. His
willingness
to
work abroad,
in
other media and with other companies, was undoubtedly prompted
by
the
hostility he felt
at
his
own
theatre.
On
the other
hand, by
all
this
activity
he
created a greater
distance between himself
and
his
company.
If Efros felt
betrayed by his
actors,
it is
equally
true that
he
neglected
them,
adding
to their
anger and
distrust,
and
he did little
to
improve
matters when
he
returned
to the
Malaia Bronnaia
to
direct
a new production of
Three Sisters in 1982.
As
we shall see
in Chapter 3, his first Three Sisters
there
in 1967,
when
he had
begun
establishing
his
own company,
had
then
been
attacked and
banned. By
1982, however, it had been
recognised as a
landmark in
the
production of
Chekhov in Russia
and
in
the career of
its director.
137
Its importance
cannot
have been lost
on
his
troupe; they too
had been key figures in his
revolutionary
new approach.
But in
staging
his
new production
he
not only rejected every
aspect of
his
previous work,
but
also
turned
his back
on all
but
one of
the
performers who
had
created
it. Iakovleva,
who
had
played
Irina,
was recast as
Masha, but
most of
the
other roles were assigned
to
young graduates and
students of
GITIS. Efros began
rehearsing
Three Sisters before his Moliere
opened at
the
MAT,
and
therefore
divided his
time
between
the two theatres.
He did
not conceal
his
enthusiasm at working with
the
MAT
company and, as
136lnnokentii
Smoktunovskii had
originally
been
cast as
Tartuffe,
and
in keeping
with
the
practice common to
Soviet
repertory theatre of casting
two
actors
in
one role,
Liubshin
requested
that
both he
and
Smoktunovsk
rehearse
the part.
(Efros, Prodolzhenie,
p.
321. )
Later, however, Smoktunovskii had
other commitments and
Liubshin
made
the role
his
own.
For Kaliagin's
comments, see
Aleksandr Kaliagin, 'lasnost", in Zaionts,
pp.
128-133 (pp.
129-130).
137Shakh-Azizova,
'60-e: klassika',
p.
171.
71
noted above, made negative
if
veiled comparisons
between
the
actors
there and
his
own.
His decision
to
recast
Three Sisters infuriated his
company,
though
it
remains unclear whether
this
was simply poor
diplomacy
on
his
part or an act of
deliberate
provocation.
According
to
his
own account, when
Three Sisters
opened not one of
the
former
company, contrary
to their
established practice,
came
back-stage
to
discuss
the
production.
138 In
relating
this,
Efros
presents
himself
as
the
injured
party,
but it is hard
to
believe
that
he had
not
foreseen
that
wiping
the
slate clean would wreak
irreparable damage
on
his
existing
troupe.
Over
the
next
two
seasons
the
situation at
the
Malaia Bronnaia
continued
to
deteriorate,
not
least because Efros
continued
to
divide his
time
between his
work
there and
in
other
theatres,
both in Moscow
and abroad.
In 1982 he
returned
to the
MAT
to
direct Tolstoy's Living Corpse,
and after
it
opened
in
December
travelled to
Japan
to
stage
A Month in
the
Country. August 1983
saw
him back in Moscow,
where
his
production at
the
Malaia Bronnaia
of
Ferdinand Bruckner's Napoleon I
ended any
hope
of a reconciliation with
Durov. Efros ignored
the
actor's request to play the title role and
instead
cast
another outsider,
Mikhail Ul'ianov. Krymova has
suggested
that the
decision
to
cast outsiders was an attempt on
Efros's
part
to
revitalise
the
company.
139
It
could equally
be interpreted, however,
as another piece of
diplomatic bungling
or
indeed
as a
deliberate
snub.
The
play
is
centrally concerned with
the
relationship
between Bonaparte
and
Josephine,
a role which
for
one
commentator was an
ideal
vehicle
for Iakovleva. 140
Ul'ianov
and
Iakovleva
proved a most effective
duo
and
the
production was a critical success,
but by
November Efros had left
the
country once more
to
direct The Cherry Orchard in
Finland.
141
138Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
31.
139Krymova,
'Zhdu',
p.
16.
14OFor
an analysis of
this
production, see
Iu. Arkhipov, 'Brukner
vpervye',
Teatr, 4 (1984)
46-52.
141When
working abroad with new casts, through an
interpreter
and with plays
in
translation,
Efros inevitably
made some changes
in his foreign
productions of
Chekhov
and
Turgenev.
72
On his
return
he focused his
attention on
his
young
GI TIS
students, with whom
he
produced
his
most
interesting
work at
this time,
The Tempest,
staged at
the
Pushkin Museum in December. This
was unlike anything
Efros had done
before. The
greater part of
Shakespeare's
script was spoken
in
unison
by
a
chorus of students
in
modem
dress,
to the
accompaniment of music
by Henry
Purcell,
played
by
a
full
orchestra conducted
by Sviatoslav Rikhter. At
the
outset
the
young actors
blew
up
balloons
and
beat
them
with
their
hands
to
imitate
the sounds of cracking masts and
the
cries of gulls,
before
releasing
them
into
the
air
in
the
midst of
the
storm, which was created
by
music and
by
light bounced
off
the
white gallery walls.
Efros had
considered several actors
for
the part of
Prospero,
and cast the
MAT
actress
Vertinskaia
as
Ariel. When
for
various reasons none of
his
chosen actors was available,
Vertinskaia
played
both
roles simultaneously,
turning an unfortunate circumstance
into
one of
the
production's greatest strengths.
In
a costume and make-up
divided into black
and white
halves,
and alternating
between
a
tone
of commanding authority and
one of
impish
mischief, she created a startling new
interpretation,
turning the
magician and
his helpmate into
two
sides of a single self.
The Tempest
was performed
for
only
two
nights, as part of
the
Museum's
December Nights
concert season.
It
was
therefore
in its
essence ephemeral,
but
in
this
lay its
true
success.
In its fusion
of a concert style of performance,
music and
light,
this production
(according
to those
few
who saw
it)
generated
the magic of a
fantasy
conjured
before
their
eyes,
in
complete accord with
the
essence of
Shakespeare's
play and
the
nature of
theatre
itself. The
memory of
Thus
although
they
were not carbon copies of
his
previous work
the changes
he
made were
relatively minor.
These
productions were not new stagings.
In fact he
used
his
previous
successes as
blue-prints,
modifying the set
designs
to
fit
new spaces, and playing
tapes of
his
Moscow
performers
to
his
new casts.
He
was
impressed (as he had been in America) by
the
dedication
and
industry
of
his Japanese
and
Finnish
actors and technical staff, and made
further
comparison with
their
Soviet
counterparts.
Efros describes his
experiences
in Toyko
and
Helsinki,
and the
difficulties
at
his
own theatre
in Prodolzhenie,
pp.
340-429,
and
Kniga,
pp.
6-44.
73
the
atmosphere of
joyous
celebration
that
affected
both
cast and audience
remained with
Efros long
after
the
event.
142
Its
success,
though
fleeting,
rekindled
his hope
that
he
could start anew, and
he declared his intention
to
open a studio with
his
young student performers.
'43
This
studio
did
not
materialise, and such a
declaration
clearly signalled
the true
end of
his
time
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. Efros
saw
the
supposed
treachery of
his
old company there
as
a repeat of
his
experiences at
the
Lenkom.
144
In
that theatre
he had
turned
fiction into
autobiography, and now
he did
so again
by
staging
Dvoretskii's
,
1Tupexmop
meampa
(The Theatre Manager),
a
drama
which explores
internecine
strife
in
a
theatre
company, as
his final
production at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia. It
opened
in February 1984,
and
in March it
was announced that
Efros had been
appointed
to the
post of
Artistic Director
at
the
Taganka, in
place
of
Liubimov,
who was
then
living in
exile.
7. At
the
Taganka, 1984-1987
Established in 1964,
under
Liubimov's leadership
the
Taganka had become
an
emblem of
the
Soviet
avant-garde.
A large
part of
its
repertoire, at
the
height
of
its
popularity, consisted of adaptations of prose works.
Liubimov,
who styled
himself (as Meyerhold had done)
the
'author'
of
the
production,
had become
a
master of so-called
'Aesopian language',
criticising through
hints
and metaphor
the
abuses of
the
Soviet
system.
His
controversial approach
had brought him
into frequent
conflict with
the
cultural authorities and
had led
to the
censorship
and
banning
of several productions.
In
the
summer of
1983 he had left for
London,
where
he had been invited by Peter James
to
stage
Crime
and
Punishment
at
the
Lyric. On
the
day it
opened an
interview
with
Liubimov
was
142Efros,
Kniga,
p.
70.
1431bid,
p.
202.
1441bid.,
pp.
48-49.
74
published
in The Times.
145 In
this
he launched
a vitriolic attack on
the
Soviet
regime.
He
commented
that
in
the
past
his
applications
to travel
abroad
had
often
been
refused.
He
also gave vent
to
his
anger at
the
banning
of
three
of
his
productions, and
implied
that
he
would not return
to the
Taganka,
or
indeed
to
the
Soviet Union itself,
until
these
plays were re-instated.
He
questioned
(as he
had
several
times
in
the
past)
the
competence and
training of
the
representatives
of
the
Ministry
of
Culture,
and suggested
that they should
be
replaced.
The
timing of
the
publication of
this
article placed
Liubimov in
a very
delicate
position.
It
coincided with
the
resurgence of more repressive measures against
expressions of
dissent, fuelled in
part
by
severe criticism
in
the
West
of
the
Soviet Union's
response
to the
shooting
down
of a
South Korean
civil aircraft
over
the
Sea
of
Japan
with
the
loss
of
269 lives. Liubimov
chose not
to
return
home,
and
instead
applied
for
a one-month extension
to
his
visa on
the
grounds
of
ill-health. Once
this
was granted,
he
extended
his
stay
in
the
West by
departing directly for Italy, having been invited
to
direct Tristan
and
Isolde in
Bologna.
By March 1984 he had
not returned and was consequently
dismissed from his
post at
the
Taganka;
soon after,
he
would
be
stripped of
his Soviet
citizenship.
146 Efros
was at
first
reluctant to
replace
him,
and was advised
by
friends
and colleagues
to
wait.
In
retrospect
this
would
have been
wiser.
He
must
have
anticipated
that
his
move
to the
Taganka
would
be
controversial.
However,
as we
have
seen,
his
position at
the
Malaia Bronnaia had become
increasingly
untenable and, moreover,
it
was rumoured
that
Liubimov did
not
145Brian
Appleyard, The Crosses Yuri Lyubimov Bears', The Times, 5 September 1983,
Arts,
p.
13.
1460u
21 March Liubimov
was expelled
from
the
Communist Party,
ostensibly
for 'not
paying
bis dues'. Then
on
26 July 1984 he
was
deprived
of
his Soviet
citizenship.
Rimma
Krechetova's
suggestion that
Efros
was
instrumental in bringing
these events about
is
unfounded.
R. Krechetova, 'Fantazii
v manere
Kallo, Taganka: Liubimov i Efros',
Nezavisimaia
gazeta,
2 September 1992,
p.
3.
75
intend
to return.
Indeed
no other
emigres had done
so
in
the past, and
Liubimov's
wife and young son
had been
permitted
to travel with
him,
which
led
to
speculation
that the authorities were actively encouraging
him
to stay
away.
147
On 22 March Efros
accepted
the post.
His decision
outraged
Russian dissident
groups abroad, and caused a
furore in intellectual
circles at
home,
where
it
was
argued
that
Liubimov
could only return
if his
place remained vacant.
148
The
Moscow theatre community split
into factions. Opposing
sides
defended
and
attacked
Efros,
and
the
debate
would continue
to rage after
his death. Many
of
the articles concerning
his
tenure at
the theatre are subjective and emotionally
charged.
Serious discussion is
mixed with
hearsay, half-truths
and
deliberate
lies,
so
that
it is difficult
to
distinguish fact from fiction.
149
Stories
about
the
Taganka
also circulated
in
the
Western
press.
For instance
much was made of
the tale that the
walls of
Liubimov's
office, which
bore
the
signatures of celebrities
from
around
the
world,
had been
painted over on
Efros's
orders.
lso
This
story was completely untrue;
the
signatures remain
intact
to this
day. It
was widely rumoured
too that
Efros
was responsible
for
the removal
from
the repertoire
in 1984
of nine of
Liubimov's
productions.
In
147Liubimov
himself later
appeared to
imply
as much when
he declared in
an
interview: The
Soviets
were
fed
up with me
because I
was always making remarks about
their artistic
restrictions.
They
sent me to
England, like
the
King
sent
Hamlet
to
England,
to
be
rid of me.
The
man who protected me,
Andropov, died,
and as soon as
that
happened, I
was
thrown out
by Konstantin Chernenko [his
successor], who
hated Andropov. ' Margaret Croyden, 'A Drama
of
Age
and
Exile', New York Times, 21 December 1986, Section 6,
p.
34.
148Krechetova,
'Fantazii',
p.
3.
149Rozov
launched
an offensive against the
Taganka in
an article
in Literaturnaia
gazeta
(18
February 1987), in
which
he
accused members of the
company of conducting a
hate
campaign
against
Efros. The Artistic Committee
of the
Taganka
wrote a
letter
of protest
to the
newspaper which
it
refused
to publish.
Rozov's
accusations were
later
vigorously
denied
on
the pages of
Teatr
and
he
was
threatened
with a
lawsuit.
See V. Rozov, Moi
trevogi',
Literaturnaia
gazeta,
18 February 1987,
p.
12; A. Smelianskii,
'Chem budem
voskresat'?...
', Teatr, 12 (1987), 42-62 (p. 54). The
original of
this
letter is
held in
the theatre's archives.
They
also contain an anonymous satirical poem written
to
'celebrate' Efros's 60th birthday, in
which
he is
cast
in
the role of
Salieri
to
Liubimov's
Mozart.
150Croyden, p.
34.
76
reality, many of
the
productions at
the theatre
were original adaptations or
versions
by Liubimov,
and
the
Authors' Rights Agency insisted
that they
be
removed
in
order
to avoid
having
to
pay
him
royalties.
lsl Other
productions
were
forced
to
close when
key
performers
left.
152 In
truth
Efros did
much
to
try to
preserve rather
than
destroy
the repertoire.
Such
controversy
formed
the
background
to
Efros's
tenure
at
the theatre,
and
his difficulties
were compounded
by
the
fact
that
he
came
to the
Taganka
at a
time
when
theatres
in Moscow
were on
the
brink
of radical change.
In
the
space
of a
few
years
they
would cease
to
be
state
institutions
and
become
autonomous, commercially viable ventures.
153 Moreover, Efros's
experience
as an
Artistic Director had been limited,
as
he himself
admitted,
to three
years at
the
Lenkom in
the
late 1960s. He
confessed
that
he knew
nothing of
financial
matters and
little
of administration.
'54 Liubimov,
although
he had frequently
clashed with
the authorities,
had
also
been
particularly adept at cultivating
the
151Beumers,
p.
246.
152In
1984 the
following
were
dropped: Tlaeuuue
u aruebie
(The Fallen
and
The Living),
1Toc.
ayucame!
(Listen), Mamb (Mother), Toeapuu4,
eepb
(Comrade, Believe),
llpecmynrzenue
u naxaaanue
(Crime
and
Punishment), Macmep
u
Mazapuma (Master
and
Margarita), Vac
nux
(Rush Hour), Pa6oma
ecmb pa6oma
(Work is Work)
and
)To.
na
na6epemno
(The House
on
the
Embankment). Rush Hour
and
Work is Work
were removed
when
the actors
Dmitrii Mezhevich
and
Veniamin Smekhov left
the theatre.
The following
remained
in
the repertoire
for
the
1984/85
season:
jlo6pba
uenoeex ua
Ceayana (The Good
Person
of
Szechwan), Jlecamb dne,
xomopbie nompac'iu
.
up
(Ten Days
that
Shook
the
World), Tapmiog6 (Tartuffe)llepexxubie
uouu
(The Wooden Horses), A
aopu aecb muxue
(But the
Dawns Here
are so
Calm), 06men (The Exchange)
and
Tpu
cecmpbs
(Three Sisters).
Beumers,
p.
305.
153Several
Moscow
theatres,
including
the
Taganka,
were
invited
to participate
in
an
'administrative
experiment' which was
introduced
on
1 January 1987. It
was
designed
to make
the theatres
increasingly independent
and self-financing.
Later in 1987, for
those theatres
which
had
participated
in
the
experiment the subordination of theatres to the control of
GUKiM
was
formally
abolished.
Initially
theatres
were still subsidised
by GUKiM, but
control was
transferred to the newly-founded
Union
of
Theatre Workers
and
later
removed
entirely.
(Beumers,
p.
247. ) Though
this
'administrative
experiment' came
into
effect at
the
end of
Efros's
tenure
he
was
to see the
beginnings
of such re-organisation and
discusses these
changes
in his
memoirs.
(Efros, Kniga,
p.
417. ) Under
the reforms, artistic and
administrative staff at
theatres
were no
longer
employees of
the
state
but hired
on
individual
contracts.
Theatres, like
other state
institutions in
the
Soviet Union, had
seen excessive over-
employment.
The
contract system and
the need
for
theatres to
be
more commercially viable
meant
big
reductions
in
staff numbers.
Theatres
also
began increasingly
to
seek commercial
sponsorship
from
the
burgeoning business
sector.
For further details,
see
Alexei Altayev,
'The Economic Experiment: Soviet Theater
of the
Last Decade', Theater, 3 (Fall 1989), 18-20.
154Efros,
Kniga,
p.
406.
77
support of powerful officials and other
interested
parties, and
to some
degree
had been
able
to
manipulate
the
system
to
his
advantage.
Efros, by
contrast,
although not a political
innocent, had been
protected
during his
time
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia by Dunaev,
and was
less
well versed
in
the
workings
(official
and otherwise) of
the
various committees and
boards
of
the
Ministry
of
Culture.
He
was
in his
own words
'a bad diplomat',
and
this
left him ill-prepared for
the
onslaught
he
was
to
face. '55
In
the theatre
itself Efros's
appearance
inevitably
met with considerable
resistance.
On his
arrival
he
met a group of about ninety of
the
Taganka's
actors and outlined
his
plans, maintaining
in
good
faith
that
he
wanted
to
work
with
the company and
develop
the theatre.
Opinion
was
divided
over
his
intentions. Some
actors expressed
fury
that
he had
taken over without
Liubimov's
permission; others were angered
that
he had
not consulted
them
first. It
was also suggested
that
he
wait
before joining
the theatre
until
it had
celebrated
its
twentieth
birthday in April. Though
some agreed
to
work with
him,
a
large body
of
the
actors and other members of staff
left for
good.
At
first,
therefore,
having
alienated
himself from his
old theatre, the
Malaia
Bronnaia, he
was
largely isolated
at
the
new one.
156
His
response
to the
problems and political entanglements
he faced
was
to
bury
himself in his
work.
This, he declared,
was
his
only salvation.
'57
He had
always
been indefatigable, but
at
the
Taganka he
worked at a
ferocious
pace and
staged six productions
in less
than
eighteen months.
'58
As
noted above,
he had
1551bid.,
p.
333.
156This
sense of
isolation
was something
he felt
very
deeply,
and recurs as a
frequent
concern
in
the memoirs
he
wrote
in
the
latter
part of
his life.
157os,
Kniga,
p.
237.
158The
Lower Depths (M. Gorky), Y
aonbi
-
ne xeucxoe
,
auyo
(War Does Not Have
a
Female Face) (S. Alexeievich), llpexpacnoe
eocxpecenbe
daut
nucnuxa
(A Beautiful Sunday
for
a
Picnic) (T. Williams,
more usually entitled
A Lovely Sunday for CrPve-coeur),
a revival
of
The Cherry Orchard (A. Chekhov), Ilonnwpa
xeadpamnbix. wempa
(One
and a
Half Square
Metres) (B. Mozhaev), in
collaboration with
Sergei Artsibashev,
and
Moliere's The
Misanthrope.
78
worked at
that theatre
before. In his
production of
The Cherry Orchard in 1975
he had
attempted
to
unite
his
own style with
that
of
the
Taganka. This had
then
been
an experiment,
but it
now
became
a
daily
exercise.
The
marriage produced
mixed results, and
it has been
argued
that given
the troubled
circumstances
under which
he
and
his
actors
laboured
at
the
Taganka Efros
was never able
either
to
develop
the
older aesthetics of
the theatre or
to
realise
fully his
own
intentions.
159 Nevertheless, in
the three
years
he
spent at the theatre
he
achieved some notable successes.
As
we shall see
in Chapter 5,
the
success of
The Cherry Orchard
there
in 1975
had
stemmed
largely from
the
vivid portrayals
by Alla Demidova
and
Vladimir
Vysotskii
of
Ranevskaia
and
Lopakhin. In 1985 he
revived
this
old production,
but Vysotskii had died in 1980,
and was replaced
by B. D'iatchenko. Although
Efros himself
shared
the
view of critics
that
his
performance
lacked
the
dynamism
and
tragic
force
of
Vysotskii's,
160
the
production was warmly
received on
tour
in Paris,
and won a special
jury
prize at
the
prestigious
Belgrade International Theatre Festival. Here Efros
also received
the
award
for
Best Director for his
production of
Gorky's Lower Depths. Iakovleva had
followed Efros from
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
and
in
time
he
also gathered about
him
a group of
those
Taganka
actors prepared
to
work with
him. He developed
a close working relationship with
Demidova
and with
Valerii Zolotukhin.
Relations
with
Zolotukhin
were consolidated
in 1986 during
rehearsals
for
Moliere's Misanthrope,
a production
that
had
much of
the
polish and cohesion
of
Efros's better
work at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. By 1986 it
appeared
that
under
Efros's
command
the
Taganka
was gathering momentum again, although
he
was moving
the theatre
in
a
different direction from
the
one
Liubimov
would
have
envisaged.
His
productions
lacked
the
direct
political comment
that
had
159Smelianskii,
'Chem budem',
p.
54.
160Efros
interviewed by Monique Sueur in 'La Taganka de Moscou
et
Anatoli Efros
an
Th
tre
de 1'Europe', Avant Scene T194tre, 808 (1987), 56-58 (p. 58).
79
characterised
his
predecessor's work.
But in
this
he
was not retreating
from
contemporary reality.
Indeed it
was suggested
by
more
than one critic
that
his
interpretations
of
Gorky
and
Moliere
expressed current concerns.
161
More
importantly, his
productions reflected
the
changing needs of
Soviet
audiences,
which were
themselves
one
barometer
of a changing
Russia.
In
the
1960s
and
1970s, during
the
zastoi,
theatres
like
the
Taganka had
given
public voice
to
sentiments echoed
by dissidents in
private.
Although
the
Taganka
productions
had
often
fallen foul
of
the
censors,
the theatre
had
also
functioned
as an example of
the
kind
of permitted
dissent
that the
regime
found
actually useful.
As Kyle Wilson has
suggested,
it
was allowed
to
exist partly
because
of
its
considerable propaganda value as a vitrina or window-dressing.
It
could
be
paraded
before
those
Western
critics who asserted
that the
Soviet
Union lacked
artistic
freedom
as a proof
that their
claims were
ill-founded. The
theatre only seated
414,
and tickets
were very
hard
to
come
by. It functioned
therefore as a
'safety-valve', by
allowing a
few dissatisfied intellectuals
to
indulge
themselves,
but in
circumstances
that
assured that their
pernicious and
subversive message reached only a small audience.
162
By
the mid
1980s, however, it had become increasingly
unnecessary
for
the
Taganka,
or
indeed Soviet
theatre
as a whole,
to
fulfil
this
special
function. On
10 March 1985, less
than
a year after
Efros's
appointment,
Mikhail Gorbachev
had been
appointed
General Secretary. His
calls
for
glasnost'
(openness)
meant
that
ideas
once expressed
from
the
stage could now
begin
to
be
articulated
in
the
press and even
to
much
larger
television audiences.
The
theatre
ceased
to
be
a
forum for debate; for Mikhail Shvydkoi it
stopped
being 'more
than theatre',
161See
Smelianskii, 'Chem budem',
pp.
42-62; Iu. Smelkov, 'Novoe
procbtenie',
Moskovskii
konisonwlets, 9 January 1985,
p.
3,
and
E. Surkov, 'Spor
o cheloveke',
Pravda, 7 February
1985,
p.
3.
162Kyle
Wilson, 'Splinters
of a
Shattered Mirror: Experimentation
and
Innovation in
Contemporary Soviet Theatre', in Transformations in Modern European Drama,
ed.
by Ian
Donaldson (London: Macmillan, 1983),
pp.
99-118 (p. 107).
80
and as
Demidova
maintained
there was as much satisfaction
in
reading a
newspaper as
there
once
had been in
going
to the
Taganka.
163
Efros's fortunes
appeared
to
improve. He began
to
develop
plans
for
a new
repertoire
that
included
proposals
for Hedda Gabler, Hamlet
and a new
production of
The Tempest. Later
the actor
Innokentii Smoktunovskii
suggested
that
in
the
years
Efros
spent at
the
Taganka his
art,
despite
all
his
difficulties, truly appeared
to
be developing in
a new
direction,
one not
fully
achieved
but full
of promise.
164
Efros
was not
destined
to
fulfil
this
potential.
Although he
could not
have known it, The Misanthrope
would
be his final
production.
It
opened
in October 1986. Gorbachev himself
attended one of
the
first
performances and met
Efros backstage.
165
It has been
suggested
that
Gorbachev's
appearance was
to
play a
decisive
role
in Efros's fate. The
meeting apparently prompted
the
writing of a
letter,
signed
by 137
actors and
other staff at
the
Taganka, including Efros himself. In
this they
requested
Gorbachev's
assistance
in bringing Liubimov back
to the
Soviet Union,
and
163Mikhail
Shvydkoi, 'Nostalgia for
the
Soviet Theater
-
Is There Hope for
the
Future? ',
Performing Arts Journal, 43 (1993), 111-119 (pp. 114-115); A. Demidova, Teatr
na
Taganke:
Utraty i
nadezhdy',
Izvestiia, 14 April 1987,
p.
3.
164Innokentii
Smoktunovskii, in his introdution
to
Anatolii Efros, '0 blagorodstve', Ogonek,
34 (1987), 22-24 (p. 22).
165The
content of the conversation
between Efros
and
Gorbachev became
an
issue
of
dispute.
Aleksandr
Gershkovich
reported
in
an article that the
Soviet Premier had
expressed regret that
some of
Liubimov's
productions
(and in
particular
The House
on
the
Embankment)
were no
longer in
the repertoire at the
Taganka. Gershkovich found Gorbachev's
comments
tactless,
because they appeared
to
imply
that
Efros
was
to
blame for
the removal of
Liubimov's
productions.
Aleksandr Geshkovich, 'Amerikanskaia Rossiia: Efros i Liubimov', Teatral'naia
zhizn,
10 (1999), 14-16,26-27 (p. 14). In
another article
it
was reported
that the production
in
question was not
The House
on
the
Embankment, but Bulgakov's Master
and
Margarita,
a
production
devised
and staged
by Liubimov in 1977. (R. Cullen
and
C. McGuigan, Director
Without
a
Country', Newsweek, 19 January 1987,
p.
50. )
Gershkovich
was not privy to the conversation
backstage
at the
Taganka. Vladimir Orenov,
an editor at
Teatral'naia
zhizn, added a
list
of corrections to the end of
Gershkovich's
article.
In
one
he
wrote
that
Gorbachev had
told
Efros
that
he had
seen
his
production of
Napoleon I
at
the
Malaia Brnnnaia,
and
had
asked
him
why so
few
of
his
productions were now
to
be
seen at
that theatre.
Efros
allegedly replied that
not every theatre preserved repertoires as
Liubimov's
had been
at
the
Taganka. V. Orenov, Neobkhodimye
poiasneniia',
Teatral'naia
zhizn,
10
(1999),
p.
27.
81
called
for his
re-instatement as
Artistic Director.
166
News
of
this
letter
reached
Liubimov
when
he
was
in Washington, directing
at
the
Arena Stage. In
an
article
in The New York Times (21 December 1986) he
expressed an apparent
willingness
to
return
to
Moscow,
provided
that
his
citizenship was returned to
him,
and
that
if
allowed
to
return
to the
Taganka he
would also
be
given
permission
to
work abroad.
167
Efros's
position at
the theatre
was now
far from
secure.
The Russian dmigrd
paper
Russkaia
mysl'
(Russian Thought)
responded
to the
speculation about
Liubimov's
return with an unverified
announcement
that
Efros had
agreed to
step
down from his
post.
He did
not
resign.
He had
previously
been hospitalised
twice
for
a
heart
condition, most
recently early
in 1985. His ill-heath
was almost certainly exacerbated
by
the
intense difficulties he faced
at
the
Taganka,
and on
January 13 1987 he
was
called
into
the
offices of the
Ministry
of
Culture for
a meeting at which,
reportedly,
he
was subjected to
a
ferocious interrogation. 168
He
suffered
another
heart
attack and
later died
at
home. He
was sixty-two.
166GeoviCh,
'Amerikanskaia',
p.
14.
167Croyden,
p.
34.
168hkovich,
'Amerikanskaia',
p.
26.
82
Chapter 2
HyKHbI
HOBble (bOpMbI
The Seagull
(1966)
83
Efros directed The Seagull in 1966
at
the
Lenkom,
whose
Artistic Director he
had been
since
1964. His interpretation
of
Chekhov's
play was entirely new
to
the
Russian
stage, and generated a critical uproar
in
the theatre
world of
Moscow. The
production was said
to
have failed
to
express
the mood of
optimism
demanded in Soviet interpretations
of
Chekhov. It
also
deliberately
challenged
the expectations of critics and audiences
familiar
with
the
approach
and style of presentation used
by Stanislavsky
at
the
MAT. This
chapter
discusses Efros's innovative
approach
in
the context of
the
play's performance
history in Russia,
with particular reference
to
Stanislavsky's
production of
1898, but
shows
too
in
what ways
Efros's Seagull
reflected
the
political
situation of
its
time and clarifies
further its
role
in his
evolution as a
director.
169
The
true
beginning
of
the
MAT
was a marathon, eighteen-hour meeting
between
its founders, Stanislavsky
and
Nemirovich-Danchenko,
which
began
at
the
Slavianskii Bazaar
on
22 June 1897. But both in
theatre mythology and
in
authoritative
histories
the
origin of
the
new art of
the
MAT is
often seen
to
have
been Stanislavsky's
production of
The Seagull. That
production
is
said
to
have
been
remarkable
for its
stunning sharpness, unrelenting
truth-to-life
and
innovative
staging.
'7 But
the
real success of
the
play
in 1898,
as
Edward
Braun has
maintained, was
for
the theatre
itself; it
gave
the
new company a
sense of
identity,
a corporate style which,
though
still
tentative,
held infinite
promise.
171
Indeed
the theatre
affirmed
that
identity by
adopting as
its
emblem
the seagull which
to this
day is
emblazoned across
its front
curtains.
This
was
the second production of
the
play.
The first had been
staged
two
years previously at
the
Aleksandrinskii Theatre in St. Petersburg. Theatre
169The
greater part of this chapter
has
already
been
published as an article.
See Ros Dixon,
'Slaughtering Sacred Seagulls: Anatolii Efros's Production
of
The Seagull
at
the
Lenkom in
1966', Irish Slavonic Studies, 21 (2000), 49-73.
170Elena
Poliakova, 'Ereticheski
-
genial'naia p'ese',
Teatr, 8 (1966), 37-43 (p. 38).
171Edward
Braun, The Director
and the
Stage (London: Methuen, 1987),
p.
65.
84
histories
and
biographies
of
Chekhov have frequently dismissed
that
first
production as an unmitigated
disaster,
and at the same
time
have lauded
Stanislavsky's
as a complete success.
As Laurence Senelick has
acknowledged,
this
excessively simple assessment owes much
to theatre
legend,
and
like
most
legends is
an accretion of
half-truths
and exaggerations
around a
kernel
of
truth.
172
Nevertheless, Stanislavsky's
production was a
significant
turning point
for Chekhov,
who
had been
acclaimed as a writer of
short stories and
theatrical
farces but had
enjoyed only mixed success as a
serious
dramatist. Thereafter he
was closely associated with
the theatre,
working as
the equivalent of an
in-house
playwright.
As
a result,
the
approach
evolved
by Stanislavsky became
the
definitive
performance style
for Chekhov's
work.
The Seagull
was also a
triumph
for Stanislavsky in
the
evolution of a new
theatrical aesthetic, and can
be
said
to
have laid
the
foundation
of
the
future
development
of
the
MAT.
173
The
theatre,
first in its
production of
Tsar Fedor
and
then
with
The Seagull,
explored
the then
new concept of
designing
a
production
from
scratch.
174
In The Seagull Stanislavsky's
aim was
to
create a
setting which would present as great an
illusion
of reality as possible.
At
this
period
his
company was
housed in
the
Hermitage Theatre,
and
he
used all that
theatre's resources
in
an attempt
to
create a complete world
for
the
play.
Every
172Laurence
Senelick, The Chekhov Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
p.
28.
1731t
should
be
noted that
Stanislavsky did
not work alone on
The Seagull but
with
Nemirovich-Danchenko. However, in
essence,
Nemirovich-Danchenko
supplied an
interpretation
of
the
written
text
which
Stanislavsky
then embodied
in
theatrical
foam;
see
Jean
Benedetti, 'Stanislavsky
and
the
Moscow Art Theatre', in A History
of
the
Russian Theatre,
ed.
by Robert Leach
and
Victor Borovsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
pp.
254-277 (p. 259).
1741t
is
generally acknowledged that
Stanislavsky's development
of an approach
to staging on
the
basis
of a total
design
concept was
influenced by European
companies such as
the
Meiningen'Ibeatre. However he is
sometimes credited, erroneously, with
introducing
the
idea
to the
Russian
stage.
In fact his ideas
and practice also
had
native antecedents.
The
playwright
Aleksei Tolstoy, for instance,
reacted
in
a similar
fashion
against
the standard
practices of much nineteenth-century theatre
when
in 1866 he
elaborated a new approach
to
staging
for his
play
The Death
of
Ivan
the
Terrible;
see
Cynthia Marsh, 'Realism in
the
Russian Theatre, 1850-1882', in Leach
and
Borovsky,
pp.
146-165 (p. 155).
85
detail
was
incorporated into
a complex visual and aural mise-en-scene, which
was also
intended
to
evoke atmosphere and
to
hint
at a
hidden
sub-text.
The
indoor
scenes were crowded with authentic stage properties and
loaded
with
realistic
detail:
thus
for instance
a real
fire burned in
the
grate, and a glass
held
by Treplev
shattered when
he dropped it. In Chekhov's
stage
directions
the
opening act
is
set outdoors on the
estate.
He
specifies
that there
is
a
lake
and an
avenue of
trees,
obscured
from
view
by
a stage
hastily
constructed
for
the
presentation of
Treplev's
play.
Contrary
to this
instruction,
the
lake in
Stanislavsky's
production
dominated
the
stage area, and
the
designer, Viktor
Simov,
attempted
to
recreate the
beauties
of a moonlit country estate
by
using a
half-lit
tracery
of
foliage. The
technical
resources of the
Hermitage limited
the
realisation of some of
Stanislavsky's
plans, and
his idea
of creating a
total
illusion
of reality appears
to
have been better
as a concept than
in its
execution.
175
In fact
at one point
Simov
resorted
to
using
dimmed lighting in
order
to
draw
the
audience's attention away
from
the
obvious artificiality of the
set and
from its
crudely painted scenery.
176
Nevertheless, for
spectators
accustomed
to
stock sets and painted
drops
this
setting created a stunning effect.
As Braun has
remarked, one of
the
great merits
for
a contemporary audience of
Stanislavsky's
production
lay in
the
fact
that
everyday
life
was portrayed with a
degree
of
fidelity
that
was entirely unprecedented.
177
Stanislavsky
also augmented
Chekhov's directions by
adding an orchestrated
score of sound effects throughout the
action.
The
purpose of this
was two-fold.
On
the
one
hand, it
generated a sense of a world
beyond
the
set; on
the
other,
it
was used
to
create an appropriate mood
for
each scene.
Mood
was created
through sound,
but
also through
silence.
Stanislavsky's
production extended
1751n
1905
the production was revived
in
the
company's new and
fully-equipped
theatre.
This
permitted
Stanislavsky
and
Simov
to
construct the
set
in
greater
detail; Braun, The Director,
p.
64.
176Konstantin
Rudnitskii, '"Chaika"- 1898, in Chekhovskie
chteniia v
Iahe: Chekhov i
teatr, ed.
by V. I. Kuleshov (Moscow: Kniga, 1976),
p.
65.
177Braun,
The Director,
p.
64.
86
the
pauses and silences,
timing them
exactly
to
between five
and
fifteen
seconds.
The
entire pace of
the
play was slowed, and
for
the
most part
it
was
played as a mournful and
lyrical
elegy
in
which
theatrical time
was replaced, as
it
were,
by
real
time.
Stanislavsky's
production was greeted with ovations on
its
opening night,
but it
subsequently enjoyed only moderate success, playing
just
thirty-two times
in
four
seasons.
It
was revived
in 1905, but
after only eleven performances was
dropped from
the
repertoire completely.
178
Nevertheless, having
once
found
what
he believed
to
be
an appropriate style and mood
for
the
works of
Chekhov, Stanislavsky
tended to
repeat salient aspects of
his first
success
in
other productions.
In fact, he developed
something of a sub-genre
in
the
Russian
theatre of
the time,
a
form
which
Meyerhold
called
the
'Theatre
of
Mood'.
179 In
this
manner
the
very
features
of
The Seagull
which
had
recently
seemed so
innovative became instead
the
norm, and were
judged
to
be
an
inherent
part of
the
style of
the
MAT.
In
the
prologue
to
his
play
Mucmepua-6ytfig6 (Misteriia-buff) Vladimir
Maiakovskii famously
mocked
Chekhov's dramas:
CMOTPRMOb
H BRA KM
-
rnycsrr na gnune
TCT
Man
Aa A[
BaHm.
A
Hac He HHTepecyioT
HH MAN, HH TeTH,
-
TeTh HJMbH JXOMa Ha*eTe.
1781bid.,
p.
65.
179See
Meyerhold's
critique of the techniques
of
the
MAT in "Ibe Naturalistic Theatre
and
The
Theatre
of
Mood', in Meyerhold
on
Theatre,
ed. and trans. by Edward Braun (London: Eyre
Methuen, 1969),
pp.
23-34.
87
MN
Toxce noWaxceM HaczonnWw xH3Eb,
110 ORa
B spernue aeo6wtaHemee TeazpoM npespaneHa.
180
Maiakovskii's
sentiments echoed
those of many
leaders
of
the artistic avant-
garde, who
in
the
years
following
the
October Revolution largely
rejected
Chekhov's
work.
This
rejection was
due in
part
to the
playwright's
inextricable
association with
the
MAT, itself denounced
as a
bastion
of
bourgeois
values, a
theatre whose style was out of
keeping
with
that
of
the
placard
theatre
of
the
Revolution.
Chekhov's interest in
the
psychology of
the
individual, his
humanism
and allusive
imagery had
no place
in
the
agit-prop
theatre,
which
demanded
readily-identifiable character
types
and an absolute clarity of
message.
In
the
1920s
there
were
few
productions of
his
plays.
Even
the
Moscow Art Theatre,
although
it
took
Three Sisters
and
The Cherry Orchard
on
its foreign
tours, stopped playing
Chekhov
to
Russian
audiences.
His
works,
like
those of all pre-revolutionary writers, were also subjected
to the
overtly
ideological interpretations
of
Soviet
critics.
As
complex
dramas,
they
proved remarkably resilient,
for
the
most part,
to
purely socio-political analyses.
The Cherry Orchard, it
must
be briefly
remarked, was a notable exception.
In
this play
it
was not
difficult for
critics
to
identify
a
Chekhov
who advocated
the
destruction
of an obsolete ruling class,
to
see
in Lopakhin
the
rise of
the
bourgeoisie,
and
to
view
Trofimov
as a visionary and as a
harbinger
of
the
coming
Revolution.
181
It
seems
hardly
surprising
therefore that
at
this time
The
180Vladimir
Maiakovskii, Misteriia-buff (Version II) in Sochineniia, 1
vol
(Moscow: OGIZ,
1941),
pp.
408-451 (p. 409).
1811n,
1929, Glavrepertkom,
the
body
which regulated
the
repertoires of
Soviet
theatres,
assigned all
Chekhov's
major plays, with
the exception of
The Cherry Orchard,
to the category
of
Litera B. This
group
included
plays of the classic repertoire whose content was seen
to
be
completely
irrelevant from
a
Soviet
socio-political view-point.
The Cherry Orchard, by
contrast, was categorised
in Litera A. Plays in
this group were characterised as
'those
works
which
due
to their
high
socio-political content
have
not
lost
their meaning
for Soviet
audiences'.
Repetuarnyi
ukazatel',
29 (1929),
p.
9. Glavrepertkom
was established
in 1923
88
Cherry Orchard
was
the
most regularly and widely performed of all
Chekhov's
plays.
However, it
was
frequently interpreted
as a satirical
farce
that
mocked
the estate owners and
their
parasites.
A. Lobanov took
just
such a view when
he
produced
it
at
the
Ruben Simov Studio in 1935. For Lobanov,
the
moral and
material
decay
of
the
gentry was a rot
that needed
to
be
rooted out.
But
the
replacement of
this social class
by
one of
industrial
capitalists was no more
desirable. Viewing
the
characters critically, with neither pity nor sympathy,
the
director
exaggerated single negative
traits
in
each character
to
comic effect.
Thus, for instance, Ranevskaia's distinguishing
attribute was
her lack
of
concern
for
others, while
Lopakhin, beneath
a mask of
kindness
and
his 'broad,
Russian
nature', was a
dangerous
predator, and
Trofimov
was an absurd
gabbler.
182 Act II
was set
in
a seedy restaurant; a
tipsy
Trofimov
was
thrown
out
in
the middle of
his harangue,
which
he later
continued
in
a
bath-house
packed with students of
both
sexes.
183
These
character
traits,
which
in
previous productions
had been interpreted
as purely
human failings,
were seen
here
to
be
socially
determined,
and
the
audience were expected
to
judge
Chekhov's
characters accordingly.
184
F. Litvinov, in
a production staged
in
1935 for
the
Krasnyi fakel' (Red Lantern) Theatre
of
Novosibirsk, invited
the
audience
to
participate
in
what
Rudnitskii described
as
'a
satirical execution' of
the
characters.
185
Social
satire catches
the
mood of a particular moment and rarely endures; such
extreme
interpretations
of
Chekhov's
work
did
not stand
the test
of
time.
These
productions,
however,
although short-lived and
indeed
rapidly
forgotten, broke
and controlled
the
repertoires of
Soviet
theatres
until
1953,
when
this
function
was
taken
over
by
the
Ministry
of
Culture.
182A.
Lobanov, 'Stsenicheskoe
voploshchenie
Chekhova', Sovetskoe Iskusstvo, 14 April
1933,
p.
3.
183LaUrence
Senelick, 'Chekhov's Bubble Reputation', in Chekhov Then
and
Now,
ed.
by
Douglas Clayton (New York: Peter Lang, 1977), 5-17 (p. 11).
184E.
A. Polotskaia, '"Vishnevyi
sad":
Zhizn'
vo vremeni',
in Literaturnye
proizvedeniia v
dvizhenii
epokh
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983),
pp.
229-287 (pp. 263-264).
185Konstantin
Rudnitskii, Spektakli
raznykh
let (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1974),
p.
89.
89
new ground
in
the
approach
to
Chekhov in
the
Soviet
theatre.
They
were
characterised, on
the
one
hand, by
a greater objectivity
in
their
interpretation
of
character, and on
the
other
by
a style of presentation which
broke
with
the
traditions of
the
MAT. As
we shall see,
these
features
were
to
be fundamental
to
what was seen as a
'new'
approach
to
Chekhov in
the mid
1960s, but
they
would
have been forgotten for
almost
thirty
years when
Soviet
theatre
directors
re-discovered
them then.
The MAT,
although rejected
in
the
post-Revolutionary period,
had
not remained
out of
favour for long; in 1921
the
Bolshevik Government had
assigned
to
it
a
special protected status as an
'academic'
theatre.
As
we
have
seen,
later, in
the
1930s, its
style of performance was actively promoted as a model
to
be
copied
in
theatres throughout the
Soviet Union. The MAT
was encouraged
to
present,
often
in
the manner of a
factory
production
line,
monumental and
ideological
epics extolling
Revolutionary
and military victories, and
these
dramas began
to
overshadow
its
previous works.
By
this time
Stanislavsky had
effectively
retreated
from
the theatre
he had founded,
and
those
of
his
productions which
continued
to run
became increasingly fossilised
museum pieces.
186
Others, like
The Seagull,
although no
longer
part of
the
repertoire,
became
theatre
legends
and entered
into
a
kind
of collective memory.
Further, Stanislavsky's
productions of
Chekhov in
particular came
to
be
synonymous with what were
seen as
'correct' interpretations,
and were
frequently
used as the
'blue-print' for
subsequent productions.
In
terms
of
Chekhov's
scripts,
this
meant a
failure
to
recognise
the
complexity of
his
writing, and
therefore the
possibility,
indeed
necessity, of multiple
interpretations. Ironically,
such rigidity of
thought
with
regard
to
Stanislavsky's interpretations
was
directly
contrary
to
his
own credo
186Following
a
heart
attack
in 1928, Stanislavsky
spent
increasingly long
periods away
from
the theatre
he had founded,
rehearsing,
developing his 'system',
and working on opera.
90
and
to the
very essence of a
theatre that
had been founded
on
innovation
and
experimentation.
187
During World War II, innovation in
the
Soviet
theatre gave way
to the
imperatives
of propaganda.
In
addition, many
theatres were evacuated and new
productions were
few. The
only
Moscow
production of
The Seagull
at
this
period was staged
in 1944 by Aleksandr Tairov in his bomb-damaged Kamernyi
Theatre.
'88
His
set was minimalist and consisted of a platform surrounded
by
grey and
black
velvet curtains.
Different locales
were established
by
the
use of
a
few
stage properties and with
delicate drapes,
which were arranged
differently
for
each scene and
through
which spotlights
filtered, lending
an airy and
dream-
like
quality.
The director's
primary purpose was
to
reveal what
he
saw as a
central
theme of
Chekhov's
play:
the
need
for
new art
forms
to
attain
the
highest
truth.
He
reduced
the
drama
to
a
discourse
on
the
nature of art, and
to this
end
187Poliakova,
'Ereticheski',
p.
38.
188Aleksandr
Tairov (1885-1950)
shared with
Meyerhold
an antipathy
towards the
developments in
theatre after the
Renaissance
which
had
culminated
in
the
'dead-end
of
late
nineteenth century
Naturalism. Like Meyerhold he
sought to revive older
forms:
the theatre of
Ancient Greece
and
Rome, folk dramas,
the
art of the
Commedia dell' Arte,
and pantomime.
He
envisaged and sought
to establish a theatre
in
which an
ideal
or universal actor would
be
equally capable of playing
tragedy,
farce,
opera and pantomime, as well as performing as a
dancer
and as an acrobat.
Tairov drew
on a
huge
range of sources.
In his
training of the
actor,
deriving his
techniques
from ballet
and music,
he
valued equally the mastery of the
body
and
voice, seeing
them as a unified
instrument
of expression.
His
work was
influenced
too
by
Greek
and
Eastern
myth, symbolist poetry and the artistic movements of the
Cubo-futurists
and
Constructivists. In 1915 he
opened the
Kamernyi Theatre
with
his
wife
Ailsa Koonen
as
a
forum for
experimentation
in
theatre
which aimed
to
synthesise all art
forms. His
theatre
attracted
leading Soviet
artists as set and costume
designers,
and
here he
produced visually
stunning and
dynamic
productions of
Oscar Wilde's Salomi in 1917,
and
in 1922 Charles
Lecoq's Giro le-Girofla,
and
(his
acclaimed masterpiece)
Racine's Phaedra; later
productions
included the
works of writers as varied as
Eugene ONeill, Vladimir Maiakovskii
and
Maxim
Gorky. Tairov
remained
largely
unaffected
by
the
Revolution;
championed
by
the
Commissar
for Enlightenment Anatolii Lunacharskii, he
continued to pursue an
independent
course
in
the
face
of
intense
criticism
from
others.
In
the
1930s, however,
when experimentation was
inimical to
Soviet
political tasks, his
work was condemned as
'formalist'. At
this period
Tairov
owed
his
survival to
his
ability to adapt to the
new climate, producing
Vsevolod
Visnhevskii's Onmu.
Mucmu4ecxaa mpazedua
(Optimistic Tragedy) in 1933
as a model of
socialist realist
theatre.
(Nick Worrall, in International Directory
of
Theatre
-
3: Actors,
Directors
and
Designers,
ed.
by David Pickering (Detroit: St. James Press, 1996),
pp.
739-
741. ) The Kamernyi
was closed
in 1949 but Tairov's
attempts to
remain
independent
of the
Soviet
regime
have been interpreted by
some as a capitulation that to some extent
overshadowed
his important
contribution to
Russian
theatre.
For further
material see
Nick
Worrall, Modernism
to
Realism
on
the
Soviet Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989),
pp.
15-75;
and
Aleksandr Tairov, Zapiski
rezhisser, stat'i,
besedy,
rechi, pisma
(Moscow: VTO, 1970). In English
as
Notes
of a
director,
trans.
by William Kuhlke (Coral
Gables, Florida: University
of
Miami Press,
c.
1969).
91
cut
the
script
by
a
third.
He
eliminated
lines
and stage
directions
that
referred
to
characters
he
considered secondary, and removed
details intended
to
produce a
fuller
picture of every-day
life. Music
was an
important feature
of all
Tairov's
work, and
in
this
case
he
used
the
music of
Tchaikovsky
as an accompaniment
to
Treplev's
play.
The
production was essentially a concert performance, and
not a critical success.
It
soon closed, and
indeed
the theatre
itself,
condemned
as an example of
bourgeois decadence,
was
forced
to
do
the
same some
five
years
later. However,
the
importance
of
Tairov's Seagull
should not
be
underestimated.
Until Efros's
production
twenty-two
years
later,
this
flawed
version represented
the only significant attempt
to
find
a completely new
interpretative key
to
Chekhov's
play.
Other
productions
tended to
preserve
the
legend
of
the
MAT,
and
to
copy the
style of
Stanislavsky.
189
1960
saw
the
centenary of
Chekhov's birth
-
an
event every
Soviet
theatre
was expected
to
honour. Viktor Stanitsyn
and
I.
Raevskii
revived
The Seagull
at
the
MAT,
using many of
Stanislavsky's ideas
as
their
'blue-print'. This
production, which even reproduced exactly
Stanislavsky's
pauses, appears
for
the
most part
to
have been
a poor copy of
the
original.
Elena Poliakova
noted
that
it
was a
lifeless
rendering of the
script
which audiences greeted with a polite,
but indifferent
response.
19
For
Rudnitskii it failed
entirely
to
present the
complexity of emotions
that
he
believed
were central
to
Chekhov's
characters.
191
M. Turovskaia harshly
criticised
the
production
for its
want of originality and
its failure
to
interest
a
189poliakova,
'Ereticheski',
p.
38. The Seagull
was not the most popular of
Chekhov's
major
dramas. In
the
Soviet Union, between 1917
and
Efros's
production of
1966,
there were
forty-eight
professional stagings of the play.
In
this
same period there were
fifty-five
productions of
Three Sisters
and almost twice that number of
The Cherry Orchard The last
named could
be
most clearly re-interpreted
in
accord with
Soviet ideology
and propaganda, and
this accounted
for its
popularity.
For
a
full list
of professional theatre productions of
Chekhov in
the
Soviet Union;
see
V. Berezkin, Postanovki
pes
A. P. Chekova
v sovetskom
teatre
1917-1986
Body
(Moscow
-
Prague, 1987).
190Poliakova,
'Ereticheski',
p.
38.
191Konstantin
Rudnitskii, 'Vremia, Chekhov i
rezhissery',
Voprosy
teatra
(Moscow: VTO,
1965),
pp.
135-159 (pp. 139-140).
92
modern audience.
192 Nevertheless,
whereas
the
directors had little
new
to
offer,
Nisson Shiffrin's decor
marked
the
beginning
of a new approach
to the
presentation of
Chekhov. He blended
exterior and
interior
scenes, so that the
natural surroundings were always visible
in
the
house. The interiors had
no
ceilings and only partial walls, and
the set
included
a panorama,
depicting
trees
and
the
horizon,
which was visible
in
all
four
acts.
Similarly,
tall
window
drapes hung in both
the
indoor
and outdoor settings, creating what
Arnold
Aronson has described
as
'an
ever-present sense of spatial memory and
anticipation'.
193
As
we shall see,
the
evocation of memory was
to
be
a
significant
feature
of
Iurii Pimenov's
setting
for Knebel"s
staging of
The
Cherry Orchard
at
the
Theatre
of
the
Soviet Army in 1965,
and of
Valerii
Levental"s design for Efros's
production of
the
same play at
the
Taganka in
1975. In
that production, as well as
in his Three Sisters in 1967,
although
the
settings would
be
much starker
than
Shiffrin's, Efros
was also
to
aim at a
fusion between
the
interiors
and outdoors.
194
192M.
Turovskaia, Ustarel li Chekhov7, Literaturnaia
gazeta,
26 July 1960,
p.
3.
193Amo1d
Aronson, 'The
scenography of
Chekhov', in The Cambridge Companion
to
Chekhov,
ed.
by Vera Gottlieb
and
Paul Allain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000),
pp.
134-148 (p. 140).
194This
fusion
of exterior and
interior
settings was also seen
in Josef Svobodas
set
for
Otomar KrejLa's
production of
The Seagull
at the
Tyl Theatre in Prague in 1960. Svoboda
encased
the stage
in black drapes
and
hung leafed branches
over the stage
throughout the
action.
There
were no walls
for
the
indoor
scenes;
instead
these
were suggested
by
pieces of
furniture
and
free-standing
set pieces.
The
atmosphere of each scene was created
through the
use of one of
Svoboda's
technological creations,
'light
curtains', which created a scrim-like
effect.
The
setting was
fluid
and changing
but
produced a unified stage-picture.
Aronson,
p.
139.
Josef Svoboda (1920-2002)
trained as an architect
in Prague before
making
his debut
as a
designer in 1947
at the
Czech National Theatre
where
he
was appointed
head designer in 1951.
During the course of a
long
career, working
in
many
different
countries,
Svoboda
completed
over
600
productions of
drama,
opera and
ballet. Arguably
the
most
innovative designer
of the
post-war period,
his
work represented perhaps the
nearest approach to the
vision of the great
pioneers of modern stage
design Adolphe Appia
and
Gordon Craig,
who
first
conceived of
stage
design
as an expressive art
in its
own right, rather than a mere
illustration
of
locale. For
Svoboda,
scenography was a
dramatic instrument
capable of
functioning dynamically in
conjunction with the stage action, and to this
end
he introduced
new and sophisticated means
of
lighting, developed
the
use of projected
images (including laser),
and
invented
various
forms
of
kinetic
scenery.
See Jarka M. Burian, in Pickering,
pp.
733-735.
For further
material on
Svoboda,
see
Josef Svoboda, The
secret of theatrical space: memoirs of
Josef Svoboda,
ed. and trans.
by J. M. Burian (New York: Applause, 1993); for his
obituary,
see
'Josef Svoboda', Te limes, 16 April 2002,
p.
29.
Otomar Kreji`a began his
career as an actor under
Emil Frantis& Burian
and
became
chief
director
and
head
of
drama
at the
Czech National Theatre in
the
late 1950s. In 1965 he
established
Divadlo
za
Branob (Theatre Beyond
the
Gates),
and
at
both
theatres
he
collaborated
93
The 1960s
also saw
the
first
signs of a
fresh
attitude
to the treatment of
Chekhov's
characters.
This
was
first
apparent
in Boris Babochkin's Ivanov
at
the
Maly Theatre in 1960. Babochkin himself
played
Ivanov
with energy and
passion,
but
stripped
him
of romantic colouring and
demonstrated little
sympathy
for his
character.
195
For Tat'iana Shakh-Azizova the
central premise
of
this production,
together
with
Georgii Tovstonogov's Three Sisters,
staged
at
the
BDT in 1965,
and
Efros's The Seagull
the
following
season, was what
she
termed
'o6bexTHBxocTb
crnnoumasi'
(thorough
objectivity).
196
By
this
she
meant
that the sympathetic
identification
with
Chekhov's
characters
that
had
provided
the
pathos of productions
in
the
past was now replaced
by
what was
intended
to
be dispassionate inquiry. Further,
previous productions
had
scrutinised
society
in
order
to
explain, or
indeed
excuse,
the
actions of
Chekhov's
characters.
In
these
new productions
the
characters
themselves
were
subjected
to a critical analysis
that
revealed
but did
not excuse
their
frailties.
The indecisiveness,
failure
to act and apparent
indifference
to the
plight of
closely with
Svoboda. In
addition to
his
stagings of
Chekhov, he directed
memorable
productions of
Josef Topol's End
of
Carnival (1964)
and
his
own conflation
Oedipus Antigone
(1971).
Owing
to
political pressures,
between 1976-1989 he directed
exclusively abroad,
returning
to
Prague in 1990, following
the
Velvet Revolution,
to revive
his Theatre Beyond
the
Gates,
which
had been liquidated in 1972. For further information,
see
Jindich Cerny,
Otomar Krejla,
trans.
by Marian Wilbraham (Prague: Orbis, 1968).
195Tatiana
Shakh-Azizova, 'Chekhov
on the
Russian Stage' in Gottlieb
and
Allain,
pp.
162-
175 (p. 167). For
a more
detailed discussion
of
Babochkin's
production, see
Rudnitskii,
'Vremia, Chekhov',
pp.
151-156.
Georgii Tovstonogov (1915-1989)
worked
first
as an actor and assistant
director in his home
town of
Tbilisi before
training at
GITIS in Moscow. During
the
war
he
returned
to
Georgia
to
work at
the
Griboedov Russian Theatre
and to teach
at
the
Rustaveli Theatre Institute.
Between 1939-1946 he
was a
director
at the
CCT in Moscow, but
came
to prominence when
he
moved
to
Leningrad, first
at
the
Lenkom (1946-1949)
and
later
as
Artistic Director
at
the
BDT. Heavily influenced by Stanislavsky, like Efros, Tovstonogov
attempted
to rescue
his
acknowledged master's
teachings
from
the
uniformity
imposed by
official
doctrine. At
the
BDT he
produced a mixed repertoire of
Russian
and
international
classics, as well as plays of
modern
dramatists. Notable
productions
included: Aleksandr Volodin's Ilamb
ee4epoe
(Five
Evenings) (1959), Gorky's Meu4ai'
e
(Philistines) (1966),
and
Henry IV (1969). In 1979 he
turned to opera,
directing Verdi's Don Carlos
at the
International Opera Festival in Finland.
See Jean Benedetti, in Pickering,
pp.
764-766. See
also,
Georgii Tovstonogov, 0
professii
rezhissera
(Moscow: VTO, 1965). Translated into English
as
The Profession
of
the
Stage
Director (Moscow: Progress, 1972). For bibiliography
on
Tovstonogov,
see
G. A.
Tovstonogov:
zhizn
i
tvorchestvo:
bibliogrqfscheskii
ukazatel', ed.
by E. Fediakhina (St.
Petersburg:
Giperion, 1998).
196Tat'iana
Shakh-Azizova, Dolgaia
zhizn'
traditsii',
in Kuleshov,
pp.
22-35 (p. 25).
94
others
demonstrated by Chekhov's intelligentsia
came
in for
particularly
harsh
treatment.
In
these
productions,
frequently
referred
to
as
'cruel', 'Chekhov
the
doctor' delivered
a shrewd and sometimes mercilessly severe
diagnosis
of
his
characters'
ills
and weaknesses.
197
For both Tovstonogov
and
Efros, in
order
to
achieve a ruthless objectivity
in
their approaches
to
character,
it
was necessary
for
the
actors
to
distance
themselves
from
their
roles, and
the
key
to this
was
to
use
techniques
similar
to
Brechtian
alienation.
In Tovstonogov's Three Sisters, however,
such
objectivity was not
fully
conveyed
in
performance
because it
was overpowered
in
the
course of
the
production, as
Shakh-Azizova
observed,
by
the
sympathy
the
director felt for
the characters
in
their tragic
plight.
198
Efros,
as we shall
see, was
to
show
the
characters much
less
mercy.
In
addition, while rehearsing
Three Sisters, Tovstonogov had
expressed great admiration
for Nemirovich-
Danchenko's
production of
the
play at
the
MAT in 1940,
and
had
no quarrel
with
its
method.
Efros, by
contrast,
though
familiar
with
the
performance
197Ibid.
The idea
of a cruel and merciless
Chekhov had been
suggested
by Maxim Gorky
as early as
1898. In
a
letter
to the playwright
in
that
year
Gorky (writing figuratively)
suggested that
Chekhov
viewed
his
characters with a cold
indifference
much
like
that of a snow
blizzard.
Letter from Gorky
to
Chekhov, between 20
and
30 November 1898, in Chekhov i
teat.
pis'ma,
fel'etony,
sovremenniki o
Chekhove
-
dramaturge,
ed.
by E. Surkov (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1961),
pp.
359-360 (p. 360).
Gorky's
concept underscored
Krej&s interpretation
of
Three Sisters
at
the
Theatre Beyond
the
Gates in Prague in 1965. Significantly, in
this production
KrejLa
emphasised the
lack
of
harmony
and
discord between
the sisters, expressed through their aggressive
behaviour
towards
one another.
Aggressive
responses and actions as a reflection of embittered personal
relationships were central to
Efros's
conceptions of
The Seagull
and
Three Sisters. Like Efros,
Krejl`a (in
collaboration with
Svoboda)
vigorously rejected the traditional style of presentation
for
the works of
Chekhov
evolved at the
MAT. This
style, adulterated
by
the
ideas
of
Socialist Realism, had been imposed
on the theatres
of
Eastern Europe (as it had been in
the
Soviet Union itself),
as a result of
Soviet
cultural
hegemony. Evidence
of
the
similarity
in
the approaches of
Efros
and
Krej& (and indeed
the
possible
influence
of the
Czech director
on
Efros's
work)
is
to
be found in
their meeting at the
Leningrad Hotel, following
the
Moscow
premiere of
Efros's Seagull, during
which
they
discussed
at
length
the staging of
Chekhov. At
an unspecified
later date Efros
saw
Krejda's Three Sisters. See N. Krymova, 'Rezhisser
v
meniaiushchemsia mire',
Teatral'naia
zhizn',
13 (1989), 7-9 (pp. 7-8).
For
a
discussion
of
Krej&s
productions of
Chekhov in Prague
and abroad, see
Senelick,
Chekhov Theatre,
pp.
241-248.
198Shakh-Azizova,
'Dolgaia',
p.
27.
95
history
of
The Seagull, deliberately
rejected any established approaches.
His
intention,
explicitly, was
to
look
at
Chekhov
afresh:
Hywiio
cerogasi npopsaTb Ty TpacpapeTayio u. neaxy, xoTOpaz Hama UBaeT Ha
Belo nbecy Haver cKyxa jai coepeMenaoro lqenosexa:
-'A-a!...
qaxaa!
3ro
7
miTans, 3T0 MU 3HaeM'.
199
Efros
chose to
work on
the
principle
that
the
play
had just been
written
by
a new
dramatist,
and perhaps more
importantly
as
if it had been
commissioned
by
Efros himself.
200
He
urged
his
actors to
imagine
that they
were reading and
rehearsing
it for
the
first
time.
The
production opened on
17 March 1966,
not
in Moscow, but
while
the
Lenkom
company was on
tour
in Vilnius. In
an
interview before
the premiere,
Efros
revealed the
weight of responsibility
he felt
in
adopting such a radical approach:
LIexoscKaJ
gaKa aepsat KnaccHlecKHik caexzaxnb ARK ab[aeanero cocTaa
TpyafN TeaTpa HMeHH
Jleaaacxoro
KoMCOMona.
)JO
CHX Hop Mt CTaBHJIH
coapeMeaHrle abecbl, H aepexoR K
lgexoay
11pe3aulia so oTaercTeea.
TeM
6onee,
Qro ero abecU HMeioT
6onbmyio
H caasayio Tpamao.
Ho,
apacryaax K
pa6are, MbU cTapaAHcb 3a6b1m o6 3TOM H aoIIb1TaJIHCB nocTaBHm 'laky, Kc
cospeMeaayco aaecy.
IlocTaBHTh
Tax, xax
6yyTo 'iexos
aast anTop, KOTOPb1
aaaacaJI AJLq HanEx ax TepoB, ARK samero TeaTpa.
201
Efros
also
directly linked his Seagull
with
his
productions of contemporary
dramas:
199Efros,
'Kak bystro',
p.
69.
200Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
145.
201A.
Efros, Prem'era
sostoitsia v
ViIniuse, Sovetskaia Litva, 10 March 1966,
p.
3.
96
MLI
xoTeim, gTo6bi 9exoBCRH CUCKTaKJIb
6bWi
A isi nac H HOBbIM CJIOBOM HB TO
we BpeMA eCTeCTBeHHbIM IIpogoji ICeHReM Tex IIYBCTB H Mb&CJleL, ICOTOpTIe
BonHOB VIH Ham TBopqecxH KonneKTHB B nocJlegHHx pa6oTax.
202
Indeed,
as
Smelianskii
recognised,
this
was
Chekhov interpreted in
accord with
Rozov
and
Radzinskii.
203
Rozov
provided
the theme
of uncompromising youth
in
confrontation with
the
adult world, and
the
biting, ironic
tone
came
from
Radzinskii. Efros's desire
to
reveal the contemporary relevance of the play was
also
in keeping
with
his
assessment of
the
history
of productions of
Chekhov in
Russia. He
saw a
fundamental difference
of approach
to
classic plays
in
the
West,
and specifically
in
the
attitude of
English
actors
to
Shakespeare. In
an
essay published
in 1967, he
maintained
that
in England
the
plays of
Shakespeare
are performed everywhere, with an endless variety of slants and
conceptions and
in
every conceivable style.
They
were perceived as
familiar
and
in keeping
with contemporary experience.
In fact in
a
barbed jibe he
remarked:
HHorAa
Ka)xeTcfi, 9To aarJIHACKOMy apTHcTy Tax xe HpOCTO BN TH B HOBO*
IIICKCIIHpOBCKOA pOJ[H, KRK HameMy IIpeKpaCHOMj+ apmCTy
MOTHHKOBy
113
BaXTanroBcxoro
TeaTpa cbirpaTb en; e oJ{Horo IIpej{ce, {aTeJIH KOJIX03a.
nbeca
Iliexcimpa
paccMaTpxBaerca aHriumaBaMH xax 3HaKoMaa a yRo6Haa coBpeMeHHax
Hbeca, TOJIbCO, MOXeT
bMTb,
Hpexpacaee, ieM Bce ocTanbNwe.
Korea
aHrnBcxae aKTepbt HaI pexcaccepbz
6epyr IIIexcuapa
B CBOH pyxH, OHR 3HaIoT,
wo c HHM AenaTb.
204
2021bid.
203Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
64.
204Efros,
'Kak bystro',
p.
68.
Efros
appears
to
have had
an
idealised
view of the
English
stage
in
the
1960s. His
suggestion
that the
works of
Shakespeare
are more readily accessed
by English
actors
is debatable. Dennis
Kennedy's
commentary
in Foreign Shakespeare
appears to
suggest that the
opposite
is
the
case.
Dennis Kennedy, 'Introduction: Shakespeare
without
his language', in Foreign
Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993),
pp.
1-17.
97
The Russian
approach
to
Chekhov, he
went on, was very
different
Y
aac xce oT Clans go KtIaxa npoxo u xopomeabxax AsajaTm neT, a
xorpa, aaxoHeiq monogo apTHCT
6epeT
B pyxa ponb
Tpennesa,
To pepxozT OR ee,
xax
6panIRaaTOSL*
rrio6yc, xoTOpb1 eMy Rana Tonaxo nopepzaTh, upeAyupepas
npa 3TOM, 9TO, pa36HB ero, OR ae pacnnaTHTCA BOO CBOIO XasHa.
Moxno
ce6e
npeAcTaBRm, xaKHM yeepeREbiM H cMeaobiM I1yacTByeT ce6x xyyoacnRx.
205
Efros's
refusal either
to
accept traditional
interpretations
of
Chekhov
or to
conform
to
an existing performance style can
be
seen as a
legitimate
expression
of artistic
freedom, but
also as an assault on
the
MAT
as a political
(or
perhaps
more accurately, a politicised)
institution. Efros
maintained
however
that
his
work was never
intended
as an attack on
that theatre
or
indeed
on
its director.
As
we
have
seen, as a youth,
in his
training
at
GMS,
and
in his
early career,
his
work
had been dominated by Stanislavsky's ideas. Efros
made a
distinction
between
what
he
saw as
the
'old'
and
'new' MAT. He idealised
the
'old',
the
theatre of
Stanislavsky
and
Nemirovich-Danchenko,
which
in his
view
had been
characterised
by
spontaneity and
innovation, but disparaged
the
'new',
the
theatre of
his
own
day, in
whose work
these
features
were sadly
lacking.
206
In
this
light his
attack was
less
on
Stanislavsky himself
than
on what
he
saw as
the
later debasement
of
his ideas. At
the
Lenkom, however, he
was
beginning
to
forge his
own unique style and
his
production of
The Seagull
was a significant
step
in his
evolution.
Thus in 1966 he
was
throwing
down
a gauntlet to the
Moscow
theatre
world and at
the
same time
making a
decisive break
with
his
own past.
Viewed in
this
light, for Efros The Seagull becomes
a rite of
passage.
He found his
own sentiments echoed
in
the
words of
Treplev: 'we
205Efros,
'Kak bystro',
p.
68.
206Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
141.
98
need new
forms'.
207
For Efros,
as
for Treplev, if
theatre
was
to
progress
it
needed
to
break
with
the
past and create anew.
Although he
consistently maintained, as already mentioned,
that
his
production
of
The Seagull
was never
intended
to
be
wilfully anti-Stanislavskian,
their
approaches
in 1898
and
1966
could not
have been
more
different. Whereas
Stanislavsky had
expanded
the
written
text
by
adding vast quantities of extra
detail, Efros
wanted
to
reduce
the
play
to
something more essential,
to
strip
it
of
all pre-conceived
ideas derived from literary
criticism and past performances,
and
to pursue a single, very clear
thematic
line.
He forced his
performers
(and indeed his
audience)
to
make
the
familiar
-
that
is
their preconceptions of
the
play
-
appear strange.
He
encouraged
his
actors
to
view
their characters objectively, and
to
inject
aggression
into
their
performances.
This
sense of aggression was
introduced from
the
very
beginning, in
the
dialogue between Medvedenko
and
Masha. That
scene,
according
to
Efros,
was
traditionally played
in
a
low-key,
almost gentle manner.
As
they walk across
the stage, waiting
for Treplev's
play
to
begin,
the
pair
engage
in
an
idle
exchange of words.
In Efros's
understanding,
Medvedenko,
although
he
wants
to talk to
Masha
of
love,
also
has
a more pressing purpose.
Efros
explained
this as
follows:
Mepaepeaxo
yxaznnaeT
-
wo Tax.
Ho
TeM Be Meaee os xax
6m
apeAnaraer
aexa upasganaanasb cuop o Tom, MOXCT JIK
6UTb
necgacTitmB genosex no
HpH, qnHHM JdXOBHUUM, MOpaJIbHbNM.
ON
soBHNaer, +rro sec'acrsLM Mozso
6brrb
oT orcyrc1B Meser, oTroro +rro
nyzno no=ynarb vat a caxap, no o ero Mozno XO NTh a Tpaype, HMea
207A.
Chekbov, Chaika, Act I, in Sochineniia: P'esy 1895
-
1904, Polnoe
sobranie
sochinenii
i
pisem,
18
vols
(Moscow: Nauka, 1978), XIII,
p.
8.
99
90CTaTOK, on ne HOHHMfleT.
3axoTeaaocb
HyTb an ne Ho-6pexroscKH oro iaTb
cMcnOBYIO CTOPOBy 3roro cnopa.
208
Medvedenko
was played
by Durov
and
in his interpretation,
as
B. Evseev
suggested,
the
character
lost
many of
his
traditional traits.
Durov's
Medvedenko
was not
the
poor
but
respectable and well-meaning school-teacher,
steadfastly prepared
to
bear his life's
cross.
209
Instead he
was
demonstrative
and
demanding,
and
therefore
his
opening question was pronounced with a
certain element of annoyance, opening up a
dispute
and
demanding
an almost
public response.
A
similar sense of conflict and
tension
permeated the
entire performance.
Efros
rejected
the
moderate
'room
temperature'
and slow pace
traditionally
associated
with
Chekhov. Instead he
removed all
the
pauses and silences, and
lost
any
sense of a cosy, conversational style.
The
actors were
directed
to
shout, cry
and moan
their
lines,
were given
to
frequent
outbursts of merriment or anger
and
to
hysterical
sobbing.
The
effect, according to
Rudnitskii,
was
to
reproduce
the
atmosphere of a contemporary communal
flat. 210
These
characters,
brought
together
in
a
family
reunion,
have known
each other
for
decades,
and
in Efros's interpretation
this
produced not a sense of mutual
kindness, but
an opportunity
to
express
deep-seated irritation
with each other.
In fact, in
their
constant
bickering
and petty arguments
they
were often
perceived as
'spoiling for
a
fight',
perhaps as a means of relieving
boredom
and
finding
scapegoats
for
their
own
feelings
of purposelessness.
211
N. Ignatova,
however,
objected to this
strident aspect of
the
production.
212
She
argued with
some
justification
that
by
making the
characters
fight
over petty things
with as
208Efros,
'Kak bystro',
p.
69.
209B.
Evseev, 'Na
puti
k Cbekbovu', Moskovskii komsomolets, 10 June 1966,
p.
3.
210Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
147.
211Poliakova,
'Eneticheski',
p.
39.
212N.
Ignatova, 'I Chekhov drugoi, i "Chaska" drugaia', Ogonek, 23 (1966), 26-27 (p. 26).
100
much ardour as over
issues
such as
the
role of
the
artist
in
society
Efros had
reduced
the
philosophical
breadth
of
Chekhov's
play.
However,
as
Shakh-
Azizova
commented,
Efros
was more concerned with
the
characters'
relationships with each other and
their
emotional responses
to their
circumstances
than
with
their
aesthetic principles.
213
The
conflicts and
continual arguments swamped
the
lyricism
and sadness normally associated
with
Chekhov's
world, and replaced
it
with a naked
drama
of
disconnected
people.
The idea
that the
characters are unable
to
make contact and
communicate with each other
has
often
been
seen as a
key
to the
interpretation
of
Chekhov, but Efros's
emphasis was on the
fact
that the
characters
did
make
contact continuously,
but
nevertheless
failed
to
understand one another.
214
In
other words,
Efros brought
what was
formerly
regarded as subtext
to the
surface of
the
drama,
as
the
substance of
the text.
His
conceptions of
Chekhov's
characters were radically
different from
traditional
interpretations,
and so confounded the
expectations of critics.
Zubkov, for instance,
complained
that
in
their
constant
bickering
the
characters
lost
the
gentility normally associated with notions of
the
intelligentsia. 215
He
objected
in
particular
to
A. Pelevin's
portrayal of
Dorn. This
critic expected to
see an erudite
doctor
whose
behaviour
exhibited a sense of
humanity
touched
by
delicacy
and a subtle
irony, but
this
Dorn's loud
voice and sweeping gestures
revealed
instead his
anger and
frustration. He
reserved some sympathy and
affection
for Treplev, but his
response to
others was expressed
in frequent
angry outbursts.
His
relationship with
his
patient,
Sorin, lacked
all sense of a
'bed-side
manner' and was particularly acrimonious.
Thus, for instance,
when
in Act II he instructs Sorin
to take
some valerian
tablets, the
line
was
delivered
213Shakh-Azizova,
Dolgaia',
p.
31.
214A.
Efros, 'Anatotii Efros
repetiruet...
i
rasskazyvaet',
Moskovskii komsomolets, 23
January 1966,
p.
3.
2151u.
Zubkov, Razvedka
chekhovskoi temy',
Teatral'naia
zhizn',
13 (1966), 12-14 (p. 14).
101
aggressively, almost as a
threat.
216
Despite Zubkov's
objections,
Pelevin's
doctor
was a credible
interpretation
of
the
role, and
furthermore Dorn's
rancorous relationship with
his
patient was perfectly
in keeping
with
the
performance of
A. Vovsi
as
Sorin,
who,
feeling
the
weight of
his
twilight
years, complained constantly,
blaming
others
for his dissatisfaction
with a
joyless
existence.
217
Sorin's disappointment
with
life
was matched
by Masha,
whose passionate
but
unrequited
love for Treplev left her both
embittered and
bereft. According
to
Poliakova, Antonina Dmitrieva
appeared
both
tired and
drained;
moving slowly
and
lazily,
she embodied
Masha's lines from
the
beginning
of
Act II: 'A
y
Meng Taxoe'Iygrcao, KK
6y7ro
x po nnacb yxce RaBHo-RaBHo; XCR3Hb CBOIO K
Tauq BonoxoM, Kax
6ecxoxembI
uinefl4).
'218
E. Fadeeva
as
Arkadina
was vain and self-absorbed, spitefully
jealous
of
Nina
and utterly
indifferent
to
her
son's plight.
Indeed,
as
Evseev
noted,
in Act III
her
response:
'HeT
y MeH' AeHer!
'
to
Sorin's
pleas
to
let Konstantin buy
a new
coat or
travel
abroad, was
delivered
not
'decisively' (peumHTeImRo),
as
Chekhov directions
suggest,
but
rather with
the
degree
of
ferocity
one might
expect were
Arkadina's
very
life
at stake.
219
According
to
Senelick, in Stanislavsky's
production the
depiction
of the
central
trio of
Nina, Trigorin
and
Treplev had been
relatively simple:
'Nina
was a pure
creature, ruined
by
that
'scoundrelly Lovelace' Trigorin,
and
Treplev
was a
misunderstood
Byronic
genius'.
220
Efros's
characterisations were very
different. Iakovleva's Nina,
most surprisingly to the
audiences of
the
day, lost
216Po1ialcova,
Ereticheski',
p.
40.
217Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
147.
218Chaika,
Act II,
p.
21. Poliakova, 'Ereticheski',
p.
40.
219Evseev,
'Na
pud', p.
3.
22OSeneliCk, Chekhov Theatre,
p.
40.
102
much of
her
meekness and naivety.
Instead, in
what
Rudnitskii
perceived as
'a
correction' of
her
character, she was presented at
first
as a woman of
considerable
foresight
and self-assurance.
221
In Smelianskii's
account this
Nina
also
displayed
an
insatiable
appetite
for fame.
222
In Act I,
as she recited
her
monologue, she
deliberately distanced herself
through
her
tone
and
demeanour from
the
'decadent'
play and
its
excitable writer.
She flirted
with
his
text
in
the
hope
of
impressing
the celebrities
from
the
capital, and when,
mortified
by
the
fiasco, Treplev fled,
she
lost
all
interest in
the
sensitive
'boy
genius' and
instead joined her
public as a co-conspirator
in his humiliation.
Later in Act II, in
what was
to
become
the most memorable scene of the
production, she
turned
her
conversation with
Trigorin into
a game of seduction,
imbuing it
with powerful sexual
feelings. 223
As
the
dialogue drew
to
a close,
Iakovleva
slashed
the
air with a
thin
fishing
rod with
ferocity
and glee,
behaviour
which,
in Smelianskii's
view, promised extraordinary carnal
delights. In Iakovleva's
action a predatory animal emerged
in
a
figure
traditionally
seen as an
innocent
girl
from
the
provinces.
224
This Nina
was a
formidable
threat to
Arkadina,
which accounted
for
the
latter's jealousy
and their
open
hostility
to
one another.
Stanislavsky had
played
Trigorin in
an elegant white suit, and
had based his
performance on the
line 'I have
no will of my own'.
225
Chekhov himself had
a
different
conception, seeing
him
as a seedy character, who
'wears
checked
trousers and cracked shoes'.
226
According
to
A. Svobodin, Trigorin had
also
been
played as a vain
fop
who
found
country society
intolerable. 227
Thus, A.
Shirvindt's
portrayal
differed from
all previous
interpretations.
To
the
surprise
221Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
149.
222Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
65.
223Poliakova,
'Freticheski',
p.
41.
224Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
65.
225Ciwika,
Act III,
p.
42. Poliakova, 'Ereticheski',
p.
42.
226Benedetti,
'Stanislavsky',
p.
261.
227A.
Svobodin, 'Chekbov bez
pauz',
Moskovskaia
pravda,
21 May 1966,
p.
3
103
of
Marianna Stroeva, Trigorin became
the
most sympathetic character
in
the
production.
228
Played
as a respectable,
dignified
and serious writer,
he
spoke
with genuine
feeling
about
his
work and was
honestly
aware of
his
own
failings;
this
Trigorin
admitted
frankly
that
he
would never write as well as
Turgenev.
229
It is impossible
to
deny Trigorin's
responsibility
for Nina's fate,
but in Efros's
production
he
was seen
to
have been
seduced and used
by
the
aspiring actress, and
therefore
was not played as a
devious
villain.
Although
she was crushed
by Trigorin's
treatment,
Efros
refused
to
see
Nina
as a victim.
Instead he
wanted
to
show,
in her
rejection of
Treplev
and
her
general
demeanour,
that
by
seeking
to
satisfy
her
own ego she was at
least
partially
responsible not only
for her
own
downfall but
also
for Treplev's.
The
play's conflict centred
for Efros
on
the
character of
Treplev,
and
in
a major
departure from
the accepted norm
he
turned
it into
something close
to
a
monodrama.
Arguing
that
Chekhov's
own sympathies
lay
with
Treplev, he
dismissed
the
melancholy, morose
traits
so often associated with
that
character,
and
V. Smirnitskii, himself
a recent acting school graduate, created a
different
Treplev,
child-like, energised and ardently searching
for 'new forms'. The
central
theme
was
the
fate
of
the
artist of a new generation who
is doomed
to
be
misunderstood and unappreciated.
Efros
saw
Treplev
as
besieged
on all sides,
rejected
by
all
the
other characters with more or
less
equal vigour.
From
the
outset
Efros
united
them against
Treplev
and
his
new art, and ensured that
any
sympathy
they
extended
to
him
was
fleeting. Thus he
made
them
all guilty of
Treplev's death.
Efros
also created a new
finale. The
pace, which
for
much of the
production
had been frenetic,
was suddenly slowed, so
that,
in
the
opinion of
G.
228MariMUa
Stcoeva, 'Anatolia Efros:
nzolodost',
(Unpublished
Chapter,
Moscow,
no
date),
pp.
270-387 (p. 369). Cited here
with permission of the
author.
229Svobodin,
p.
3.
104
Kholodova,
this new ending also
functioned
as a requiem
for Treplev.
230
In
Chekhov's
stage
directions, Dorn's lines
announcing
Treplev's
suicide are
followed by
the
final
curtain.
In Efros's
production,
the
auditorium
lights
were
gradually
brought
up
to
full; Masha
was
directed
to
continue
to call the numbers
for
the
lotto
game
in
a meaningless stream of
figures, Arkadina
sang an old
romance, gradually
increasing
to
full
volume, and
Dom
swung
back
and
forth
in
a rocking chair.
Efros
was seeking
to
show
that there
was no real means of
escaping
from
a senseless
life. The
only solutions were suicide, or continuing
to engage
in
a pointless game or other monotonous routines.
Rudnitskii's
central criticism of this approach, and one
that
has
some validity, was
that
by
concentrating
the
conflict of
the
play on a single character
Efros lost
the
'polyphonic'
multiplicity of
Chekhov's
writing, and
that the
other characters
were
inevitably
weakened as a result.
Every
character reacted
in
a similar
fashion
to the troublesome
Treplev. This
emphasised
his
separateness and
isolation, but
also precluded
development
and emotional
fluidity in
the
others.
231
The
presentation of
The Seagull
almost as a monodrama was no
less
clearly to
be
seen
in
the
set, created
by
the
designers Valentin Lalevich
and
Nikolai
Sosunov. This, like
so many other aspects of
the
production, was
both highly
praised and severely criticised.
Since Efros's
production was meant to
generate
the
bleak
atmosphere of a world
that
was
both harsh
and unrelenting, on
his
stage
there
was no attempt
to
recreate the
magic
lake, leafy
trees
and glorious
sunshine so
familiar
to
Russian
audiences.
Whereas Stanislavsky had
deliberately
evoked a sense of
life beyond
the
borders
of
the
set,
in Efros's
production
the
stage was surrounded on all sides
by
a
fence
of old
boards; but
this,
instead
of obscuring natural
beauties beyond,
was constructed with gaps
2306.
Kbolodova, Tri
chekbovskikh spektaklia',
Teatr, 1(1968), 15-18 (p. 17).
23 1e, Spe li,
p
148.
105
that
deliberately
showed
the audience
that there
was nothing
but darkness
beyond
the enclosed world of
the characters'
lives. For Shakh-Azizova,
writing
in 1976,
this set
had
the appearance of a prison and expressed
the tragic
circumstances of
Chekhov's
characters;
they
were
locked into
their
lives
and
also
fatally
conjoined
to one another.
232
In Teatr in 1980,
this
same critic saw
the
set precisely as an expression of
the
world as seen
by Treplev,
and more
importantly
perhaps as a realisation of
the
idea
of an
infinite
and empty cosmic
space, expressed
in
the
words of
Treplev's
own play.
233
Further,
the
sense of
'nothingness' beyond
the
world of
the estate
lent
an even greater poignancy and
foreboding
to
Nina's
exit
into
the
dark
empty space
beyond
the
set.
Zubkov
bemoaned, however,
the
loss
of
the
lake
and natural surroundings which
had
been
so
dear, he
argued,
to
Chekhov. The failure
to
recreate such
surroundings,
he
maintained, was a refusal on
Efros's
part
to
acknowledge
Chekhov's intention
to
use
the
image
of
the
richness of nature as a
deliberate
contrast
to the
inane
and absurd
life
of
the
characters.
234
Interestingly,
Rudnitskii
remarked
that
Efros
succeeded
in
capturing
just
this
contrast of
opposites
by
the
use of a single
tree,
which
in its
very vitality stood out against
the capricious and unhealthy relationships
that
developed between
the
characters
('AepeBo
-
HpoCTOe, gHCToe, 3AOPOBOe
-
oTileTJIBHoe HPOTHBOCTOSIJIO
He3ROpOBbIM, KafpH3HbIM, HePBHb1M H COBCeM HenpOCTbIM oTHomeHHSIM
mope
1,
sm iss nxcfi Ha 3TOM (poHe.
')235 That
commentator also saw a
thematic
link in
the
contrast
between
the
old
boards
used
for
the
surrounding
fence
and
the
fresh,
new planks
that
littered
the
stage
floor
and were used
in
the
construction of
Treplev's
stage.
This
was solidly
built
and
he dashed
about all
over
it, fussing
and
fixing
things,
balancing
on the
planks,
lying down
on
his
back,
and
leaping
up again as
he
cried out
for 'new forms'. For Rudnitskii,
232Shakh-Azizova,
'Dolgaia',
p.
30.
233Tat'iana
Shakh-Azizova, '"Chaika"
segodnia
i
prezhde',
Teatr, 7 (1980), 87-95 (p. 91).
234Zubkov,
Razvedka',
p.
14.
235Rudnitskii, Spektakli,
p.
146.
106
throughout the play
in
general and
in Treplev's
performance
in
particular,
there
was a sense of
foreboding. He
remarked
that the
little
stage
itself looked like
a
scaffold and
thus gave physical expression
to the theme
of
the
martyred
artist.
236
The
set
for
the
interior in Act III
was
in direct
contrast
to the stark opening
scene.
The designers
created a room completely
full
of objects and pieces of
furniture;
a vast variety of
different lamps
shone
from
every corner, and every
inch
of
the
wooden walls was covered with pictures.
However, in
what was
perhaps a complete reversal of
the
intention
of
the
MAT
production,
this
set
evoked a sense not of comfort and stability,
but
of gloom and
immobility. The
characters were so
hemmed in by
their surroundings
that they
became
absurd
and awkward
in
their
movements.
Nina
was
the
only one who seemed
to
be
able
to move
in
this
atmosphere;
in Rudnitskii's image,
she
flitted like
a
bat
from
one corner to the
next.
However,
this capacity
for
movement
had by Act
III
a very
different
meaning
from her
activity at
the
beginning
of the
production:
Ho
ecii a Hagane CHeKTaKJIA CC
MO6HAbHOCTb 03Halia za
6e3orJ1
ayio
IIpCJ[IIpIHI IIHBOCTb, TO K KOHiky CIICKT8IUI noABiiznocTm
3ape4Ho*
BOCIIpmngma I&Cb gH89C
-
Kax aroni i
237
The
mood
for
much of
the
production was aggressively anti-lyrical,
but
at
moments
Efros lightened
the tension
with pieces of pure comedy.
At
the
beginning
of
Act II, following
a short
dialogue between Dorn
and
Arkadina,
according
to
Chekhov's
script
Sorin
enters walking with a stick, accompanied
by Nina
and
Medvedenko,
who
is
pushing
Sorin's
empty
bath
chair.
238
In
Efros's
production
Durov
entered without
the
chair.
Later Sorin
and
Shamraev
2361b1d.
2371b1d,,
p.
152.
238Chaj
,
Act II,
p.
22.
107
are arguing over
Shamraev's
refusal
to
provide
the
party with
horses. An
exasperated
Sorin
angrily
demands: CefWxiac
xe nogaTh cioAa Bcex
notnaAei%t239
At
this precise moment
Durov
pushed
the
bath
chair violently on
to the stage, producing
laughter in
the
audience, who were
delighted by
the
incongruity between
the
words and
the
action.
Efros's
production raised a storm of controversy which split
the
Moscow
theatre world.
As Rudnitskii later
noted,
the critics of
the time
ranged
between
such extremes
that on
the one
hand Efros's
champions refused
to see any
failings
or
insufficiencies in his interpretation,
and on
the
other
his detractors
were so
blinded by
their sense of righteous
indignation
that they refused
to
acknowledge
the
importance
of
Efros's discoveries
2
Zubkov, for instance,
considered
the
scene with
the
bath
chair and other comic
moments as gratuitous, and
further
charged
Efros
with altering stage
directions
in
order
to
'modernise' Chekhov. Thus, for instance, he
objected
to the
fact
that
Masha
was
directed
to smoke rather
than to take
snuff
because, he
maintained, women of
Chekhov's
era
did
not smoke.
241 Similarly, N.
Ignatova
suggested
that
changes made
to
Chekhov's
script
in Efros's
interpretation demonstrated
the
director's lack
of
faith in
the play's capacity
to
excite
the
interest
of a modern audience.
Writing in Ogonek,
she also provided
some predictably
ideologically-charged
criticism, suggesting
that
The Seagull
failed
to send an appropriately optimistic message
to the
young spectators at
the
Lenkom:
MocKoacxl
TeaTp naeu
JIeataccoro
KoMCOMOna Kaiar it mo6zT MocKBRqa.
B
1CM CZese'CPHC
T(kMUrTCI MOnO Czb, KOTOPYI HYzno y rm AMY a upasae.
2391bid.,
p.
25.
240Rudnitskii, Spektakti,
p.
145.
241Zubkov,
Razvedka',
p.
14.
108
Moaopeace
-
Kax uaxoMy
-
eapo 3H Th K Bepam, 'no ecm connge, a se Tonbxo
arras o Rem!
C
3Toro cueKraxatx yxoAmob c TK (CJI iM cepjem.
Her, Liexoa
j pyroi, H KLIagica ppyrax.
242
Efros's
production
failed
to
find
approval even
from
some who
had
championed
his
work
in
the
past;
thus
it
was many years
before his former
mentors,
Knebel'
and
Markov,
could
forgive
their
prot6gd.
243
The front
curtains used
for Efros's
production
had been decorated
with
the
image
of a seagull, painted as
if by
the
hand
of a child.
For
all
Efros's
protestations
to the
contrary,
it is difficult
not
to
see
in
this, and
in
other
features
of
the
production, an
ironic
commentary on
the
style of
the
MAT,
and
Efros
was admonished
for his
audacity
by
members of
that theatre.
2
However,
as
Stroeva
reasoned, criticism
from
this
particular
quarter was
hard
to
justify:
Pa3yMeeTca,
mxaToagba
6Wna
BosxffleHU noOo6aRM cBoesoanteM no omomenwo
Y EX
'3HKOHHOMy
AocTO*HhIO'
-
gaAKe.
Ho
cocTSeuHan nej aaggi
nocTaeoaxa LIa*11 na cgene
MXAT, 6eccnuao
npoaanesma ca, noppuaana
'sanoHEOCTb'
nx 9o3MymeHHa.
245
It is important
to
note
that
few, if
any, of
Efros's
critics could
have
seen
Stanislavsky's legendary
production of
1898. But Efros
was seen to
be
attacking and
indeed destroying
a cherished myth.
Further,
as we
have
seen,
The Seagull, both
actually and symbolically,
lay
at the
heart
of
the
history
and
development
of
the
MAT. Efros's
assault was
therefore
also on
that theatre's
2421gnamva,
p.
27.
243Stroeva,
'Anatolia Efros',
p.
370.
244As
noted
in Chapter 1, in 1968 Efros
staged
Radzinskii's The Seducer Kolobashkin
at the
Malaie Bronnaia. It
was proposed
for
this
production that the
front
curtains should also mimic
those of
the
MAT, but
that the
figure
of a seagull
be
replaced
by
that
of a
huge
moth.
This
was clearly
intended
me suggest that the
ideas
of the
MAT had become
exhausted and
irrelevant
with age.
The idea
was,
however, later dropped. Edvard Radzlnsldi, 'Repetitsiia', in Zaionts,
pp
70-76 (p. 73).
245Stroeva,
'Anatolia Efros',
pp.
270-387 (p. 370). Stroeva
is
referring to the
MAT
production
of
1960 discussed
above.
109
essence.
His
challenge upset
the
sensibilities of
those
many critics
for
whom
The Seagull
represented a sacrosanct part of
the
history
and symbolism of
the
MAT.
Interestingly,
while
The Seagull
was on
tour
in
the
Baltic States
and
Ukraine
reviews of
the production were generally positive,
but
when
it
opened
in
Moscow
there
was only
limited
support.
246
A. Svobodin
admired
Efros's
courage
for breaking
with
tradition,
and
Poliakova
praised
the
Lenkom for
having
produced an
innovative but
carefully respectful production of a classic,
that nevertheless explicitly explored
Chekhov's ideas in
a contemporary
context.
247
Mark Poliakov,
although
he found
much
to
admire
in Efros's
original
interpretation,
sharply criticised
its
excessively strident tone,
which
in
his
view reduced
the
subtle complexity of
Chekhov's
writing:
Ho
BOT 3a3sygajm ranoca, x QeM penne, Heu rpy6ee oss 3ByqaT, qeM
6onee
93Aopso sosegesse ax, ireM xesee ocTaeTcs y sac oir oup+o; essx gexoacxoi
a rxoccpepu....
Mcae3aer
csM4osa+1soca nexoacxo ApaMaTypran, Rcge3aeT
TosxocT, MBorocropoisocrb x MHoronnasoBOCTh TpaFHaecKIX cyge6 uexoacxix
repoea.
248
Poliakov's
comments were
justified. Indeed
years
later Efros himself, in his
fast book Rehearsals Are My Love,
criticised
his
production and suggested that
his 'Brechtian'
approach
had been
misguided and excessively
harsh. It had
allowed
the actors
to
view
the
characters objectively
but
without affection,
had
reduced
the
actors' capacity to
portray
depth
and
had
resulted
in
a
loss
of
246See
I. Kashnitsic, '"Chaska"
prodolzhaet polet',
Sovetskaia Litva, 22 March 1966,
p.
3.
Later
there were also positive reviews
in
the
following
newspapers outside
Moscow: M.
Brusilovskaia,
'Chethovskim kliuchom', Komsomol'skoe
znamiia,
(Kiev), 12 July 1966,
p.
3,
and
S. Leaman, 'Vchera i
segodnia:
"Cbaira" A. P. Chekhova
v
teatre
imeni Leninskogo
Komsomola',
Sovetskaia Estonia, 11 December 1966,
p.
3.
2473vobodin,
p.
3. Poliakova, 'Ereticheski',
p.
43.
Marls Poliakov, Z.
apiski
bez daty'. Nash
sovremennik,
4 (1967), 101-106 (p. 106).
110
lyricism.
249
In
general, adverse criticism of
The Seagull
outweighed positive
commentary, and
it
significantly
failed
to
find
support amongst
the
more
politically powerful critics.
As
we
have
seen,
in
the
mid
to
late 1960s
the
Soviet
regime was
increasingly demanding ideological
conformity.
As Rosalind Marsh
has
noted,
by September 1965
the
increasing influence
of
the
neo-Stalinist
Politburo
member
Shelepin
and
his
ally,
the
KGB
chief
Semichastnyi, had led
to the
imposition
of a repressive policy against
literary dissidence. This
policy
saw
the
confiscation of copies of
Solzhenitsyn's Ilepebi
KPY2
(First Circle),
and
in February 1966
the
infamous
trial
of
Andrei Siniavskii
and
Iulii Daniel.
Efros's Seagull
opened
in March,
a month which also saw concerted
(though
only partially successful) efforts
by
neo-Stalinists
to
ensure the
complete
rehabilitation of
Stalin
at
the
Twenty-Third Congress. During
this
Congress
productions were removed
from
the
repertoires of several
theatres
including (as
noted above)
Making
a
Movie from
the
Lenkom,
and
Aleksandr Tvardovskii's
Tepxun
na mom ceeme
(Terkin in
the
Other World) from
the
Satire,
while at
the
Taganka Liubimov's llamuue
u xuebie
(The Living
and
The Fallen)
was
permitted only after numerous revisions and viewings
by
the
censors.
251
Not
surprisingly,
in
this
context
Efros's iconoclastic
production, a protest against
such
increased
repression of artistic
freedom,
was seen as
too
radically
individual,
and was
banned
within a year.
Shortly
afterwards,
having
produced
a repertoire
that
failed
to
conform
to
political
imperatives, Efros
was removed
from his
post at
the
Lenkom
and moved to the
Malaia Bronnaia. But
there,
deterred
neither
by his dismissal
nor
by
the
furore
caused
by The Seagull, he
chose
for his
very
first
production another
Chekhov
play,
Three Sisters.
249Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
163. This book
was
first
published
in 1975.
250R.
Marsh,
pp.
14-15. Sianiavskii
and
Daniel,
who wrote under the
pseudonyms
Abram
Tents
and
Nikolas Arzhak,
were arrested and accused of
having
published their
work abroad.
They
were condemned
to seven and
five
years
labour
respectively at a
trial
which caused
widespread
controversy
in Russia
and abroad.
251
Beumers,
p.
49. The
production at the
Satire
was
based
on
Tvardovskii's
poem of the
same name.
Tvar+dovskii himself
was
forced
to
resign as editor of
Novyi
nur
in 1970.
111
Chapter 3
He
FOHH Mewl!
Three Sisters
(1967)
112
In his Three Sisters
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia Efros further developed, in his
treatment of character and use of visual symbolism,
key features
of
his Seagull
at
the
Lenkom. Rejecting
once more
the evocation of a
traditional
Chekhovian'
mood,
he
created an energetic,
fast-paced
and openly
theatrical production.
Through
parody and
the tragicomedy of
the grotesque,
he
expressed
the
inherent
absurdity and ultimate meaninglessness
he
saw
in
the
lives
of
Chekhov's
characters.
The
production caused even more controversy
than
The
Seagull. Some
critics welcomed
it
as another
departure in
the
interpretation
of
Chekhov, but
others condemned
it
as an affront
to a great
Russian
playwright, a
violation of a classic work and a
further
attack on
the traditions of
the
MAT.
As
we
have
seen,
the
MAT Seagull
of
1898,
though rightly regarded
later
as
one of
the most significant productions
in
that theatre's
history, had in fact
enjoyed a relatively short run, so
that
Efros's
radical re-staging at
the
Lenkom,
rather
than attempting
to
supplant a specific production,
had
challenged and
destroyed
a cherished myth.
By
contrast
Three Sisters, first
produced at
the
MAT by Stanislavsky in 1901, had been
staged
there
again
by Nemirovich-
Danchenko in 1940,
and
this
production was still playing, albeit with a change
of cast,
in 1967252 It
constituted
therefore
a
living
example, with which critics
of
Efros's interpretation
made comparisons.
Written
at
the turn of
the twentieth century,
Chekhov's drama
reflects a
turbulent period
in Russian history,
which saw
the
beginnings
of
the
collapse of
252These
productions
have been discussed by (among
others):
David Allen, Performing
Chekhov, (London & New York: Routledge, 2000),
pp.
26-28 (1901),
pp.
87-88 (1940);
Braun, The Director,
pp.
67-71 (1901); Konstantin Rudnitskii, Russkoe
rezhisserskoe
iskusstvo
1898-1907 (Moscow: Nauka, 1989),
pp.
116-131 (1901); Senelick, Chekhov
Theatre,
pp.
188-195 (1940); M. Stroeva. 'Rabota VI. I. Nemirovicha-Danchenko
nad
spektaklem
"Tri
sestry"',
Teatr, 7 (1954), 53-67 (1940); M. Stroeva, Rezhisserskie iskaniia
Stanislavskogo
1898-1917 (Moscow: Nauka, 1973),
pp.
73-79 (1901); Nick Worrall,
'Stanislavsky's
Production
of
Chekhov's Three Sisters', in Russian Theatre in the
Age
of
Modernism,
ed.
by Robert Russell
and
Andrew Barrah (Basingstoke & London: Macmillan,
1990),
pp.
1-31. Reference
will
be
made
here,
therefore, only to
features
of them which
Efros
either radically
rejected or echoed with significant modifications.
113
an old social order
in
the
face
of
the
new era of revolutions.
Stanislavsky's
production,
though opening on a note of
buoyant
gaiety,
had
created overall a
pervading sense of
heart-rending
tragedy.
As
a
lament for
the
destruction
of a
way of
life
under
threat,
it had
clearly reflected not only
the
personal concerns
of a
director
who was
himself
a member of an educated elite
but
also
those
of
his
audience.
Similarly Nemirovich-Danchenko's
staging
in 1940 had been
a
product of
its
time.
His interpretation had
rested on
two
central principles:
firstly
the
longing for
a
better life,
seen not simply as a passive
desire but
rather
as a goal
towards
which
the
characters would actively struggle, and secondly a
deeply
rooted
faith in
the
future. This
concept was clearly
in full
accord with
the prevailing
ideologies
of the
Stalinist
years, and
linked
to
what was required
of all
theatre
art of
the
period:
that
it
should
depict life
not as
it is but
as
it
ought
be.
This
was reflected most clearly
in
the
setting.
In 1901 Stanislavsky had been
concerned to emphasise the
isolation felt by
the
sisters
in
the
dull,
stifling
atmosphere of a provincial
town,
which
Chekhov had imagined
to
be
some
eight
hundred
miles east of
Moscow. He had
therefore
instructed his designer,
Simov,
to
produce a
home fit
not
for
a general's
daughters, but for
a captain's.
Simov had introduced down-at-heel
and common-place objects: a
damask
table-
cloth,
faded
wall-paper, yellowed painted
floors,
a threadbare
Turkeman
carpet.
In 1940, by
contrast,
Nemirovich-Danchenko's designer, Vladimir Dmitriev,
created an elegant
home
with
huge
graceful windows, surrounded
by
a
landscape
of shimmering
birch
trees,
a setting more appropriate to
a
house in
suburban
Moscow. The
sisters
in
this
production
were removed
from
a
provincial
backwater
to
a world more closely associated
with
their
poetic
aspirations.
Everything in
the
set and costumes was
designed
to
express
beauty
and refinement.
In
the
final
act,
Dmitriev
created a wide avenue of
birch
trees
that shed shimmering
leaves
on to the
stage area.
This
avenue
led back
to
a
114
vision of a river rising
from
the
mist
in
the
distance. The
colour of
the tree
trunks matched grey-white
folds
of material, which were
decorated
with
patterns similar
to those
of
the theatre
curtains and extended
the
borders
of
the
set
into
the
auditorium.
This
unified stage picture created a sense of air,
light
and spaciousness.
In
the
final
scene, as
Olga delivered
with passionate
conviction
her lines
about
the
happiness
that
awaited
future
generations, the
three sisters gathered on the
forestage in
an
harmonious
group.
According
to
Stroeva,
this
lasting image
of
total
harmony
evoked
in
the
audience not a
feeling
of
hopelessness
at
the tragedy
of the sisters' plight,
but
rather an affirmation of
hope
and
life in
the
future. 253
At
the
end, according
to
Chekhov's
script,
Chebutykin is
seated reading a newspaper, sardonically undercutting
Ol'ga's
speech
by
repeating the
words:
'Bce
pasxo!
Bce
paBxo!
'. To
strengthen the
mood of optimism,
Nemirovich-Danchenko
removed
Chebutykin from
this
final
scene, so that
Ol'ga's
triumphant
hymn
to the
future
was not
interrupted by his
idiotic ditty "Tapa...
pa...
6yM68st...
caxcy Ha TyM6e A...
' Writing in 1954,
Stroeva
maintained that this production was a
triumph
for
the
principles of
Socialist Realism in
the
interpretation
of
Chekhov.
254
As
we shall see
(although Stroeva herself
was
to
be
castigated
for her later
support of
Efros), in
the
late 1960s
such
ideologically-charged
criticism was still much
in
evidence
amongst
those
conservative critics who
had
come
to
regard
Nemirovich-
Danchenko's
production as
the
'correct' Soviet interpretation.
Efros
remarked
that that
production
had been
copied and recreated
in
many
different
theatres,
but
that these
had failed
to
create the
enduring
impression
of
the original-255
The
reason,
he
maintained, was
that
as times
changed
it
was
impossible
to
revive
the
ideas
of an older
director,
no matter
how
wonderful
those
ideas
might once
have been,
and
in fact his
own
ideas
were very
different.
253Stroeva,
'Rsbota',
p.
66.
254Ibid
255Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
257.
115
In
rehearsing
Three Sisters, he
and
his
actors questioned,
for
the
audience of
their own
day,
the relevance of
the
concept of
'the longing for
a
better life'
:
JIioAH
B Tpex cecTpax TocirywT?
-
capanmBana Mbz ce6x.
J1a
HeT, aoxcany,
TORaee
66iuio 6b1
cKa3aT6, RTo ona peIIIHTCJIbfO H 3nepra4Ho HHiwT Ans ce6a
KaKOA-TO HCTHabt.
OHR
BCJIYIIIHB8IOTCX H BCM8TpRBBIOTCH B IIpoacxoAmgee H
gyMaloT, JdMaioT, pyiaior...
Oaa
amyr Aiia ce6a KaKoe-TO HOBOe IIpB3Bauae, ORB
IIbITaIOTCx BAymaTbCA B TO, 'TO
6yJeT
9epe3 J{BeCTH
-
TPHCTa JIeT, zB TO,
ao, qely HAeT caer.
He
or Toci a 3aBo rr on cBoa
6ecKoae'able
pa3rOBOpbi, a oT
xenaBHB apoaaKayrb B TaHbi CBOero co6CTBeaHoro cyigeCTBOBaHHz: Ecaza
6bt
3naTb!
-
TaK 3By'LIT caMaa nociieAaaa
4)pa3a
B IIbece.
256
This
notion of a search
for
the
meaning of existence was
to
be
a principal theme
of a production which would emphasise neither
the
past nor
the
future but
the
present, and would
therefore
reflect,
like its
predecessors,
the
spirit of
its
own
time.
In The Seagull Efros had
protested against the
limitations
placed on
his
own artistic
freedom
at the
Lenkom. Since, however, it
was staged as noted
in
Chapter 2,
at a
time
of more widespread cultural repression,
it
may
be
seen to
have
expressed
in
addition the
frustrations felt by
many others of
the
post
Thaw
generation.
In Three Sisters he
no
longer
protested,
but instead
reflected the
sense of
bitter disillusionment
that
repression
had
produced.
In
this
respect
his
production presaged the
mood of
despondency
generated
in
the
1970s during
the period of zastoi.
For
those
artists, writers and
intellectuals
who under
Khrushchev's
relatively
liberal
government
had been
encouraged to
express
themselves more
freely,
and to
believe
that the
reform of the
future Soviet
Union
was possible
from
within, the
more repressive regieme of
Brezhnev
came as a
bitter disappointment. Disillusioned
with current circumstances, they
now
felt
a sense of
isolation from
their
cultural roots, and a
depressing
2561bid.
116
awareness of
the
disparity between
their
aspirations and reality.
In
the
light
of
unfulfilled past promises, moreover,
lofty
sentiments about a
better future
sounded
like
so much empty rhetoric.
In its
perception of character, setting,
treatment of
language
and action
Efros's darkly
pessimistic production reflected
these concerns, capturing
the
mood of
his
time and marking a
decisive break
from
the
idealism
of
the
1950s.
257
Efros's
treatment of
Chekhov's
characters reversed established expectations.
In
1898 Stanislavsky had
sympathised with
the sisters' plight.
In 1940
Nemirovich-Danchenko
had been keen
to emphasise what
he
saw as
their
spiritual suffering as
dreamers in
the
midst of
lack-lustre
reality.
258
In
their
capacity
for
endurance
they
had
also obtained,
however,
an
heroic
status.
259
In
1967 Efros
took
a
harsher
view of
the
characters and
their
lives. In his Seagull
the previous year
he had felt
a close affinity with
Treplev
and
had
seen the
action
from his
point of view; now, according
to
Rudnitskii, he directed Three
Sisters
as
Treplev
might
have done.
260
In
that critic's opinion,
the
play as a
whole was viewed
from
a perspective of youthful
idealism,
and
therefore
with
hostility, disappointment
and
bitterness. Efros
refused
to
romanticise
the
characters.
Instead he directed his
actors, as
he had in his Seagull,
to
approach
their roles with sympathy
but
objectively, with a
degree
of
ironic detachment
and aggression.
The
army officers were not
the
'best-mannered,
noblest and
best-educated
men
in
the town',
as
Masha describes
them;
Vershinin
and
Tuzenbakh
were seen as rather
foolish
and naive chatter-boxes, and all the
characters were caught up
in
their
own concerns
to the
point of
indifference
to
one another.
They
neither
heard
nor
listened
to
what others were saying,
but
257Shakh-Azizova,
'60-e: klassika',
p.
171.
258For
further details
on
Nemirovich-Danchenko's
conception of
Three Sisters,
see
Vladimir
Nemirovich-Danchenko,
Rozhdenie
teatra:
vospominaniia, stat'i, zametki, pis'ma
(Moscow:
Pravda, 1989),
pp.
381-384,423-429.
259ACcorftg
to
Rudnitstii
they evoked much sympathy
for
the
pain of their
unrealised
dreams, in their subtle expression of
feeling, in
the
purity of their
enthusiasm and
in
their
defencelessness
in
the
We
of a vulgar world.
Rudnitskii, 'Uremia, Chekhov',
p.
140.
260Rudnitskii, Spektakli,
p.
152.
117
instead
argued with each other and were given
to
frequent
outbursts of anger
and near-hysterical emotion.
For instance, in Act II Masha
gave vent
to
her
vexation at
Vershinin's
rapid
departure,
on
hearing
that
his
wife
had
once again
attempted
to
poison
herself, by
shouting
loudly
and rudely at
the
innocent
messenger,
Anfisa, before
storming upstage and
throwing things
at someone
in
the wings.
261
Stanislavsky had been
admonished
for lowering
the
sisters' rank
by
providing
them, as mentioned above, with a
home fit
not
for
a general's
daughters but for
a captain's.
Efros
adopted a similar approach, which
tended to
place all
the
characters on
the
same social
level. Indeed, Stroeva has
suggested
that the
key
to the
interpretation
of
the
play's
intellectual
characters
-
the
sisters, the
military officers and
Chebutykin
-
came
from
the
doctor's
own
lines
to
Tuzenbakh in Act I:
Bw
TombICO *[TO CKa38JIH,
6apon,
gamy Sxa3Hb Ha3osyr BMcox01k; HO moj{e BCC ace
Hn3eabKHe...
(BcraeT. ) IJIIMWC,
K8KO A RR3eRbKK.
3ro
ARM MOerO yremeawi
aaAo roBopam, RTO JKH3Hb MOM BMCOBBM, nowraaa Ben.
262
This
perception of
the characters was
heavily
censured.
Iurii Dmitriev
bemoaned
a
loss
of
the
lyricism
and gentility normally associated with
the
intelligentsia.
263
Zubkov,
noting
that
on
two
occasions
Irina
sat
in
Chebutykin's lap,
was similarly critical of
the
sisters'
lack
of restraint, and was
shocked
too
by
overt expressions of sexual
desire. 264
At
one point
Tuzenbakh
carried
Masha
off-stage
in his
arms, and at
the
beginning
of
Act II Natasha
attempted
to seduce
her husband. She
gambolled about, catching
Andrei in
a
2611bid.,
pp.
153-154.
262A.
Chekbov, T
ri
Sestry, Act I, Sochineniia: P'esy 1895-1904, Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii
i
pisem,
18
vols
(Moscow: Nauka, 1978), XIII,
p.
129.
263Iurii
Dmitriev, 'P'esa A. P. Chekhova. Rezhissura A. V. Efinsa. ', Sovetskaia kul'tura, 18
January 1968,
p.
3.
264Iurii
Zubkov,
'Raznye
tsveta
vremeni',
Teatral'naia
zhizn',
5 (1968) 8-10 (pp. 8-9).
118
close embrace, as
they
rolled around on an ottoman set at
the
edge of
the
stage.
He
attempted
to
escape
her
clutches
by
retiring
to
a rocking-chair,
but
she
pursued
him
with caresses and
kisses before he finally
and
decisively
rejected
her
advances.
For Rudnitskii, Andrei's
rejection provided
Natasha
with
the
motivation and
'moral
right'
to
conduct an affair with
Protopopov.
265
Later in
Act III, Natasha lifted her
skirts
to
her knees
to
examine
her legs in
a mirror
while musing
to
herself: 'I'oBOpwr,
x nononxena
...
H He npaBga.
'266 For
Shakh-Azizova, L. Bogdanova
played a self-assured and coldly calculating
Natasha, determined
to
bring
order
to the
household.
267
In Act IV Natasha
expresses
her intention
to
destroy
the
old garden with
its
avenue of
firs
and
plant scented
flowers instead.
268
In Shakh-Azizova's description
the actress
pronounced
the
words
'6ygeT
3arcax'
in
such a
'cold, bloodthirsty'
tone that
one
could
imagine
that
such a person as she could
take
an axe
to
a cherry orchard.
Though Natasha
was seen,
in keeping
with
traditional
expectations, as a
largely
unsympathetic
figure, Efros,
unlike
his
predecessors,
did
not
idealise
the
sisters, who
in
some respects were
to
be
no more refined
than
she.
This
was
evident
from Natasha's first
entry at
the
end of
Act I. According
to
Chekhov's
text, she
first
appears
in
a pink
dress
tied
with a green
belt.
269
In Efros's
production,
in keeping
with
her
own words,
this
belt
was not green
but
violet.
Firstly, Ol'ga's
remark
that the
belt
and
dress do
not match was therefore
clearly
untrue.
Secondly, A. Dmitrieva delivered her lines
at
full
volume,
tactlessly,
and
in
a manner
deliberately
calculated to
bring
maximum embarrassment to
Natasha,
whose
dress
sense the
sisters
had
already ridiculed.
Thus 01'ga's
265Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
153.
266Tri
Sestry, Act III,
p.
158.
267Tat'iana
Sbakb-Azizova, 'Chekhovskaia
trilogiia', in Zaionts,
pp.
372-385 (p. 374).
268Tri
Sestry, Act IV,
p.
186.
2691bid.,
Act I,
p.
135.
119
behaviour
revealed
lack
of
breeding
on
her
part rather
than
poor
taste
on
Natasha's.
270
Stanislavsky had
seen as
the
play's
fundamental
conflict
the
struggle
between
the
sisters' quest
for happiness
and
the threat
of petit-bourgeois philistinism
posed
by
their
brother's
wife.
271
Similarly, Nemirovich-Danchenko had
divided
the characters schematically, separating
the
philistines
Natasha
and
Solenyi from
the
refined
Prozorovs
and
the
other military officers.
As Efros
himself
noted,
in 1940 Boris Livanov had
played
Solenyi
as a
boorish bully,
establishing a pattern
for
the
role
for
generations.
272
Efros
rejected
this
neat
opposition;
in
a complete reversal of conventional expectations,
Solenyi became
the most positive character
in
the
production.
E. Kalmanovskii
commented that
Sergei Sokolovskii's Solenyi
was not
himself
malicious
but
rather suffered
the
malice of others.
Though
proud, and occasionally given
to
uncontrolled
emotional outbursts,
he
was essentially vulnerable.
273
His
strange
jokes
were
delivered in
a
tone
of moody sadness, with an enigmatic,
bitter
smile.
According
to
Rudnitskii, in
the
midst of
the
frenzied
action and emotional
extremes of
the
others
he
remained measured and restrained.
Elegantly
and
unhurriedly smoking
his
cigar,
he
appeared gracious and sincere.
274
Vadim Gaevskii has
argued convincingly
that
by
placing
Natasha
on
the
same
level
as
the
sisters, and
by his
unorthodox
treatment
of
Solenyi, Efros
modified
one of
the
central conflicts of
the
play.
275
The
other officers,
Chebutykin
and
the
sisters are all closely associated with
'high-culture'
and education.
They,
like Andrei (played by V. Smirnitskii
as a
'superfluous
man'),
have
skills and
270Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
153.
271B
raun,
The Director,
p.
68.
272Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
35.
273E.
Kalmanovskii, 'Chem
zhiv rezhisser',
Zvezda, 8 (1975), 147-156 (p. 149).
274Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
159.
275Vadim
Gaevskii, 'Priglashenie k
tantsu', in V. Gaevskii
Fleita Gamleta (Moscow:
Soiuzteatr, 1990),
pp.
53-66 (pp. 59-60).
120
talents,
but
are
incapable
of
turning their
dreams into
reality and
become
detached from
their
cultural roots.
Irina is
employed
in
a post-office and
Tuzenbakh is
to
work
in
a
brick factory. By
contrast
the
refined
Solenyi
recites
Lermontov,
and
Natasha,
who
is learning French, has
aspirations
to
education.
The
central conflict,
for Gaevskii,
was not
therefore a
battle for
selfhood or
for
the
house, but
rather
for
the
ownership of culture
itself. He
argued, moreover,
that the
members of
the
intelligentsia
all
lived in
constant
fear
of rejection and
cultural
dispossession. For
that
critic,
the
repeated cry of
the
old nanny
Anfisa
in Act III
as she
begs 01'ga
not
to
evict
her ('He
rom3 Mewl!
') became
a motif
for
many of
the
characters.
276
In Efros's
own words,
the
intelligentsia in Chekhov's drama had been 'cast
out'
of
life (Bbi6pome
ie a3 xcs3ii),
277
and
he
expressed
this
idea
most clearly
in
his
setting.
The
single, unchanging set
designed by Viktor Durgin
was
for
many a shocking
departure from
traditional
expectations.
Stanislavsky had
stressed
the
sisters'
isolation in
their
provincial
town,
but in his
concern
for
realistic
detail had
set
their
home in
a readily
identifiable locale. Efros
and
Durgin borrowed
this
idea but
carried
it
much
further. The
set
had
some pieces
of
furniture, but little
sense of
domestic
comfort.
In fact it
was not a
house but
a room, with minimalist
decoration in
the
style of
the
Russian Moderne. In
contrast
to
Dmitriev's
creation
in 1940
of a
beautiful
countryside with
shimmering
birch
trees,
it
was surrounded on
three
sides
by
stylised naked
trees,
whose
distorted limbs bent
under
the
weight of outsize crows' nests.
These
appeared
to
encroach on and overhang the
space, overpowering the
characters.
For Shakh-Azizova
they
created a sense of the
fragility
of
the
space,
which
thus offered
little
protection to the
defenceless
characters.
In
this
remote
and
barren landscape,
moreover, they
were cut off
from
the
world, so
that their
276AASsa's
lines to
O1'ga
run as
follows: 'Omona,
MIJIU, ae rolm Tu Mesa!
He
roam!
'.
Tri
sestry,
Act III,
p.
158.
277Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
193.
121
cries of
To Moscow'
sounded
like 'To
the
end of
the
earth'.
278
In
the sisters'
home
all
links
with place and
time
were severed.
In
the
centre of
the
stage stood
a single rubber-tree plant, covered
in
gilt
leaves,
which seemed ridiculously out
of place, and was
intended
perhaps
to create a sense of
fake
opulence, an absurd
reminder of past grandeur.
The
rest of
the
set was
devoid
of all period
detail.
There
are references
to time
and memory
throughout
Three Sisters,
even
from
the
very
first line: 'Orell
yep pOBHO roo HasaR, xaK pas B 3TOT AeHb, nwroro
Max B TBOH HMeHHHbI,
1IpHHa. '279 Accordingly, in
the
opening act of
Stanislavsky's
production, a clock
had
solemnly struck
twelve,
reminding the
sisters of
the
hour
of
their
father's death. This had been followed by
the
calls of
a cuckoo clock
in
an alcove on stage, and as
Ol'ga
continued
her
speech about
time
passing
the
rapid chimes of a smaller clock
had been heard
off-stage.
In
Tovstonogov's
production at
the
BDT in Leningrad in 1965
the
action
had
similarly
begun
with
the
sound of a striking clock, and
its incessant
ticking
had
taken on a
fateful
meaning
in
the
course of
the
action.
For Tovstonogov,
changes over
time
had destroyed dreams
and suppressed
hopes. 280
At Efros's
Malaia Bronnaia, by
contrast,
time
appeared
to
stand still.
C. J. G. Turner has
argued
that
'Three Sisters is
unique
in Chekhov's dramaturgy in
that
its
action
covers at
least
over
three and probably over
four
years and
in
that
an appreciable
period of
time
passes
between
each of
its
acts'.
281
For Rudnitskii, however,
although
the performance was
interrupted by
three
intervals instead
of
the
usual
one,
the
pace of
Efros's
production generated a sense
that the
events
took
place
in
a single
day. The
passage of
time
did
not appear to
affect the characters, who
remained unchanged
throughout the
action.
282
Efros
placed a
large
clock
278S-AZjzova,
'Dolgaia',
p.
32.
279Tri
Sentry, Act I,
p.
119.
280Senelick,
Chekhov Theatre,
p.
207.
281C.
J. G. Turner, Time
and
Temporal Structure in Chekhov, Birmingham Slavonic
Monographs, 22 (Birmingham: Department
of
Russian Language
and
Literature, 1994),
pp.
51-52.
282Ruditskii, Spektakli,
p.
152.
122
down-stage, but it
stood motionless
throughout the
action and
its face had
no
hands. Time
-
the
past,
the
present and
dark
presentments about
the
future
-
were compressed
into
a single context;
thus the
sisters were
locked into
a never-
changing world of unrealised
dreams. But
although
time
appeared
frozen,
the
atmosphere and action of
the
production were carefully modulated.
It
swung
from
moments of gaiety
to
an
ironic, indeed humorous
perception of
the
characters' world, which often
bordered
on satire and even
threatened to
spill
over
into
energetic excesses and
hysteria, but
the
performance ended on a note
of
despair. As Rudnitskii
maintained,
Efros
succeeded
in
the
course of
the
play
in
switching
its
mood
between
two
extremes:
'CneKTaxlb
ua, %xancx o uo1
xpAxocTbio, xoxgancsi ApyroL.
Ha
ancx xoTamia cxenc$ca it capxa3Ma,
xox, qancx noToxamn cne3.
'283
Efros
was supremely conscious of
the
musical
tempi that
underlie
the
structure
of
Chekhov's
plays.
284
For him
the
melody of
the
dialogue
and
the
action,
together
with
the
internal
construction of a scene or act,
functioned like
music,
generating mood, pace and atmosphere
in
arias, pauses, crescendos and
diminuendos, harmonies
and
dissonance. Iurii Smelkov
suggested that
Efros
built his
entire production as a symphony, orchestrated
in
accordance with
just
such a
hidden
score.
285
In
the
opening scene, wanting
(like Stanislavsky)
to
generate an expectant,
buoyant
tone,
he
used a piece of waltz music, played on
an old-fashioned
horned
gramophone set
down-stage left. Iurii Dmitriev
commented
derisively
that the
melody was of
the type typically
played
in
the
apartments of
the
bourgeoisie
at
the turn
of the
nineteenth century.
286
In fact
the
music was
taken
from
a recent popular
Czech film, The Shop
on
the
Square.
Efros
used
this
familiar
modern music as a
deliberate
anachronism, which
2831bid.,
p.
160.
284
,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
196-197.
285Iutii
Smelkov, '"Tri
sestry"
1967
goda',
Moskovskii komsomolets, 24 December 1967,
p.
3.
286Dmitriev,
'P'esa',
p.
3.
123
contributed
to the sense of
timelessness
in his
production.
As
the
music
began,
Tuzenbakh (Lev Kruglyi)
gestured
to
Irina (Iakovleva), inviting her
to
dance.
The
waltz and
this gesture were repeated at
different
moments
in
the
first
act and
Chebutykin,
the
officers and other sisters swirled around
the
stage
in
a
joyous
dance. The
same waltz was
heard intermittently
throughout the
later
action.
It
functioned
as a
leit-motif,
a
bitter
reminder of
the
joyful hope
expressed at
the
opening, which
jarred increasingly
with a growing sense of
despair. At
other
times the
whirring sound of
Irina's
spinning
top cut
into
the
dialogue,
creating a
sense of alarm which
for Shakh-Azizova
recalled
the
effect of
the
distant
breaking
string
in The Cherry Orchard.
287
For Smelianskii,
the
shift of mood
from
gaiety
to
pessimism was charted too
by
the
changing colours of
A. Chernova's
costumes.
288
Ignoring Chekhov's
stage
directions, Efros had
all
the
sisters similarly clothed.
They
appeared
first in
brilliant,
spring-like green,
then
in
smoky-grey, and
finally in
satin
dresses
with
black
and white stripes.
The
costumes
became
more
luxurious
with each
appearance, and according
to
Rudnitskii
the
sisters
did
not merely wear
their
dresses, but
paraded
them, as
it
were, around the
stage.
289
In
their
extravagance,
like
the
gilt-leafed
tree, these
costumes seemed
incongruous in
this remote place and provided a stark, almost
ludicrous,
contrast with
the
wretched reality of
the
characters'
lives. Moreover,
the
sleeves of
the
green
dresses
were padded and resembled
butterfly
wings, suggesting almost cruelly
that these
women,
though their
dreams
would remain unfulfilled, were capable
of
flight. In Act I Chebutykin
calls
Irina 'my
white
bird',
and when she
announces
in Act IV
that
she
is
marrying
Tuzenbakh
and
leaving, he
refers
to
himself
as an old
bird
who, unlike
the
others,
is
now unable
to
fly
away,
but
urges
them to
do
so.
('OCTa.
ICs fI II03ajs, ToMBo nepeneTxast nTmMa, xoTOpa$
287S
_Azizova,
'chekbovskaia',
p.
373.
288Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
70.
289Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
154.
124
cocTapwmacb, He Mo)KeT JIeTeTm.
neTBTe,
MOH MHJIble, JIem're c
6oroM! ')29
According
to
Shakh-Azizova, however, Durov delivered
these
lines in
a way
that
suggested
he had
no
faith in
them,
indeed
as
if he knew
what
fate had in
store.
291
This
was
by
no means
the
only
instance in
which
the
words spoken
by
characters were out of
keeping
with
the
reality of
the
world around
them.
As
Gaevskii
noted,
Efros's
treatment
of
language
was again at odds with
traditional
expectations.
Monologues
and speeches made
famous in MAT
performances
became low-key
and were
delivered by
the
actors with
their
backs
to the
audience, whereas
lines formerly
seen as
insignificant
were given new and
greater weight.
292
Efros
was not simply concerned,
however,
to
inject
new
sense
into
well-worn phrases.
Instead language itself became
a central
theme
of
his
production.
Words in Chekhov's drama
express
ideals
and
hopeful dreams
which are not
fulfilled in
the
real world.
In
a play
in
which, as
Masha
remarks
angrily
in Act IV,
everyone
talks
incessantly, it
was
Efros's intention
to
show
that
words cannot
be
trusted.
They deceive;
they
mask true
feelings
and can
be
manipulated
to
create
false dreams. At
the
opening of
Act H Stanislavsky had
littered
the
stage
floor
with
toys
(presumably belonging
to
Bobik,
and
intended
perhaps
to
imply Natasha's incipient domination
of
the
household). They had
included
a
little,
squeaky
barrel-organ
and a
harlequin
with a pair of clapping
cymbals.
Later in
the
act, as
Irina had begun
to talk
dreamily
of
Moscow,
Vershinin had been directed
to
play with
the
harlequin,
undercutting
her
words
with
the tinkling sound of
its
tin
cymbals.
Then
as
Vershinin himself had begun
to philosophise on
life in
two
or three
hundred
years,
his
musings
had been
interrupted by
the
squeaks of
the
barrel
organ turned
by Tuzenbakh. Thus
Bobik's
toys
had
provided an
ironic
commentary
on the
characters'
lofty
290Tri
Sestry, Act I,
p.
123; Act IV,
p.
175.
2915
_A
ova,
'Chekbovskaia',
p.
376.
292
i
vskii, p.
58.
125
sentiments.
Efros
used a similar
device in
this
act
by directing Durov
as
Chebutykin to thump the piano
derisively during Tuzenbakh's
speeches.
But
an
idea
that
Stanislavsky had
used
for
a single scene was extended
by Efros
to
become
a central premise of
the production as a whole.
Even
the
joyous
mood
engendered
by
the
waltz at
the
beginning
of
Act I
was undercut
by
moments of
tension and
insecurity. As Smelkov
noted,
Iakovleva
spoke
Irina's line: 'A
He
3HaIO, 0T'lero y Memi Ha j; ymme TaK CBeTJIO!
'293
not as an exclamation
but
as a
question, as
though she were attempting
to
fathom
whether
it
was
true,
revealing a
disparity between
the
words and
her inner
conviction.
294 Similarly
in
the
final
act
Tuzenbakh's
exclamation
that
life
too
should
be beautiful
amid
such
beautiful
trees
seemed
both
comic and
deeply ironic
on a set overhung
by
gnarled
bare branches.
295
Efros did
not,
however,
change
Chekhov's
script, which can
itself be
shown
to
justify his interpretation
of
Three Sisters
as a play of contrasts
between
the
characters'
ideals
and aspirations and
the
reality of
their
unchanging
circumstances.
In Act I for instance,
through the
ingenious
use of simultaneous
staging,
the
sisters'
dreams
of going
to
Moscow
are undercut
by
caustic
though
apparently unconnected remarks
from
the
officers
in
the
adjoining
ball-room.
Similarly, later in Act II
the
idealised image
of
the
city
is
counterpointed
by
Ferapont's
fantastical
anecdotes.
Vershinin, in
the
sisters' view,
has
a close,
almost magical, association with
Moscow,
and
they
are
in
awe of
him
when
he
first
appears, exclaiming and questioning repeatedly:
'You
come
from
Moscow'.
296 He
too,
however,
soon paints a
different
picture of
their
beloved
city
by
recalling
the
loneliness
and sadness
he
used
to
feel
when crossing a
293Tri
Sestry, Act I,
p.
120.
294Smelkov, '"Tri
sestry"', p.
3.
295M.
Stroeva, 'Esli by
znat'...
', Sovetskaia kul'tura, 18 January 1968,
p.
3.
296In
this opening exchange
between Vershinin,
the sisters and
Tuzenbakh,
the phrases
'143
Mocxebc'
and
'BM
as
Mocr.
Bw' are used six times as questions and as statements, while
Vershinin
himself
also uses
'a Mocne'
three times.
Tri Sestry, Act 1,
pp.
126-127.
126
gloomy
bridge
to
his barracks,
and suggesting
that their
own river
is by
comparison a much more wonderful sight.
297
Smelkov
recalled
the glittering
impression
that
had been
created
by
Stanislavsky's
entrance as
Vershinin in
the
first MAT
production.
Tall,
handsome,
clothed
in full dress
uniform, with glimmering epaulets and sword-
knots
on
his hat,
this
Vershinin had
truly
appeared
to
be
a vision
from
another
world.
298
Efros by
contrast appears
to
have
taken
his
cue
from Masha's
confession
in Act III
that
before
she
loved Vershinin
she
thought
him
at
first
rather strange and
later
pitiable.
He had Nikolai Volkov
play
Vershinin
not as a
dashing hero but
as an ordinary
though
somewhat eccentric
individual. As
Henry Popkin
noted,
the
pattern of
his
eccentricity was set
by his first
scene:
He is
a man
haunted by
the past.
On
meeting
two of the sisters,
he
stares at them
without a word, clapping
his hand
to
his
cheek.
They
exchange glances, wondering
if
he is
all right.
At last he
explains that
he is
recalling
his
previous acquaintance with
them.
299
Similarly, during
the
monologue
in Act III in
which
he describes his daughters'
plight
during
the
fire, Volkov flapped his
arms about comically and
did
not
seem
to
listen
to
his
own words.
As Gaevskii has
noted, such an eccentric
interpretation
was
fully in keeping
with the role as written:
Chekhov's directions
indicate
that
during
this
speech
the
character
laughs
three times
and at
its
end
begins
to sing.
300
Clearly Volkov's Vershinin belonged
more
to the
Moscow
of
Ferapont,
or possibly
to the
gloomy and
lonely
city
described in his
own
words, which, as
Smelkov
noted, were
lent
an new emphasis, as
though they
297Ibid,
p.
128.
298Smelkov,
'"Tri
sestry"', p.
3.
299H.
Popkin, 'What
the
Russians Ask
of
Chekhov', The Times, 17 July 1968 (Arts),
p.
6.
300Gaevskii,
pp.
65-66.
127
had
never
been
spoken
before.
301
This
was not
the
city of
the
sisters'
dreams,
their
lost
spiritual
homeland. The disparity between
the
sisters' expectations
and
the
real
figure
of
Volkov's Vershinin highlighted
the
absurdity of
their
hopes.
Stroeva
maintained
that
Nemirovich-Danchenko had
treated
seriously the
discussions
on
the
meaning of
life between Vershinin
and
Tuzenbakh in
order to
avoid
their
becoming 'superficial intellectual
chit-chat'
(HHTennHreTxcxax
(50nTOSxx).
302
In Efros's
production,
by
contrast,
these
debates became
precisely
the
kind
of empty chatter
that
Nemirovich-Danchenko had
wanted
to
avoid.
Thus,
according to
Rudnitskii, Volkov's Vershinin,
though
apparently
enthralled with
Masha,
used
high-flown language
and expressed seemingly
lofty
sentiments not
because he
actually
thought
in
this
way,
but
rather
because
he had heard
somewhere
that this
was what
was
expected
if
one was
in love.
303
However, he
rapidly
became
tongue-tied and confused, was
too
embarrassed to
'philosophise'
seriously,
tended to
mutter or race
through
his
speeches, and
was given to
joking
and play-acting.
In
a similar manner,
Tuzenbakh's
speeches were given an
ironic
treatment
in
Kruglyi's interpretation
of
the
role.
In fact Kruglyi's
overall tone
was one of
humour,
self-mockery and parody.
In Act I he
was
directed
to
sing and
dance,
and
in Act III
appeared
to
be in
an almost
dream-like
state.
In Act II he
was
drunk,
which
(as Popkin
maintained) conveniently explained
his
sudden
warmth
towards
Solenyi,
who was also played as tipsy.
304
Thus
the
Baron's
speech about
the
swallows, who simply
fly
with no
knowledge
of why
they
do
so, was produced as
if Tuzenbakh himself had
no real
idea
what
he
was saying
301
Smelkov, '"Tri
sestry"', p.
3.
302Stroeva,
'Rabota',
p.
63.
303Rudnitskii,
Spektakli,
p.
155.
3041bid.
128
and even
less belief in its
content.
This Tuzenbakh
was radically
different from
Viktor Khmelev's interpretation
at
the
MAT in 1940. Khmelev's Baron,
though
not
himself
an active revolutionary,
had fervently believed in
and welcomed
enthusiastically
the
coming storm which would sweep
before it
all
laziness,
boredom
and unwillingness
to
work.
305
Kruglyi, by
contrast,
delivered his
speech on
the
necessity of work
in
a
tone that
was
both
comic and
ironic,
and
it
was received with
indifference by his
on-stage audience.
Rudnitskii
saw
the
hollowness
of
the
army officers' speeches as significant
in
the emotional
downfall
of
the three
sisters.
The
women
themselves
shed all
sense of
delusion
when
they
realised
that these
high-flown
words, and
indeed
by
extension
the
speakers, so closely associated with
their
dreams
of
Moscow
and a new
life,
were
increasingly
unbelievable.
306
This ironic
aspect of the
interpretation
was not,
however,
completely overpowering.
Instead Efros
maintained a
balance between
a mocking sense of
humour
and a
deep
sense of
sorrow.
The
steadfast and self-assured
Solenyi
was used as a counter-weight to
the meaningless
discussions between Vershinin
and
Tuzenbakh. He
was
sincere, moreover,
in his
affection
for Irina,
and
her
preference
for Tuzenbakh
was
therefore
given an added
twist.
As Iurii Dmitriev
maintained,
his decision
to
fight
the
Baron
was not simply
therefore
an act of
bravado but
motivated
instead by
the
pain of unrequited
love.
307
The Baron
too
had
moments of absolute sincerity.
For instance, in Act II his
lines
to the effect
that
he is Russian, in
spite of
his
triple-barrelled
German
surname and
Greek Orthodox baptism,
expressed a
deep insecurity by being
delivered
as
though
he himself
was searching
for
reassurance about
his
305Stroeva,
'Rabota',
pp.
60-61.
306Rudnitsk,
Spektakli,
p.
157.
307Dmitriev,
'P'esa',
p.
3.
129
roots.
308
In Act IV,
as
he leaves for
the
duel he
expresses a
deep longing for
love from Irina,
who
feels
only affection
for him. He
repeatedly pleads with
her ('CxaxdH
Mxe pro-Ha6yb.
'309), but in
this
production
he
elicited
from
Iakovleva's Irina
only a
harsh
and calculating response:
"ITO. LhTo
cxa3am?
LITO? '. Tuzenbakh
appeared
for
this
scene not
in
uniform
but in
mufti, as
though,
as
Stroeva
noted,
he
was stripped of all
defences,
and as
he
exited
for
the
duel his
mask of self-mockery was
finally
removed.
310
The
waltz music
was
heard
again, and
Kruglyi
repeated
for
the
final
time
his
gesture of
invitation. He
then
danced
slowly off, shouting:
'No, No. In Chekhov's
text
the
word
'no' is
said twice,
but Efros directed Kruglyi
to
repeat the
line
again
and again; with each repetition
he
used a softer
tone
and spoke with
increasing
conviction.
According
to
Gaevskii,
this
suggested resignation
in
the
face
of
what
Tuzenbakh knew
to
be
a suicidal act
311
In Kruglyi's
sudden changes of
tone the
audience were made aware that
Tuzenbakh's
self-mockery
belied
a
deep
despair. He
turned
Tuzenbakh into
a
tragic
clown,
both
enormously
sympathetic and somewhat
foolish
and awkward, which
in Popkin's
opinion
was entirely
in keeping
with
Chekhov's
own conception
312
Stanislavsky had
suggested that the
sisters'
desire for life
and
joy
was the
central
theme
of
the
play.
To
this
end
he had
attempted,
largely
unsuccessfully,
to
inject laughter
and gaiety
into his
actors' performances.
As Meyerhold,
who
had
played
Tuzenbakh,
recorded
in his
notebook, one of
the
basic
motifs of
Stanislavsky's
concept
had been 'a
tragic
quality against a
laughable
(background)
comedy'.
313
Efros
carried this
kind
of contrast much
further.
Zubkov, in describing Kruglyi's
tragi-comic dancing
exit, used
the
word
308Smelkov,
'"Tri
sestry"', p.
3.
309Tri
Sestry, Act IV,
p.
180.
310Stroeva,
Bsli',
p.
3.
311vskii,
p.
58.
312Popkin,
p.
6.
313Quoted
in Rezhisserskie
ekzempliary
K. S. Stanislavskogo,
6
vols, ed.
by I. Solov'eva
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983) III, 1901-1904,
p.
23.
130
'balagan'
as a
term of
derision.
314
It is
clear
however
that
Efros had
recognised, and was
deliberately
using,
the expressive power of
the theatre
of
masks,
the
grotesque and
the
ironic,
that
are so
frequently
associated with such
theatre.
In
this
he
was clearly
influenced
not only
by
the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky,
but
also
by
those
of
Meyerhold
and
(as Gaevskii
noted) of
Vakhtangov.
315
Like Vakhtangov, Efros
rejected naturalism or what
he
termed
'domestic
truth'
in
the theatre:
'MHe
3Ta
6bITOBasI
ROCTOBepHOCTb BcerAa
6hIJIa
CKyiIHa H
HeHHTepecHa.
HewTepecHO,
KorAa JIuORH Ha ci eHe CHART, HOCKT CBOH
nHAxcaKH,.,
'316 In
an
interview
recorded
in
about
1979 Efros discussed his
approach
to
Chekhov,
and
insisted
that the contemporary
theatre
should not
be
based
on what
he
termed
'literary
psychology':
CTaHHCJiaBC%Hil
BBeJi B Hamy IIpO4JeCCffiO TaxEe cJioaa xax jgekkTBHe,
BHyTpeHHee pedCTBHe,
-H
TeM CaMMM COBepmHJI HepeBopoT.
MM...
BOCIIHT8Hbi Ha 3TOM, 3TO OCHOBbZ namero IIpo4eccnonanbnoro
MHpOBO33peHHH...
3I
wiuO MEC Co BpeMeneM CTaJIO ECHO, WO BBYTpennee gekCTBHe
Hajo JXOBOgHTb J{o Hpc e]Ia, IIo9TH go a6Cypjja.
317
He drew
an analogy with painting, suggesting
that
it
was possible
to
stay within
the
frame
of realism or go
beyond it:
MOYCHO
H BOCHpKHHM*Tb H H3O6paHCaTb Ty %e ZH3Hb rRHep6oJrngecKH,
rpoTecxoro, HpeyBeeJIHReHHO.
BOT
BoIpoC: xax HaxoJ{HTb HpeyBellHceHHbie
3aAa9H, HpeyaemmeHHoe J{e*cTBHe, HpeyBeJIHgengyio aKTHBHOCTm, lie Hapyman
314Zubkov,
'Raznye',
p.
8
315Gaevskii,
p.
59.
316A.
Efros, '0 Chekbove io
nashei professii',
Moskovskii
nabliudatel
, 11-12 (1993) 4-8 (p.
7). The
exact
date
of this
interview is
not
known. Krymova has
estimated that she taped
it in
about
1979, but its
text was not published until
1993.
317E
,
'0 Chekhove',
p.
7.
131
xcasaeHao upaBAb, no noA'IaaH1 ee xaxo*-To xpyfHO, ecna MO HO Tax
cxa3aTm, ocTpo gena.
318
As
we
have
seen,
for
much of
his
time
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia Efros
was
to
develop his
concept of
'acting
on
the
run',
in
which
he
sought to
combine a
sense of
'inner
truth'
with a very physical performance style.
This idea
was
central
to
his first
production there.
In
productions of
Chekhov
at the
MAT,
the
passions and sufferings of
the
characters
had been buried in
a sub-text, and
revealed only through
implication
and silent pauses.
By
contrast, as
Demidova
noted, referring specifically to the
final
scene
between Masha
and
Tuzenbakh, in
Efros's Three Sisters
this
sub-text was not
buried but
physicalised
in
a manner
that
was
to
become
typical
of much of
his later
work.
319
In
a production
in
which words could not
be
trusted,
Efros filled
the
MAT's
silent pauses with
action, which quite
literally
spoke
louder. In
addition, some pieces of
business,
though often created as
buffoonery, had
also a sad, even cruel aspect, revealing
(often
quite explosively) the
characters'
inner
emotions.
For instance, in Act I
Chebutykin
presents a samovar
to
Irina,
who
is
embarrassed
by
such an
expensive present.
Usually
this
samovar
is
rapidly removed
from
the
stage,
but
Efros directed Tuzenbakh
to
snatch
it
up and
toss
it
to
Solenyi,
creating
laughter
all round.
Solenyi
then
set
it down
on
the
stage, and a
furious
and
humiliated
Chebutykin kicked it
viciously, so
that
it fell
over and
its lid
rolled about
noisily,
frightening
the
sisters.
Similarly,
when
Kulygin
returned exhausted
from
the
fire in Act III
and sat with
his
wife on
the
ottoman,
Masha
suddenly
and
decisively
tipped
him
off on
to the
floor.
The
role of
Chebutykin had been
created
for
the
MAT
actor
A. Artem,
and
(as
Gaevskii
observed) was usually
interpreted
as
the
slow slide
into indifference
of
3181bid.
See
also
Allen,
p.
93.
319AM
DeMidova, Vtoraia
real'nost'
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980),
pp.
55-56.
132
a
lonely
old man.
320
Chebutykin is
reduced
to
reading useless newspaper
excerpts about a
distant
world
from
which
he is
precluded.
But in his
monologue after
the
fire, in Durov's interpretation, he
suddenly
became (for
Gaevskii)
not only energised
but
ageless, and revealed
like Tuzenbakh
that
all
his
quirky
behaviour
was only a mask
for inner despair. Durov's
execution of
Chebutykin's
speech was an electrifying tour
de force: he
created a wild
dance,
parodying
his
waltzing
in Act I. In Rudnitskii's description
of
this
scene, the
diminutive Durov flew
on
to the
stage with a cry
between laughter
and
tears,
and with such nervous energy that
he
seemed
to
be
seeking an exit or some way
to
discharge his intense
emotions.
Suddenly he
caught sight of the
gramophone, which stood to
one side of
the stage;
turning the
handle, he
whirled
into
a rollicking
dance. As he danced he
examined
himself in
an
imaginary
mirror,
inspecting his
own
limbs
as
if
they
were objects,
disconnected
as
it
were
from his
own
body. 'MoxceT 6brrb,
xH He genoBex, a
TOEIbxo BOT Aenaio BHA, 'ITT y MeH$ pyxa H Hong
...
H ronOBa.
'321 He
then
uttered
the
line: '0,
ecim
6161
xe cyu&ecTBosam!
'
as one of complete
despair.
At
this precise moment the
music stopped and
Chebutykin halted, drooping,
limp
and utterly perplexed.
Then he
suddenly
leapt back
across
the
stage to
his
'saviour'
the
gramophone, and galloped
into
a
frenzied dance
once more.
322
This
portrayal of
Chebutykin
as a
dancing
marionette pulled
by
unseen strings,
railing against
his
very existence and
demanding
a
justification,
revealed a
pathetic,
despairing
and
inherently futile
attempt at rebellion against a
life
of
meaningless
inertia
and passivity.
Following
this
explosive crescendo
in Efros's Chekhovian
symphony, the
pace
of
the
final
act was slowed and
the
farewells
prolonged.
In
the
closing
moments of
the
1901
production
Stanislavsky
had
created the
now
famous final
320
v*H, p.
62.
321
Tri Sentry, Act III,
p.
160.
322RudniLQW,
Spektakli,
pp.
157-158.
133
image
of
the
forlorn
sisters
huddled
together
around a
bench
stage-left
in
a
withered garden.
Nemirovich-Danchenko's
Three Sisters had
created a
lasting
impression
of unfailing
optimism: with
Chebutykin banished from
the
finale,
the sisters
had
stood united
in
their
belief in
the
future. In Tovstonogov's 1965
production, which also celebrated an ultimate
faith in human
endurance,
the
closing moments of
the
play were
the only
time at which
the
sisters
drew
physically close
to
one another.
Efros, by
contrast,
deliberately
rejected
this
traditional
image
and
the
indeed
the spirit
it
evoked.
He 'quoted' Stanislavsky
by
providing a
bench down left, but left it
conspicuously
bare
and
instead
separated
the sisters
to
different
parts of
the stage.
Ol'ga
addressed
her final
lines, in
a
tone
of mocking
despair,
not
to
her
sisters
but directly
to the
audience.
Although he borrowed
something of
the tragic atmosphere of
Stanislavsky's
production,
Efros's Three Sisters
created a view of
the
world
that
was
ultimately
far
more
bleak
and pessimistic
than that
conveyed
by
any previous
performance of
the play
in Russia. In his
vision of
Chekhov's intellectuals
as
fearful
of
false
promises of
the
future,
culturally
dispossessed
and
ineffectual,
Efros
reflected
the
experience of
the
intelligentsia
of
his day. Indeed,
as
Shakh-
Azizova has
correctly observed,
his
melancholy scepticism concerning
contemporary
Soviet
experience caused greater alarm amongst critics
than
even
his
production
of
The Seagull.
323
In fact it
caused a
furore. Different
commentators
alternately championed and condemned
Efros's
work, and
his
detractors
also criticised
those
who praised
the
production, often
implying
that
their political credentials should
be
subject
to
scrutiny.
324
For
many
in both
3235j-pzizova, '60-e: klassika',
p.
171.
324N.
AlbWn
suggested
that those critics who saw
Efins's
production as a new
departure in
theatrical art were misguided.
N. Albakin, Mere
otvetstveanosti
khudozbnika', Znamia, 12
(1968), 202-212 (pp. 206-207). This
same critic challenged the
views of
both Smelkov
and
Stroeva.
Stroeva's ideas
and
her
support of
Efros
were similarly critcised
by both N. Fed'
and
B. Slovakov.
See N. Albakin, 'Klassika
ostaetsia
klassikoi', in Teatral'naia khronika
(Moscow:
VTO, 1975),
pp.
69-71 (pp. 73-74); N. Fed', 'Obshclhestvennaia
zhizn'
i iskusstvo',
134
camps
Nemirovich-Danchenko's
interpretation became
the
yard-stick against
which
Efros's
was measured.
Smelkov,
on
the
one
hand,
praising
his
wonderful new staging,
declared
that audiences should not
be
surprised
that this
production was
different from
the
MATs;
on
the contrary, after
twenty-seven
years,
it
would
be
surprising
if it
were not.
325 On
the
other
hand,
as
Leonid
Bronevoi
recalled,
MAT
actors present at previews
declared it
to
be
a
'violation'
of a classic.
326 Similarly Albakin,
on seeing
the
Malaia Bronnaia
production,
expressed a
desire
to
go
to the
MAT in
order
to
see
'genuine
art' and
'to
commune with
the
poetry of
theatre,
which stood so proudly above
the
poor
prose of
the
opposition.
'327
Efros's Three Sisters
was
later
appreciated as one of
his
greatest
triumphs, and
even some negative critics at
the time
found it difficult
to
attack
from
a purely
aesthetic stand-point.
Zubkov
confessed,
in
what was otherwise a
damning
critique,
that
he
could
fault
neither
the
coherency of
the
overall conception nor
the quality of
the
performances
328
Predictably his
remarks, and
those
of other
hostile
critics, were
ideologically-charged
and
frequently in
accord with
the
peculiar
logic
of
Socialist Realism,
which
this staging was seen
to contradict.
Gleb Grakov,
writing of
the
so-called
'objective' laws
of art, and quoting
selectively
from Chekhov himself,
suggested
that the
correct
interpretation
of
his
work was
to
present
life
not as
it is, but
as
it
ought
to
be.
329
N. Fed'
Sovetskaia Rossiia, 10 September 1968,
p.
3,
and
B. Slovakov, 'I
moe mnenie',
Sovetskaia
kul'tura,
20 February 1968,
p.
5.
325Smelkov,
"'Tri
sestry"', p.
3.
326Leonid
Bronevoi, '"...
no
kak
ne zhalet'?...
", Teatral'naia
zhizn,
1 (1992), 16-18 (p. 17).
327Abalkin,
'Kiassika',
p.
72.
328Zubkov,
'Raznye',
p.
8.
329G1eb
Grakov, 'S
pozitsii
Chebutykina? ', Sovetskaia kul'tura, 31 January 1968,
p.
3.
Grakov is
referring
here
to one of the central tenets of
Socialist Realism. Given
the need to
stress
the
idea that the
Soviet Union
was continually, and rapidly, moving towards a
harmonious period of economic strength and a glorious
future
prosperity
for
all
its
peoples,
the
dominant tone of all artistic expression was
to
be
one of prevailing optimism.
In
the
skewed
logic
of this theory
it
was necessary and
indeed 'more
realistic', to
lay
stress on
the
positive aspects of
the current situation and to
ignore
any negative ones.
The former
were
to
prevail
in
the
future
and were
thus more typical
even today than the latter,
which were
doomed
to extinction.
Dramatic literature, in
particular, was thus to
depict
the
Soviet
world not
through the microcosms of sordid and petty realities
but in
terms
of
idealised
utopias.
135
objected
to the suggestion
that the sisters were of
the
same social standing as
Natasha,
and also referred
to the
depiction
on
the
production's poster of not
three
but four identical
stylised
female figures,
which confirmed
for him
that
this staging was a celebration of
the values of
the
bourgeoisie.
330
In
a second
critique
he
echoed
the sentiments of
G. Kucherenko,
who objected
to the
removal of
historical
referents
in
the costumes and setting on
the
grounds
that
'truth'
could not
be 'abstract'; it
could
be
revealed only
through the
use of
concrete
details
of
locale
and period.
331
Their
views were shared
by M. Levin;
comparing
Durgin's
set unfavourably with
that of
Nemirovich-Danchenko, he
also maintained
that
Efros, by his failure
to recreate
the
beauties
of nature,
had
violated
the
idea
that
Chekhov's
play was a celebration,
in
spite of everything,
of all
that
is beautiful
and wonderful
in life.
332
He interpreted
the gilded rubber-
tree plant as an effrontery
to
nature
('kax 6b1
B xacMeuKy oT npHpohi), and
remarked
that the
encroaching
trees
immediately
plunged
the
audience
into
an
atmosphere of
hopelessness
and
doom,
which was strengthened
by
Tuzenbakh's
final
exit.
In
a negative comparison with
the
1940
production
he
wrote:
B
micriuy pa3
6onbaee
CTaHOSanoca 3pHTemo oT Toro, Rro
Ty3CH6ax
yxoAmTi R3
aca3aa BAojib npexpacso* annex, pa3Bepayamecx so Bce apace, a se nop
axxomimaneMeErr aopom ero rpaa s Roue cMepTE.
333
The
comic
treatment of
Vershinin's
and
Tuzenbakh's discourses
on
the
future
and on
the necessity of work sent shock waves
through
many critics.
Albakin,
who also
described Efros's
work as
'an
experiment
born
of a poverty of
ideas'
330N.
', 'Chelovek dlia liudei', in N. Fed', Formula
sozidaniia:
liudi
truda v sovremennoi
literature (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1977),
pp.
223-44 (pp. 241-242).
331N.
Fed, 'Dostoinstvo iskusstva', Izvestiia, 12 June 1968,
p.
4; G. Kucherenko, Istorizm
kak
printsip sotsialisticheskogo
realizma',
Oktiabr', 3 (1972), 195-196. (pp. 196-197).
332M.
Levin, 'Obraz
spekwW,
Teatral'naia
zhizn',
24 (1968), 13-16 (p. 13).
3331b
136
and as a'parody of
Chekhov',
334
stated simply
that
without
hope
and a
belief in
the possibility of
building
a
better life
there
is
no
Three Sisters.
335
He implied,
moreover,
that the
use of mocking
irony
was
indicative
of
Efros's
own
lack
of
political commitment.
336 Similarly for Iurii Dmitriev
the
delivery
of
these
speeches
displayed
a
lack
of
faith in
what
he
maintained was
Chekhov's
own
belief in
the
future; he
condemned
the
production as
'decadent',
neither
in
accordance with
Chekhov's intentions
nor appropriate
to
modern
Soviet
theatre.
337
For Smelianskii, however, Kruglyi's derisive
tone
and
the
deadly
sarcasm with which
he
announced
that a
time
would come,
in
twenty-five
or
thirty
years, when everyone would work,
had
quite a
different
effect.
At
this
particular moment,
Smelianskii
recognised a cruel contrast
between
such
aspirations
in Chekhov's
period and
the
forced-labour
camps of more recent
Soviet history.
338
Efros had
created a short-circuit
between
two
eras, and
thus
administered
to the
audience a
brutal
electric shock.
Efros himself later denied
that
he had intended
to
mock
the
institution
of work per se, suggesting
instead
that
Tuzenbakh's
self-mockery was an
inherent
aspect of
his
character.
339
This
comment was written,
however,
under conditions of censorship, and may
therefore
have been
somewhat
disingenuous.
For
some commentators
Efros's
production not only reflected recent
Soviet
history
and more
immediate
social conditions
but
also appeared
to
provide a
broader
commentary on eternal
truths
of
the
human
condition.
In
presenting
characters
locked in
a
timeless
world of unrealised
dreams
and separated
from
the touchstones and referents of past, present or
future,
this
interpretation
of
Chekhov's drama drew it
close
to the
existentialist
ideas
more
frequently
334Abalkin,
'Hera',
p.
206.
335Abalkin,
'Klassika',
p.
70.
33 6Abalkin,
'Hera',
p.
206.
337Dmitriev,
'P'esa',
p.
3.
338Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
70.
339Eos,
Repetitsiia,
p.
33.
137
expressed
in
the
work of playwrights of the
Absurd. In describing Durgin's
set,
Aronson later
maintained
that
'the influence
of
Beckett
as the spiritual
descendent
of
Chekhov
was clearly making
itself felt'. 340
David Allen
similarly
has described
the
world on
Efros's
stage as
'a Beckettian limbo'.
341
As is
well
known,
the
work not only of
European Absurdist dramatists but
also
that
of
Soviet
writers working under
their
influence
was
heavily
censored at
this
period:
Vampilov's Ymuuai
oxoma
(Duck Hunting)
was
banned in
the
same
year
that
Efros's Three Sisters
was staged.
As
a member of
the
intelligentsia,
Efros
may
have
enjoyed privileged access
to
censored material, and
it
seems
unlikely
that
he
would
have been
completely unaware of
the
Absurdist
tradition.
He
certainly read
Vampilov later,
after
the
ban
was
lifted.
342
However,
whether
he intentionally interpreted Chekhov's 'waiting for Moscow'
as an
anticipation of
the
Absurdists is debatable.
343
But intentional
or not, the
possibility of such an
inherently decadent,
and
indeed
pernicious, conception of
the
play was not
lost
on
his
critics.
Dmitriev
maintained
that
nowhere
in
the
Russian
classic repertoire
is
there
a character who
is
convinced of
the
incomprehensibility
of
life.
344
This, he
suggested, was
the prerogative of
'bourgeois' Western
writers
like Beckett
and
Ionesco. In Russia it
was
the
duty
of
the
director
to ensure that
his
contemporary approach
to the
classics
conformed
to the
Socialist Realist
model.
Thus
the
'modernity'
of
Efros's
production could not
in fact be
seen as
in
any way modem or progressive,
but
like
that
of all
'Absurdist'
theatre
represented a step
backwards in
cultural
history. As Shakh-Azizova has
noted,
the
suggestion that
Efros's
production
was
influenced by
the
ideas
of existentialism and
the theatre
of
the
Absurd
was
34OAronson,
p.
141.
341AIlen,
p.
89.
342E
s
discusses Vampilov's Duck Hunting in Prodolzhenie,
pp.
149-155.
3431he
phrase
'waiting for Moscow' is
used
by Nick Worall in his introduction
to his
discussion
of
Stanislavsky's
production.
The
predicament of
Chekhov's heroines
could no
longer be
sustained within
those
existentialist terms
which can now
be
seen,
in
retrospect, to
have
anticipated specific
forms
of
European "absurdist" drama
where waiting
for "Godot"
can
be
construed
as a simple
imaginative
extension of waiting
for "Moscow"'. Worrall,
'Stanislavsky's',
p.
1.
3441u
Dmitriev, '0 klassike i
ee meste v sovremennom teatre', Teatr, 9 (1968), 3-7 (p. 4).
138
made
by
critics whose own
knowledge
of
them
was
limited; furthermore
these
teens tended to
be
used
to
condemn any
theatrical
forms
that
appeared
to
deviate
from
the
well-trodden paths of realist
interpretation.
345
Thus
although
the
influence
of
Absurdist
theatre
was undeniably
to
be felt in Three Sisters, for
Soviet
critics
its
attack on
traditional
interpretations
and
its
articulation of
the
immediate
concerns of
the
contemporary
intelligentsia
were a greater cause
for
alarm.
It
was
these that
were seen
to
contain a subversive message
directed
beyond
the
walls of
the theatre.
Efros's
production garnered as much support
as condemnation,
but
was staged at a
time
when
Brezhnev
was
directing
an ever
wider and
increasingly intense
campaign against
dissent in
artistic circles.
Official
policy changed
in
the
late 1960s,
and within months was
to
see a
wholesale crackdown,
brought
about
in
the
main
by
the
crisis
in Czechoslovakia
in 1968. The
voices of those
who supported
Efros
were swamped.
The
production was
banned,
and
for
over a
decade in
critical works was
frequently
cited only as a prime example of
the
violation of a classic work.
According
to
Shakh-Azizova,
it
was not until
the
1980s,
when censorship
laws
were
somewhat relaxed, that the
significance of
Efros's
work as a
landmark in
a new
approach
to
Chekhov
on
the
Soviet
stage could
be
articulated again.
346
The
response
to
Efros's innovative
staging of
Chekhov
can
be
seen not only
in
critical commentaries
but
also
in
the
work of
his
contemporaries.
In fact his
productions contributed
to
what might
be described
as an artistic
debate between
directors in
the
late 1960s
and
1970s,
as
they translated their
arguments
into
theatrical
form. Boris Livanov launched
the
first
sally at the
MAT in 1968,
when
he
produced what
Shakh-Azizova described
as a
'romantic
and elevated
version' of
The Seagull
that
was emphatically
detached from 'the boredom
of
everyday
life',
and was staged as
deliberate
reaction against
Efros 'rough'
345Shakh-Azizova,
'60-e: klassika',
p.
171.
3461bid.
139
interpretation
of
1966.347 This
production,
in
contrast to
Efros's, included
a
beautiful
evocation of
the play's natural surroundings.
348
V. Asmus
suggested
moreover
that,
in
contrast
to
other recent stagings
(a
tacit
reference perhaps to
the
'failure'
of
Efros's
single-minded
interpretation),
the triumph
of
Livanov's
production
lay in
the
director's
understanding of
the
multiple
layering inherent
in Chekhov's
work.
349
For Smelianskii, by
contrast,
Livanov's
staging
contained no new
ideas.
350
Efremov's
production at
the
Sovremennik Theatre
in 1970 demonstrated
the
influence
of
Efros,
and was
itself intended
perhaps, as
Smelianskii
suggested, as a riposte
to
Livanov.
351
Efremov's
central
idea
that
the characters'
inability
to
communicate stemmed
from
their
essential selfishness
and
lack
of concern
for
others was also
borrowed from Efros. Like Efros,
Efremov
changed the
final
scene; all
the
characters were so wrapped up
in
their
own activities
that they
were entirely oblivious
to the
plight of
their
loved
ones.
Sorin
appeared to
be
not asleep
but dead,
and when
Treplev (contrary
to
Chekhov's directions)
shot
himself
on stage,
for Shakh-Azizova his
suicide was
a
deliberate
reproach
for
their
indifference.
352
The Sovremennik Seagull, like
Efros's Three Sisters,
reflected
the
social and political circumstances of
the
end
of
the
Thaw. As Smelianskii
suggested, the
'death
of
the
"common ideal"
set
the tone
for
the production'.
353
In
the
characters'
harsh
recriminations and
hostile
attitudes to one another,
Efremov
similarly
'imported
to
The Seagull
the
ideological
confusion and
despair
that typified the
late
sixties
.
354
The
sense of
entrapment
in Efros's
settings
for The Seagull
and
Three Sisters
was echoed
in
Leonid Kheifets's Uncle Vanya
at
the
Theatre
of the
Soviet Army in 1969,
and
347Shakh-Azizova,
'Chekhov',
P.
171.
348V.
Shklovskii, 'Vemost' "Chaike"', Pravda, 22 February 1969,
p.
6.
349V.
Asmus, 'Voskreshenie "Chaiki"', Literaturnaia
gazeta,
12 February 1969,
p.
8.
350Anatoly
Smeliansky, 'Chekbov
at the
Moscow Art Theatre', in Gottlieb
and
Allain,
pp.
29-49 (p. 33).
351
Smeliansky, 'Chekhov',
p.
33.
352T.
Shakh-Azizova, 'Sovremennoe
prochtenie chekbovskikh
p'es',
in V
tvorcheskoi
laboratorii Chekhova,
ed.
by L. D. Opul'skaia
et at
(Moscow: Nauka, 1974),
pp.
336-353 (p.
346).
353Smeliansky,
'Chekbov',
p.
33.
354Ibid.
140
later in Adolf Shapiro's Three Sisters
at
the
Molodezhnyi
teatr
(Youth Theatre)
in Tallinn in 1971. Kheifets's
cage-like set overpowered and enclosed
the
characters, creating
the
impression
that they
could neither move nor
breathe.
355
In Tallinn
the
Prozorovs lived in
a solid
house
of
high
walls, with no
doors
or
windows
that
could permit
daylight
to
enter
the
murky gloom of
its interior.
The
garden of
the
final
act was replaced
by
an empty space,
in
which
Andrei
played with a child's
ball. He
attempted
to
bounce it
off the
walls,
but it fell
against
them
with sharp smacks.
356
Efros's first iconoclastic
productions of
Chekhov
prompted a partial revolution
in
the
staging of
his
plays and were clearly
influential
on others.
On
the
other
hand,
traditional
productions,
like
that
of
Livanov,
which remained
in
the
repertoire of
the
MAT for decades,
continued
to
run parallel
to
more radical
interpretations. Efros himself,
as we shall see, adopted
later
a
different
approach
to
Chekhov,
the
beginnings
of which can
be detected in his Cherry
Orchard
which opened at
the
Taganka in November 1975.
First, however,
we must consider
his
production at
the
Malaia Bronnaia in
March
of
that
same year of
Gogol's Marriage. In
this
he
was again able
to
adopt a radical approach.
Although he did
not
deliberately
modernise
Gogol, he
succeeded
in
totally
altering established conceptions, and,
by
exploiting a
classic's potential
for
multiple
interpretation, in
commenting, though
now
indirectly,
on
the
contemporary world.
One
reason
for his
attraction
to
such
works
in
the
1970s, it
will
be
recalled, was
that
because
they
were canonical
and
lacking,
apparently,
in
reference to the
modern world
they
were regarded
by
the authorities as
'safe'. Marriage in 1975
was
to
be
regarded
by
critics
(and
indeed by Efros himself)
as
his
greatest triumph.
357
355Shakh-Azizova,
'Sovremennoe',
p.
345.
356
jb jj
357Efros,
Kniga,
p.
399.
141
Chapter 4
Hy
B3FJI$IHH B 3epKaJI0, 'ITO TbI TaM BHAHIIIb?
Marriage
(1975)
142
Efros
staged
Gogol's Marriage
three times:
first in 1963
at
the
CCT,
second
in
1975
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
and
finally in 1978
at the
Guthrie Theatre in
Minneapolis (a
new
English-language
version of
the
play with an
American
cast).
All his
productions will
be
referred
to
in
this
chapter, with special
mention of
the
first,
which
though
in
some respects an experiment
influenced
his later
approach.
But it
will
focus in
the
main on
the
second, which was much
more successful, toured
widely
in
the
Soviet Union
and
Europe,
and was
presented at
the
Edinburgh Theatre Festival in 1978.
Marriage
concerns
the
attempts of
two
matchmakers, one professional,
Fekla
Ivanovna,
and one amateur,
Kochkarev,
to
marry off
the
dilatory bachelor
Podkolesin
to
a merchant's
daughter, Agafia Tikhonovna. In
the
course of
the
action
Kochkarev
cunningly
fends
off competition
from four
other suitors and
cajoles and
badgers Podkolesin
to the
point where
the
match
is
almost complete.
However,
a
terrified
Podkolesin,
when
finally faced
with
the
imminent
prospect
of matrimonial
bliss,
suddenly
leaps
out of an open window and escapes
in
a
horse-drawn
carriage.
At first
glance, with
its
simple plot, the play seems more
like
a comic
interlude
than
a
full dramatic
work.
Indeed in its
earliest
performances
it
was
treated
as such.
Throughout
the
nineteenth century
it
occupied a relatively
lowly
position
in
the
repertoires of
the
Imperial
theatres,
and
from its first
production at
the
Aleksandrinskii in St. Petersburg
on
9
December 1842
was presented as a vaudeville, one of
the
most popular
forms
of
theatrical entertainment of
the
period
358
Although it
was given some
different interpretations in
the twentieth
century, the
play never
fully
recovered
from its
association
with
the
vaudeville, and
continued
to
be
seen as a
light-weight
comedy.
In
all
his
productions,
Efros,
358Tbis
is
evidenced
by
the
fact
that the number of vaudeville pieces presented annually at the
Aleksandrinskii increased from 41 in
the
season
1832-1833
to
149 by
the
end of
1853;
see
Nick Worrell, Nikolai Gogol
and
Ivan Turgenev (London
and
Basingstoke:
Macmillan Modem
Dramatists, 1982),
p.
35.
143
however,
refused
to
accept
that
it
was nothing more
than
(in his
own words)
'a
jolly
concert number'
(Becenifi
xorngepTHbt t xoMep).
359
On
the
contrary
he
maintained
that
it had depths
not yet
fully
explored on
the
Russian
stage.
He
saw
it
as an
intriguing
mixture of comedy and
drama,
with elements of
fantasy.
360
Thus he
created on stage a phantasmagorical world,
in
which
the
fantasies, dreams
and
fears
of
the
unconscious mind were represented
physically.
In
this
he
was rejecting official
Soviet interpretations dating from
the
mid
1930s,
which suggested that the
play was a realistic
depiction
of society
in
Tsarist Russia. Efros
was
influenced instead by
earlier productions of
Gogol in
the
1920s. His
approach was undoubtedly
(and
perhaps
inevitably) indebted
to
Meyerhold's
seminal staging of
The Government Inspector in 1926. This
production, now regarded
in Russia
and elsewhere as one of the
most
significant
theatrical
events of
the twentieth
century,
has
generated a
huge
volume of critical
literature
and
has been
extensively
documented in both
Russian
and
English. It is
therefore
neither necessary nor within
the
scope of
the present study to
provide a
full
analysis of
that
production
here, but it
must
be
taken
into
account.
Meyerhold's Government Inspector
represented
to
some
degree
a summation of
his
previous practice, which
had developed
alongside and also
influenced
that
of
other
directors
of
the
post
Revolutionary
avant-garde.
The impact
of
his ideas
had been felt in
a production of
Marriage
mounted
in 1922
as
the
first
performance
by The Factory
of the
Eccentric Actor (FEKS) 361
Some
of
his
359Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
268
36OEfros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
10.
361This
was
the
fast
production
by
the company
founded by Sergei Eisenstein, Grigorii
Kozentsev
and
Leonid Trauberg. Staged
as a
"montage
of attractions', the
production exploited
to an extreme
degree
the
farcical
traditions
of
Russian folk dramas
and the
vertep puppet theatre
of
Gogol's
native
Ukraine,
to
which
his
works are said to be indebted. The
chaotic action
consisted of a series of stunts,
drawing
on the techniques
of circus, musical
hall,
acrobatics and
gymnastics, performed
to
a cacophony of musical effects and under rapidly-changing
lighting.
144
techniques
had
also
been
used
by Iurii Zavadskii in
another staging of
the
play
at
the
MAT's Third Studio in 1924.
Zavadskii had
studied with
Vakhtangov,
and
his
production clearly
demonstrated
the
influence
of
his
mentor's concept of
'Fantastic Realism'.
Marriage bears
the
subtitle:
'A Completely Incredible Event in Two Acts',
and
this provided
the
director
with
the
key
to
a surreal and musical
interpretation
which
transformed the
play
into
a
living
nightmare.
Zavadskii's
central
theme
was
the opposition
between
two
worlds.
The first
was represented
by
what
he
saw as
the
idealised love
of
Podkolesin
and
Agafia Tikhonovna. The
second
was
inhabited by
mysterious,
demonic forces
which
threatened to tear this
ideal
world asunder.
The
stage was populated
by
terrifying, caricatured
figures,
who
appeared,
disappeared
and magically reappeared
from
the
gloom.
The
actors'
voices were carefully modulated
throughout; at
times they
spoke
in
whispers,
but
then suddenly raised
their
voices
to sharp,
barking
shouts.
Mournful,
wailing choruses gave way
to
a cacophony of sounds
that
faded
away
unexpectedly
as crashing musical chords were
heard. Similarly, life-like
gestures were abruptly
transformed
into
the awkward, angular movements of
marionettes.
Moments
of
frenetic
action were
introduced into
what was
otherwise a
deliberately
unhurried pace.
The
action was
frozen
at
times
into
tableaux;
for instance in
the
scene
in
which
the
suitors
try to
peer
through the
key-hole
at
the
bride-to-be
the
actors clustered around
the
door, forming
a
pyramid of
human
statuary.
362
As
the advertising poster proclaimed
this
was
Marriage 'not
according to
Gogol',
and
indeed
although
the performers at
times
uttered
isolated lines from
the
play these
had
no
logical
connection
to the action and
Gogol's
written text
was almost entirely
lost. FEKS
only
remained
in
existence
for
two
years, staging their
second
(and last)
production,
Foreign Trade
on
the
Eifel Tower,
on
4 June 1923. However
their productions were
influential
and spawned
a
host
of
imitations including
some of
Marriage. This
tendency to turn
Gogol's
play
into
mad-cap extravaganzas was
delightfully
satirised
by
the
humorists Ilia BY
and
Evgenii Petrov
in
the chapter
'At
the
Columbus Theatre' in
their
novel
1(eena&4amb
cmyIu ee
(Twelve
Chairs). See Il'ia II'f
and
Evgenii Petrov, Dvenadtsat'
stul'ev
(Moscow: Khudozhestvennoi
literatury,
1956),
pp.
236-246. For further details
on
FEKS,
see
Rudnitsky, Russian
and
Soviet,
p.
94.
362E.
Kukhta, '"Zhenitba" N. V. Gogolia
na sovetskoi stsene
1920-kh
gg.
', in P'esa i
spektakl'
(Leningrad: LGI TMiK, 1978), 40-49 (p. 47).
145
As
we shall see,
the
idea
of
two
contrasting worlds and the
use of
frozen
tableaux were
important
aspects of
Efros's
work.
He
was well-versed
in
Vakhtangov's ideas,
and
he had
also
begun his
training,
it
will
be
recalled, with
Zavadskii. Although he
made no specific mention of
this
production,
he
may
therefore perhaps
have been influenced by it
to
some
degree.
By
the
mid
1930s,
the
elements of mysticism and
the surreal, characteristic of
the work of
Zavadskii (and
of
Meyerhold),
were out of
keeping
with
the
official
interpretations
of
Gogol's
work.
Soviet
criticism at
this time
gave renewed
emphasis
to the turn-of-the-century
notion
that
Gogol had influenced Aleksandr
Ostrovskii,
the
playwright regarded as
the
father
of
Russian
realism.
The
hyperbole
and eccentricity exhibited
in
productions of
Gogol's
works
in
the
1920s
were now regarded
therefore
as
features
grafted on
to them
by
misguided
formalist directors,
and not
in
any sense an
inherent
part of
his
style.
Instead,
in
official
interpretations Gogol's
clearly
fantastic
representation of
his
world
was seen as a realistic
depiction
of
Tsarist Russian
society.
Significantly,
a new
edition of
Marriage,
published
in 1937,
was accompanied
by
a commentary
which
insisted
perversely
that the
author's own subtitle,
'an
extraordinary
event',
had
no relevance
to the
content of
the
work
itself. In 1949
these
sentiments were echoed
by B. Medvedev in his
review of
the
play's
first
production
in Moscow
after the
war,
directed
at
the
Lenkom by S. Stein. He
praised
the
director for
recognising
that
Marriage
was not
'an
extraordinary
event'
but
an accurate picture of
the
behaviour
and morality of
the
merchant
class and civil servants of
its
era.
363
Moscow
audiences
had
to
wait until
1963 for
another production, when
Efros
directed
the play at
the
CCT. In
contrast to
Stein, Efros
at
this
period
had begun
363E
Medvedev, '"ZbeeniCW', Trud, 17 September 1949,
p.
5.
146
to
explore non-realist, consciously
theatrical
means of expression.
His first
1963 Marriage
also
demonstrated
two
other concerns central to
much of
his
work at
this time:
his interest in 'the
tragedy
of
the
common man' and
his
investigation
of
the psychology of character.
He
was
beginning
to
seek ways
in
which
to
synthesise
the
actors' expression of
their
authentic
inner
emotions with
a consciously
theatrical
style of presentation.
In
this
first Marriage, however,
the synthesis remained
incomplete. In fact his
production was something of an
experiment.
He
explored
in it
some
ideas
that
were
to
be
more
fully
realised
in
his later interpretation, but his
whole approach
to
Marriage
was as yet
excessively
tentative
and
his
view of
the
play
too
narrow.
The 1975
production
would
be
more complex and guided
by
a much surer
hand.
In 1963,
anxious to
avoid the trappings of
'realist' interpretations,
and
constrained
by
a
limited budget, Efros's designers Valentin Lalevich
and
Nikolai Sosunov
avoided
heavy
period
furniture
and
historically
accurate
decor
in
their
setting.
They
attempted
instead
to
give a sense of
the
era with
the
simplest means.
They
surrounded
the
stage area with a series of velvet-covered
screens, on which were
inscribed, in
naive style, motifs evocative of
the
period:
a
top
hat,
a candelabrum,
the
profile of a
bonneted
woman and so
forth Light
scrim curtains were
hung
at
the
sides, and a
few
sparse properties suggested the
location
of each scene.
Efros
also augmented
the
action with pieces of comic
buffoonery. For instance, he
added a new opening sequence
in
which
G.
Petrov,
as
Podkolesin,
was
directed
to
wander
through the
audience
introducing
himself
to the
spectators, until
he
was overcome
by
a
fit
of shyness and
hid
himself from
view.
Later Durov,
as
Stepan,
and
B. Zakharova,
as
Duniasha,
made much play of clearing the
furniture
and props, working together
as
'proscenium
servants'.
364
Similarly,
at
the
end of
Act I,
scene
XVII,
the
364This
term
is
a
deliberate
allusion to the
costumed stage
hands
used
by Meyerhold, first in
his
production
of
The Adoration
of the
Cross in 1910
and
later in
other productions,
including
(perhaps
most memorably)
Don Juan in November
of that
same year.
As
noted above, the
influence
of
Meyerhold's
work was to
be
seen even more clearly
in Eftis's 1975
production.
147
suitors crowded around a
door
with a man-sized
key-hole in
order
to
'peep'
at
Agafia Tikhonovna. In 1975
such pieces of stage
business
would
be
used
to
create
the
sense of a
fantastic,
unreal world, and
to
call attention
to the
artifice of
performance,
but
they
were also
to
be fully integrated into Efros's
overall
concept.
In
the earlier production
this
buffoonery,
though
in keeping
with the
spirit of
Gogol's
work, at
times
seemed out of place
in
an
interpretation
more
firmly
grounded
in
other respects
in
the
dramatic.
Nevertheless in
this
production
Efros
seems
to
have been less
concerned with
outward appearance and more with
inner
content.
The
production's true
focus
was
his
rejection of
the traditional
view of
Gogol's
characters as typical
comic
masks.
Instead he
saw them
as rounded, as unique, albeit eccentric, and often
deeply
unhappy,
individuals. For instance,
according
to
Evseev, Podkolesin,
who was often stereotyped as an
irremediable idler
similar
to
Oblomov,
was
played sympathetically as a gentle,
kind
character, an
impossibly
shy
dreamer.
365
The interpretation
of
Agafia Tikhonovna
was also refreshingly
new.
Traditionally
seen as
frivolous
and
feather-brained, for B. Aseev, in
Dmitrieva's
convincing performance she
became both
charming and
touching.
This
soft-spoken
Agafia Tikhonovna,
rejecting the
mercenary advice of the
matchmaker, seemed completely sincere
in her desire
to
marry
for love.
Appearing in
white at
the
end and radiantly
happy,
she
broke into bitter
tears
of
genuine grief on
learning
of
the
disappearance
of
her husband-to-be. 366
In
the
role of
Zhevakin Efros
cast
the
veteran actor
Mikhail Zholodov,
who at
seventy
had
played at
the
CCT for
over
twenty
years.
Zhevakin has
more
lines
than the other suitors and
his
role
has
therefore
greater scope.
In Act I,
scene
XVI he has
a series of speeches
in
which
he
provides a rambling
description
of
365B.
Evseev, 'Vozvrashchenie "Zhenitby"', Moskovskii
komsomolets, 24 October 1963,
p.
3.
366B.
A
v,
'"Sushchestvovateli" ili "malen'kie
luidi"? ', Sovetskaia
kul'tura, 14 January
1964,
p.
5.
148
his
past
life
and
travels.
He has
served as a naval officer on a
destroyer,
with a
crew who
had
extraordinary surnames,
including
one called
Hole. He describes
too
his
sojourn
in Italy,
though
he
confuses
Sicily
with
Venice
and says
that
Italians
speak
French. His
stories are comic and
have
the quaint charm of an
older world, a
different
era.
But
though these travels seem exotic
to the
other
suitors,
there
is
another side
to
his life. He
now
lives
entirely alone
in
a small
single room;
his
one possession
is
a pipe.
In his
own words,
being
alone
is
death itself,
and when at
the
end of
Act I,
scene
XX,
the suitors
depart, he
accompanies
Anuchkin home,
even
though this takes
him
well out of
his
way.
367
It
can
be
assumed
that
he does
this to put off
the
horror
of returning
to
an empty
house. In Zholodov's
performance, as a commentary
in Teatral'naia
Moskva
made clear,
Zhevakin's
stories,
though comic, also revealed a
deep
longing
to
break free from
a
life
of
isolation, loneliness
and
fleeting,
insubstantial
relationships.
368
Zhevakin is
an absurd
figure,
now
too
old
to
marry;
he has been
rejected sixteen
times
before
and
his
optimism at
the
prospect of success on
this
occasion
is ludicrous, but
also
touching.
An
innocent, he is
readily
taken
in by Kochkarev's
offer
to
help him; it is
a ruse,
but he is
convinced.
Zholodov
expressed
his
character's wild
delight
at
the
prospect of
his future happiness,
and
literally
rolled about
the
floor in laughter
at
the
idea
of
defeating
the other
hapless
contenders.
But in his final
moments,
rejected
for
the
seventeenth
time,
Zholodov
appeared
to
express real pain, and
as
he departed,
carrying a single small
flower, he bore
a close resemblance
to
a
tragic clown.
Efros's
recognition of
the
importance
of
the
idea
of
'laughter
through tears'
was
vital
to
his
understanding of
Gogol,
and
it
was
this
aspect of the
1963
367N.
Gogol', Zhenit'ba, Act I,
scene
XIX
and
Act I,
scene
XX, in Sobranie
sochinenii,
7
vols
Dramaticheskie
proizvedeniia,
IV (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia
literature, 1967),
pp.
137,139.
368Gogolevskii
obraz',
Teatral'naia Moskva, 41(1963), 4-5.
149
production which most clearly
influenced his
approach
in 1975.369 But
an
emphasis on
the tragi-comic nature of
the
play was only one aspect of
the
later
production.
What distinguished it both from
that
of
1963
and
from
all previous
stagings of
Marriage in Russia
was
the
breadth
and complexity of
Efros's
approach.
In his
productions of
Chekhov,
as we
have
seen,
Efros had been
criticised with
some
justification for
taking
an excessively reductive,
indeed
subjective
approach
by interpreting
the
works along narrow
thematic
lines. In Marriage he
did
the opposite.
He
revealed
in
the play a complexity and psychological
depth
not manifest
in
previous productions.
He incorporated
concrete
images
which
expressed
Gogol's
concepts of
the
double,
of
distorting
mirror
images,
and of
poshlost' and
the
metaphorical meanings of marriage
itself. Under his direction
Gogol's deceptively
simple play
became
a profound
treatise
on
the
inherent
absurdity of
the
human
condition.
To
characterise
his broad
approach
to the
play
he
coined a new verb:
'He
xaAo
osogeBHnmmam
7KeHHrb6y,
xajo ee ommiem .
'370 His
remark
implied
that rather
than
regarding
the
play as a minor work
he intended
to
interpret it
within
the context of, and
in
relation to,
Gogol's
other works,
including his
short story of
1842, The Overcoat. 371
In
order
to
understand
his
remark we must
therefore
consider the
similarities
between
the
symbolic
function
of
the
overcoat
in
the
prose work and the
concept of marriage
expressed
in
the comedy.
369lurii
Smelkov has
suggested that
prior to
Efros's
production
in 1975
the concept of
'laughter through tears'
had
never
been
used as an approach to
Gogol's
characters.
Clearly
this
critic was not only not au
fail
with a production of
Gaideburov's Travelling Popular Theatre in
1916 but
also unaware of
Ef
os's own earlier staging of
Marriage in 1963. Iurii Smelkov,
'Bednye liudi', Moskovskii kontsonwlets, 14 May 1975,
p.
S.
370Efros,
Repetitsiia,
p.
269.
371As
noted above,
Efros directed Marriage
at the
Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 1978.
Although he
explained
the
importance
of
his
new verb to
his
cast, the significance of
'to
overcoat' was probably
lost
on
his
audience, when
in
the
programme
Efros's
words were
mistranslated as:
'One
must not vaudevillize
(sic) Marriage,
one must wrap
it
up
in
a coat.
'
150
In
this short story
the purchase of a new overcoat
transforms the
dismal
and
mundane existence of
Akakii Akakievich Bashmachkin,
and
the
involved
process of
buying it
rapidly
becomes
an all-absorbing passion.
Actually
and
symbolically
the
overcoat
becomes
the
object of all
his desires
and
dreams
and
represents not only
the
purpose of
his
current existence
but
also
the promise of a
new
life. Interestingly, its
acquisition
is directly
equated with
the
idea
of marital
happiness. In
order
to
pay
for it, Akakii Akakievich
subjects
himself
to
a
regime of near-starvation,
but he
suffers
this privation gladly
because his
nourishment
is
spiritual;
from
the
moment
he decides
to
buy it he
thinks
only,
like
one
in love,
of
the
fact
that
one
day
the overcoat will
be his.
C
max nop KaK
6ygro
caMOe cyngeCTSOSane ero cAeAanocb KaK-TO no mee, KaK
6ygro 6i
on Zennacs, KaK
6yTro
KaKo-TO ppyro QenoseK npscyTCTBoBan c
1KM, Kay.
6yATO
OH
6bin
He O K11, a KaKax-To npaKTnan noApyra X13HR
cornacnilacb c HHM Hpoxoj[HTb sMeCTe ZH3HeHHYlo j[opory,
-H
HoApyra 3Ta
6wia
He rcro Apyra,, m Ta xe IHHU
.b
Ha romcro Haie, Ha Kpefco HogviWe
6e3
H3HOCy
372
Once
purchased,
the overcoat
brings
great
joy
and propels
the
protagonist
into
another world.
Newly
attired,
he
ventures
into
a
different
part of
the
city
in
order
to go to a party, and
in
so
doing
to
participate
in
a social circle
from
which
previously
he has been
excluded.
But his
new-found
happiness is
short-lived.
Leaving the party, and
lost in
the
unfamiliar streets,
he is
robbed of
his
overcoat; abandoned
in
the
bitter
cold,
he falls ill
and
dies
soon after.
Buying
the overcoat
has horrific
consequences.
Indeed its
very existence ultimately
brings
about
his death. In
this
manner
Gogol
subverts
its
symbolism, turning
it
into
the negation of all
it
once represented.
372Gogol,
Shinel', in Sochineniia, 2
vols
Povesti (Moscow: Khudozhestvennia literatura,
1973), I,
pp.
536-565 (p. 548).
151
It is interesting
to note the marked similarity
between Efros's
comment and
the
famous
remark attributed
to
Dostoevsky: We have
all emerged
from
under
Gogol's Overcoat. ' This
observation, as
F. Driessen has
noted,
'may
serve
very well as a succinct
formulation
of a view which
had become
classical
during
the
19th
century.
This
sees
Gogol's
short story as
the
starting point of
the
literature
which
is dominated by
social pity and which
demands
attention
for
the
humiliated
and
insulted. '373
There is
no
direct
evidence that
Efros intended
to
paraphrase
this
much-quoted
aphorism,
but he
may well
have known it
and was possibly alluding to
it,
because he
clearly saw
Podkolesin, Agafia Tikhonovna
and
Zhevakin in
particular as very much part of that
literary
tradition.
As
we
have
seen
in
the
description
of
his CCT
production,
he did
not see
Gogol's
characters as simple
comic masks.
He
viewed
them
instead
as complex
individuals;
as such they
were not separate
from, but
very much part of,
Gogol's
whole approach to
characterisation.
In
every character
Efros
saw a ridiculously
funny
and
deeply
unhappy
'cousin'
of
Akakii Akakievich,
a character often perceived as
the
quintessential
'tragic little
man'.
But Efros
also wished
to
see
the
work
in
the
context of
Gogol's
whole oeuvre.
This idea had
something
in
common with
Meyerhold's
approach to
The
Government Inspector. He
too
had
wanted to
produce
'all
of
Gogol'. Efros,
however,
unlike
his
predecessor,
did
not make radical alterations to
Gogol's
written
text
or
incorporate into his
production extracts
from Gogol's
other
writings.
Moreover, Meyerhold's intention had been
overtly political;
he had
wanted
to
paint a satirical picture of the
whole of
Gogol's
Russia. By
contrast,
373F.
Driessen, Gogol
as a
Short-Story
Writer: A Study
of
his Technique
of
Composition,
(The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1965),
p.
183. Although
this famous
remark
is
attributed to
Dostoevsky, Driessen
casts some
doubt
on whether
he
actually
uttered
it. (Note 4,
p.
185).
152
Efros's desire
to
'overcoat'
the
play was motivated, as well as
by his
approach
to
character,
by his desire
to
express
the
philosophical
ideas in Gogol's
work.
Like
the
overcoat,
the
concept of marriage
in his
play simultaneously affirms
and negates all
that
it
represents.
The idea
of marriage as
it is depicted in Gogol has
very
little
to
do
with
the
ideas
normally suggested
by
the
word.
His
perception of matrimony was
undoubtedly coloured
by his
own sexual complexes and
by
what appears
to
have been,
at
least
as
it is
expressed
in his
works, an
inordinate fear
of women.
But his
concept of marriage also
has broad,
complex, metaphorical meanings,
the separate strands of which
the present writer
feels
obliged
to
seek
to
delineate, before
analysing
how
these were expressed
in Efros's
production.
In
the
opening scene of
Marriage, Podkolesin is lying
on a
divan,
ruminating on
the meaning of
life:
Bor
xax Haney aAax ojau sa pocyre uoAyMNnam. Tax egg, To saeoneq
TO HO ayxcao ZeHRTbcL.
'Izo,
13 caMoM Rene?
Xasemb,
zseum, Aa Tarcaa
nauoneit cxBepHOCrb cimBoBirrcx
374
Podkolesin,
as
his
name
implies, is
a man
'under
the
wheel',
trampled
down by
a
life
which
by his
own admission
is dull
and meaningless.
A
victim of
the
essential sameness of
his bachelor
existence,
his
solution
is
to
get married.
This
then
is
the
first
meaning ascribed
to
marriage
in
the
play:
it is
a means of escape.
It
offers,
if
not exactly
the
possibility of
happiness,
then
at
least
the
hope
of
relief
from boredom. But
marriage
in Gogol's
perception rapidly
loses its
positive attributes.
As Podkolesin's
reluctance to
commit to the
match
throughout
the
action makes clear, marriage
is
also something to
be feared,
374Z,
henit'ba, Act I,
scene
I,
p.
109.
153
principally
because it
represents an alarming
invasion
of privacy.
A bachelor
existence,
though perhaps
tedious,
is
after all also
deeply
private and
comfortingly
familiar. Getting
married
inevitably
means
that
one's single
life
will cease, and marks
the
end of everything one
is
used
to.
In fact
marriage
casts one
into
a completely unknown, and
indeed
unknowable, world.
The idea
of a second, unknown world, or
indeed
a series of such worlds,
beyond
the one
immediately
visible
is
extremely
important
to
an understanding
of
Gogol's
work.
Unknown
worlds
in Gogol
are
invariably linked
with
the
imaginings
of
the
unconscious mind or with
the
realms of
the
supernatural, as
in
the
shadowy vision of
St. Petersburg
at
the
end of
The Overcoat.
At
times these
worlds appear
to
run parallel
to the real world.
To
use a
metaphor
from
theatre, they
are
the
life
of
the
wings, while
'real life' is
played
out on stage.
However,
they
rarely remain so;
instead, in Gogol's
work,
the
real and
the
fantastic
converge and
intertwine,
and
indeed
can
become
so
enmeshed
that
one can no
longer distinguish
them.
Fact becomes fiction
and
vice versa.
The
effect
is invariably
terrifying:
reality
becomes
nightmare and
nightmare reality.
Moreover, in
a world of such
blurred distinctions,
the
premises on which one
judges
oneself and others are
inevitably faulty. Nothing
is
as
it
seems, perceptions are
distorted
and appearances
deceptive.
Significantly,
many of
the
characters
in Marriage
are obsessed with outward
appearances and with
how
society may
judge
them
by
their
dress
or
behaviour.
For instance
one suitor,
Anuchkin, is
excessively concerned with
the
notion that
his future
wife should speak
French. He does
not
know it himself, but
sees
it
as a status symbol.
He hopes
to
acquire a spouse
who will speak
it for him, by
a
kind
of proxy.
Similarly Zhevakin,
when
he first
appears
in Act I,
scene
XVI,
asks
Duniasha
to
brush him down,
and take
care to
remove all
the
specks
154
of
dust from his
coat.
As
she
does
so
he delivers
a
long
speech on
its history,
emphasising
to
others
that
it is
of
high
quality and made of
English
cloth.
He
then tidies
his hair,
while admiring
himself in
a mirror.
Podkolesin,
according
to
Gogol's directions,
twice
looks in
a mirror to
check
his
appearance, and at
the
beginning
of
Act I he interrogates his
servant,
Stepan,
as
to
what progress
has been
made on
his
wedding outfit.
He
presses
Stepan
for
assurances
that
his dress-coat is
the
finest
of
those
hanging in
the tailor's
shop.
Stepan
asserts that this
is
so,
but
then
Podkolesin
needs
to
be
reassured
that the
coat will
be
suited to
his
official rank and guarantee
him
the
respect
he is
due.
375
Then
there
is
the
question of a man's
boots. Podkolesin is
equally convinced
that
a man
is judged by
their
make and shine.
The
polish
for
them
cannot come
from just
any shop;
he insists
that
it be bought in
the
one on
Voznesenskii
Street. His
obsession with appearances and appropriate etiquette reaches
its
most ridiculous extreme at the
finale
when, as
he
sees
it,
a major obstacle to
his
escape
from impending
wedlock
is
the
fact
that
he has
no
hat
and will
therefore
be forced
to
run
bareheaded
through the
streets.
Indeed, Kochkarev is
so
convinced
that
his friend
would not suffer the
indignity
of
being hatless in
public
that
he has deliberately hidden Podkolesin's hat in
order
to
prevent
him
from fleeing.
However,
as
Gogol
makes plain, the
way a man views
himself in
society may
in
truth
be
very
different from
the
way society
views
him. Zhevakin is
completely self-deluded.
The
coat
he
wears
is
thirty
years old, thick
with
dust
and even
home
to the
odd spider.
It is frayed
at the
seams and
has been
turned
inside
out.
His description
of
it
recalls that
of
Akakii Akakievich's
old
375Zhenit'ba,
Act I,
scene
III,
pp.
110-111.
155
overcoat, which
is
so
far beyond
repair
that
he
must reluctantly give
it
up
for
a
new one.
Zhevakin
nevertheless
insists
that
what
is
clearly an ancient and
decrepit
garment
is
still
'almost like
new'.
376
Similarly, Podkolesin is
shocked when
the
match-maker
tells
him he has
grey
hair,
which
for
all
his
concern
for his
appearances
he has
apparently
failed
to
notice.
He immediately inspects himself in
a
hand-mirror. Kochkarev
creeps
up
behind
and startles
him,
so
that
he drops
the
mirror and
it breaks.
Kochkarev
volunteers
to
buy him
another,
but he
rejects
the
offer
because
the
replacement would not
be from
the
'English
shop' and would
therefore
distort
his
reflection.
'Aa,
cbuueam.
3HaIo
a am jipyrHe 3epKana.
Uenmm
AecsrrKOM
Ka3KeT CTapee, H pO)Ka BbIXOART KOCSIKOM.
'377
These lines
clearly echo the
proverb
that
Gogol
used as an epigraph
to the
final
version of
The Government Inspector in 1842: 'Don't blame
the
mirror
if
your
mug
is
crooked!
'. In
that
play,
just
as
in Marriage,
the
characters
look in
mirrors
to
see not
their
real selves
but
only what
they
want
to
see.
The idea
of
'seeing
what one wants
to
see' suggests a
double
perspective, as
if
characters
like Podkolesin have
not one
but
two selves,
the
self others see and
the
self
they
perceive
themselves.
These
selves are also
to
some extent reflections of one
another
in
a
distorting
mirror.
Moreover,
the
idea
of a character with
two
selves
is
closely
linked
to
another
Gogolian idea:
the
double.
The
process of matchmaking,
indeed
marriage
itself, involves
the
bringing
together of
two
sides.
It destroys 'singleness'
or singularity
by introducing
'doubleness'
or
duality. However,
marriage also
implies
the
act of sexual
procreation and
therefore
a
further 'doubling'
of
the
married couple.
The
effect
3761bid.,
scene
XVI,
p.
129.
3771bid.,
scene
X,
p.
117.
156
of
doubling
something
twinned,
is,
of course,
to
quadruple
it. Marriage in
Gogol's distorted
world
therefore
involves
not only a
doubling
of oneself
(or
one's selves)
but
also
the
creation of multiple reproductions of
the
self.
In Marriage
this
process
is
once again closely
linked
to the
concept of mirror
images. In Act I,
scene
XI, Kochkarev
tempts
his friend
with
the
idea
that
marriage will
bring
children:
Hy
B3rnHHa B 3epxaao, 'rro TU TaM BHJHma? rnynoe nrgo
-
6onbme
sgeero.
A
ryr, Boo6pa3H, OKOJIO Te6a
6yAYr
pe6ATKmxa, sew ne To pro Boe HaN Tpoe, a,
Mo)KeT
6brrb,
igeimix mecrepo, v Bce Ha Te6$ xax pie KaIInH sow.
TM
BOT
Tenepb opals, naJBopab1t& COBeTHHK, 3KCIIeyHrop HJ M TaM Ha'am affic Kaxo,
6or
Te6A aeAaeT, a TorAa, B006pa3H, oxono Te6a 3KCReJHTopgoaxa, ManeabKHe
3Aaxae xaHaAib goHK
...
378
In Gogol's distorted
perception, and
in Kochkarev's fantasy, Podkolesin's
offspring will not
be individuals. Indeed he
will
have
at
least
six
little dispatch
clerks, all of whom will
be
spitting
images
of
their
father. The idea
of
identical
pint-sized
Podkolesins
also recalls
the
broken hand-mirror
of
the
previous
scene;
the
children are simply reflections captured
in
the
little
scattered shards
littering
the
floor. Interestingly, however, Kochkarev first
exhorts
Podkolesin
to
'look in
the
mirror' of
the
present, and
then to
picture
in his
mind's eye what
are
in
effect self-replicating mirror
images
of
the
future. In
this
way
the
production of children
becomes
part of
life's
unending sameness;
it
can
be
imaginatively
supposed
that
each of
these
'children'
will produce
identical
offspring, and
that those
will
do likewise
and so on ad
infinitum.
3781bid.,
scene
XI,
pp.
119-120.
157
This leads
us
to the
central paradox
in Gogol's
perception of marriage.
As
we
saw, at
the
beginning
of
the
play marriage ostensibly provides a means of
escape
from
a
tedious
existence,
from
an unending sameness,
but in
truth
it is
part of
that
sameness.
Moreover,
as we also saw,
Podkolesin's life before he
contemplates marriage
lacks
any purpose, and getting married provides one.
Like
the
acquisition of
Akakii Akakievich's
overcoat,
it becomes
the
sole aim of
existence
but
also
therefore the
ultimate end of all
human
aspiration.
It is both
a
beginning
and a
termination,
at once everything and nothing.
The
pursuit of
marriage
is
the
pursuit of a
dream
which
is
the
end of all
dreams,
and
is
therefore an utterly
futile
activity.
But if
marriage
is
the
purpose of
life, it
follows
that
life itself is
an endless and
fruitless
quest
for
nothing.
This
perception of
human
endeavour as an empty activity
has
much
in
common
with
Gogol's
notion of poshlost
. This
word
is
possibly the
most
famous
of all
untranslatable words
in Russian. It
can
be
rendered as
'banality', 'triviality',
'the
mundane',
but
also as
'ostentatious bad
taste'
or
'pretentious
vulgarity'.
In
Marriage
there
are many examples of poshlost': several characters' excessive
concern with appearances and
decorum;
the
social climbing
demonstrated by
Agafia Tikhonovna
and
her Aunt in
their
desire
that
she marry not a merchant
but
a nobleman;
the
reduction of marriage to
a mere
financial
arrangement
in
the
words and actions of
laichnitsa,
who
though
a nobleman
is
prepared to
marry
beneath him for financial
gain;
Anuchkin's inflated
notions about a
French-
speaking wife;
the
characters' petty rivalries
in
their
attempts to
outdo each
other, and so on.
In Gogol's
perception poshlost'
denotes
all that
is
petty, self-important and
commonplace
in human
aspirations and
feelings,
and
becomes
the
very sum of
existence.
It is by definition
all that
is
consistently
mundane and middle-
ground;
it is
a
denial
of all
depths
and
heights,
of
the
sublime.
Indeed for
158
Gogol
poshlost'
has
a quasi-mystical aspect:
the
denial
of
the
sublime
is
a
denial
of
the
spiritual and so a
denial
of
God.
379
His
characters therefore
inhabit
worlds which are spiritually empty.
The
need
to escape
from
these
worlds
becomes
a central
theme of
his
work.
The flight is
often made
in
a carriage:
Khlestakov
towards the
end of
The Government Inspector, Chichikov in Dead
Souls, Poprishchin in Diary
of a
Madman
and
Podkolesin in Marriage. But
Gogol
provides neither
his
audience nor
his
readers with any real
indication
of
the
final destination
of
his fleeing
characters.
380
Leaving
others
behind,
they
simply gallop off along apparently open roads
into indeterminate
spaces; where
they stop, whether
they
stop, remains unclear, and
if
their
destinations
are
unknown or unseen,
their
journeys by implication
are endless.
In
this
sense all
hope
of escape
is in fact
an
illusion, for
the roads
lead
nowhere,
into
nothing,
into
the
emptiness
from
which
the
characters are ostensibly running away.
Thus
the
characters
left behind
are entrapped
in
a spiritually
barren
existence,
and
those that
flee
run
towards
one.
In
this
fashion,
poshlost' comes to
express
not only
the nature of experience
but
also the
eternal
human
condition.
This
idea
of
life
as an empty cycle, as
inescapable
poshlost', was
fundamental,
as we
shall see,
to
Efros's
understanding of
Marriage.
Efros 1975
production was staged at
the
Malaia Bronnaia in
the
same year as
his
Cherry Orchard
at
the
Taganka. In
these
productions
Efros
worked with
the
designer Valerii Levental',
who on
both
occasions produced a single set which
incorporated
as visual metaphors the
central
ideas
of
the
play.
As Efros
made
379For
a
discussion
of
the
metaphysical and spiritual aspects of
Gogol's
notion of poshlost'
(in
relation
both
to
The Government Inspector
and to
Dead Souls),
see
Dmitry Merezhkovsky,
'Gogol
and
the
Devil', in Gogol from
the
Twentieth Century, Eleven Essays,
ed. and trans.
by
Robert. A. Maguire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974),
pp.
57-102 (pp. 57-60).
380AS
Podkolesin leaps from
the
window,
he demands
that the
driver
take him
to
Kanavka
Street,
near
the
Semonovskii Bridge. However, Gogol
provides no
indication
of what
this
means.
It
could
be
assumed
that
Podkolesin is
going
home, but
the
audience
do
not see
him
reach a
final destination. Like Khlestakov in
effect
he
simply
disappears (or
perhaps enters
some other unknown realm).
159
clear
later in
an
interview, his
collaborative work with
his designer
was
fundamental
to
his
conception of
the
work:
JIeaeETaJIb
ae IRKH Bb gyhC HK H
4)aHTa3ep,
z noToMy
6ecepbt
c HHM pa[oT oqeHE,
MHoro.
HarIed
nepaoA coBMecTHO* noCTanoBKOi
6wia
}KeHHTb6a.
06b
rum
ee BOCIIpHHHMaIOT KaK Bem IIyCTyIO, KaK IIIyTKY.
Mbz
ze fOCTapa]IHCb
IIOCTaBHTb ee xax gaCTm roroneacxoro HacneAcTBa, xax cosepmeHao
HeaepoTHoe npoHCIIIecTBHe, B Mepy
6ojibaoe,
C 9epTOBIIWHRO* H Boo6IIje
TparH9ecxoe.
.
neBeHTaJib
npHAyMaJI j{ii )KeHHTb6bi TaKyio 7 eKopaEtnio,
xOTOpaX KaK
f)bl
BTHrHBaeT B Ce6A IIepcoBa)KH H H3BepraeT HX BHOBb.
H
IIpeAJIO ICHJI BBeCTH THIIHiIHM Ann
roroju
TeMj ABOAHHKOB.
B
oWeM, IIOMOr
MHe yBHJ{eTb
rorodlfi 4)alTacMaropKQecxoro...
381
As
the
play opened,
two
large
gilt
frames
were gradually
illuminated. Slowly
emerging
from
the
dark,
the
entire cast, carrying posies of white
flowers,
moved
in
a procession
headed by Volkov
as
Podkolesin, leading
on
his
arm
Agafia Tikhonovna (lakovleva), dressed in
traditional
white and wearing a veil.
This
wedding party walked
towards the
front
of
the
stage and
froze in
a
tableau
to pose
for
an
imaginary
photographer.
Sonorous Orthodox Church
music and
choral singing were
heard
off-stage.
Similar
musical motifs were used
later
at
specific points
throughout the
action.
At
the
sound of a gong
the
party suddenly
disappeared.
The
portrait
frames
that
remained enclosed yawning empty spaces
instead
of pictures of
family life,
suggesting perhaps
that the
marriage was an
illusion from
the
very
beginning.
These
vacant
frames
remained on stage throughout
and produced an eerie
381Efros,
in
conversation with
E. Egor'eva in Teatral'nyi
khudozhnik Valerii Levental",
Dekorativnoe iskusstvo, 12 (1978), 16-19 (p. 19).
160
impression; for V. Kommissarhevskii
they
created
from
the
outset an
horrific
vision of
the
emptiness of the characters'
lives.
382
As
we
have
seen, marriage
is
a
frightening
prospect.
Podkolesin's fear is
apparent
from
the
very
beginning; it is
expressed
in his
nervous questioning of
Stepan,
who
has
made several
journeys into
the town to
make arrangements
for
his
master's wedding outfit.
He
pesters
his
valet about
the
progress
being
made, and
is
concerned to
know
whether
his
orders
for
a
dress
suit and new
boots have
made either the tailor
or
boot-maker
curious about
his intention
to
marry.
His
worries about
inquisitive
shopkeepers are unfounded; no one
has
asked
Stepan
such questions.
This
exchange establishes a sense of
the
opposition
between
two
realms:
the
public, unknown and unseen one of
the
town
into
which
Stepan
ventures and where
these
invisible
rumour-mongers
reside, and
the
private one,
Podkolesin's home. Efros
established
in his
blocking
this
notion of private and public worlds, and
the
fear
that the
former
may
be invaded by
the
latter.
Fond
of
bridging
the
division between
stage and audience,
in
such scenes
between
two
characters
he frequently imposed
conditions which made
it
impossible for
them to
simply sit and talk.
Instead he
placed one actor
in
the
audience and
the
other on stage,
forcing
their
conversation to
span
the
length
of
the
auditorium.
His
purpose,
he
explained, was so
to
involve
the
spectators that
the
actor, when
he
moved
to the
stage, would
take them
back
with
him
through
the
proscenium arch.
This
technique,
he
maintained, allowed the
audience to
become
co-creators of the theatrical
event without sacrificing their
spectator
status.
383
He
used
this
method, which
he
referred to
as
'putting
each
in
a
different
city',
for
the
opening exchange
between Podkolesin
and
his
valet,
382V.
Komissarzhevskii, '"Zhenit'ba"', in Teatr kotoryi liubliu (Moscow: VTO, 1981),
pp.
99-104 (p. 100).
383Golub,
'Acting',
p.
22.
161
Stepan. Volkov
as
Podkolesin
remained on stage, and
Aleksei Ushakov
answered
his
questions while walking
through the
auditorium.
This
world,
into
which only
Stepan
ventured, and where pertinent questions might
be
asked
about marriage, was quite
literally
the
public one.
On
the other
hand,
the
stage
on which
Podkolesin
waited
for
answers represented
the safe confines of
his
own room.
At
the
back
of
the
acting area, on
the
left,
a
little
stage mounted on a
truck
represented
Podkolesin's
private
domain. A black
carriage on
its
upstage end
symbolised
the
open road and
the promise of escape.
This
carriage was used
by
the suitors
in Act II;
according
to
Maria Szewcow
they conveyed
their
mutual
rivalry
by
adroitly changing seats
384 A
similar stage, on
the
right, was
Agafia
Tikhonovna's
domain:
an overcrowded parlour, surrounded
by lace
curtains, on
which stood an armchair and a small round
table covered
by
a cloth.
Enclosed
in its
own
frame, her home,
rather
like
the portraits at
the
beginning,
was
frequently
presented as
if it
were a cinematic
'still';
within
it
the
bride-to-be
became
as much a prisoner as
the
multi-coloured, stuffed parrots
in
three
cages
that
hung
over
her head. As Shakh-Azizova
observed,
Efros's
staging owed
much
to the techniques of
television
and
film.
385
At
specific points
he drew
individual
characters out of
the
background
and
focused
the audience's attention
upon
them, as
if
using a camera
in 'close-up' before
pulling
back
again
to
provide a
'panorama'. In
order
to
achieve
this
effect
the
mini-stages rolled
backwards
and
forwards
on metal
tracks, towards
and away
from
the
audience,
as
the action
demanded. This
was a method of staging clearly
borrowed from
Meyerhold,
who
had
similarly
been inspired by
the
language
of cinema.
In The
Government Inspector in 1926
the stage
had been
surrounded
by
a semi-circular
screen of
thirteen
double doors in
polished
imitation
mahogany.
The
central
384Maria
Szewcow, 'Anatolij Efros Directs Chekbov's The Cherry orchard
and
Gogol's The
Marriage. ', Theatre Quarterly, 26 (Summer 197704-46 (p. 41).
385T.
Shakb-Azizova,
'Kontrasty
sovremennoi stseny',
Voprosy
teatra
(1977), 88-119 (p.
104).
162
doors
could
be
slid sideways
to
allow a series of
little
stages on
trucks to
roll on
one at a
time on metal runners which ran
to the
front
of
the
playing area.
Once
each
truck
was on stage
the
doors behind it
closed silently.
Before it
emerged
each was prepared
back-stage,
so
that
when
it
rolled
into
view
the
cast and
setting
for
a given scene
had been fully
assembled.
In Braun's description,
'each
scene on
the truck-stage
glided
forward from
the
gloom
like
the
re-
incarnation
of a
long-buried
past, an exquisitely composed engraving projected
out of
its
mahogany
frame;
a
long
pause was
held for
the
image
to
register, then
the tableau
came
to
life. '386 As
noted above,
Levental'
created a similar
dynamic in his
set
by drawing
the
characters
inwards
and
then
casting them
outwards again.
387
Irving Wardle, in his
review of
Marriage
at
Edinburgh in 1978,
criticised
Efros's
use of
these
stages, remarking:
'If
they
are
intended
to
represent the
hero's dreams, it does
not say much
for his dreams. '388 Although
meant as a
sharp rebuff,
this
criticism was a succinct summation of
Efros's
perception of a
character enmeshed
in
the
poshlost' of
the
everyday.
Wardle
also suggested
that the stages
did
nothing to
establish
location,
and were
too
small
to
act on.
He
apparently
failed
to
realise that the
director
was
deliberately incorporating
into his
staging a symbolic
juxtaposition between
these
restricted spaces and
free
movement
in
the
auditorium.
This
was clearly seen at
the
end of
Act I:
when
Kochkarev has finally brought Podkolesin
round
to the
idea
of marrying
and
leaving
the safe world of
his
room,
Mikhail Kozakov
as
Kochkarev
chased
Volkov down into
and
through the
'unknown
world' of
the
audience.
As
we
have
seen,
in Gogol
the
unknown
is
a world with
its
own peculiar and
unfathomable
logic, in
which reality and
fantasy become inextricably linked.
396Edward
gam, 7he Theatre
of
Meyerhol4 (London: Methuen, 1986),
p.
218.
387Egor'eva,
p.
19.
388kving
Wardle, 'The Marriage', The Times, 22 August 1978, Arts,
p.
6.
163
Thus, in keeping
with
the phantasmagoria
that
was
the playwright's vision of
St. Petersburg, Efros
created a
bizarre
environment
in
which
the characters'
inner
emotions,
desires
and
fears
were represented physically.
Like both
Zavadskii
and
Meyerhold, he
wanted
to
evoke a sense of another world parallel
to the
'real'
one, and employed a
device
analogous
to their
use of extras.
In
1924 Kochkarev had been
accompanied
throughout
by
a pair of mysterious
dopplegnger
who
had
created
the
illusion that the elusive
Kochkarev
was
everywhere at once; as soon as one
figure
exited
from
one place
the
other would
suddenly emerge elsewhere.
389 Similarly in 1926 Khlestakov had had
a
mysterious and
taciturn
double,
an
Officer in Transit,
and
Meyerhold had
introduced
another additional character, who
if
anything was even more
enigmatic.
Named
the
Blue Hussar
and
dressed in
a
blue
military uniform,
he
appeared
in
three
scenes
but
spoke no
lines
and
did
not participate
in
the
action.
For Mikhail Chekhov his
presence symbolised
the
idea
of
the emptiness of
man's existence at
the
heart
of
Meyerhold's
production
390
In 1975 Efros's 'extras'
were
by
turns ghostly and comic, and
took the
form
of
the actual embodiment of
figures
mentioned only
in
passing
in Gogol's
dialogue. For instance in Act I,
scene
XII, before
the
suitors
have
made
their
first
entrances,
the
match-maker
Fekla describes
each one
to
Agafia
Tikhonovna
and
her
aunt.
In
this
production each suitor materialised as
he
was
described,
as
though summoned
in
the
imagination
of
the
bride-to-be. The
men
then
lined
up
like
soldiers on an
inspection
parade.
Last
on
Fekla's list is
a
stammering
clerk and
titular councillor,
Akinf Stepanovich Panteleev.
According to
Gogol he
never appears
because he is immediately
rejected on
account of
his lack
of sobriety.
He
too
was conjured,
however,
and
joined
the
ranks of
the assembled wooers.
In
this
same scene the
aunt recalls
how
389pavel
Markov, 'Istoriia
moego teatral`nogo
sovremennika',
Teatr, 10 (1969),
p.
100.
390Mikhail C6ekbov. Quoted in: Rudnitskii, Rezhisser Meierkhol'd (Moscow: Nauka, 1969),
p.
356.
164
Agaf ia's
merchant
father had bouts
of
bad
temper
in
which
he
used
to
beat her
mother.
This fearful
memory prompts
Agafia
to
confess
that
she
herself is
wary of marrying a merchant.
At
this
moment,
the
figure
of
her father
suddenly
appeared,
holding
over
his head, in
readiness
to
strike, a
hand
encased
in
a
huge
glove several
times
normal size.
Efros
also used supernumeraries to
express
the
idea
of marriage as an endless
repetition.
Thus
when
in Act I Kochkarev
points out
to
Podkolesin,
as an
inducement
to
marriage, that
he
will
be
able
to
beget
children,
half
a
dozen little
boys
piled on
to the
stage, all
identically dressed in
period costumes as petty
civil servants.
Each
child was a version
in
miniature of
his father,
so
that
all
those
in
the
group were
doubles, indeed
multiples of each other.
In
a
later
scene,
this
image
was
itself deliberately
mirrored:
Agafia Tikhonovna's dreams
of
future
children were realised
in
a gaggle of
little
girls, all
decked
out
in
identical flounced dresses
and wearing
bonnets
covered
in lace
and ribbons.
As
Kozhukova
noted,
by
presenting
these tots on stage
Efros deliberately blurred
the
distinction between
reality and
dreams, because
although apparently a
trick
of
the
imagination
they
were also
in
some sense real.
391
This
merging of
two
apparently separate worlds,
true to
Gogol,
was underlined when
Kochkarev led
the children away up-stage
to
prevent
them
from disturbing
a conversation
between Podkolesin
and
Agafia Tikhonovna. In
a similar way
the
match-
maker reacted
in
shock at
the
appearance of the
ghost of
Agafia Tikhonovna's
father,
who one might otherwise
have been
assumed to
have been invisible
to
those
on stage.
In
an
interview Efros
explained
his
understanding of the
play as
follows:
3916.
Kozhukhova, 'Predstav'te
sebe',
Pravda, 10 November 1975,
p.
3.
165
Gogol's idea in The Marriage is
to
show
that
people search
for
some
kind
of activity,
any
kind,
even to the point of seeming absurd,
but
they can't
find
anything to
do.
There's
no reason to
live,
so they
begin
to
view marriage as a possible means of
escape.
They
are
locked into
an absurd pattern of meaningless pursuit, not
knowing
who or what
they
want.
They
run around and around and around.
No
sooner
do
they
stop than they
die.
392
This idea
of a
life
as perpetual cycle of useless activity was manifest
in
three
different
ways
in Efros's
production.
Firstly, it
was seen
in
the
manner
in
which
the
director
propelled
his
actors
into
almost constant action.
Secondly,
the
idea
was
incorporated directly into
the set
design. Finally, it
was expressed
through the
new
finale he
added
to the
play which served as a
frame
to the
action.
Judging by Gogol's directions
alone, the play contains
little
physical action.
In
fact
the
suitors spend most of
their time
waiting.
However,
as
Golub has
observed,
it
was characteristic of
Efros's brand
of staging at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia
that
he
propelled
his
performers
into
a state of constant movement
by
filling
this
waiting
time
with a variety of
inventive
comic
business. 393
For
instance,
when
in Act I
scene
XV
two
characters,
laichnitsa
and
Anuchkin,
meet
for
the
first
time,
Efros
turned their
attempts at a simple
hand-shake into
a comic
play of request and
denial,
with repeated gestures that
reflected escalating
emotions,
from
polite courteousness through
anger to the
expression of
injured
pride.
At
a
later
point
in
the action, all
five
suitors
dutifully
trailed
after
Agafia
Tikhonovna, dragging between
them
an outsized
divan from
one side of the
stage
to the
other and
back
again.
Later,
the
rivalry
between
them
provoked
by
Kochkarev
was expressed not only through
Gogol's lines but
also physically,
in
a
humorous
game of one-upmanship.
In
the
opening scene of
Act II, Agafia
392Efros,
'Energy',
p.
33.
393Gplub,
'Acting',
p.
26.
166
Tikhonovna
was seated
in her
parlour attending
to
her
toilette;
meanwhile
Kochkarev
staked out a space on
the
floor from
which
to observe
her,
comporting
himself,
as
Golub has
suggested, as would
befit
a connoisseur
viewing an exhibit at a museum.
394
The
other gallants
then
appeared
from
behind her
chair,
jockeying for
position
to
get a closer
look. Like
a many-
headed hydra
with waving arms,
they
stretched out
to
catch whichever part of
her dress
and
body
was closest
to
each.
As Braun has
noted,
in The Government Inspector Meyerhold had
employed
comic
business
not
for its
own sake
but
to
bring
out
the
significance of
the
action and
to
underscore
the
performers' awareness of
it
395
This idea
clearly
influenced Efros's
approach.
In Gogol's
script,
the object of
the
suitors'
desires, Agafia Tikhonovna, is
a relatively minor character,
in
respect
both
of
dialogue
and of
the
stage action
he
prescribes.
In Efros's
staging
however,
as
Szewcow has
noted,
her
role was
in
no way minor.
396 On
the
contrary,
its
importance
was evoked
by her
silent presence.
Indeed in
a scene
in Act II, in
which
Gogol
expected
her
to
be
off stage, and
in
which
the
suitors
discuss her
merits and
faults,
she was at
the
centre of a
tug-of-war
between
them.
Conducted
as a pantomime,
this tug-of-war
revealed the
contradiction
between
what each man secretly
desired
and what
he
actually said
to
beat
off
his
rivals.
This
mock-heroic
battle
expressed too
each man's erotic
fantasy,
which was
rendered concrete
by
the
kisses
they
lavished
on the
body. Since
the
real
Agafia Tikhonovna had
slipped
from
their
grasp, this
was now
that
of a rag
doll. On
several occasions
Podkolesin
was
knocked
out of
the
contest and
staggered
to
one side of
the
stage.
At fleeting
moments, the
doll
appeared to
come alive once more:
by
clever manipulation,
it
was made
to turn
and
face him
and stretch out
its
arms
in
an embrace
before being
pulled
back into
the
fray.
3941bid
395Braun,
Theatre
of
Meyerhold,
pp.
210-211.
396Szewcow,
p.
44.
167
The
principal engineer of action was
Kochkarev,
who was played
by Kozakov
with
frantic
and prodigious energy.
The
script contains several suggestions of
the presence of
demonic forces. In fact Kochkarev's first line
to the
match-
maker,
if
taken
literally,
suggests
that
he himself is
married
to the
devil. ('Hy,
riociryiuafi, xa xo qepT mi Mexx )Kemuia?
')
397
Such
references as
this
and
indeed
the
sheer
intensity
of
Kozakov's
portrayal
led
several commentators to
suggest
that
he
appeared to
be driven by dark forces beyond his
control.
In
the
words of
Anna Obraztsova he
was a
latter-day Mephistopheles
transplanted
into
a nineteenth-century
Russian
comedy.
398
As if
possessed and propelled
by
an
extraordinary
inner dynamic, Kozakov
was
breathlessly
excited as
he
rushed to
organise
the
great event,
delighting in his description
of
the
preparations
for
the
feast,
the
purchasing of champagne and
the
arrangements
for
the
ceremony.
According
to
Obraztsova's
account,
his
euphoria at
duping
the
other suitors and
at
the
prospect of the
match produced
in him
a sense of amazement at
his
own
new-found powers, as
if like
a
fiendish
magician and
before
our very eyes
he
was about
to
pull off a master stroke.
399
Although
this
association
between Kochkarev
and the
devil
can
be
substantiated
in Gogol's
script,
Efros's
own conception of
the
character
had
a
less
other-
worldly
basis.
400
Indeed Kozakov's
performance was very much
in line
with
the
director's
overall conception of
life
as a constant search
for
action.
As Efros
himself
noted,
Kochkarev is
unhappily married and therefore
his
actions
in
trying to
find
a match
for his friend
are not motivated
by kindness. In
truth
he
is little
concerned with
Podkolesin's feelings
on
the
matter.
Instead, Kozakov's
Kochkarev had
a mania
for
activity, which
implied
that
he himself
would cease
397Z:
kenit'ba, Act I,
scene
IX,
p.
115.
398Anna
Obraztsova, 'Odin den' i
vsia zhizn'
Podkolesina', Teatr, 12 (1975), 17-25 (pp. 23-
24).
3991bid.,
p.
24.
4OOEfros,
Repetitsiia,
pp.
262-263.
168
to exist unless
involved in
something.
In
order
to
master
his
own
life,
to
give
it
purpose,
he
needed
to
persuade
himself,
and others,
that
he
was a man of
energy and
decision. For Podkolesin
the
prospect of marriage
becomes
the
purpose of
life, but for Kochkarev
too the
impending
match
becomes his
own
reason
for living. Like Podkolesin he hopes
that the
match will
bring
change,
the possibility of something new, a chance
to rise above
the
poshlost' of the
everyday.
But his
energies are misdirected and
his
plans ruined when
the
wedding
does
not
take
place.
Like Obraztsova, Stanislav Rassadin identified
a
demonic
aspect
in Kochkarev, but
suggested
that
he
was working
for
the
wrong
master.
He
was
in
the
pay of a
devil
whose name was neither
Beelzebub
nor
Voland; he
was serving
instead
a creature called
Vacuum. In Rassadin's
analysis,
this
production captured
Gogol's
sense of
horror in
the
face
of
life's
spiritual emptiness, and turned the
play
into
a re-telling of
the
legend
of
Faust
and
Mephistopheles. In
this
instance however
the
story
had
a new twist;
Podkolesin's Faust did
not
know
what
he
wanted, and
Kochkarev's
Mephistopheles did
not
know
what
he
needed
'1
In
truth this
Kochkarev, for
all
his feverish
activity, recognised early on the
ultimate
futility
of
his
actions.
At
the
end of
Act I,
when
Kochkarev has
disposed
of
the
rivals and apparently persuaded
Podkolesin
to
marry, the
friends
shake
hands
to
seal
the
bargain. At
this
moment
Kozakov danced
a
jig
of victorious
delight
as
he delivered his line: 'Hy
3moro roimxo ime a ayx Ho.
'
(That is
all
that
I
need).
According
to
Gogol's
script
Kochkarev
speaks this
line
once,
but Kozakov
stopped
dancing
and repeated
it
several times,
finally
addressing
it
to
himself
as a question:
Is
that
all that
I
need?...
Is
that
all
that
I
need?
In
this
single moment,
his
energetic movements arrested, the
character
became
earth-bound, revealing
his
own
insecurities
and recognising
with
increasing
clarity
the
emptiness of
his
existence.
Kozakov's
treatment
of this
40tStanislav
Rassadin, '"Ne dal'
she chem v sobstvennoe serdtse"',
lunost', 7 (1976), 67-72 (p.
68).
169
line
was calculated
to
reveal
Kochkarev's inner
emotions and
to
evoke
sympathy
for his
plight.
As
such
it
was symptomatic of
Efros's
whole
approach
to
characterisation, and
in full
accord with
his
conception of the
play
as a
tragedy
disguised
as comedy.
A
sense of
the tragi-comic
coloured all
the
actors' performances,
but
was
particularly apparent
in
the
portrayal of
Zhevakin by Durov. Having
played
Stepan in
the
production at
the
CCT, he
appears
in his
conception of
Zhevakin
to
have been influenced by Zholodov's
performance
there,
but
rather
than
simply reproducing
that
interpretation he brought
to the
role a great
deal
of
his
own
invention. Indeed,
the
diminutive Durov is
an actor of considerable range
and
indefatigable
energy, and
has
an arresting stage presence.
In his
many roles
with
Efros he
always excelled
in
those
which allowed
him
to
give rein to
his
considerable comic
talents,
but
which also permitted
him
to
reveal
the
essential
humanity
of
his
characters.
As Igor' Zolotusskii's
account of
his Zhevakin
made clear,
these
qualities were evident
from his
very
first
appearance.
In Act I,
scene
XVI, Zhevakin introduces himself for
the
first
time to the
unfortunately named
Ivan Pavlovich laichnitsa (Fried Eggs/Omlette).
Mishearing, he
thinks that
laichnitsa is
talking
about
food. This
exchange
is
often regarded as
little
more
than
a silly
joke, but
as played
by Durov
and
Bronevoi it became
a small scene
in itself. For Bronevoi's laichnitsa,
as
the
actor's pained expression made clear,
his
surname was no
joke but
rather the
cause of genuine embarrassment.
Durov's Zhevakin,
ashamed of
his
mistake,
revealed
his
sympathy
by directing his
reminiscences about acquaintances
with
curious names
to
Iaichnitsa
personally,
in
a manner which,
in Zolotusskin's
opinion, was calculated
to
compensate
for
the
hurt he had
caused.
402Igor'
Zolowsskii, '"Zbenitba"', Komsomolskaia
pravda,
15 May 1975,
p.
5
170
Durov delivered his
monologue about
his
travels
with great verve, gesticulating
wildly and speaking ever more rapidly as
his
excitement grew.
For
Zolotusskin, Durov's
account of
life
abroad
became
an enchanting
fairy
tale,
but
in
this
Durov
revealed, as
indeed Zholodov had done,
the
character's yearning
to
break free from his loneliness; in
so
doing he
also exposed
the
longings
of
the
other suitors,
his
on-stage audience.
This
was a view shared
by
Obraztsova,
who saw
his
whirling gestures and
the
increasing
speed of
his
speech as signs of
his
growing sense of
helplessness
403
Durov
was at
his
most touching,
as
M. Liubomudrov
noted, at
the
end of scene
X
of
Act II,
when
Agafia Tikhonovna
repulses
Zhevakin
and
leaves him
alone
on stage
to
deliver
a monologue.
According
to the script
he directs
the
first
lines
to
her departing figure
and goes on
to
beg her
to tell
him
why
he has been
rejected once more.
But Durov,
shaking and with
tears
in his
eyes, appealed
directly
to the
audience
for help in
solving
his
enigma:
ga... BoT
3"ra yxc
6yAeT,
Hsxax, cemaaj aTan aesecTa.
H
eero e, oAuaxo xc,
xogeTca?
'iero 6w
e, aaupamep, 3RaK... c Kaxo cram...
(IlodyMae. ) Tewno,
gpe3Bwlahao Tewao!
Ao6po 6ba 6bm
aexopom qeM.
(Omc.
wampueaemcR.
)
Kaxcercn,
ae7Ib3A Cxa3aTb 3Toro
-
Bce cnasy
Gory,
naTypa ae o6aena.
Henoarrrso.
405
The
word
'xenoHwmo'
occurs a second time
in
the
speech as
Zhevakin
says:
'Eft Gory
xenoxsrrxo!
'. As Rimma Krechetova
recalled,
Durov
turned
his head
upwards on
this
line
and
directed it
angrily to the
heavens. In his
words and
in
this action, according
to the
critic,
he
succeeded
in
expressing a central theme
of
Efros's
production:
the tragedy
of
little
people
who are thwarted
in
their
'3Obraztsova,
'Odin den",
p.
20.
404M.
Liubomudrov, Uroki klassiki', Zvezda, 1 (1978), 200-212 (p. 207).
405Zhenit'ba,
Act II,
scene
X,
p.
154.
171
desperate
efforts
to change the circumstances of
their
existence
because
they
live
in
a world
they cannot comprehend.
H
BO3HHKaeT epaHhi o6pa3 orpoMnoro, cnogcnoro Maps, B KoTOpoM aToT
'IenOBCX
6beTCa,
ae yMen o6HapyxKTb npagHa cBonx
6eJcTBnt,
roTOBM
oGBHBHT maponaune 3a (yrcyTCTaae BRmmo norBKH, as To, q'ro npH4a ero
HecnacTbH CKphITt, ne $IBHE& eMy, H aeH3B CTHO, Kax MOHCBO Hx ycTpaHRTh
406
The
role of
Podkolesin
was performed
by Volkov. Volkov
was a
leading
actor
in Efros's
troupe
and
had
previously played, among other parts,
Don Juan in
1973; later in
the
1975
season
he
was
to
be
seen
in
the
role of
Othello. In 1987
Iurii Fridshtein
wrote a retrospective account of
Volkov's
career
in
which
he
identified
certain traits
common
to
all
these
portrayals.
Each
character
had been
interpreted by Volkov
as a man of great
intelligence
who was racked
by doubts.
As Othello,
totally trusting,
he had
shown a
lack
of
judgment
that
rendered
him
blind
to
lago's intrigues. His Podkolesin, lost in
a world
he did
not
understand,
displayed
a similar uncertainty, which
lent
the
character a child-like
innocence. In fact, Fridshtein has
suggested
that
in
all
these
roles
Volkov
revealed a sense of
the
child within; one
felt
compelled as
it
were
to take
him by
the
hand
and
lead him
safely through the
labyrinth
of
lies
and perfidy
in
which
he found himself.
407
Smelianskii,
on
the
other
hand,
voicing an opinion shared
by
other
commentators, suggested
that
Volkov's
vacillating and
indecisive Podkolesin
was a parody of
the
'superfluous
man' of
Russian
nineteenth-century
literature
-a
Russian Hamlet.
408
This
was
hardly
a new
interpretation.
In 1859
406R.
Krechetova, Za
gran'iu gran",
Tear, 6 (1980), 97-103 (p. 103).
407Iu.
Fridshtein, 'Strannye
genii
Nikolaia Volkova', Sovetskaia
kul'tura, 10 September
1987,
p.
5.
408A.
Smelianskii, '"Chelovecheskoe
slyshitsia
vezde"',
Literaturnoe
obozrenie,
2 (1979), 85-
91 (p. 88).
172
Apollon Grigoriev had
argued
that the character was a
'travestied
and
trivialised
Hamlet,
one
Gogolian
exhibit among many serving
to
attack
the
inflated
self-
image
of
the
contemporary
Russian
-
as
if
to
say
"You
are not a
Hamlet,
you
are a
Podkolesin"'.
409
But if Volkov's
performance was
in line
with a
familiar
conception,
Iakovleva (like Dmitrieva before her) brought
a new perspective,
by
contrast,
to the
part of
Agaf is Tikhonovna.
This
character, as
Krechetova has
noted, was
frequently interpreted
as similar
to
the silly, pretentious and coquettish women
found in
the
works of
Ostrovskii
41o
Iakovleva's
comic portrayal
did
not entirely exclude
these traits,
but for M. Panich her
performance also revealed a
tenderness
and
depth
of
feeling
that
was most affecting.
411
This
view was echoed
by
many,
including
Dmitriev,
who remarked
that
beneath her
comic affectation
the
actress
displayed
at
times a
touching
naivety and
defencelessness.
412
In Zavadskii's 1924
production
the
love between Agafia Tikhonovna
and
Podkolesin had been
idealised, but Efros believed it
should
be
portrayed as real.
Accordingly,
Dmitriev
suggested
too that the
heroine's desire for love
was endearing and
apparently authentic, and
that the
humour, lyricism
and
drama blended in
Iakovleva's
portrayal were
traits
entirely appropriate to the
interpretation
of
Gogol, but
which
hitherto had
remained unseen.
At
the
finale Agafia
Tikhonovna
was
left
alone on stage
to
mourn
the
sudden
loss
of
her husband-
to-be.
Like Kozakov
and
Durov, Iakovleva
expressed
her inner
anguish
in
a
physical way.
V. Maksimova described her final
exit as
follows:
409Donald
Fanger, The Creation
of
Nikolai Gogol (Cambridge, Massachusetts
and
London:
Belkap Press, 1979),
p.
196,
see note
7.
410Krechetova,
Za
gran'iu', p.
103.
411M.
Panich, Put' k
sehe,
(Leningrad: Sovetskii
pisatel',
1991),
p.
279.
4121urii
Dmitriev, 'Akte
ri
"aktivnaia"
rezhissura',
Teatr, 2 (1976), 117-123 (p. 119).
173
14
B3TJIIHCT B 3aJi TJI38MH, IIOJIHbIMH CJIC3, H yJIiAC)HeTCa, roTOBaH 3aIIJIaKSTb,
Toaeabxasi, aesecoMas
...
sesecTa
Aracpba TsxoaoBHa (0. SIzcosnesa),
upacaaar S[ K KYJIHCe B RcTOMe nocne uieft yCrad[ocra.
413
As
noted above,
the
sense of
life
as a endless, meaningless cycle was
incorporated directly into
the
stage
design. At
the
back
of
the
stage, at the top
of
the
set,
Levental'
created a semi-circular
border
containing a series of separate
panels.
These
operated on a spindle, and could
be
rapidly
turned
over
to
reveal
differently
painted sides.
In
the
opening sequence
they
showed views of street
life in St. Petersburg,
with crowds of
ladies
and gentlemen, elegantly attired,
walking on
Nevsky Prospect. As
the
wedding party exited,
the
panels
swivelled
to
reveal a series of pictures of a
hatless
running
figure,
whose
progress could
be followed
around
the
semi-circle of
the screen.
The
effect was
again cinematic,
in
the
manner of a child's cartoon
book
whose pages, when
flipped
with a
thumb,
create
the
illusion
of
figures in
motion.
Used
at
the
beginning
and end of
the
action,
this
device
suggested
that the
lives
of
Gogol's
characters, and
by
extension
that
of all
human beings,
amounted to
nothing
more
than
a unbroken and never-ending cycle of
futile
activity.
In
the
closing moments of
The Government Inspector, Khlestakov
gallops off
in
a coach, soon after
the townspeople,
having
realised that
he
was an
impostor,
are
dumb-struck
with
horror
as
the
gendarme announces that
a government
inspector has
come.
His
arrival
is intended
as a
final
resolution, almost
in
the
manner of a
deus
ex machina.
But Gogol
subverts this theatrical
convention
and
his
audience's expectations;
the
government
inspector does
not appear, and
the characters remain mute and motionless
like
statues.
The
play
therefore
has
no
denouement,
or rather
its
very
lack
of ending
is its finale. An
audience
is left
413V.
Maksimova, 'Eta
strannaia, eta grustnaia
"Zenit'ba"... ', Vecherniaia Moskva, 26
November 1975,
p.
3.
174
with
the
unmistakable sense
that
another
drama (or
perhaps,
in
a manner
familiar in Absurdist Theatre,
the
same
drama) is
about
to
begin.
The final
scenes of
Marriage have
even
less
sense of resolution
than those
of
The Government Inspector. Podkolesin leaps from
the
window and
disappears,
leaving
the
other characters
in
a state of scurrying consternation.
This lack
of
completion caused great confusion
in
the
audience at
the
first
performance of
the
play
in 1842. The
majority of
its
spectators,
familiar
with
the
happy
outcomes
of well-made romantic comedies, saw
the
play as unfinished, and
fully
expected
Podkolesin
to
return and marry
Agafia Tikhonovna.
414
In Efros's
production,
he did
return
to the stage
in
a newly created
finale,
which
suggested,
like
the
denouement
of
The Government Inspector,
that
it
was at
once an ending and a
beginning. It
created a visual statement of
Gogol's idea
of
eternal poshlost',
but linked
this
closely
to the
Absurdist
sense of
life
as an
endless, empty pursuit.
Moreover,
this
resolution of
the
play was almost
identical
to the
opening.
Thus
with stunning simplicity
Efros incorporated
Gogol's ideas
of
the
double
and of mirror
images into
the
very structure of
his
production.
Podkolesin
made good
his
escape
by leaping from
the
stage
into
the
'unknown'
world of
the
auditorium.
The
top
hat he had
worn
lay
abandoned
in
a pool of
light. Somewhere in
the
distance,
as
though
in
the
mind of
his intended,
was
heard
the
sound of
horses' hoof-beats
galloping to
freedom. The
panels above
the
stage
turned over
to
reveal the
running
figure
once more.
But for
this
Podkolesin
escape was an
illusion: his
carriage remained motionless on
its
stage.
Instead, Volkov
climbed wearily
back
on to the
stage to the
join
the
whole of
the
rest of
the
cast,
including
the
dozen
miniature
Agafia Tikhonovnas
414S.
DWilov, "Zhenitba" N. V. Gogolia (Moscow: GATD, 1934),
pp.
47-48.
175
and
Podkolesins. The
wedding portrait of
the
opening was repeated, and
moved slowly
down
towards the
audience.
All
the
characters were
expressionless save
Agafia Tikhonovna,
who was quietly crying.
Her dream
of
happiness had been
turned
into
a nightmare
to
which
there
was no end.
In Podkolesin's
weary return
to the
world of
the
stage, and
in
the
other visual
metaphors of
the
continually running
figure
and
the
immobile
carriage,
Efros
appeared
to
imply
that
Podkolesin is doomed
to
run
in incessant
circles or
to
remain
'under
the
wheel', mired, so
to
speak,
in
the
mud
(or
poshlost) of
his
own existence.
Indeed
on
Efros's
stage all
Gogol's
characters were
in
almost
perpetual motion and yet remained rooted on
the
same spot, engaged
in
the
endless ritual of a wedding celebration.
In
this production
Gogol's
characters,
like Vladimir
and
Estragon in Waiting for Godot, filled
their time
with activity
while
they
waited
for
the
appearance of something
they
hoped
would end
the
waiting.
This hope
was an
illusion. Godot
never comes.
The
marriage never
takes
place.
Efros's
new ending was meant
to create this
sense of a perpetual
waiting game, and
it
was
to this end that
he had
the
groom return
to the
stage.
This
was a vital point entirely missed
by Wardle, in his
review of
the
production
in Edinburgh in 1978,
when
he described Podkolesin's
getaway as
'outstandingly
clumsy' precisely
because Volkov leapt into
the
audience and
then clambered
back
on to the
stage.
415
Wardle heavily
criticised
Marriage. It is
clear
from his
comments as a whole
that
he
steadfastly
believed
the
play
to
be
a mere theatrical
romp, and
therefore
understood
little
of
Efros's
serious
intentions. With
patronising excess and
considerable savagery,
he
remarked:
415Watdle,
p.
6.
176
To Moscow
audiences
Anatoli Efros's
version
for
the
Malaya Bronnaya Street
company may convey messages
hidden from
the
Western
spectator,
but
my
impression is
that the
farce has been
systematically sabotaged
by leaden
perversities
a 16
Wardle's damning
opinions were not
however
shared
by Ossia Trilling in
a
review
in Plays
and
Players:
Gogol's
comedy
is
subtitled
'An
absolutely
incredible
event' and
Efros
proceeds to
make
it look
perfectly credible
by
turning
it into
a rip-roaring spectacle
in
which
stage effects and
incidental
music vie with
the actors'
finely
spun performances to
make
his
comic, socio-critical point.
417
In Russia in 1975,
and
indeed
throughout
its long
run,
Efros's Marriage
spawned a great many reviews.
There
was some minor criticism of
his
treatment of
the
play not as a comedy
but
as a
drama,
which
in
the
opinion of
Inna Vishnevskaia
negated
its humour. 418
This
was refuted
however by
others,
most notably
Liubomudrov
and
Rassadin,
who noted on
the
contrary
that
his
interpretation
provoked much spontaneous
laughter in its
audiences.
419
In fact
the
Russian
reviews of
the
1975
production were overwhelmingly
positive, and
found little fault
either
in its
style or
in
the
ideas it
expressed.
There
was only one notable exception,
from
a predictable quarter, an article
by
G. Danilova in Teatral'naia
zhizn'.
420
She
opined that
Efros had
altered the
entire
tone and purpose of
Gogol's
work, producing an atmosphere of
4161bid.
4170ssia
Trilling, 'The Russians
at
Edinburgh', Plays
and
Players, 1 (October 1978), 36-37
(p. 36).
4181.
Vishnevskaia, 'Klassikas
granitsy
i bezgranichost", Literaturnaia
gazeta,
24 March 1976,
p.
8.
419Liubomudrov,
p.
207,
and
St. Rassadin, Ne khodite
v teatr
s papoi',
Literaturnaia
gazeta,
9 June 1976,
p.
8.
4206.
Danilova, Spros
osobyi',
Teatral'naia
zhizn,
21(1975), 20-23.
177
hopelessness
and gloom which precluded what she maintained was
Gogol's
belief in
the
healthy,
purifying effects of
laughter. She
also rejected
Efros's
treatment as misguided
because it had
turned
Gogol's biting
social critique
into
a
drama
of suffering and
into
a
timeless
morality
tale on
the theme
of unrealised
dreams.
421
Indeed for her Efros's
production was profoundly misconceived.
Other
critics,
by
contrast, saw
his
perception of
the play as a
treatise
on spiritual
loss
and
his
exploration of the theme of the
ultimate
futility
of
human
endeavour
as a profound,
insightful interpretation
of a work often regarded as
frivolous.
Panich
remarked
that the
humour
of
the
piece was coloured
by
a
tone
of sadness
which expressed a
longing for harmony
and unattainable
ideals:
CIICKT8Knb
yrny6nseTCx TCM, 'iTO K KOMHQHOMy IIpHMemana F CTb
HeycTpoeaaocTH eenoseqecxo 2H3Ha.
H
3T0 yze He ToabKo o
lloAKonecaae
a
ero He)q aqHo gceaam6e.
422
Smelkov
similarly praised
Efros's broad
approach, suggesting
that the
idea
of
spiritual poverty was one often explored
in
such works as
Dead Souls but
not
previously seen as a
key
to the
interpretation
of
Marriage.
423
His
sentiments
were echoed
by M. Pozharskaia,
who praised
Efros for his
originality:
B
mroo cnexraune suepsbIe scx Seca, sce xapaurepi
6bvm
ocsemeam cseToM
Hcero roronCBCKCro Thoplecrsa, ero IPYCTIE[bDdff pasMb]Mneuim 0 CKyKe 2K3[[H
a cTpacTKX genoBeqecKgx
424
4211bid.,
p.
23
422piCb,
p.
279.
423Smelkov,
'Bednye',
p.
5.
424M.
pozharskaia,
Sovetskie thudozhniki
teatra i kind (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik,
1977),
p.
161.
178
Likewise, Rassadin
suggested
that the production expressed
Gogol's
sense of
horror in
the
face
of what
he had
seen as a spiritual vacuum
in Russian
society.
Interestingly,
he
also
implied
that
Efros had interpreted Gogol
as a precursor of
Chekhov, in
whose apparently action-less
drama,
nothing
happens;
people
simply eat, oblivious
to the
fact
that their
lives
are
being destroyed.
425
In his
staging of
Three Sisters in 1967,
as noted above,
Efros had been heavily
criticised
for
what was seen as
his Absurdist
vision,
for
presenting a world
in
which
dreams
of a new
life
were
illusory. That
production
had been banned
principally
because
such a view was out of
keeping
with
the prevailing
ideology
of optimism.
In 1975 in Marriage he
viewed
human
endeavour as a cycle of
futile
activity, a
fruitless
search
for happiness
and
fulfilment. But
this
production was not condemned as
his Three Sisters had been. On
the
contrary
it
won
him high
praise,
toured
in
the
Soviet Union,
was produced abroad and
would
be
performed at
the
Malaia Bronnaia for
the next
two
decades.
426
It is
interesting to speculate why,
less
than ten
years
later,
critics once so ready
to
castigate
Efros
not only were untroubled
by
the
pessimism of
Marriage but
also
frequently
cited
the production as
his
greatest
theatrical
achievement.
One
answer may
be found in
the
fact
that the
world presented on stage was
manifestly unreal and
indeed
extremely
funny,
which allowed
the
critics
to
ignore
any possible parallels with contemporary
life. Another
answer may
lie in
the tone of
the commentaries and
the
language in
which reviewers expressed
their remarks.
Several,
at
least in
print, created a sense of
distance between
the
production
and
its
potential as a critique of modern society
by
echoing
Danilova's
remarks
that this
was an abstract and
timeless
morality
tale.
G.
Lobkovskaia
provided a
different
sense of
distance, by implying
that the
425Rassadin, '"Ne dal'she',
p.
69. Rassadin is
referring to a
famous
remark
by Chekhov. See
note
730 below.
426
The Malaia, Bronnaia
production closed
in 1996, but (as
noted
in Chapter 1) did
not play
continuously
from March 1975
to that
year.
See
page
56
above.
179
production was
less
concerned with
the
spiritual poverty of everyday existence
than
with
the
absence of a
love
closely associated with a
higher
realm:
[TeaTp
Ha
Manofi BpoHHO]
TonxyeT )KeHHTa6y KaK BbIcoKHlk aKT,
saxmo, qaemba na He6ecax, HagepTaHHbz CBbtme, aKT JIIO6BH
(orroro
H xop
gacTO 3BYqHT 3a cgeaoA), a ecnH ee net, nro6BH, To H HCHSHL eenosegecxan, eio
He ocBeleHHasi, HHKgemna H nycTa.
427
In
contrast
to this
somewhat
fanciful
and romantic perception,
A. Solodovnikov
saw
in Efros's
production a salutary
lesson directed in
particular at the
young.
It
called upon
them to think
of
their
role
in
the
world, and
to
avoid squandering
their time on
life's
trifles
and nonsense:
Toronescxa1
cMex CKBO3b cate3bi
3OBeT MOJIOAMX 3pHTeJIefl, IIOCMC BU JHCb BOJIhHO, IIOAyMaTm: a KK 3KHTb,
pa, Aa gero?
'428
It
need
hardly be
said
that
Solodovnikov
was not calling on
the
Soviet
youth
to
question openly and
freely
the
circumstances of
their
lives. His
commentary
was a reiteration of
the
firmly-held belief in
the
didactic
power of theatre to
inculcate Soviet ideals,
and was couched
in
a
familiar
rhetoric.
Implicit in his
remarks was
the
idea
that
any
'free-thinking'
on
the
purpose of
human
existence
was
to
be
expressed
in
the
confines of prevailing
ideologies,
and not as a radical
rejection of
them.
In
the
context of the
period
Solodovnikov's
comments may
have
provided
for
many an acceptable explication of
Efros's
purpose.
The
present writer remains unconvinced,
however,
that
at
least
some of
Efros's
spectators and critics, who
knew
of the
banning
of
Three Sisters,
could
have
failed
to comprehend
in Marriage
the
wider
implications
of what was after all a
427G.
Lobkovskaia, Uroki
nastavnica',
Detskaia littratura, 9 (1975), 38-43 (p. 40).
428A.
Solodovnikov, "Sovetskii
teau
rastit cheloveka',
Kul'tura i
zhizn',
10 (1976), 34-35 (p.
34).
180
deeply
pessimistic view of
the
human
condition.
It is important
to
note
that the
work of all theatre critics was scrutinised
for ideological
purity and subject to
censorship.
It is
possible
to
suggest
therefore that
Efros's Marriage
may
have
articulated
ideas fully
understood
by his
audience
but
not aired publicly
in
reviews.
In
this
sense
the
production serves
to
illustrate
not only an aspect of
Soviet
theatre
in
the
seventies
but
also the
paradoxical status of classic works, and
indeed
the
nature of
theatre
itself. As
noted
in Chapter 1,
the
Soviet
theatre
was
granted a greater
degree
of
freedom
than the
official press and other media, most
notably
television.
The
classics, moreover, were subject
to
less
scrutiny than
modern plays, and
indeed
productions of
them
were actively encouraged.
But
though they
were acceptable to the
authorities,
the
fact
that they
were not rooted
in
the
familiar,
contemporary world, and were also multi-layered, allowed
both
directors
and audience to
interpret
them more
broadly
and
to
see
them
as
having
meaning on more
than
one
level. As
well as exploring eternal
themes
and
philosophical concepts, productions could suggest,
by
allusion and
implication,
ideas
which would otherwise
be
suspect.
It is
one of
the
characteristics of
theatre that
it
permits such
ideas
to
be indirectly
conveyed, especially
through
visual and gestural
irony,
even under systems of control and censorship.
In
the
specific context of
the
Soviet
theatre
before
perestroika,
Shvydkoi has
argued
that
whereas
in
the
late 1980s,
when censorship
had been
removed,
productions of classics
had less impact, for 'masters
of the
sixties generation'
such productions
had been 'the
only way seriously to toss
a glove
in
the
face
of
Soviet
power,
to comprehend
its
monstrous nature
from
the
position of
eternity
. 429 As he
also wrote
in
an article of
1989:
429Shvydkoi,
Nostalgia',
p.
115. This
article
is in
translation,
and without recourse to the
original
Russian it
only possible to
suggest that the
phrase
'to
toss
a glove might
be
rendered
as
to challenge or
idiomatically
as
'to
throw down
a gaunle
.
181
Today it is
understood
that theater
was a type of
island
of
freedom
on which even
if
things could not
be
said,
they could
be
stated with such expressive silence that this
had
a great effect on the
public.
430
That
use of
'expressive
silence' can
be best
seen perhaps
in
the
staging of
classics.
Gogol's Marriage,
though
overshadowed
(like
all
his
other
dramatic
works)
by
The Government Inspector,
was regarded as a classic,
by
reason of
its
author's
status.
As has been
shown, prior
to
Efros's
production
in 1975, it had
enjoyed
few
successful stagings and
been dismissed
as a
light-weight
comedy.
Though
fully
exploiting
its
comic potential,
Efros
created a
fantastical
world, radically
altered
traditional
preconceptions, and
lent
the
work a
depth hitherto
unseen.
But in
addition, although
his
production
did
not comment
directly
on
contemporary
life,
one may suggest
that
he
was using
the potential of a classic,
and of
theatre
itself,
to
send messages which,
though
muted, were
there to
be
read.
After Marriage,
which opened on
14 March 1975, Efros
would state
further
things
'with
such expressive silence'
in his Cherry Orchard
at
the
Taganka in November
that
same year.
430M.
Shvidkoi, The Effect
of
Glasnost: Soviet Theater from 1985
to
1989, Theater, 3 (Fall
1989), 7-12 (p. 7).
182
Chapter 5
366bIJIH. HHKTO
HC HOMHHT.
The Cherry Orchard
(1975)
183
Efros
was
invited by Liubimov
to
direct
at
the
Taganka in 1975. As
that
theatre's
first
guest
director, he
would
be
working with a company whose
methods and style of performance were very
different from his
own.
The first
production
there,
in 1964, had been The Good Person
of
Szechwan,
and
the
company
had
since
developed
a style which
in
essence owed
less
to
Stanislavsky's
principles
than to
Brecht's. Liubimov,
who
had himself been
invited
to
work at
La Scala, left
the
choice of play
to
Efros,
whose
decision
to
direct The Cherry Orchard
was a surprising one.
The
theatre
had
no
tradition
of
performing
Chekhov,
and
its demonstrative
techniques of performance
represented
the
very antithesis of
the
lyrical
style
in
which
the playwright's
works
had
traditionally
been
presented.
Efros, however,
saw working at
the
Taganka
as an
interesting
challenge, although
he
expressed some apprehension
at
directing Chekhov's
play
there,
and was not surprised
by
the
critical
debate
that
his
production provoked.
KoHegHo,
BBI meBMA caj , nocraLneHHbl Ba
TaranSe,
-
cnerraxmb cnopEbiA.
CnopaoCTh
ero xoTB
6LI
B TOM, WO
LICXOB
CTaEHTCH B Ho iemne a6coJUOTHo
He gexoscKOM.
TyT
JIIopn npO3awmHbi AO Aep30CT11.
! 4x
rJIaBHOC opyzeHHe
-
HacMemlca.
A
ec in oun Hrpa[OT ApaMy, TO CBOT 9To, cKopee, zanposo.
A
'IexoB
B abecax CBOHx yToH eH, H3nulen.
CraBHTb 'qeXOB&
Ha
TaraiKe
-
3HacHT KaK
6&
3aBC) OMo ggrx n HpoBan.
Ojpiaxo
B Hoc. IIejHee BpeMA'IexoB He
ygaBaIIcs HMeHHO TaM, rj(e, Ka3aJ[ocb, 93MmCCTBO H JIHpH'HOCTb
61IVIH
B CaMOA
IIpHpoAe TeaTpa.
noToMy
giTO B 9TOM JIHpH3Me mB 3TOO Ho3THKe o6pa3oBaJlacb
J OJ1M IIpHBbNHOCTH.
OHa
ne pasana BO3MO7BHOCTR CHOBa IIOiIyBCTBOBaTb
CyWeCTBO.
BOT
IIo4CMy ne IIpOCTO IIpRxOTb)o
6bzAo
ZenaHHe IIOCTaBHTL
LIexoBa
Ha
Taraaxe.
431
431
EfroS, professiia,
p.
279.
184
In his
previous stagings of
Chekhov, Efros had
rejected
the
detailed
settings,
the
slow, pausing pace, and
the evocation of
lyrical
mood characteristic of
traditional performances, and
in The Cherry Orchard he
was
to
adopt a similar
approach.
He
clearly saw
in
the
methods of
the
Taganka
something
in
common
with
his
own
ideas. Indeed Senelick, in his discussion
of
the
production,
has
gone so
far
as
to
assert
that
Efros 'adopted
the style of
his host [Liubimov]:
frank
and clear-cut, perhaps more aggressive
than
was called
for in
Chekhov'.
432
This
statement,
however, is
not substantiated
by
other
commentaries and
is
erroneous
for
several reasons.
Firstly,
although
in his
Seagull Efros had
encouraged
his
actors
to put aggression
into
their
performances,
in 1975,
as
Stroeva has
observed,
he demonstrated
greater
sensitivity and subtlety.
433
Indeed,
as
Vladislav Ivanov
noted,
his
treatment
of
the
characters marked a
development
away
from
the
more openly
brutal
approach
that
had been
typical
of
'cruel'
productions of
Chekhov in
the
1960s.
434
Secondly,
the
assertion appears
to
be belied by
the
fact
that
Liubimov himself
was said
to
have disliked
the
production.
435
Indeed, in V.
Solov'ev's
opinion
The Cherry Orchard
marked
the
beginning
of
the troubled
relations
between
the two
directors
436
Thirdly,
and most
importantly, Efros
was
by
now a mature and experienced
director,
who
had honed his
skills over
many years, and
therefore
contributed much of
his
own
invention. In fact,
as
we shall see,
his
production perhaps owed a greater
debt
to
his
previous
approach
than to the techniques
of
the
Taganka.
As detailed in Chapter 1, he had been
working since
1967
as a staff
director
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
where
he had developed his
own style of physical theatre.
432Senelick,
Chekhov Theatre,
p.
69.
433M.
Stroeva, I
snova
Chekhov', Literaturnaia
gazeta,
10 December 1975,
p.
8.
434V
slav
Ivanov, 'Sovremennost' klassiki:
tendentsii,
problemy',
Literaturnoe
obozrenie,
1
(1978), 88-94 (p. 89).
435Aleksandr
Gershkovich, 'Vishnevyi
sad v epokhu penestroiki', in Aleksandr Gershkovich,
Izbrannoe (Moscow: ULISS, 1994),
pp.
26-38 (p. 27).
436Solov'ev,
'Istodia',
p.
3.
185
He
saw
The Cherry Orchard
as an experiment,
in
which
he
could attempt
to
marry
his
own style with
that
of
the
Taganka
and allow the
production
to
operate on
two
planes at once.
On
the
one
hand,
the
actors
in
general, and
Demidova (Ranevskaia)
and
Vysotskii (Lopakhin) in
particular, expressed
their
feelings
at certain moments
through
physical action.
On
the other
hand,
the
Taganka
actors, using
techniques
akin
to
Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt,
at
times
distanced
themselves
from
their
roles and so provoked
the
spectators
to
reflect
more objectively on
the
characters' emotions and
ideas. As
we shall see, critical
opinion was
divided
over
the
success of
this
experiment,
but Efros himself
saw
working
in
a theatre
whose
techniques
were
different from his
own as an
opportunity
for
mutual
benefit
and
development. He
remarked
that
it
was
necessary
for
any troupe
(by
which
he
meant
both
the
Taganka
actors and
his
own
Malaia Bronnaia
company) to
work not
in isolation but 'comparatively',
so
that
'every few
years
they
could re-arm
themselves'.
437
He
suggested
that
his
work at
the
Taganka
was
like looking in
a
two-way
mirror:
it
allowed
director,
actors, audience, and critics
to
observe simultaneously
the
effect of one
approach on
the
other.
At first, however, he found it
very
difficult
to
work with a company that
was
not
his
own,
in
the
alien environment of the
Taganka. There
was a
faction
within
the theatre,
company members not
involved in
the
production, who
did
not welcome
the
presence of an outsider.
438
Liubimov himself
attempted to
intervene in
the
rehearsal process,
taking
actors aside and advising them to
play
their
parts
in
a manner
different from Efros's
conceptions.
439
Vysotskii,
perhaps
the most celebrated
Taganka
actor, compared the two
directors'
rehearsal
techniques, and
identified
a
fundamental
difference
of approach.
Liubimov
tended to
rule rehearsals with an
iron hand,
to
be intrusive
and
to
437
,
Professiia,
p.
95.
4381bid.,
p.
280.
439eiig
Demidova, 'Vysotskii ig
aet
Lopakbina', Teatr, 6 (1988), 44-51 (p. 45).
186
demand
that the
actor must reproduce
the
role as
he,
the
director,
saw
it. In
Vysotskii's
view, moreover,
Liubimov
consistently
focused less
on
the
progress of
the
work
than
on
its
end product.
('JIIo610os
Bce I OBO r go
Korn a.
OH
He IIO3BOJ1ReT Te6e, 11TO6bI Ha ero rna3ax
616111
enge
Ilony()a6pmcaT.
OH
MoxceT c yMa cokTH oT 3rroro!
'.
440
Efros, by
contrast,
was more concerned with
the
process, and placed more
trust
in his
performers.
Instead
of
dictating
their actions,
he
permitted
them to explore more
freely
and
to
let
their
roles
develop in
the
course of rehearsals.
Not
surprisingly,
he found
it hard initially
to communicate
his ideas
to
a
troupe
who were accustomed to
a
more
direct
approach.
His
tendency to
allow
his
actors
to explore their
psychological motives and then translate them
into
physical action
(which
was
both
emotionally expressive and consciously
theatrical)
met at
first
with
misunderstanding:
Ha TarauKe
ppyrze npmBbiwa, Apyro xapaKTep peneTKiwounot paomz, coaceM
HHax cgeHa.
Maeepa
nrpbt Apyram.
Hx
RacrembKo o6smsioT B rono cpopMe; no
110 CyTH
-
o1K ropa3J(o
60]IbMe
peai*CTbi, qeM MHOrHe R3 Hac....
ORR
coaepmeHaemKe peanacTM, ace HHO pa3 pocTaTO*sao 3neMenTapsbce.
3ro
IIapaj{oxc, no nuenno x mm Ka3ancn cpopMaJmcToM.
Mon
ycJlosaocTb HaorAa
Ka3ailacb KM neyJIoBHMOb, one upasbuKRR K
6onee
BecoMO*, oTKpbrro
yca[oBHOCTK.
Ho
9ra Hx ycAOBHOCTh zanposan, RTo an.
A
Ty?, no xx hlsemno,
-
KaKoo-To Ka6CTpaKTnbzk UCKXOThorN3M
441
In
the course of rehearsals,
however, he
achieved what
he
claimed was a
'common language'
with
the
Taganka
troupe,
and
both Demidova
and
Vysotskii
welcomed
the
opportunity of working with
him because it
enriched their
own
experience.
"'2
Demidova
was
to
remain at
the theatre
under
Efros
when
he
was
44OV.
Vysotskii, '"Vyrazit'
sebia"...
', Avrora, 1(1990), 132-147 (p. 138).
1Efros,
Professiia,
pp.
282-283.
442
dova, 'Vysotskii',
p.
47; Vysotskii,
p.
138.
187
appointed
to the
post of
Artistic Director
there
in 1984. She later found her
own
analogy
for
the
differences between his
approach and
that
of
Liubimov: 'It's
like
this.
You have
an actor and a chair which
he has
to treat
as a
horse. With
Liubimov, I
see
it's
a chair,
but I
shall
treat
it
as a
horse. With Efros, I
see
it's
a chair,
I
shall
treat
it
as a chair,
but deep inside I feel
that
I
am riding.
'443 The
attempt
to
unite
these two
approaches
dictated
the style of
Efros's Cherry
Orchard, but
on
the other
hand,
as noted above,
he
also
drew
on
his
previous
experience of staging
Chekhov's
work
(though
treating the
dramatist's
characters
less
aggressively), and
The Cherry Orchard
represented a
further
exploration of
the themes
and
ideas he had
expressed
in Three Sisters. Whereas
that production,
in 1968, had
openly expressed
the
despair felt by
the
post-
Thaw
generation at what
they
sensed was
their own
lack
of purpose and
their
sense of
isolation from
their
cultural roots,
in 1975,
although
these
ideas
were
still
important
to
Efros,
the
message of
The Cherry Orchard (like
that
of
his
Marriage
the
same year) was more closely guarded, revealed more
by
implication
than
by
open statement.
As is
well
documented,
a primary source of conflict
between Chekhov
and
Stanislavsky
over
the
first
staging of
The Cherry Orchard
at
the
MAT in 1904
had
concerned
the
genre of
the
play.
Chekhov had insisted
that
he had
written a
comedy, at
times almost a
farce, but Stanislavsky had
remained rooted
in
the
idea
that the plight of
the
dispossessed
gentry was
in
essence a
tragedy.
The
fundamental difference
of opinion
between director
and author,
however,
was
one of perspective.
Chekhov,
as
Stroeva has
argued, viewed
historical
change
(as
symbolised
by
the
axing of
the
orchard) with a
degree
of objectivity, as a
natural occurrence, an unalterable
law,
no more
heartless
than the
change of
443Dan
Sullivan, Detente in New Haven', Los Angeles Times, 7 March 1987, Section 6,
p.
8.
188
seasons.
4'
Thus his
characters's
inability
to
recognise
this
process,
indeed
their
indifference
to
it,
was
laughable,
almost absurd.
By
contrast,
Stanislavsky,
whose social
background
was similar
to that of the characters,
saw
the events of
the play,
in
a
Russia
on
the
verge of major and
irreversible
change,
from
a more personal perspective.
As Rudnitskii has
observed,
his
production was weighted emotionally
in favour
of
the theme
of
'Farewell
to the
Old Life'
over
that
of
'Welcome
to the
New'.
"5
If
previous
MAT
productions
of
Chekhov had
emphasised
'TOCKa
no nytnuek xm m3', now
Stanislavsky
stressed
its
opposite,
'TOCxa
no xcHSrm npoiunoil'.
He
expressed a great
nostalgia
for
the
old order;
in
the
destruction
of
the
fragile
and
beautiful
orchard,
he
saw a
tragic
loss
of
ideals
and of a cultured, genteel and
harmonious
way of
life. Thus,
although
in his
production
he had by
no means
ignored
opportunities
for
pieces of
buffoonery, it is
widely accepted
that
he
staged
Chekhov's
play as a mournful elegy
for
a past
life.
6
Efros's interpretation in
1975
owed a very clear
debt
to this
idea but his
production was,
if
anything,
more openly
tragic than that
of
his
predecessor.
In keeping
with
his
established
practice,
this
sense of
deep
sorrow was not
buried in
a sub-text
but
shown
nakedly and
frequently
revealed
in
startling emotional outbursts.
He
was well
444Stroeva,
Rezhisserskie (1973),
p.
129.
445Rudnitskii,
Russkoe,
p.
245.
446References
will
be
made only to those aspects of
the
MAT
staging
in 1904
that
illuminate
study of
Efros's
production.
For
more
detailed discussions
of
Stanislavsky's interpretation,
see
Braun, The Director,
pp.
71-74; Sharon Marie Carnicke, 'Stanislavsky's
production of
The
Cherry Orchard in
the
US', in Chekhov Then
and
Now,
ed.
by Douglas Clayton (New York:
Peter Lang, 1977),
pp.
19-30; Rudnitskii, Russkoe,
pp.
226-247; Senelick, Chekhov Theatre,
pp.
67-82; Stroeva, Rezhisserskie (1973),
pp.
120-136,
and
E. Taranova, '"Nachalos'
s
nedorazumenii...
"', in Chekhov i
reatral'noe
iskusstvo (Leningrad: LGiTMiK, 1988),
pp.
151-
173 (pp. 154-164).
In
most accounts of
Stanislavsky's
production there
are references to
moments that the
director
treated
in
a comic, at
times almost
farcical,
manner.
It is
generally acknowledged,
however,
that
in his
setting and
in his
creation of mood
(particularly in
the
final
act) the overall tone of
the production was melancholic.
In
a recent study,
however, David Allen has
suggested that
Stanislavsky's
perception of the play as a tragedy is
a myth, a commonly-accepted
idea
that
is
essentially erroneous and warrants qualification.
(Allen,
pp.
29-46). In his detailed
analysis of
Stanislavsky's
production notes,
Allen
cites numerous
instances
that indicate
that the
director
actually weighted
his interpretation
towards tragi-comedy
and
farce. He
argues
further
that
Stanislavsky
viewed
the gentry with
irony
and gentle, mocking
humour
and
based his
production
on this.
He
also refers to contemporary accounts, most notably those
of
Aleksandr
Kugel',
who suggested
that the play emerged
(contrary
to
Kugel"s
own perception) as
light,
funny
and cheerful'
(Allen,
p.
35),
and therefore
appears to
contradict the
opinions of other
commentators.
189
aware of
the
legendary
conflict,
but
suggested
that
Chekhov
might
have insisted
that
he had
written a comedy
because he had been dissatisfied
with
Stanislavsky's
production.
In his
own, moreover,
he deliberately
strengthened
what
he
saw as
the tragic
aspects of
the
play.
In
an article
in 1976 he
wrote:
,
Ra,
I 3HaJI, TITO'qexos IIscaii 0 TOM, 9TO n eca 3Ta
-
KoMeAWR.
Bo3MozHo,
T-Iexos
pro cxa3a. n o1-Toro, QTO cuex'raxm. so
MXATe 6scn
H&qamne nnpaven,
MoxceT
6Mm,
Raze cenTHMeErranen....
Tenepa
we, gNTax KBsumestg cap*, x
Mort' J{oxasaTb, rro 3m TpareAmx xoTq I canbBO 38IIpxTassax B
4)opMy
gyra nH
ae
4apca. Ho
x cnegsarwso cAeaian taoro axieirros na oTxpbrrOM TparH3Me.
447
Efros included far fewer
comic moments
than
Stanislavsky. In fact,
even
in his
response
to
characters who might
be
seen, at
the
very
least,
as
tragi-comic,
he
chose
to
stress
their
more melancholy
traits.
As Stroeva has
suggested, this
was particularly
true
of
his
treatment
of
the
eccentric
figure
of
Sharlotta. 448
In
Act II, dressed in
a
two-piece
costume
(somewhat
reminiscent of a
fairground
Petrushka), M. Politseimako
amused
the
guests at
the
ball by juggling large
metal
balls.
449
Her humour
overall,
however,
was
less
that
of a
farcical
character
than that
of a sad clown, and
in Act IV
she
became
pathetic.
In
this
act, according
to the
stage
directions,
she picks up a
bundle
that
looks like
a
baby in
swaddling clothes.
Efros, however, directed her
to model a
doll from
earth.
For G. Kholodova,
at
this
moment
Sharlotta's longing
gaze at
her baby
stressed
her
sense of
isolation
and
lack
of
belonging (articulated in Act 1I);
she
was
doomed
not only
because
she
had
no
homeland but
also
because,
unlike
her
clay child, she
had both literally
and symbolically no
link
to the
earth on which
447A.
Efms, 'A
chto skazal
by
avtor?
', Literaturnaia
gazeta,
28 July 1976,
p.
8.
448Stroeva,
'I
snova', p.
8.
449Szewcow,
p.
37.
190
she
lived. ('BeJb
oxa o6peMeHa He
TOJIbKO Ha
6e3poj(HOCTb,
HO H Ha
6ecnnoje. ')45
Efros
maintained
that
Chekhov's
play was supremely well-crafted
because
although
there
is
a
forward
movement
in its
events everything apparently occurs
by happenstance.
451
For instance
the
penurious
Pishchik,
who continually
borrows
money
from
others, comes
into
a
fortune
only
by
selling
his land
to
prospectors after the
orchard
is
sold and
thus too
late
to
save
Ranevskaia,
a
circumstance which
Efros described
as at once comic and
tragic.
452
The
characters, moreover, are either unwilling or unable
to
communicate with each
other.
Even
at
times
when
it is
absolutely necessary
for
them to talk
about what
is
really at stake,
their
attention
is diverted
to
petty and
inconsequential
matters:
Lopakhin fails
to
propose to
Varia,
and although
the
family
express concern
over
the
ailing
Firs
they
ultimately abandon
him. In his Seagull
and
Three
Sisters,
such a
failure
to communicate
had
reflected the
characters' essential
selfishness and
indifference
to the
plight of others as they
engaged
in bitter
arguments and squabbles.
In The Cherry Orchard however, Efros
took
a more
sympathetic view.
He
saw
this
failing
as a mainspring of
the
characters'
suffering, which resulted
in
their
social, and
by
extension cultural,
isolation.
The dominant
theme
of
the
production was unrequited
love. This
was seen
both
as a source of personal pain
for Trofunov,
and more
importantly for Ranevskaia
and
Lopakhin, but
was also
linked
to the
more general
idea
of
the
sense of
spiritual
loss
experienced
by disconnected
people who, sensing a
lack
of
purpose,
look for
something to
fill
the
emotional void.
45OG,
Kholodova, '"Vishneyi
sad": mezhdu proshynn
i budushchim',
Teatr, 1 (1985), 148-
169 (p. 161).
451Efros,
Repetitsiia,
pp.
99-100.
452
,
Kniga,
p.
21.
191
As Efros himself
noted, at
the
beginning
of many
his
productions
the
performers appeared
together, as
if
to
announce collectively
the
source of
their
troubles.
453 As
the
play opened,
the entire cast grouped on stage
to
sing
in
mournful unison
the
words of
Epikhodov's ballad (from Act II):
TO Mile Ao urymHOPO CBeTa,
LTO
Mile jpy3b* H Bpara,
Bwno 6bi
cepue corpeTo,
)Kapoll
B3 BMDO 3i06BK.
454
Later in Act II Epikhodov introduced
a note of grim
humour
when
he
sang
the
song with a revolver cocked
into his
mouth as
if it
were a microphone.
The
note of melancholy expressed
in
the
ballad
set
the tone
for
the
whole
production, and
this
haunting
refrain was
heard
at
different
points
throughout
the action,
to
underscore
the
idea
that no one was
immune from
a sense of
longing. At
the end, as a
frame for
the
action,
the
chorus of actors gathered
to
sing
it
once again.
Trofimov,
who
in
this production
did
not return
Ania's love,
was seen
to
be
motivated
by love in his
efforts
to
help Ranevskaia. This
was made most
apparent, as
A. Iakubovskii
observed,
in
the
ball
scene of
Act III,
when
the
pair
danced
together.
14
Z uogysCTBOBan,
xax MCZJ 3 RIME B039Hxno 3MOJaosaJIbaoe none nI06o1nbix
oTHomeaa.
geMRAosa
chirpana ero oco3Hasse, y'na upzcyrcmBac cBoelk Aoilepa
Asa
a pe3xo upepaana Na Hanmx rnasax oiraomeaax.
Arrpnca
curpana 3T0
3aMegaTe lbno, TogUO H upeJjenbRO no'JrrI wo.
455
453
,
fros, Professiia,
p.
234.
454A.
Chekbov, Vishnevyi
sad
Act II, in Sochineniia: P'esy 1895-1904, Polnoe
sobranie
sochinenii
i
pisem,
18
vols
(Moscow: Nauka, 1978), XIIl, pp. 215-216.
455A.
ubovskii
'gogatye
toxhe plachut',
Teatr, 8 (1992),
p.
151.
192
Trofimov's love for Ranevskaia
cannot,
however,
come
to
fruition. He is
intended for Ania,
and
Ranevskaia has
a
lover in Paris. This lover has
rejected
her, but
when she receives
his
telegram
in Act III
she
is
nevertheless prepared to
return
to
him. Later in
this
same act she admonishes
Trofimov for his
claim
that
he
and
Ania
are above
love,
telling
him
that
at
his
age
it is
ridiculous
that
he has
no sweetheart.
As
a
kind
of
distancing device, Demidova
repeated
the
line: 'B
saam ropbi xe Rmem Jllo6osHH11b1!
'456
not once, as
the
script
indicates, but
six
times.
At
the
final
repetition she
brought her hand
to
her breast, indicating
that
the
line
referred to
herself, implying
that
her love,
too,
was
doomed
to
frustration. In her
production
for
the
Theatre
of
the
Soviet Army in 1965
Knebel' had hinted
at a secret
love between Lopakhin
and
Ranevskaia. Efros
extended
this
idea by
making
Lopakhin's
unrequited
love for her
the
motivating
force
of
his
actions.
In
a
letter
to
his
wife
Ol'ga Knipper in 1903 Chekhov had
expressed concern
that
Lopakhin,
whom
he
saw as
the
central character, should not
be
played
simply as a
loudmouthed boor.
457
The
playwright
had
emphasised
instead
a
delicacy
of spirit
hidden beneath
the
businessman's
coarse exterior, and
from
the
very
beginning had
envisaged the
role
being
played
by Stanislavsky,
a real
millionaire
from
a
family
of merchants, themselves
sprung
from
peasant stock.
Stanislavsky had
readily agreed with
Chekhov's
analysis of
the
character,
but
showed great reluctance to
play
him. Initially he had
rehearsed two
parts,
Lopakhin
and
Gaev, but he had
written twice to
Chekhov,
on
3
and
4
November,
complaining
that
he
could not
find
the
right
'tone' for
the
peasant-
turned-merchant
458
In
the
end
he had
played
Gaev,
portraying
him, Aleksandr
Kugel'
maintained, as a well-groomed man of refined taste
and
bonhomie but
456Vishnevyi
sad
Act III,
p.
235.
457Letter
from Chekhov
to
Knipper, 30 October 1903, in Surkov, Chekhov,
p.
156.
458Jean
gene, Stanislavski (London: Methuen, 1988),
p.
128.
193
with a sense of self-irony and showing a gentle mockery
towards those
around
him.
459 Chekhov had been
concerned when
Lopakhin had been
offered
to
Leonid Leonidov,
anxious
that this
less
talented actor would
turn the
character
into
a
'kulachok' (little kulak)
460 It
appears
that
Leonidov did indeed fall into
the traps of overstatement and coarseness, as
the
playwright
had feared; for
Nikolai Efros his
performance
lacked
the
necessary sense of
internal
conflict.
461
Stanislavsky
and
Chekhov had disagreed
also over
the
role of
Ranevskaia.
Chekhov had been
adamant
that
Knipper
should play not
her but
either
Varia
or
Sharlotta. Stanislavsky, ignoring his
wishes again,
had insisted
on casting
Knipper
as
Ranevskaia,
a role with which she was
to
be
closely
identified for
the rest of
her
career.
Her
performance
became legendary,
and was consistently
cited as a measure against which
later interpretations
could
be judged. Sharon
Carnicke has
argued
that the
casting of
Stanislavsky
and
Knipper,
two
of
the
company's strongest performers,
in
the roles of
brother
and sister,
had
immediately
and
inevitably focused
attention upon
them,
strengthening
Stanislavsky's
overriding concern with
the
sufferings of
the
dispossessed
gentry and shifting
the
centre of gravity of
the
play
"2 In 1975 Efros
altered
this
balance. Gaev for him
was a
less
significant
figure,
and
his
production
centred on
the
plight of
Ranevskaia,
although
Lopakhin,
as
Chekhov himself
had hoped,
was also of pivotal
importance.
459Quoted
in: Rudnitskii, Russkoe,
p.
244.
460Letter
from Chekhov
to
Stanislavsky, 30 October 1903, in Surkov, Chekhov,
pp.
156-
157 (p. 156).
461Nikolai
Efros, "Vishnevyi
sad"
P'esa A. P. Chekhova
v postanovke
MXTa (Petrograd:
1919),
pp.
87-88.
There is
some
indication that the
interpretation
of
Lopakhin
was given greater
depth in Viktor
Stanitsyn's
new staging of the play at the
MAT in
the
late 1950s. This
production toured to
the
UK in 1958,
and as
Cynthia Marsh has
observed on this occasion the
MAT demonstrated
that
Lopakhin 'is
a character of maturity, who
is
unwillingly, and perhaps tragically,
caught
between his
own generosity and self assertion'.
Cynthia Marsh, 'Chekhov
re-viewed: the
Moscow Art Theatre's
visits
to
Britain in 1958,1964,
and
1970', in Chekhov
on the
British
Stage,
ed.
by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
pp.
113-125 (pp.
120-121).
Such
a conception of the
character
had
something
in
common with
Stanislavsky's
early conception and was perhaps
intended
as a'comection' to
L.
eonidov's performance.
462Carnicke,
p.
23. Carnicke discusses
the touring
production of
The Cherry Orchard in
the
USA (1923-1924).
194
Vysotskii,
with
his
slight
frame
and shoulder-length
hair,
was perhaps an
unusual choice
for Lopakhin, but
one which, as
Golub
noted, proved
particularly effective.
463
The
actor possessed a particular magnetism, which
together with
the
famously
compelling
timbre
of
his deep,
somewhat cracked,
bass
voice,
had long
made
him
a
favourite
on
the
Taganka
stage.
In
reviews of
the
production, and
in
tributes
written after
his
untimely
death in 1980, his
dynamic
performance was universally praised;
for G. Kholodova his
work
demonstrated
to the
best
advantage
the
fusion
of
the
styles of
Liubimov
and
Efros.
464
His Lopakhin lost
the traits
first
manifested
in Leonidov's
performance at
the
MAT,
and
thereafter traditionally associated with
the
role.
As Szewcow
wrote:
The
stereotypes
into
which
Lopaxin
can
(understandably) fall
are avoided: there
is
not
the slightest trace
of vulgarity, of that
impudence
of a peasant
turned merchant with
which
the character could tempt the actor, nor
is
this
Lopaxin
a mixture of
inferiority
and condescension, good-will and
haplessness, ingredients
which often go
into his
making.
He is
not a variant of
Piscik (sic),
that
fi+equentor (sic)
of the
family,
who
is
essentially parasitic and ultimately
indispensable,
as parasites are to
frail
psyches.
465
He
was played
instead
as a refined,
intelligent,
and
deeply
sensitive man, who
for Stroeva
possessed a rare combination of outer coarseness and
inner
poetry.
466 Stanislavsky had
recognised
in Lopakhin
what
Rudnitskii has
described
as a
tormented
duality:
a man whose
industry forces him
to
destroy
the orchard,
but
who
in
so
doing destroys his
own
humanity. 467
This
conception was
fundamental
to
Vysotskii's
understanding of the
role.
Demidova
observed
that
he
created
Lopakhin in keeping
with
the
image
of such
463Go1ub,
'Acting',
p.
25.
4640.
Kboiodova, 'Lopakhin', in Vysotskii
na
Taganke (Moscow: Souzteatr, 1988),
p.
69.
465Szewcow,
p.
38.
4665
va,
'I
snova', p.
8.
467Rudnitskii,
Russrkoe,
p.
233.
195
men as
Savva Mamontov
and
Savva Morozov. These
men were rich
industrialists
who
had
supported
the
Revolutionary
movement
in its
earliest
stages, and whose combination of refined artistic
taste
and
huge
wealth
had
enabled
them to
establish art galleries and
theatres,
468
and
Morozov had
committed suicide
following his depression
over
the
failure
and
bloody
consequences of
the
1905 Revolution. As
we shall see,
the
destruction
of
the
orchard and
the
life it
represents was
if
anything a greater
tragedy
for
Vysotskii's Lopakhin
than
for Ranevskaia. Thus for Demidova,
an ultimately
tragic echo of
Morozov,
a merchant-cum-artist-cum-suicide, underlay
the
actor's performance.
She
wrote:
468Demidova,
'Vysotskii',
p.
47.
Savva Mamontov (1841-1918)
was a railway
tycoon who studied art abroad
in
the
1870s. In
Paris
and
Rome he
met the artists
Vasilyi Polenov
and
Ilia Repin,
the sculptor
Mark
Antokol'skii
and the art
historian Adrian Prakhov. This
group
formed
the
foundation
of an
artistic circle at
Mamontov's
estate of
Abramtsevo,
which
he
purchased
in 1870. Numerous
artists were
invited
to come and
live
on
the estate and were
to
be inspired by its
creative
atmosphere and picturesque surroundings; among other
famous
works painted there
were
Valentin Serov's Girl
with
Peaches (1887)
and
Mikhail Nesterov's Vision
of the
Boy
Bartholomew (1889-1890). In 1885 Mamontov
opened the
first
museum of
Russian folk
art
on
the estate and oversaw
the
building
of
the
Abramtsevo Church (1881-1882), designed by
Viktor Vasnetsov. Vasnetsov, Repin
and others contributed to the
decoration
of the church
and
to the creation of
its iconostasis. Mamontov's interest in
the collection of
folk
art,
together with
the efforts of the artistic circle
in
the revival of the techniques of
icon-painting,
were
important influences
on the
development
of modern
Russian
and
Soviet
art at the
beginning
of
the twentieth century.
In 1885 Mamontov
also established the
Moscow Private
Russian Opera Company
and
in
this
venture was concerned to
promote
his
opera as a
synthesis of arts.
The
company was conducted
by
a pupil of
Rimsky-Korsakov,
the
composer
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov,
and
later by Rakhmaninov. It
was
here
too that
Fedor Chaliapin,
later
a world-famous
bass,
gained valuable early experience.
The
opera,
however,
also attracted
artists such as
Aleksandr Golovin, Konstantin Korovin
and
Mikhail Vrubel',
who created sets
for its
productions.
See Oxana Cleminson in The Dictionary
of
Art,
ed.
by Jane Turner, 30
vols
(New York: Grove, 1996), XX,
p.
232.
Savva Morozov
was a wealthy
industrialist
who subsidised
Lenin's
newspaper
Iskra
and was a
major
investor in
the
MAT,
contributing a
large
proportion of the
28,000
roubles needed
for
its launch. Later in 1902,
when
the
lease
ran out on
its first home
the
Hermitage Theatre, it
was with
heavy backing from Morozov
that the company acquired the
Aumont Theatre. That
same year saw a major restructuring of
the company as a collective whose members were
entitled
to
buy
shares
(an idea first
mooted
by Nemirovich-Danchenko in 1897). Morozov lent
money
to those who could not afford to
buy
them, on the
proviso that
no shareholder could
have
more than
he. As
a result, much to
Nemirovich-Danchenko's
chagrin,
he
wielded
considerable
influence
at the theatre.
For instance he
championed the
work of
Maxim Gorky,
and was
instrumental in having his
plays performed.
See Benedetti, 'Stanislavsky',
pp.
256,
264-266,269.
Stanislavsky himself
was very much of this milieu
(in its
early years
he frequently
attended
rehearsals at
Mamontov's
opera company), and was
himself heir
to
a
fortune. It is interesting
to speculate
therefore
if Chekhov had figures like Morozov
and
Mamontov in
mind when
he
wrote
the part of
Lopakhin for Stanislavsky,
and
indeed
whether the
part, as executed
by
Vysotskii,
contained elements closer to the
playwright's conception than he had
seen
in
Leonidov's interpretation.
196
BMcogzcaA
olieHb TO WO nepejan 3ry Tparsiecicyio HoTy o6pa3a.
HecMoTpH
Ha
TO, wo
JIouaxHHbZ
[Mopososai,
MaMoaroHM]
apHxoRsrr Ha cMeay o6nTaTensim
Bgmnesoro capa, oHe,
JIonaxseaz,
Toxce o6pe+[eHM.
Kosemo, LIexos
allen B
sHJjy se TonbKO cMeay colmaJibHux yx iaAos.
Au
Hero s rH6e]Ia Bnnmesoro
capa ssy'ana Tema rn6e. na no3T1'iecxoro, pyxosaoro Hagana s pyccxo
ICHSHa.
469
In Act IV Trofimov
remarks to
Lopakhin: 'Y
Te6x Tome, Hexclie naRbi$i,
xax y apTHCTa, y Te6x ToHxasI, xegcxax Aymua.
'470 Komissarzhevskii
suggested
that this
line
was
the
basis
of
Vysotskii's interpretation,
which
centred on the
actor's understanding of a
tragic
paradox:
it is
these
same
hands
which,
though
motivated
by kindness,
so cruelly
lift
the
axe
to
fell
the trees.
471
Throughout his
performance
Vysotskii
used
the
simplest of gestures with
extraordinary expressiveness and clarity.
As Demidova
recalled, at
Ranevskaia's
arrival
the
characters gathered about
her
and each
in
turn
kissed
her hand in
a gesture of welcome and respect.
At his
turn
Vysotskii
moved to
take
her hand, but
was suddenly overcome with shyness.
Unable
to touch
her,
he drew back, leaving his hand
to
hover
over
hers. 472
In
this
single action
he
succeeded
in
expressing
the
secret
love he had felt for her
all
his life,
and
which, as noted above, was
to
motivate all
his behaviour. From
this
first
moment
Lopakhin
responded
to
Ranevskaia
with what
Smelkov described
as
unexpected
tenderness
and warmth.
473
He
showed great restraint and patience,
and acted exclusively
in her interest, in
order to
save
her from
penury.
When
urging
her
to
build dachas, he
explained the
virtues of
his
plan, gently refuting
her
objections,
in
the
manner, as
Solov'ev
observed,
of a caring and
intelligent
469Didova,
'Vysotskii',
p.
47.
470Vishnevyi
sad
Act IV,
p.
244.
471V.
Komissarzbevskii, 'Teatral'naiapanorama',
in Teatral'nye
stranitsy
(Moscow: Iskusstvo,
1979), 32-49 (p. 46).
472Demidova,
'Vysotskii',
p.
50.
473Iu.
Smelkov, '"Zhar
vzaimnoi
llubvi... "', Kornsomolskaia
pravda,
26 March 1976,
p.
3
197
physician.
474 This image
of a gentle
doctor
was
fully in keeping,
as we shall
see, with
the
ideas
of
incurable disease
and
imminent death
that
underscored
Demidova's
understanding of
Ranevskaia's
plight.
Efros
once suggested
that
Chekhov had included
many
'extras' in
order to
show
how life
on
Russian
estates was changing.
475
He
referred
to the
clerk
Epikhodov
playing
billiards (off-stage in Act III)
as symptomatic of
the
way
in
which
the
social status of
the
gentry was
being
usurped,
but he
also
included
Sharlotta, lasha, Pishchik
and
Duniasha in his list
of supernumeraries, and
indeed
effectively treated them
as such.
With
the
exception of
Lopakhin,
and
to
a
lesser
extent
Trofimov,
the
other characters
formed
a
background
chorus
to
the
action's main
thread
-
the
plight of
Ranevskaia
-
on which
he built
the
whole of
his
production.
His
primary aim was
to
express what
he described
as
Ranevskaia's 'howl (BOrum, )
of
farewell
to
her
childhood,
life
and past'.
476
As
we
have
seen,
Efros
paid close attention
to
what
he
sensed were
the
musical
qualities
inherent in Chekhov's
works.
He likened The Cherry Orchard
to
an
orchestral piece whose conductor should ensure that,
while
the
other musicians
played
their
parts,
the
central motif of
Ranevskaia
was consistently
heard.
477
A
crucial
key
to this
complex character
is
on the
one
hand her
response to the
new
life
she
has
established
in Paris,
and on
the
other
her feelings
about the
old
one
to
which she
has
now returned.
In
the
MAT
production of
1904,
Stanislavsky's
notes suggested that
Knipper's behaviour
should show the
influence
of
her life in France. As
she entered
in Act II, he
specified that
she
should wear a
fashionable French
summer
dress,
and remarked that, troubled
by
tiredness and
the
heat (and by biting
mosquitoes!
), it
should
be
apparent that
474Solov'ev,
istoriia',
p.
3.
475Efros,
Kniga,
pp.
21-22.
476
,
professiia,
p.
202.
4771bid
198
she would
be happy
walking on
the
Italian boulevard in Paris but
not
in Russian
villages.
478
He
also added certain mannerisms, such as
her 'Parisian habit
of
frequently
taking
out a powder compact and mirror'
in
order to
do her
make-up
in Act 111.479 In
this
same act, when she says
to
Trofimov 'A
A BOT, ponmKHo
6bITb,
H1DK nio6sH.
'480
-
during
which
it
may
be
suggested
that
she
is
thinking
of
her lover in Paris
-
he
noted:
He
TO KoKeTHHila*, He TO Hepsao padnycKacb, ona KaK-TO Haicaonn iacb ronoaol
Ao czona, HpHR UIa KaKylO-TO KOKOTHCT K) H03y.
LiyBcTayercx
cppaHIKenKa.
(Bce-Taxes OJnbre JIeoaapgosse
HaAO Hgrn s TOHC or cppangyzenKH.
) Heso.
mHo
yraAblaaemb, KaK ona TaM B
Hapaze
Hposogn is se4epa B pecTopaae, 3a
HOmIbnOgqb, OKOJIO
6ecnopngoilHoro
oeAeuuoro CTona.
B
Re# eCTb KaKali-To
6oreMa
HapRXCKOO
6y]IbBapHO*
gJ 3HH.
481
Allen has
suggested that thanks to
Stanislavsky's
emphasis on
her links
to
Paris
Knipper's Ranevskaia
created
the
impression
that
she
did
not
belong
to
her
old
world and
'would
not stay
long'
482
There
may
be
some
truth
in
this,
but
according
to
B. I. Rostotskii's
account
this
idea did
not
translate
into Knipper's
performance.
That
critic argued, on
the
contrary, that the
actress engaged the
audience's sympathy
by
playing up
her love
of
her homeland
and playing
down
her
attraction
to
her lover in Paris 483
This
was
in
marked contrast to
N.
Urgant's
portrayal
in R. Goriaev's
staging at
the
Pushkin Theatre in 1972.
Smelianskii has
observed
that this
Ranevskaia,
who smoked a cigarette
in
a
long
holder,
and wore a
bright
red wig and
fashionable
clothes,
belonged
utterly
to
Paris
and
her 'Parisian
tormentor'.
484
He has
suggested that
her
anxiety
478Stanislavskii,
Rezhisserskie
ekzempliary,
III, Act II,
note
20,
p.
345.
4791bid.,
Act III,
note
150,
p.
413.
48Vishnevyi
sad,
Act III,
p.
233.
481Stanislavskii,
Rezhisserskie
ekzeinpliary,
HI, Act III,
note
73,
p.
397.
482A11en,
p.
30.
483B.
I. Rostotskii, '0. L. Knipper-Chekhova',
in Mastera MXATa (Moscow/Leningrad:
1939),
pp.
250-251.
484Smelianskii,
Nashi,
p.
294.
199
throughout
Act III
was
inspired by her fear
that
Gaev
might
buy
the
orchard and
so
delay
their return
to
France. For
this
Ranevskaia, therefore, news of
its
sale
to
Lopakhin
was not
traumatic
but
came
instead
as a relief.
Chekhov had
originally seen
Ranevskaia
as a mature woman,
but had later
re-
written
the
part
for
a younger actress.
485 Knipper
played
her,
according
to
many accounts, with extraordinary grace and refinement, and as a woman who
lived in
a state of near-constant anxiety, moving easily
from laughter
to tears,
from
anger
to
a carefree
lack
of concern and
back
again.
486
Knipper
continued
to play
the part
for
most of
her
career, and
inevitably
aged with
her
role.
In
subsequent performances she was often seen, as
Demidova
noted, as older
than
the part as
finally
written.
487 For instance in Knebel"s
production
in 1965
she
was played
by
an older actress,
L. Dobrzhanskaia,
who
in her
concern
for her
ward
Varia, her
comforting of
Ania,
and
her
grief
for her drowned
son,
emphasised
Ranevskaia's
maternal
traits.
488
In Efros's
production, as
Golub
maintained,
Demidova
abandoned
traditional
interpretations
of
Ranevskaia
as
'a
grand
(sic) dame
exuding old-world charm',
and
became instead 'a
contemporary woman of
fashion' in low
cut-gowns, who
stalked about
the stage
'with
the
grace and
beauty
of a
thoroughbred'.
489
Before
accepting
her
role she stated
that
although she
knew
of
Knipper's
legendary
performance she
had
never seen
The Cherry Orchard
either on stage
or on
film; her
only recourse,
therefore,
was
to
return again and again
to
485Chekhov
had
originally envisaged
Ranevskaia
as an old woman, and
had
requested that the
theatre
invite 01'ga Sadovskaia
of the
Maly Theatre
to
play
her. Much
to
Chekhov's
annoyance,
however,
she was not available, and
in
any case
Stanislavsky
appears
to
have had
had little interest in
employing an outsider.
Chekhov
therefore
re-wrote the part
for
a younger
woman.
Chekhov described Ranevskaia
as
'an
old woman
for
whom all was
in
the past'
in
a
letter to
Vera Komissarzhevskaia dated 6 January 1904. See Surkov, Chekhov,
p.
161.
486Taranova,
p.
158.
487Demidova,
Vtoraia,
p.
138.
488E.
Polotskaia,
'"Neugomonnaia" dusha', Teatr, 3 (1993), 87-97 (p. 90).
489GOlub,
'Acting',
p.
25.
200
Chekhov's
script.
490
For her, Ranevskaia's
relative youth
-
she estimated
her
age as no older
than thirty-seven
-
was
important
precisely
because
she
had
not entirely abandoned
her
new, wilder
(and
therefore
more youthful)
life in
Paris but
equally was not
totally
at peace with
her
old one.
491
Maria Shevtsova
has described how Demidova
came running on
in Act I like
an elegant
dancer,
'incarnating
a refined
Parisian (sic)
who
has lost
all
traces
of
her Russian
origins and education'.
492
Shevtsova
suggested
further
that
'Efros de-
Russianises her
to
point out
that
she returns as a stranger
to
a
foreign land'. For
all
her fashionable
appearance,
however,
this
Ranevskaia belonged
to
neither
world.
On
the
one
hand, her
existence abroad was sordid and
belittling;
on
the
other,
her
return
to the old evoked painful memories.
At
the
Pushkin Theatre in
1972
there
had been
something almost romantic and enticing
in Ranevskaia's
Paris, but in 1975 Demidova
emphasised
the
loneliness
and wretchedness of
life
there, where
her lover had left her
and she
had
attempted suicide.
493
The
actress alluded
to
Ania's
speech
in Act I, in
which she provides a
heart-rending
insight into her
mother's
life:
Mama
ICKBCT na UXTOM 3Taxe, IIpRxox yK net, y see xaxae-To
4pauIy3bi,
paMM, cTapb uaTep c Eaa olk, H Hauypeao, neytoTao.
Mae
appyr cTa io xcamm
MaMbi, Tax Z JIL, x o6Hxna ec ronosy, cZana pyxa. S H ae Mory sunycTam.
494
Smelianskii has
suggested
that
Demidova 'hid her Paris deep
within
herself,
only allowing
her feelings
about
it
to
be
revealed
in
occasional, sudden
outbursts of emotion, which
left
those
around
her
at a
loss
as
to their
cause.
495
490Demidova,
Vtoraia,
p.
138.
49tlbid.
492Maria
Shevtsova, 'Chekhov in France 1976-9: Productions by Strehler, Miquel
and
Pintelld', in Transformations in Modern Drama,
ed
by Ian Donaldson (London: Macmillan,
1983), 80-98 (p. 90).
493AIla
Demidova, 'Bol'shaia Medveditsa i
zvezdnoe nebo',
Literaturnaia
gazeta,
25 August
1976,
p.
8.
494Vishnevyi
sad
Act I,
p.
201.
495Smelianskii,
Nashi,
p.
295.
201
In Act I,
when
Varia handed her
the two telegrams
from Paris, Demidova
ignored Chekhov's directions
to tear them
up without reading
them;
instead
she
hid
them swiftly and suddenly
in her
pocket.
For N. Lordkipanidze
this
gesture
indicated her
secret guilt
that
she still
loved
and was
incapable
of renouncing
her
unscrupulous
lover.
496
It indicated
also
Demidova's
sense
that,
although
Ranevskaia's
new
life is
a
torment,
she cannot rid
herself
of
it; in
the
actress's
words
it
was
like 'an itch' from
which she could get no relief.
497
She
suggested
that
Ranevskaia has
returned
home,
penniless,
in
order
to
sell
her
estate,
in
the
hope
that the
sale will
bring
some stability
to
her dissolute
and
unhappy existence.
498
But
she also observed
that the act of returning was a
deeply
painful and emotionally
turbulent process, and
thus
no
less
troubling
than the
Paris
that
haunted her. On
the
one
hand,
the
orchard represented a
return
to
her
childhood,
the place
to
which people
in
times of
distress
imaginatively
regress.
On
the
other
hand,
the
home from
which she
had
escaped was
full
of painful memories of
the
deaths
of
her husband
and son.
As
Demidova
explained:
Z[a,
j[biM oTegecTBa cJlaAOX, HO 3 CCb, B TOM AOMC, MCP MyYC, 3Aecb jrTOH JI
ceMHJIeTHHfi cbW, oTcioj[a 6eza. Aa, ce6a ne HoMSA,
PaneacKaK,
3Aecb EBZJ{oe
BocnoMHHaHHe
-H
pmoCTb z
bomb. Ha
Sex oCTaHOBHTb
6ecnoKoubl
B3rnKA,
3a RTO yXBaTHTbCX, 'qTO6bl BCpHYTb XOTb BHAHMOCTb Aymeanoro
cnOKoikcrBHg?
499
From
the outset
Ranevskaia
appeared
highly-strung. Like Knipper,
as
is
clear
from V. Frolov's description,
she moved rapidly
from
one emotional state to the
next:
496N.
Lordkipanidze,
'Postizhenie', Nedelia, 17-13 July 1975,
p.
10.
497Denudova,
'Bol'shaia',
p.
8.
498Jbid
499Demidova,
Vtoraia,
p.
139.
202
Anna JJeMHRoBa
HrpaeT
Pauescxyio
Ha cuenneHnH HeBepoxTHbix xoHTpacTOB.
Ee
reponan xCHBCT B BHxpe cTpacTelk.
OHa
MoxceT BeceJ[HTbcx H MoxceT
3aCThITb B rope.
OHa
M*Tezaa, o3opHa, KOKCTnHaa H BO BceM yMHa H
%iyBCTBHTeJIbna.
OHa
MOJxeT BCxpy3KHTb ronoBy
JlonaxnHy,
No He ycTynHT eMy.
IIpoTecTyx
npoTHB 3na,
PaHCBCKBH 6ecnoMompa
nepeA
6eAo?
00
Rudnitskii identified
the
source of
these
vacillating emotions as
the
inner
turmoil
felt by
a
Ranevskaia
torn
between
the
life in Paris
she
has left behind
and
the
old
one
to
which she
has
now returned.
50'
Efros's
production was played at
his
characteristically rapid pace, and
in her
dynamic
expression of emotions
his leading
actress clearly
demonstrated his
central principle
that
'truth is in
the
feet'. This is
to
be
seen
in Szewcow's
description:
Demidova
and
tfros
(the
close collaboration
between
actor and
director is
evident
in
the
consistency of the
interpretation) hear
the suffering of
Chekhov's heroine. They
find its
expression not
in Ljubov' Andreevna's
traditional
sighs and tears
but in her
perpetual motion.
Motion
to
Demidova is
not
just
a matter of physical position or
displacement, it is
also a matter of emotional
fluctuation.
502
For E. Taranova, Demidova's Ranevskaia
appeared
fragile
and
broken; her
angular movements recalled
those
of a
bird
who
had been
shot
down in flight
but
was still attempting
to
fly Similarly, Stroeva
suggested that
it
was as
if
her
wings were
broken
and she were
falling in
a spiral.
504
For
this
critic, she
50OV.
Frolov, Sud'by
zhanrov
dramaturgii (Moscow: Sovetskii
pisatel',
1979),
p.
229.
501K.
Rudnitskii, Vremia i
mesto',
in Klassika i
sovremennost"
(Moscow: Nauka, 1987),
pp.
190-223 (p. 205).
502Szewcow,
p.
36.
503Taranova,
p.
166.
50Stroeva,
'I
snova', p.
8
203
was also
like
a person on
the threshold
of
death,
who
demonstrated,
at
moments,
that
her
spirit was still very much alive, as she
joked, laughed
and
suppressed
her feelings in
expressions of cheerful
bravado.
The idea
that the
play
is
pervaded
by
the
imminent
approach of
death
was
articulated
by
several commentators
in Chekhov's
own
day. Kugel', for
instance,
saw
the
central
idea
of
The Cherry Orchard
as a
'a
meeting with
death'.
505
Andrei Belyi
expressed a similar notion, which was consonant
too
with
Meyerhold's
conception of
the
The Dance
of
the
Living Dead' for
the
ball
scene of
Act 111.506 In
the
midst of
the
supposed
joviality, Meyerhold
sensed
the suggestion of an underlying
threat.
He
saw affinities
between Chekhov's
work and
that
of
the
Symbolist
writer
Maurice Maeterlinck. Deeply
critical of
the
MAT interpretation, he felt
that the
key
to the
play
lay in its hidden
musical
qualities.
After
the
premiere
he
wrote
to
Chekhov:
Bama
IIbeca a6cTpaxTHa, xax cRMC4oanH
LIafxoBcxoro. H
peYCHccep AonxceH
YJIOBHTb cc CJIyXOM IIpezAe BcerO.
B
TpeTbeM aKTe Ha (pone rnynoro
TOIIOTaHbg
-
BOT 3To KTonoTaBbe* Hyzzo ycimzma m- HC3aMCTHO AThH
jmAe Bxooparr
Yxac:
BHumeB1 caA IIpoAana.
TaIHyIOT.
llpojana.
TaHgytoT.
H
Tax Ao Kong a.
Korga
IIHTaCIIIb IIbeCY, TpeTH aKT IIpOH3B0 ET TaKOe
BIIegaTACHHe, KBK TOT 3BOH B ymax
6OAbHOrO
B
BameM
paCCKa3C TH(p.
3yj{
KaKOO-TO.
Bece.
me, B KOTOpoM CJIUU HbH 3ByKH CMCpTH.
B
3TOM aiTe TITO-To
McTepnmmoBcxoe, crpanmce
507
505A.
Kugel', '0 Chekbove', Teatr i iskusstvo, 28 (1904),
p.
518.
506M.
H. Stroeva, Rezhisserskie iskaniia Stanislavskogo
1917-1938 (Moscow: Nauka,
1977),
p.
129.
507Letter
to
Chekhov. V. E. Meierkhol'd, Stat'i,
pisma, rechi,
besedy: 1891-1917 (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1968),
p.
85.
Contrary
to a more widely accepted view,
Allen has
argued that the
1904 MAT
production was
not essentially naturalistic
in its
conception,
but
rather that
Stanislavsky
understood and
exploited
its
symbolic elements.
In his
view
the director
staged the ball in Act III in
a' comic,
absurd, even grotesque' manner and
in
a way that
suggested that
elements of
Meyerhold's
phantasmagorical
description
were already present
in
the MAT
Production.
(Allen,
pp.
38-41).
On 5 November 1903 Stanislavsky
suggested to
Chekhov
that the
final
act
be
set not
in 'a
room
in
the
house',
as the author
had
stipulated,
but in
the
nursery of
Act I,
a change which
204
Shakh-Azizova has
observed
that
both in Goriaev's Leningrad
production
in
1972
and
in Adolf Shapiro's Cherry Orchard for
the
Youth Theatre in Tallinn
the previous season,
the
ball
scene
had been
staged almost
' la Meyerhold',
expressing
the
'suppressed, hidden
rhythms of
Time
and
Fate',
as
the
dancing
characters created a mood of
'joy before death'.
508
Although Efros's
production, unlike
those of
his
contemporaries,
did
not evoke
the phantasmagorical aspects of
Meyerhold's
conception,
he did,
as we shall
see,
incorporate images
of
death in his
set.
Demidova's
understanding of
the
play, moreover,
had
much
in
common with
the
ideas
of
these
earlier
commentators.
She
recalled
that
Chekhov,
when writing
The Cherry Orchard,
was
himself
seriously
ill;
the
ghastly vision of someone
dying
of
tuberculosis
was
fundamental
to
her
conception of
his
play:
AI
McHA B HoHHMaHHH Hbeca HexanoBaaxO To, TO
tiexoB
HHcan BHmrMeBM
caA,
6ypyg8
cam cMepTenbHO
6omhHIIIM. Ty6epxyne3
MC HKH Ha3bIBSIOT
cTpamHo: aeceno
6oae3ubio. YMHpaioT
s no mou cosaasss.
HB
OCHOBHOM
na paccseTe.
Becao.
509
In Demidova's
view
it
was not
for
nothing
that
Chekhov's
play opens at
dawn
in
spring-time, and
that
later in
the
action
the
characters attempt
to
stave off
their
Chekhov
retained
in
the published version of
the
play.
(Letter from Stanislavsky
to
Chekhov,
5 November 1903, K. S. Stanislavskii, Sobranie
sochinenii,
8
vols
(Moscow: Iskusstvo,
1960), VII,
p.
271. ) For Act IV
the
nursery was stripped
bare;
the curtains
had been
taken
down
and the shutters closed.
Crates, bundles
and cases cluttered the
stage.
Oval
and
rectangular marks on the walls
indicated
where the
pictures, now stacked
in
piles,
had
once
hung. Allen has
argued
that the
staging of this
scene was a
further indication
of
bow
Stanislavsky's
production could
be
read realistically and symbolically.
(His
emphasis)
The
stripping of the room
had
a
basis in
realism,
indicating
the
characters'
imminent departure, but
also symbolically suggested
desolation
and emptiness
(Allen,
p.
41). There is
some
justification for
this argument,
but it is
equally true that the theatre by its
nature
communicates
through signs, and that therefore
many
features in
a given production, even
when conceived
in
a naturalistic style, and
irrespective
of a
director's intent,
may
be interpreted
symbolically.
508Shakh-Azizova,
'Sovremennoe',
p.
350.
SMDemidova,
'Bol'shaia',
P.
8.
205
inevitable destruction by joking
and
drinking
champagne.
In her
perception
the
destruction
of the orchard
is life-threatening for Ranevskaia. At first however
she refuses
to
acknowledge
her illness
openly; only
in Act II,
and
then
unwillingly,
does
she
look for
a
'cure' from 'the doctor', Lopakhin. Demidova
described Act III
as
follows:
TpeTNA
arr
-
oz aHBe pe3y7IbmTa, KaK oxMAanHe HCxoAa Tjixenot onepai is
.
Tyr
HecOOTBCTCTBHe cRTyaIHH H uoeej[eHHA AOCZHraeT BepimHbi: CrpeMBTCH
U RKpbMTb cMepTeJlbHbi* CTpaX My3b1KO
,
TaUI(aMH,
4)OKyCaMH. H
BOT MoROnor
JIOHaXHHa
-
ouepa1HA KOH'IHJIaCb CMCpT io
510
It is
clear
from
this
description
that
Demidova's Ranevskaia knew her fate. She
was neither
feckless
nor
happy-go-lucky,
as she
is
sometimes portrayed:
her
moments of apparent cheerfulness,
like
those
of
the
other characters, were
pretence.
Emma Polotskaia
maintained
that
Demidova,
unlike
Knipper,
never
showed
frivolous
unconcern;
instead
she portrayed a woman of considerable
intellect,
who
in
truth
understood
her
circumstances all
too
clearly.
511
For
this
critic,
in her
expressions of great anguish
this
Ranevskaia
was more
tragic than
in
previous performances:
her
self-knowledge was
the
very source of
her
true
tragedy, and she
had
gained
her
wisdom and worldly
insight
through
suffering.
Although Demidova
revealed
her
emotional anguish physically, she was also a
Taganka
performer.
The impression
she gave that
Ranevskaia knew her fate
was
indebted
too, therefore, to the
approach she
had developed
under
Liubimov. As Stroeva
noted,
her interpretation
was coloured at
times
by
a
sense of self-irony, and
through
a subtle stylisation
of
the
role
the
actress
created a
distance between herself
and
her
character.
512
This
opinion was
echoed
by Alevtina Kuzicheva,
who remarked that
in her
somewhat affected
5101bid.
511
polotskaia, '"Neugomonnaia"',
p.
91.
512Sva,
'I
snova', p.
8
206
gait, and
in her
playful
intonation, Demidova
occasionally created a sense of
viewing
Ranevskaia from
the outside.
513
This idea
that
Ranevskaia is fully
aware of
her fate, in
the
way
that
someone
terminally
ill
may also
hide
what
they
know
to
be
true,
was
in Efros's
view
apparent
from
the scene of
her
arrival,
in
which
he
suggested
that those
who
gathered about
her
also understood
the truth:
Bce
HoHHMaloT oAHo: oua HpEexana HpoupTbc.
C
3To* xCK3Hbio HoKOHileHO.
XOTB
eu; e
6yAyT
KaKHe-To CTpacTH KHHeTb,
6yAyr
cxaHpamm H cUOpbt, HaRemMu,
Ho rAe-TO, yze HOHATHO, Bce pemeHo.
H
BOT Bce CTOAT, H MN Ha6JUO) aeM, KK
ona j epzwrcfi.
Tax
si aoAirr
6oJU
HOt or Bpaga, y3HaB yWacH AHarH03, a BBI
HAeTe c HHM H
6o]ITaeTe
o HoroAe, ropOAe z BHTpKHax.
OHa
rOBOpHT 0 KOMHaTC,
rAe KOrj[a-To cuaiia, o TOM, YaK exaaa B uoe3Ae, 9TO iuo6HT Ho()e, no Bce
HOHHM8IOT, TO Re. AO COBCCM B jjpyrOM.
H AHx
c
Bape*
yxousrr, He Bwepzas
HanpaxceHHx.
514
For Efros
the
underlying
tensions
of
this
scene were
indicative
of what
he
called
the
'emotional
mathematics'
inherent in
the
structure of
Chekhov's
plays.
515
He further
suggested
that
it
was neither
desirable
nor necessary
to
express
these
through
details
of
'domestic
realism'
(6brr); he
maintained on
the
contrary that
they needed a
form
which was at once symbolic and emotionally charged.
He
drew
an analogy
between
theatre
design
and painting, remarking that
while
it
was possible
to
paint a
bull in
all
its life-like detail,
one could also
draw it
as
Pablo Picasso had done
with
'a
single,
daring brush-stroke',
creating
in
effect a
symbol, almost a
'sign',
which nevertheless completely captured
its
pose and
513Alevtina
Kuzicheva, 'Vishnevyi... Vishnevyi... Vishnevyi
sad',
Literaturnaia Rossiia, 11
June 1976,
p.
14.
514
5,
Professiia,
p.
97. (His
emphasis).
515
Jbid.
207
movement.
516
His
rejection of realist
detail
was
in keeping
with
his
previous
interpretations
of
Chekhov, but his desire
to express the essence and
ideas
of
The Cherry Orchard
symbolically was shared
by
other
directors,
and
therefore
not entirely new.
In 1904, Stanislavsky, in
characteristic
fashion
and exploiting every technical
means available,
had
expanded, much
to
Chekhov's dismay,
on
the
playwright's
directions for
the setting.
In
collaboration with
Simov, he had
provided a wealth of naturalistic
detail for
each act, and
(as in The Seagull) had
written what was
in
effect a complete score of off-stage sound effects.
The
production
had been
criticised
for
such excess of
detail by
contemporary
commentators,
including Meyerhold,
who
by
contrast
had
maintained that the
orchard and
the
old
life it
represents were expressed
in Chekhov's
play
in
an
openly symbolic
form.
517
This idea had been
central
to
Knebel"s
production
in 1965: in
the
Theatre
of
the
Soviet Army
there
had been
no attempt
to
create a
physical realisation of the orchard.
This,
as
Shakh-Azizova
noted,
had been
a
bold
move
indeed for
a
director
who
had
trained
at
the
MAT
under
Stanislavsky.
518
Working
with
her designer Iurii Pimenov, Knebel' had
created a semi-opaque shroud of
light, floating drapes
around
the
stage area,
and so
had
evoked
the
spiritual essence and memory of
the
orchard rather
than
its
actual presence.
Pimenov had
also made
inventive
use of slide projections.
These
appeared
in
separate scenes
to
indicate
the
locus
of
the
action, and
between
the acts
to
create a montage of associations and memories,
in
the
manner of still-life paintings.
Taking his
cue, perhaps,
from Pimenov, M.
5t6Jbid.,
pp.
96-97.
517For
details
of
Meyerhold's
conception, see
his letter
to
Chekhov
already cited,
(Meierkhol'd,
pp.
84-86. ),
and also
The Naturalistic Theatre
and
The Theatre
of
Mood' in
Meyerhold
on
Theatre,
ed. and trans.
by Edward Braun (London: Eyre Methuen, 1969),
pp.
23-
34 (pp. 28-33). Later, in
the
1930s, Nemirovich-Danchenko
appears to
have
shared to
some
degree the
ideas
of
Meyerhold. He
suggested that the theatre had handled
the
play
too
roughly,
and remarked
significantly
that the
playwright
had
refined
his
realism to the
point where
it
became
symbolic.
Stroeva, Rezhisserskie (1973),
p.
126.
518Sbakh-Azizova,
'Dolgaia',
p.
30.
208
Kataev
too
had departed from
the traditions
of the
MAT in his design for
Shapiro's 1971
production.
He
also
had
not created a garden of
trees
in
blossom, but instead had
painted
the
faint
outlines of
leaves
and
flowers
on
the
walls of a
dilapidated house,
whose
furniture had been
covered
in dirty dust
sheets.
519
I. Ivanov's
setting at
the
Pushkin Theatre in Leningrad in 1972 had
created an atmosphere of
destruction
and neglect.
Black,
rough
branches
sprouted
through
white ceilings, walls and colonnades, and punched
holes in
the cases of clocks, each of whose
faces
showed a
different
time.
520
Both
Pimenov's idea
of a
'still-life',
conveying
the
sense
that the
orchard
had long
passed
into
memory, and
Ivanov's
suggestion of
timelessness, also
featured in
Efros's
setting.
It
was
designed by Levental',
who
had
collaborated with
Efros
before,
on
Marriage, but
worked mainly at
the
Bolshoi,
producing
lavish
and
visually stunning
designs for
operas.
In
this
case,
however, he
succeeded
in
creating
Efros's 'single daring brush
stroke'.
His
set remained unchanged
throughout the
action,
but
generated multiple meanings, and expressed
through
visual metaphors
the
ideas
that
were central
to the
director's interpretation.
Chekhov
provides extensive
directions for
the
outdoor scene of
Act II. These
specify an open
field
and a road
leading
to the
estate,
together
with an
abandoned chapel with a well,
large
stones,
long-neglected
gravestones and an
old
bench. In
this
act,
in 1904, Stanislavsky
and
Simov had hoped
to
create a
vision of
Central Russia in
the style of
the
landscapes
of
Levitan. Stanislavsky
had
replaced
the
old
bench
with a mown
field
and a pile of
hay,
and
had
made a
host
of other additions.
These,
as
he
outlined
in
a
letter
to
Chekhov,
were
to
include
a
little
chapel, a small gully and a neglected cemetery
521
Chekhov
responded
by
stating categorically that there
should
be
no churchyard; there
was
one,
he
stressed, a very
long
time
ago,
but its
existence should now
be indicated
5t9Taranova,
p.
164.
520Jbid.,
p.
165.
521Ler
from Stanislavsky
to
Chekhov, 19 November 1903 in Stanislavskii, Sobranie,
pp.
274-275.
209
only
by
two or
three slabs
lying
scattered about.
522
In keeping
with
the
ideas
of
Stanislavsky
and contrary
to those of
Chekhov,
an old cemetery was
the
central
focus
of
Levental's
set.
At
the
centre-back of
the
stage,
filling
about a
third of
the
area,
the
designer
created a white mound, roughly circular
in
shape.
On
this there
was a white
garden
bench
of exquisite
iron-work,
several garden chairs,
furniture from
a
child's nursery, and whitish gravestones, arranged
in
such a way as
to
give the
ensemble
depth. A
single cherry tree
in blossom
was placed
in
the
midst of
the
gravestones, and at
the
back
two
more were silhouetted against a white
lace-like
cross.
At both
sides of
the
stage,
in
groups of
three
and scalloped at
the top
into
rosette-like
drapes,
almost
transparent
white curtains were
blown by
a constant
air-flow at varying strengths.
Georges Banu interpreted
this
as a metaphor
for
the
wind of
history
that
would
bear
away all
in its
path
523
At
the
back
white
material
fell
to
form
a
frame
reminiscent of theatre curtains, against which sepia
portraits of
former family
members
hung in
oval
frames. The huge branch
of a
cherry
tree
dangled
obtrusively across the
front
of
the
stage.
At
the
opening
paper
blossoms,
manufactured
in
the
MAT's
props
department, fell from
the
flies like
snow.
524
This
evocative set was
devoid
of all
local details;
the
only
touch of colour was
the
reddish
hue
of
Gaev's beloved book-case,
curiously out
of place
in
the
all-pervasive white.
525
The
characters too
were
dressed in
white,
its dominance
relieved only
by
the textures
of
the
fabrics,
which gave
the
impression
of
different
tones
of white; nothing stood out
in
contrast
but
their
coloured shiny shoes and
boots,
and the
black
trimming
on
Ranevskaia's
costume
in Act IV
526
The
only other exceptions
were
Lopakhin,
who
for
the
522Letter
from Chekhov
to
Stanislavsky, 23 November 1903, in Surkov, Chekhov,
p.
161
523Georges
Banu, '"Les Cerisaies"
Strange
res',
in Chekhoviana:
Chekhov i Frantsija
(Moscow: Nauka, 1992),
pp.
233-240 (p. 238).
524Efros's
set
is described in
several accounts.
See in
particular the
following
sources:
V.
Berezkin, Khudozhnik
v teatre
Chekhova (Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1987),
pp.
97-
98,
and
Szewcow,
p.
34.
525Berezkin,
Khudozhnik,
p.
98.
526Szewcow,
p.
37.
210
final
act changed
from
a white suit
into
a plum-coloured one, and
Firs,
who
throughout wore a
black
coat and
tails; this gave
him, in
the
opinion of
A.
Kurzhiiamskaia,
the appearance of a master of ceremonies at a sad spectacle.
527
The
contrast
between
this
setting and
Simov's
poetic vision of
the
Russian
countryside at
the
MAT in 1904
could not
have been
more stark.
Golub
recalled
that
when
he
saw
the
production
in 1976
a
theatre student,
having
pondered on
the set,
leaned
over to
him
and whispered:
The Moscow Art Theatre lies buried
there'.
528
Golub
added,
however,
that
although everything about
the
production seemed
to
be
aimed at a sacred cow,
Efros
was
too
much of an artist
to serve as a
'hit
man' even
for
the
sake of
innovation
529
In
truth the
setting
drew its inspiration from
several
different
sources.
As
noted above, a realistic
depiction
of
the
orchard
had
already
been
rejected
in
several productions on
the
Soviet
stage.
For Szewcow,
moreover,
the
composite
image
of
'white
on
white' recalled
the
work of
Kazimir Malevich,
and
Rudnitskii
and
Shevtsova
both
cited
the
influence
of
the
all-white production
by
the
Italian director
Giorgio Strehler
at
the
Piccolo Teatro di Milano
the
previous year.
530
527A.
Kurzhiiamskaia, 'Chto
utverzhdaet spektakl',
Sovetskaia kul'tura, 30 July 1976,
p.
3.
528Golub,
'Acting',
p.
24.
5291bid.,
p.
25.
530Szewcow,
p.
34; Rudnitskii, 'Vremia i
mesto', p.
205; Shevtsova, 'Chekhov',
p.
89.
Levental"s
set
had
some clear similarities with
that of
Luciano Damiani's for
the
opening act
of
Strehler's
production.
Strehler had first
produced
The Cherry Orchard in 1955, but
was
dissatisfied
with
that production, and
had
staged
it
again at the
Piccolo Teatro in 1974.
Strehler
referred
directly
to a
letter from Chekhov
to
Stanislavsky
on
5 February 1903, in
which
the playwright maintained
that the play was already
fully formed in his
mind, and
alluded
to the white orchard
in full bloom
and to
ladies in
white
dresses. (Surkov, Chekhov,
p.
141. ) Strehler
was convinced
that
for Chekhov
the
work
had
taken
shape as
'a
shooting
white
light'. (Giorgio Stnehler, Un
thEdtre pour
la
vie.
Reflexions,
entretiens, notes
de
travail,
ed.
by S. Kessler,
trans.
by E. Genevois (Paris: Fayard, 1980),
p.
326. ) This idea
was central
to
Damiani's
conception.
In Act I he
created an open space, with no walls, and with a
few
pieces of simple white
furniture (including
a
diminutive
set of tables and chairs
for
the
nursery).
The
stage
floor
was covered
in
a white-grey cloth and an enormous, white,
transparent gauze
hung
over the stage throughout the
acts.
This
could
be
manipulated
by
stage
hands to
float
over the orchestra and audience and was covered
in
shimmering
leaves
which
fell
to the
floor in
the
final
act.
The
characters were all
dressed in
white,
its dominance
relieved
only
by Firs's black
suit, the actors'
dark
shoes, and
by
a
black
poodle
for Sharlotta. For
further details
of
this production, see
Banu,
pp.
235-237; Senelick, Chekhov 7heeatre,
pp.
267-
272; Shevtsova, 'Chekhov',
pp.
80-98.
In the course of
his
career the
leading Italian director Giorgio Strebler (1921-1997) directed
some
200
works
in
a variety of genres, and
his
work
does
not
divide
easily
into distinct
periods.
Educated
at
the
University
of
Milan,
the
Geneva Conservatory
and the
Academia dei
Filodrammatici
in Milan, he
co-founded the
Piccolo Teatro
with
Paolo Grassi in 1947.
211
The
set
functioned
on several
levels. In
the
first instance it
synthesised all
Chekhov's
spatial and
temporal
directions. As Szewcow
noted,
it
was at once
the orchard,
the
bower
of
Act II,
the spring of
Ranevskaia's
return
to
Russia
from Paris,
with a
temperature of minus-three
degrees just left behind her,
and
the
October
of
her departure,
when
the
house is
closed
for
winter and
for
ever.
But
that critic also saw
in
the
almost completely white set a visual
translation
of
a major
theme:
Ljubov' Andreevna
and
her brother,
who are
the characters most
threatened
by
the
material world,
turn
reality
into
abstraction.
If
they cannot seize their present and
make
it
concrete
through action, they can, only
too
well,
take
hold
of their past.
531
In Knebel"s
production
the
light drapes
around
the stage
had been interpreted
as a
hazy
memory
through
which
the
remains of
Ranevskaia's life
on
the estate
appeared as
in
a mirage.
532
But in Efros's interpretation
all emotional
responses were
brutally
revealed, and
therefore memories of
the
past were
dazzlingly
precise and clear.
The
actors moved about
the
mound, sat on
it
and
on
the
furniture,
and
leant
against
the
gravestones, watched over
by
their
dead
relatives.
Thus for V. Berezkin in
this
'still-life'
memories of
the
past and the
detritus
of
the
present were
jumbled
together
in
a
heap. In fact in Act IV
the
Subsidised by
government
funds,
the theatre
had
an acknowledged public service
function in its
attempt
to reach a socially more
heterogeneous
audience than that of the traditional
urban
theatre.
The European tour of
Brecht's Berliner Ensemble in 1956
was a seminal
influence
on
Strebler's
work and
led him
to stage
The Threepenny Opera (1956), The Good Person
of
Szechwan (1958), The Good Soldier Schweik (1961),
and
The Life
of
Galileo (1963). His
work
in
the
Italian
repertoire
included
notable productions of
Goldoni, including
several
stagings
from 1947
of
Arlecchino, Servant
of
Two Masters, in
which
he
explored
for
a modern
audience
the techniques of the mask and pantomime.
The
events of
May 1968 led him
to
develop
a more politically engaged theatre
and saw the establishment of the
Gruppo Teatro
e
Azione, but he
returned
to the
Piccolo in 1972. In
the
1980s he
was
involved in the
work of
the
Thb6fitre de 1'Europe,
and
his interest in
opera saw productions of
Mozart, lighter
comic
pieces
by Piccinni
and
Cimarosa,
and
Beethoven's Fidelio
at
La Scala in 1990. See Richard
Trousdell, in Pickering,
pp.
727-731; for further
material see
David L. Hirst, Giorgio Strehler
(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993).
531Szewcow,
p.
34.
532B
Win, Khudozhnik,
p.
78.
212
hummock itself became
a rubbish
dump,
when
the triumphant
Lopakhin, in
a
gesture of mocking
irony,
carelessly
tossed empty champagne
bottles
on to
it.
According
to
Chekhov's
text,
in Act I
the
orchard
is
still
flourishing,
and
in Act
II
and until
the
end of
Act III Ranevskaia
clings
to the
hope
that, though
threatened,
it
will
be
saved.
It is
not until
the end of
Act IV,
when
the
sounds
of chopping are
heard
off-stage, that
it is
actually
destroyed. Efros's
production,
however, began
as
it
were at
the
end.
His
white set, although
it
evoked
the
blossoming
of
the
orchard
in Spring, indicated
at
the
same
time,
with
its
suggestions of shrouds and mourning,
that the trees
and the
life
they
represented were already
dead. This
was
in keeping
with
the
idea
that
he
shared
with
Demidova
that
Ranevskaia's fate has been decided from
the outset.
The
cherry orchard was not seen simply as almost certainly
doomed: its destruction
was presented as an established
fact. In
this
way
(as in Three Sisters in 1967),
the passage of
time
in
the
play
-
and with
it
the
historical
changes
in Russia
since
1904
-
were entirely eclipsed.
The
audience were
invited
to
contemplate
the
effects on
their
own
lives
of
the
losses, both
spiritual and cultural,
symbolised
by
the
destruction
of
the
orchard.
In Stanislavsky's
production
Ranevskaia's house,
although crumbling and
dilapidated, had been
still a
comforting
home. Here, by
constrast, and
from
the
very
beginning, just
as
the
sisters at
the
Malaia Bronnaia had had
no
home,
not only was
there
effectively
no orchard,
there
was no
house. In Efros's
stark conception this
(and indeed,
as
Berezkin
noted, even what might
have been
a
family
vault)
had
already
collapsed
before
the
action
began.
533
Thus
the
characters,
driven from
their
home
and
dressed in
shrouds, were
left
to
move about a graveyard, to
dwell
as
it
were amongst
the
dead. For Rudnitskii
the
image
of
the
characters
fighting
off
their
imminent demise haunted Efros's
production:
'Ha
aAeIge He
5331bid.,
p.
98.
213
x HByT.
LIexoscKHe
Juo)H y
34poca 6
cb B npeAcMepTnc xoHBymc x,
B nociiegHHx CIIa3MaX HCCmIKaiouwx gyBCTB...
'534
This description
of
the
external expression of
feverish
emotions was entirely
in
keeping
with
Efros's
style of physical
theatre,
in
which, as we
have
seen,
passions were
to
be
outwardly and openly portrayed.
Efros
recalled
how,
after
a
break in
rehearsals and on re-reading
the script,
he
was struck even more
forcibly by
the
idea
that the
basis
of
Chekhov's drama
was
the
fact
that the
characters were
living in
a constant state of anxiety.
535
As
noted above,
this
was particularly apparent
in Demidova's dynamic
performance,
but it
was also a
feature
of
the
work of other actors, most notably
Vysotskii. In
the
opening
scene, as
Lopakhin, Duniasha
and
Epikhodov
are awaiting
the
delayed
arrival of
Ranevskaia
and
her
entourage,
Vysotskii,
uncomfortable
in his
white suit,
which
he
was clearly unaccustomed
to
wearing, made
insistent
perambulations
about
the stage,
infecting
the
others with
his
nervous
tension.
Thus for instance
Epikhodov,
who according
to
Chekhov's directions
crushes a
bouquet
of
flowers, became
so agitated
that
he
also
knocked
over a
table
and
flattened
one
of
the gravestones.
This
nervous energy at
the
opening permeated
the
entire
action; rising and
falling in
peaks and
lows, it
gradually
built
momentum as
the
production's
driving force.
In
other scenes
Efros
was equally concerned, as ever, that
Chekhov's
'emotional
mathematics' should not
be buried in
the
subtext
but
openly
displayed. In The Cherry Orchard (as in Three Sisters) he demonstrated
therefore
how,
without changing a word
but by
a careful re-reading of
the
script,
lines
which were often seen as
insignificant
could
be
given a new
emphasis.
In Act I Lopakhin
announces
his
plan to
cut
down
the
orchard to
534Rudnitskii,
'Vremia i
mesto', p.
204.
535Efros,
professiia,
p.
278.
214
make room
for dachas. Firs
then
recalls
how in
the
past
the
cherries were
dried
or preserved as
jam, but
remarks, when asked
by Ranevskaia
where
the
recipe
for
the
jam is
now,
that
it has been forgotten. As Efros
noted,
this
exchange
was usually
treated as
inconsequential
chatter.
The
role of
Firs had been
written
for
the
MAT
actor
A. Artem,
who played
it
with great
tenderness and warmth
and as a
tired, old man.
536
In Efros's
production, according
to
G. Kholodova,
Gotlieb Roninson's Firs had little
to
do
on a set where
there
was no
house,
so
that
he loitered
rather
than
fussing
over
the
new arrivals.
537
In
this
exchange,
however, he
suddenly
became
animated and
demonstrated
that
for Efros Firs,
though
deaf, fully
understood
the
import (indeed
almost symbolic significance)
of
the
loss
of
this
recipe
S38
Firs's
recollections were not
the
mumbled
ramblings of an old man
but his
ardent protest against
the
dachas,
and
his line:
'3ab1Jm. Hmcro
xe rnoMIM.
'539
was
to
be directed
at
Lopakhin in
a
tone
of
reproach.
Similarly Efros
suggested
that
Gaev
attempts
to
silence
Firs
not
because he is
embarrassed
by
the
old
lackey's
chatter
but because Firs
touches
a
raw nerve, awakening
Gaev's
own memories of
the
past.
540
In Act II,
after
Trofimov's
speech about
the
differences between
the
lives
of
the
intelligentsia
and
the
workers,
the
conversation runs as
follows:
JIOIIAXMH:... Hno
pas, xorAa IN CIRTCI, x IyMaio:
'rocnoAa,
Tu pa. n HaM
rpouaRnbie iieca, neoirruue uona, rny6ogamRe ropK3oHTN, a, xCHBR TyT, aU
ca. H J{on=b1
6w
no-macron *my
uTm
aeJmxaHamx...
'
JIIOBOBb AHJIPEEBHA: Bait
noKaAo6vIwcb aengxaar,...
OHR
TOJIbKO B
cKa &ax xopomR, a T8K oss uyraloT.
(B
uy6uue CeuM npoxodwn
Bmmopoa
u uapaem na zumupe.
)
536Twova,
p.
159.
537KhOlodova,
'"Vishnevyi"',
p.
160.
538Efivs
Professiia,
pp.
275-276.
539Vishnevyi
sad,
Act I,
p.
206.
540Efros,
Professiia,
p.
275.
215
(3adyiutiueo). Ennxrojos
apeT...
AHA: (aaaymwiueo). EnnxoooB
apeT...
rAEB: Conage
ceno, rocuoj a
TPOtDi4MOB: g
a.
541
This
exchange could
be
seen as an
idle
conversation, as
Efros
conceded
in his
notes;
but he
added
that
he loved
moments such as
these,
which on
the
surface
appeared
to
have been
written
to
create a particular mood or to
simply allude to
the characters' surroundings,
but
could actually
be
seen as an
indication
of
internal
conflict.
-142
Thus,
as
Demidova
recalled,
Vysotskii
produced a sudden
deathly hush in
the
audience,
because he had been directed
to
deliver his lines
directly
to them
543
It
was as
though
he
was asking
them
why
the
inhabitants
of
their
Russia
were not giants.
Efros
then
saw
in Ranevskaia's
almost
immediate
reference
to the
appearance of
Epikhodov (a
man of
'twenty-two
misfortunes' and
therefore
a most unlikely giant)
her 'instinctive
understanding'
that
Lopakhin's fantasy
was completely out of
keeping
with reality.
544
Similarly, he
remarked,
Trofimov's 'yes'
was not simply an
inconsequential
confirmation of
Gaev's
statement
but
an assertion of something much more
significant
-
'the
end of
the
world'
(xoHeg
cBeTa;
literally,
the
end of
light).
545
Later in
this
same act,
Trofimov
and
Ania
are
left
alone on stage and
he
speaks
to
her
of
the
necessity
to
rid themselves
of the
existing social order and
entrenched attitudes
in
order to
march
forward
to the
future. Rudnitskii, in his
account of
the
original
MAT
production, maintained that
Stanislavsky had
shown
little faith in Trofimov's
words, and that
he had
therefore
interpreted
the
541Vishnevyi
sad,
ACt II,
p.
224.
542Efros,
Professiia,
p.
276.
543Demidova,
'Vysotskii',
p.
50.
544Efros,
Professiia,
p.
276.
5451bid.
216
exchange
between
the student and
Ania
as simply a
love duet
sah
By
so
doing
the
director had
suggested
that
Trofimov's
apparent optimism was
fleeting
and
unconvincing
because it
was primarily motivated
by his
excitement
in
the
expression of
his
passion
for Ania. As
a result
Stanislavsky's
view of
the
youthful and ardent
Trofimov
was
touched with a sense of
knowing irony. As
noted
in Chapter 2, in
some subsequent
Soviet interpretations
critics
had
identified
a
Chekhov
who
had
advocated
the
destruction
of an obsolete ruling
class,
had
seen
in Lopakhin
the rise of
the
bourgeoisie,
and
had
viewed
Trofimov
as a visionary and as a
harbinger
of
the
coming
Revolution. The
interpretation
of
Trofimov
as a wholly serious character
is
undercut,
however,
by Chekhov's
comic
devices (after
storming out
in Act III he falls down
stairs,
and
in Act IV he
mislays
his
galoshes), and
in
general
his inability
to
put
his
words
into
action renders
him
somewhat
laughable. Efros, like Stanislavsky,
took an
ironical
view of
Trofimov
and
insisted
that the
character
had
to
be
interpreted in
the
light
of contemporary circumstances.
He
remarked,
moreover,
that
he felt Chekhov's
attitude
to
his
character was at
the
very
least
ambivalent:
H
quo Taxoe
IIeTx Tpo4,
HMOS, ec i ero paccMaTpla
,c
ceroguuaime ToVxa
3peaHA?
...
LITO
Taxoe ero cnosa: BnepeA, ne oTcTasa, p! py3ba!
-
KoTOpb[e
off roaopiT pCB UIKC BCgepoM up][ Jryae?
EcTb
as 3Igecb AonH EacMemnasoCra
LIexosa? HAI IlexoB
ryr a6coniarso cepbesen?
547
In Act II Trofimov himself
remarks
that
he is
afraid of serious
talk,
and
(like
Kruglyi's Tuzenbakh in Efros's Three Sisters) Zolotukhin
therefore
delivered
his lofty
speeches on
the
future in
a
tone
of self-mockery, turning
statements
into
questions and
highlighting
the
rift
between ideas
and action.
Later in Act
546RitSkii,
Russkoe,
pp.
233-234.
.
kM
547,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
263-264.
217
IV, in
the
exchange
between Trofimov
and
Lopakhin,
the
disparity between fine
words and the characters'
inability
to
alter events was given a
further ironic
twist.
Trofimov
and
Lopakhin
are soon
to
part company, and at
this
juncture
the student states grandly:
'genoseqecTBo
aAeT K sbictue npaBAe, K
BMCIIIeMy CLIaCTbio, KKOe TOJI16KO BO3MOXHO Ha 3eMJIe, H SI B IIepBbIX
psax!
'548 Lopakhin
then
asks
him: ')
oAAeirm?
'
to
which
Trofimov
responds:
'AofiAy. ' But
as
he delivered his
next
line (')
o Ay au yxaxcy ApyrHM nyTb,
KaK AoTH.
') Zolotukhin
turned
upstage, walked
back
to the
mound, settled
himself
against a gravestone, and promptly
fell
asleep.
In Three Sisters
the
central, climatic moment
had
come
in Act III
with
Durov's
virtuoso performance of
Chebutykin's dance,
and
had been followed by
a
slowing of
the
pace
throughout the
final
act.
The Cherry Orchard followed
a
similar pattern, and
in Act III Vysotskii,
as
Lopakhin,
also
finished his
monologue
by
cavorting and gesticulating wildly as
he
performed what
E.
Taranova has described
as
The Dance
of
the
New Master. '549 On his
return
from
the
auction
Chekhov
gives
him
the
following line: Toprw
KoaX1WMcb K
ileTblpeM iIacaM...
MbI
K IIOe3gy ono3AaJm, npRmmocb 3KAaTb go HOJIOBHithI
Aecsrroro.
'550 Smelianskii described how Vysotskii,
as
he
uttered
these
words,
tapped the side of
his
neck with
the
back
of
his hand,
a
typical
gesture to
indicate how
much
they
had drunk in
the
meantime
551
Tipsy
and
flushed
with
excitement,
he
then
announced that
he had bought
the
estate.
The
effect on
Ranevskaia
was extraordinary: she suddenly collapsed, clasping the
front
of
her
dress
as
if
shot
in
the
stomach, and released a terrible,
soul-chilling, almost
inhuman
cry of pain.
552
At first,
apparently oblivious to
her, Vysotskii
launched into
the speech
in
which
he describes
the thrill
of
the
sale,
his
triumph
548vishnevyi
sad
Act IV,
p.
244.
549Taranova,
p.
166.
550Vishnevyi
sad
Act III,
p.
239.
55 t
Smeliansky, Russian Theatre,
p.
122.
552}o1odova,
'"Visnevyi"',
p.
154.
218
in
outbidding
Deriganov
and
his
growing awareness
that
(none
other
than)
he,
the poor
barefoot
peasant
boy, is
now
the owner of
the
estate on which
his
father
and grandfather
had been
serfs.
In
this
speech
Vysotskii
succeeded
in
combining
drunken laughter,
sober
tears,
anger, self-reproach, and self
irony
all
in
one.
Vysotskii, however,
was not only an actor
but
also a poet and song-
writer.
In
the
words of
his famous ballads,
through
allusion and
hidden
metaphors,
he
spoke with a critical,
dissenting
voice of
the
abuses of
the
Soviet
system.
In
the
view of
Kholodova, in
the
rhythm and
intonation
of
his delivery
he
turned
Chekhov's
prose
into
verse, almost as
if
reciting
the
lyrics
of one of
his
own works.
553
At
this
point,
for Krymova,
the
actor and character
fused
into
a single persona.
Through Chekhov's lines, in
the
words of
'the
poet'
Lopakhin,
the
ballad-singer Vysotskii
was expressing a
thought
deeply familiar
to
him: 'qeM
Ha
Pyc$
rnyinaT 'rocxy.
'554 Stanislavsky had
once suggested that
it
was as
if Lopakhin had bought
the
orchard
by
accident and
then
his
confusion
over
his
actions
had
prompted
him
to
get
drunk.
555
In
a similar way,
Vysotskii
appeared at
first
to
be
carried away with excitement;
but
then
in
the
middle of
his
speech
he
suddenly
felt
the
full
and
horrific import
of
his deed. At
this
moment
he broke into hysterical,
reckless
dancing. In
this
he
expressed violently the
tumult of
his
confused emotions:
his
triumph
and pride,
his
anger and
frustration
at
the
blind
stupidity of
those
who
had forced him
to
act, and at
the
same
time
his bitter
anguish and self-loathing at the thought that
he, like
a
reluctant murderer,
had been forced
to
kill
the
very
thing
he held
most
dear. His
stamping
feet beat
out a pain
that
ate at
his
very soul, crushed
his
spirit and
shattered
the
illusions
of
his hopeless love. In Rudnitskii's
view
Vysotskii's
distress
spelled out with absolute clarity that the
loss
of
the
orchard was
if
553olodova,
Lopakhin',
pp.
63-64.
554N.
Krymova, 'Poet,
rozbdennyi teatrom',
in Vspominnaia Vladimira Vysotskogo
(Moscow: Sovetskaia Rossiia, 1989),
p.
154.
555Lette
from Stanislavsky
to
Chekhov, 31 October 1903, Stanislavskii,
Sobranie,
pp.
266-
267 (p. 267).
219
anything a greater
tragedy
for Lopakhin
than
for Ranevskaia, because by its
destruction
she was
lost
to
him forever.
556
After
this
emotional climax
late in Act III,
the
pace slowed
for
the
final
act.
In
the closing moments
the
actors circled
the
central mound
in
procession, walking
in
silence at a
funereal
pace to the
steady
beat
of an amplified metronome that
recalled
the sound of a chopping axe.
557
But Ranevskaia
unexpectedly
broke
from
their
ranks, rushed to the
front
of
the
stage, and
in
a
final
tormented
cry
addressed
the
audience with
her line: '0,
MOR MRINA, MO xexcxbi
,
npexpacm ili can!
...
Mox
x H3Hb, MO MOJIOAOcTm, cgacme Moe, npougaAt!
...
rIpoutal!
...
'S58 She
then
stretched out
to
clutch
the
branch
of cherry
blossoms hanging
tantalisingly
out of reach over
the
forestage
and cried out
in
bitter despair
as she
failed
to
grasp
it. The
others moved
forwards,
placed a
black
cloak about
her
shoulders, and
led her
gently
back from
the
edge of
the
stage, as a group of mourners might pull someone
back from
the
brink
of a
grave.
559
The
characters exited slowly,
leaving Firs
alone.
According
to
Chekhov's directions
the
old servant
lies
motionless,
but Roninson began
to
hunt desperately
among the
gravestones, as
though
looking for
a way out,
before finally
collapsing at
the
base
of
the
mound.
560
The
other characters then
gathered where
he lay
and sang their
mournful refrain
for
the
final
time.
By
the mid-1970s, as
Efros himself
noted, there
had been
several productions
of classic works,
including
those
of
Chekhov,
whose style of performance
was
not
in keeping
with established
interpretations,
and consequently those
which
deviated from
tradition
had
met with a greater acceptance
from
the
critics.
561
556Rudnitskii,
'Vremia i
mesto', p.
206.
557Stroeva,
'I
snova', p.
8.
558Vishnevyi
sad
Act IV,
p.
253.
559Sva,
'I
snova', p.
8.
560Taranova,
p.
167.
56IEh
,
'A
chto', p.
8.
220
This
view
is
substantiated
by
several critical commentaries.
Shakh-Azizova,
outlining
developments in
the
staging of
Chekhov from
the
earliest productions
to
1998,
suggested
that
from
the
beginning
of
the
1960s,
as
directors
searched
for
new
forms, his
theatre
underwent
'truly
revolutionary changes', which
by
the
1970s had
resulted
in
the
continuing
'democratisation'
of
the
playwright's
work and
had
seen
the
breaking
of
the
MAT's 'monopoly', because 'Chekhov
offered equality of rights and opportunities
to
all
theatres
regardless of rank or
artistic style'.
562
The MAT's
own productions, she added,
(under
the
direction
of
Efremov)
echoed to
some
degree
changes
in
traditional
perspectives.
This
perception was shared
by Polotskaia,
who noted
that the
rejection of
the
MATs
'canonical'
style, apparent
both in Efros's
staging of
The Cherry Orchard in
1975
and
in Kheifets's
television
film in 1976,
was also reflected
in Efremov's
production of
Ivanov
at
that theatre
in 1978
563
In
this
context critics of
Efros's
Cherry Orchard focused
not on
ideological issues (as
they
had in
their
reactions
to
his Seagull
and
Three Sisters) but
on aesthetic ones.
Their
responses were
mixed.
They
remained
divided
above all as
to the
ultimate success of
Efros's
experiment
in bringing
together two
disparate
styles at
the
Taganka.
Efros had found
two
metaphors which
for him
expressed
the
sense of
historical
change as an
implacable force, in
the
face
of which
Chekhov's
characters, and
by
extension all
humans,
are powerless.
B
eem, Tm cxa
,
ocnossax upo6JIeMa Bsmuesoro cajaa?
B
Tom TO ZH
-
xax saxpb.
A
moAa He ycaesaioT sa 3 sHxpeM.
BHxpb
scerra sag naMB.
Mini
-
cnej z 3roro sxxpn, xoTopoMy aa3eaaae: speiet.
BpeM, 6e3zanoc
no,
cTpeMWremmno,
6ecno
o.
OHO
MesxeTca a MCHaCT aac, Tax me xax Bymcaa
5625
-Azizova,
'Chekhov',
pp.
169-170. Shakh-Azizova
has
observed elsewhere that the
rejection of traditional approaches to
Chekbov
had been
already
demonstrated
previously
in
the
critically-acclaimed productions of
The Cherry Orchard
by Shapiro
at the
Tallinn Youth
Theatre in 1971
and
by Goriaev
at the
Pushkin in Leningrad
in 1972. Shakh-Azizova,
'Sovremennoe',
pp.
349-350. (These
productions
were
discussed briefly
above, see page
204. )
563Polotskaia,
'"Vishnevyi
sad"', p.
284.
221
McHReT penbecp 3eMJIH.
H
MOAN BcerAa uepep BynxaHOM, B o6WeM,
6eccanbHU.
BynxaH
IIepecTpaaaaeT penbec 3eMnB.
LIeXOB
III BC11BOBan B Te roAb, *rro
peme4) seam a3MeWICTcM.
H
HanacaR o6 31roM nbecy
564
This
would appear
to
suggest
that
Efros
shared what can
be imaginatively
construed as
Chekhov's
sense of
historical
objectivity
in
regard
to the
inexorable
march of
time,
represented
by
the
inevitable destruction
of
the
orchard.
This,
as noted above,
had
allowed
the playwright
(unlike
Stanislavsky)
to see
ironically
the
diminutive
stature of
his
characters
in
the
face
of
the
passage of
time,
and
to
laugh
at
the
absurdity of
their
inability
to
recognise
the
hopelessness
of
their situation.
In his
previous productions of
Chekhov, Efros had
maintained a sense of objectivity,
but in The Cherry
Orchard,
taking
his
cue
from Stanislavsky, he deliberately
exaggerated certain
aspects of
the
drama in keeping
with
his idea
of
the
loss
of
the
orchard as a
tragedy, and viewed
the characters with sympathy.
Although
the
inevitable
destruction
of
the
orchard was apparent
in
the
set,
there
seems nevertheless to
have been
a certain
disparity between Efros's
conception of
the
play and
its
performance.
The Taganka
actors, schooled
in Brecht's
techniques
of multiple
perspectives, were capable of portraying a sense of objectivity.
It
will
have
been
clear,
however, from
the
account above, that the
most effective moments
in
the production were
those
in
which
the
actors expressed physically
deeply-
felt inner
emotions.
The
production
therefore
demonstrated
the techniques
of
Efros's
physical
theatre,
but did
not exploit
fully
the
capabilities of
the
Taganka
troupe.
The direct
addresses
to the
audience and sense of a separation
between
actor and character were
to
some
degree
added
details
rather than
inherent
aspects of
the performers' work.
There is
some truth, therefore,
in Smelianskii
assertion
that the synthesis of the two
approaches
remained
incomplete. 565
564A.
Efros, '0 Chekhove'.
p.
4. (His
emphasis).
565Smelianskii,
Nashi,
p.
299.
222
As
noted above,
Efros had difficulties in
communicating
his ideas
to
Liubimov's
troupe, and
it is
apparent
from
their
own accounts that
Demidova
and
Vysotskii
grasped more clearly
than
others
the
differences in Efros's
approach.
This
practical
issue,
together
with
his
concern to
foreground
the
relationship
between Ranevskaia
and
Lopakhin, led Efros
to
focus
attention on
them.
As M. Turovskaia
observed,
however,
this
meant
that
many of
the
other
characters remained on
the
periphery of
the
action
566
The Taganka
production,
therefore,
lacked
the
sense of ensemble so
important in Stanislavsky's
productions, and
indeed
characteristic of
Efros's
own
troupe
at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia. Through Efros's
neglect, several of
the
roles remained
underdeveloped, and
(as Smelianskii
maintained)
the
director
might
have
produced a more satisfying production at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
where
his
own
troupe could
have filled
the
character portrayals with a greater psychological
depth.
567
This lack
of
depth, however,
was not a
feature
of all
the
performances.
Demidova's Ranevskaia
was almost universally praised, and
there
seems
little justification for Vladimir Blok's
opinion
that
her
rapid changes
of emotion
lacked
psychological motivation.
568
G. Kholodova
also suggested
that
Demidova's
extreme reaction to the
news of
the
orchard's sale
lacked
internal justification because it
was out of
keeping
with
the
sense of self-
knowledge
that this
Ranevskaia had demonstrated
throughout.
569
In
the
view
of
the
present writer such criticism
is
not valid,
because
there
is
a great
difference between knowing, but
scarcely admitting, a
truth,
and suddenly
being faced
with
it.
Zolotukhin's interpretation
of
Trofimov
was predictably attacked
for
what was
seen as
insufficient
political commitment.
T. Surina
criticised the
ironical
and
566M.
Turovskaia, 'Kino
-
Chekhov-77
-
teatr: Na
granitne
iskusstv", Iskusstvo kino, 1
(1978), 87-105 (p. 92).
567Smelianskii,
Nashi,
p.
299.
568V1.
Blok, 'Kopiia? Vanatslia? Fksperimeut?, Literaturnaia
gazeta,
2 June 1976,
p.
8.
569Kholodova,
'"Visbnevyi"',
p.
154.
223
sceptical
tone
of
his delivery,
which
failed
to
convey what
this
critic maintained
was
Chekhov's
positive vision of a new
life
and unfailing
belief in
the
future.
570
Smelianskii
remarked
that
he
played the role
in 'elementary
colours',
implying
that
his interpretation
was
lacking in depth.
571
There
was condemnation also of
the
unchanging, all-white set.
S. Mezhinskii
criticised
it for
establishing the central
ideas
of
Chekhov's drama from
the
outset;
this,
he
maintained,
impeded
an
independent
analysis
by
the
audience of
the
play's social
issues.
572
Similarly, in
a vigorous attack
in Teatral'naia
zhizn',
Oksana Korneva
and
Gennadii Biriukov
rebuked
Efros for his failure
to
include
realistic
detail
and
for
the
style of
his
performance, which
had
much
in
common,
they suggested, with
his
production of
Three Sisters in 1967
573
This
production
too
had
produced a mood of
despondency,
and
had
demonstrated
the
failure
of communication and
interpersonal
relationships.
Such ideas,
they
maintained, properly
belonged
to
Absurdist drama,
and were
therefore
inappropriate in
an
interpretation
of
Chekhov. Maiia Turovskaia,
on
the other
hand,
praised
both
the
set and
the
acting style
for
revealing
the
skeleton of
the
play's emotions and
ideas. She interpreted
the cemetery as an
epitaph
for
the
end of an era, and saw
too,
in
the
actors'
delivery
of
their
monologues
from
the
very edge of
the
stage, a physical realisation of
their
spiritual
isolation.
574
Several
commentators
heard in Efros's
stark and openly tragic
production a
lament for
the
death
of spirituality
in
modern
Russia. Stroeva
suggested that
it
was a nostalgic requiem
for
the
passing of a culture more refined and poetic than
that of
its day,
and an appeal
to the
audience to
guard against a
loss
of values
570T.
Surina, 'Istoricheskaia
preemstvennost",
Teatr, 1,1981,
p.
73.
571Smelianskii,
Nashi,
p.
298.
5725.
Mezhinskii, Uvenchannoe
pravdoi',
Sovetskii klob, 4 March 1977,
p.
5.
5730ksana
Korneva
and
Gennadii Biriukov, 'Nasledstvo,
dostoinoe
vremeni',
Teatral'naia
zhizn',
2 (1976), 12-14 (p. 12).
574Turovskaia,
'Kino',
p.
90.
224
within
themselves.
575
E. Taranova
went still
further in her
assessment of
Efros's
central message, suggesting
that
pragmatism was
levelling
spiritual
values
in
present-day society.
Thus
the
sound of
the
breaking
string was as
much a warning
for
those
in
the
auditorium as
for
the
characters on stage
576
Efros later denied (as he had in
respect of
Three Sisters)
that
his
production was
intended
as a commentary on
the
loss
of
idealism
and culture
in
contemporary
society, although
it
should
be
noted once more
that
he
was writing under
censorship.
577
In
the
ironic
treatment of
Trofimov's
speeches,
in Lopakhin's
direct
address to the
audience, and
in
the
presentation of a cherry orchard
already
dead,
such a message was undoutedly
there to
be
read.
Despite his
protestations
to the
contrary,
there
is
therefore
clear
justification for
such critical
interpretations.
Efros's denial
seems all
the
more
implausible,
moreover,
in
the
light
of
his
next
Chekhov
production, a new staging of
Three Sisters
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia in
1982, in
which
he
would clearly
lament
the
loss
of
the
culture of
Chekhov's
era
and seek
to
resurrect
the
past.
As
stated
in Chapter 1,
such nostalgia
for
the
past would also
be
manifest
in
other
Chekhov
productions
in
the
1980s,
and
would
lead directors
to
return
to the techniques
and style of
the
MAT. This
retreat
into history
would reflect a more general sense of uncertainty
in
the
face
of what were as yet
barely-felt
changes
in
political and social spheres.
But in
Efros's
case
the
need
to
re-discover
history
and tradition
was also part of
his
personal and artistic crisis.
This
would prompt
him
to
begin
to
reject
his
own
previous productions, and
to take
a
less
aggressive approach to
classic
dramas.
This
change of
direction in his
work was not wholly consistent, and would not
be fully
apparent until
his
second production of
Three Sisters.
As
we shall see,
575St,
roeva,
'I
snova', p.
8.
576Taranova,
p.
167.
577
,
Professiia,
p.
297.
225
in both the form
and content of
that
production
Efros
would suggest
that
it
was
possible
to preserve
the past.
This
was at odds with
his
assertion, cited above,
that
human
attempts
to resist
the
'whirlwinds'
and
'volcanoes'
of
time
are
doomed
to
fail. This idea
was not conveyed
by his
production of
The Cherry
Orchard, in
which rather
than
stressing
the
inevitability
of change
he
showed
the
characters'
loss
of
their
past as
tragic.
It
could
therefore
be
said
to
have
signalled
the
start of
his
change of
direction. That
change would
be
more
clearly apparent
in his
staging, at
the
Malaia Bronnaia in 1977,
of
Turgenev's A
Month in
the
Country.
226
Chapter 6
ABaHrapjy,
BM 3HaeTe, ogexb jierKO cneAaTLCM
apHeprapAoM...
Bce
je io B IIepeMexe
lHpeKI HH.
A Month in
the
Country
(1977)
227
As
already noted,
this
production,
though
innovative,
was
less
at variance with
established approaches
than those
of
the
plays
discussed
so
far. Efros
was
especially
familiar
with
Stanislavsky's
staging at
the
MAT in 1909. He
read
his
predecessor's remarks on
the
work
in My Life in Art,
and also an analysis of
the
MAT
production published
in 1976, by
the theatre
historian Inna
Solov'eva.
578
That
production will
therefore
be
referred
to
in
some
detail in
what
follows, in
order
to
show
that
Efros's
was
indebted
to
it in
some respects,
though
in
others
fundamentally different.
Although
ostensibly a
love
story,
A Month in
the
Country
was written against
the
backdrop
of the
later
years of
the
reign of
the
aggressively reactionary
Nicholas I (1825-1855),
and
(as Soviet
critics
in
particular
have
emphasised)
reflects contemporary
developments in Russia. Produced
at a
time
of upheaval,
which saw
the
often violent suppression of revolutionary activity,
it depicts
the
gentry, represented
by Natal'ia Petrovna, Rakitin
and
Islaev,
as an
increasingly
isolated
social group whose existence
is
threatened
by fundamental
change.
This
threat
is
symbolically represented
by
an outsider of
lower
class, the
poor
student
Beliaev. However,
although
Natal'ia Petrovna falls for
the tutor,
she
does
not
leave
with
him; instead
she
loses both her
new
love
and
the
persistent
Rakitin
and remains with
Islaev. The
threat that
Beliaev
poses
to
her,
and to the
world she represents,
is
thus
averted.
By
contrast,
in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, first
performed
in 1904 (some
fifty-five
years after
Turgenev's
work was written and shortly
before
the
1905
Revolution),
the
actual
destruction
of
the
gentry class
is
symbolised
in
the
axing
of
the orchard
by Lopakhin,
another outsider and the
son of a peasant.
Chekhov
always vigorously
denied
that
any of
his
work was
influenced by
578mna
Solov'eva, '"Mesiats
v
derevne"', Teatr, 6 (1976), 101-111.
228
Turgenev, but in
this
was
disingenuous.
579
The demise
of
the gentry
depicted
in his
work
had
undoubtedly
been
presaged
in A Month in
the
Country.
Indeed, it
may
be imagined
that the
world of
Islaev's
estate
is in
essence
that
of
the
impecunious Ranevskaia, but is
shown at a
time when
the
auction
has been
forestalled
and
its
owners given a
temporary stay of execution.
This
perception
of
Turgenev's
play as a prologue
to
The Cherry Orchard
was perhaps
first
most
clearly established
by Stanislavsky.
As
noted
in Chapter 5,
a root cause of
disagreement
about
the
latter
play
between
Stanislavsky
and
Chekhov had been
one of perspective.
Chekhov had
seen
the events
in his
play with a sense of
historical distance
and a certain comic
irony. Stanislavsky, by
contrast,
had
mourned
the
loss
of
the cultured way of
life
symbolised
by
the
destruction
of
the orchard, and
in 1909
when
turning to
A Month in
the
Country, five
years after
his
work with
Chekhov,
a
desire
to
preserve
that
way of
life
was something
he felt, if
anything, even more
personally
and strongly.
Indeed,
as
Stroeva has
observed,
the
principal
motivating concept of
his
production was
the
destruction
of what
he described
as
the
'epic
quiet and subtle aestheticism of
life
on
[Russian]
estates' when
it
came
in
contact with
'a breath
of
fresh
air' and
'drew
close
to
Nature itself
580
For him
the central conflict
in
the
play was
therefore
between
what we might
term nature and nurture.
In Act I
we
learn
that
Islaev is
repairing a weir,
in
order,
it
may
be
assumed,
to
hold back
waters
that threaten to
flood his land
581
579A.
D. P. Briggs, 'Writers
and
Repertoires, 1800-1859, in Leach
and
Borovsky,
pp.
86-103
(pp. 102-103). It
possible
to suggest
that
Chekhov denied
the
influence
of
Turgenev because
be intended to parody
his
pr+edecessoes work.
58OStroeva,
Rezhisserskie
(1973),
p.
246. Stroeva is
quoting
Stanislavsky.
581interestingly,
in
an earlier version of the work
Turgenev
appears
have drawn
an analogy
between
an unpredictable
flow
of water and a woman
in love. In Act V, in
a
final
exchange
with
Beliaev, Rakitin
remarked:
'A
woman's
love is like
a
brook in
spring: one
day it
rushes,
excited and
turbid, rising
to the gully's edges, the
next
day it
scarcely moves, a thin,
fresh
little trickle along
the
dried-up bed
of
the
stream.
' These lines
were expunged
by
the censor
for
the published version
of
1855. See 'Appendix'
to
Ivan Turgenev, A Month in
the
Country,
trans.
Isaiah Berlin (London: Penguin, 1981),
pp.
124-127 (p. 127).
229
This
operation
typifies man's
desire
to
control
the
anarchic excesses of
Nature,
whose potent
forces
are capable of
destroying
the
world
he has
made.
It
symbolises a central
theme
of
the
drama,
which was given a particular emphasis
in Stanislavsky's
production:
the
absolute necessity
for Natal'ia Petrovna
to
stem
the tide
of natural and spontaneous sexual
impulses induced
within
her by
Beliaev, in
order
to prevent the
destruction
of
the cultured world she represents.
The director found his
own metaphor
to
describe
this
opposition
between
wild
natural
impulses
and an ordered, civilised society.
In My Life in Art he
suggested
that
Natal'ia Petrovna
was
to
be
seen as a woman who
had
spent
her
life
enclosed
in
a
luxurious
sitting-room, separated
from
nature and constrained
by
a
'corset'
of society's conventions.
He likened her
situation, and
those
of
Islaev
and
Rakitin,
to that
of
hot-house flowers
protected
from
the
natural world
by
the
glass of a conservatory
582
The
challenge
to the existence of
this
cloister
(set, ironically, in
an
idyllic
rural
landscape)
was
Beliaev;
as
Natal'ia Petrovna's
much-desired
'gulp
of
fresh
water on a
hot day', he
represented a
force
of
Nature itself.
583
On
seeing
him
with
Verochka, Natal'ia Petrovna
was
involuntarily drawn
to simple and natural
feelings,
to
Nature: 'Opaii
epe ax
posa saxoTena cTaTh noneBbIM iWeTxoM, xaqana MeirraTb o hyrax H
necax.
'584
In Stanislavsky's
perception
the
action was circular: once the threat
of
destruction
was averted,
it
returned
to
its
starting point and
Natal'ia Petrovna
was
to
be immured
once more
in her
glass-house.
He
viewed this
as a
582Konstantin
Stanislavskii, '"Mesiats
v
derevne"', in Moia
zhizn' v
iskusstve (Moscow:
Iskusstvo, 1972),
pp.
368-374 (p. 368).
583The
idea
that
Beliaev's
spontaneous
behaviour draws him into
close contact with nature can
be
seen to
be in direct
opposition to
Rakitin's
response.
In Act II Natalia Petrovna highlights
the artificiality of this aesthete's relationship
with nature; she suggests that
Nature
cannot
understand
his language because he
courts
it
as a perfumed marquis on
little
red-heeled shoes
might court a peasant girl.
See 1. Turgenev, Mesiats
v
derevne, Act 11, in Polnoe
sobranie
sochinenii
i
pisem,
28
vols
Stseny i komedii 1849-1852, III, (Moscow-Leningrad:
Akademii
Nauk, 1962),
pp.
75-76.
584Stanislavskii,
Moia
zhizn', p.
368.
230
restoration of social order, a
triumph
of
duty
over
desire,
which
in
turn
would
ensure
the continuation of a refined and cultured
life-style,
with
its
moral values
intact. In Chekhov's drama,
set at a
later date,
the
fate
of
the
characters can
be
seen
to
be historically determined,
the
result of
forces beyond
their
immediate
control.
In A Month in
the
Country by
contrast
the
gentry were still
empowered,
because
the
values
that their
upbringing
had fostered (and
that
Stanislavsky
so prized) were
the
very means of
their self-preservation.
Turgenev's heroine is
twenty-nine,
but in his
notes, as
Solov'eva has
observed,
Stanislavsky frequently
referred
to
Natal'ia Petrovna
as younger, suggesting
instead
that she was eighteen or nineteen.
585
Her
youth,
inexperience
and
naivety, manifest
in her inability
to
comprehend or control
her
new-found
emotions,
for him
were part of
her
charm.
But
these
very
traits
also
threatened
to cause
her downfall,
and
he
also
therefore
viewed
her
negatively as a
'weak
woman',
in
need of schooling
by Rakitin. Accordingly,
she was not
to
be
ruled
by
passion or
to
follow
the
dictates
of
her
misguided
heart. Instead,
although
she erred, she was ultimately
to
be
governed
by her
sense of
honour
and
duty
-
the
codes of
behaviour in
which she
had been
educated.
To borrow his
own
metaphor,
the
'corset'
she wore was
therefore
not a restrictive garment
but her
coat of armour.
For Stanislavsky, however,
the
real saviour of standards, and
therefore the
representative of
his
whole
'ruling idea',
was
Rakitin.
586
His
own performance
in
that
role won
him
unanimous acclaim and came to
be
seen as one of
his
greatest
triumphs.
Poised
and
handsome,
elegantly attired
in
a
blue
period coat,
585Solov'eva,
note, p.
106.
586k
the process of rehearsal,
Stanislavsky broke
the
elements of the actors' performances and
the production
into
more readily manageable parts,
but
suggested that these
separate elements
should ultimately
be
melded together
and
follow
a specific pathway.
In
this
manner the
performance
should move
in
the
direction
of a
'ruling idea',
the
concept that
underlay
the
actors'
interpretations,
and the
production as a whole.
For further details,
see
Magashack,
'Stanislavsky',
pp.
266-269.
231
his
every gesture controlled and
delicate, he
epitomised the
very essence of
grace and refinement.
Rejected by Natal'ia Petrovna,
to
whom
he
cannot express
his love,
and
fully
aware of
the
feelings
aroused
in her by Beliaev, Rakitin
undoubtedly suffers a
private
torment.
In Turgenev's
script
he
gives vent
to the trauma,
humiliation
and
indignity
of
his
position
in
monologues unheard
by
the
other characters.
In
Stanislavsky's
portrayal this
repression of emotion was also apparent, as
Nikolai Efros
recalled,
in his
economy of gesture and use of
the
very slightest
vocal modulations.
Such
a style of performance,
that
critic maintained, was
right
for Rakitin,
an aesthete elegant
in
all
things,
in both
word and
feeling,
beautifully
world-weary and condescendingly scornful of
life.
587
Clearly
this
suggestion of scarcely perceptible, suppressed emotions was
fundamental
to
Stanislavsky's
conception.
He
saw
Rakitin
as a man motivated
by
a sense of
duty
and
bound by
codes of
honour
so
deeply ingrained,
according to
Solov'eva,
that they
were part of
his
very
being;
so
deeply indeed
that
he
interpreted
the
role, without
the slightest
hint
of
irony, in
the
spirit of a
chivalrous
knight
of old.
588
His
performance won
him high
praise
for
the
subtlety and apparent authenticity with which
he
conveyed
inner
emotions.
However,
as
Stroeva
suggested,
he
also turned
Rakitin into
a symbolic
figure,
in
whom
the spiritual values of
the
past were celebrated and preserved.
589
This
sense of celebration and preservation
was emphasised too
in
the
production's set,
designed by
a member of
the
World
of
Art
group,
M.
Dobuzhinskii,
whose strikingly
beautiful
and graceful settings
frequently
produced spontaneous and rapturous applause
and
high
critical praise.
Moreover,
they captured the
spirit of
the
era
in
a manner never to
be
repeated on
587N.
Efros, 'Turgenev
v
Khudozhestvennom
seatre', Rech', 12 December
1909, in
Vinogradskaia,
p.
215.
588Solov'eva,
pp.
103,109.
589Stroeva,
Rezhisserskie (1973),
p.
252.
232
the stage of
the
MAT. The
production was
therefore a celebratory
hymn
to a
bygone
era of sophistication and refined
feeling,
and also
its
swan-song:
IIocneAnHI[
pas B csoeJk HCTOpKR
XyAoxceCTBessbtl[
TeaTp C TBKO napmltecxo*
CE1101k BOCKpeman Na cgeHe n033H10 upomnoro.
CnOBHO
WIARAcb C Hefk H He
zeiiax paccTaTbcf[, os KaK
6yM
rosopH]I cBOHM 3pHTeJC*M: aeT, IIOGMOTpHTe,
sce-TaKH eCTb B 3TOM yxoAUeM H rH6HyieM netrro TaKOe, TITO HefoABJIacTHo
speMens, 'rro aascerra coxpaaa7 B ce6e 4epmi Rymesaoro
6naropoRcrsa
HcrEHSO pyccxoH Kyjibzypbi.
590
Paradoxically,
however,
although
these settings represented, symbolically and
in
reality,
the
end of an era,
Stanislavsky's
actual approach
to them
was a new
departure. Previously he had been
concerned
to create an architecturally
accurate picture of
the
period and
to
produce an
illusion
of reality.
To
achieve
this, particularly
in his
productions of
Chekhov, he had loaded his
sets with a
large
number of authentic props and
decorative features. His
approach
to
A
Month in
the
Country, by
contrast, was governed
by
three
different
concepts.
Firstly, his
overriding concern was
to
explore
the
psychological nuances of
character.
Secondly, he
wished
to
express what
he
saw as
the
essence of
the
play
by
evoking an atmosphere of stability and quiet, which
in his
opinion was
typical of
its
time.
Finally,
although
the
settings
incorporated
realistic
features,
they were somewhat stylised, and
intended
to
express
his
central
ideas
through
the use of visual symbols.
The
subdued colours
in
the
outdoor scenes,
in Acts II
and
IV,
were meant to
create an autumnal mood, and
thus to
symbolise the
gentry's slow
decline.
591
5901bid.,
p.
251.
IDobuzhinskii
some artistic
licence here. Russian
aabanns tend to
be
very short and
there
is little in
the script
to suggest
that the
play
is
set
in
autumn.
On
the
contrary
it
appears
to
be late
summer.
This is indicated in
the
following: in Act I
we
learn
that
Beliaev has
taken
a vacation
post, and
it
can
therefore
be
assumed that
he intends
to return to
Moscow for
the
233
Similarly, Stanislavsky's
sense of order restored was
to
be incorporated into
the
stage picture.
As
the
designer
would
later
recall:
[CraHacnaBcxaA]
xcAaa ar McHH, gTo6b[ B xoaeqHoM irrore Aexopazz ome+iana
gyxy abecu v cwacny ee
-a
J{aaaoM cjiy9ae
-
xapTaae yloTaoA a TIXO
uoMeu4Ee* llCa3aa, rj(e B poMe Bce MecTa xBacz; KeBbi, ace ycTOJk9HBO a KyAa
BPUBaeTCa 6ypa, no, xorAa oaa yTaxaez, ace oCraeTcx as csoeM MecTe a
xZsab OHM TeeeT 110 upeuxeMy pycay.
592
The
sets
for
the
first
and
final
acts, which
in keeping
with
Turgenev's directions
were
identical,
were conceived
in
the
so-called
Empire
style of
the
1840s,
a
period characterised
by
symmetry and
balance,
qualities which were emphasised
throughout.
They depicted
an elegant semi-circular
drawing-room; its
walls
were painted
in
a
delicate dove-grey,
with a
dark blue flower-patterned
cornice,
topped
by
a white stucco ceiling,
in
the centre of which
hung
a gilded
chandelier.
The
stage was covered
by highly-polished
parquet
flooring
with a
rose pattern
in its
centre.
An
arched window
in
the
back
wall revealed a view of
the estate,
but
this,
rather
than
depicting
an unruly countryside, was
in
the
style
of
the planned symmetry of
the
parks of
St. Petersburg.
593
Objects, furniture
and pictures
to the
left
of
this
window were a mirror
image
of
those
on
its
right,
and
the
V-shaped
sitting-room
for Act III had
a similar sense of
balance.
Such
symmetrical
features
were meant
to
symbolise the
equilibrium and
harmony
of an
idealised
vision of the
past.
But
as
Solov'eva
observed this
symmetry,
together with
the
use of semi-circular walls, which reduced the
depth
autumn semester;
in Act II Katia is
picking raspberries
(a
summer
fruit);
and
in
this
act she,
Natalia Petrovna
and
Rakitin
all mention that
it is
a very
hot day.
592M.
Dobuzhinskii, '0 Kbodozhestvenuom
teatre',
Novyi
zhurnal,
1943,30-40 (pp. 37-38)
in Vinogradskaia,
p.
177. Dobuzhinskii
was clearly referring
here
to the
gathering storm
mentioned
by Rakitin in Act I.
593Leonid
Grossman, Teatr Turgeneva (St. Petersburg: Brokgaus-Efron,
1924),
p.
153.
234
of
the
stage, evoked
in
addition a
feeling
of containment
594
The
effect was
the
opposite of
that created
in
many of
Stanislavsky's
previous productions,
in
which
the
diagonal lines
of
the
walls
had
extended off-stage
to
suggest
that
life
continued
beyond
the
sight-lines.
Instead
the
audience were presented with a
clearly-defined playing area, as
though the characters'
lives
were confined
to
this
space alone.
This feeling
of confinement,
however,
was not only a
feature
of
the
setting.
As
Dobuzhinskii
noted,
it
was also
in
accord with
the
actors' style of performance:
3ra
cHMMCTpHB H ypaBaoBemeHHOcTb, KoTOpa TaK THnMHa WM RHTepbepa
pyccKOTO aMnEpa, oTBevalia n HaMepeRHHM
CTaHHC]IaBCicoro
B 3T0* IIocTaaoBKe
co3 BTb aTMoc4epy cUOKO*CTBHS H paTb BHemmoio HenoABHZHOCTb aKTepaM n pia
Bced BHyTpeaSe HaIpa]KCHROCTH RyBCTBa x KaK
6bt
HpHrBO3HTb HX K
MecTaM.
S95
Stanislavsky's A Month in
the
Country
came at a time
when
he
was exploring
new
ideas
of acting
that
would give rise
to
his famous 'system'. His focus
was
shifting away
from
an emphasis on
the
externals of a production
towards
greater
concern
for
an
inner,
psychological authenticity.
The
play was eminently suited
to
his
purpose,
he
maintained,
because Turgenev had
woven
the
lace-work
of
the psychology of
love (Tomme
JIIOeosHibie Kpyxesa) with such
delicacy
and
mastery
that
it demanded
a particularly subtle approach.
596
He believed,
furthermore,
that revealing
the
spiritual and emotional essence of
the
characters'
inner
worlds could not
be
achieved
by
the
established conventions of gesture
and movement, and
therefore
proposed an almost static mise-en-scene.
The
actors were
to stay seated, almost motionless,
for long
periods,
using what
he
594Solov'eva,
p.
104.
595
,
in Vinogradsksia,
P.
186.
596Stanislavskii,
Moia
zhizn', p.
368.
235
described
as
'unseen
rays of creative will and emotion',
'psychological
pauses',
eye movements and
barely
perceptible changes of
intonation
to
convey
the
characters'
feelings.
597
A long
and arduous rehearsal process
began in August 1909. His
new
ideas
met with considerable and understandable resistance
from
actors who
in
the
main were experienced performers.
598
Knipper,
whom
he
also rehearsed as
Natal'ia Petrovna in
private, perhaps
had
the
hardest
time.
A
talented
and
seasoned performer, she
later described
working with
Stanislavsky
as
both
a
joy
and a
torment,
but
more of
the second
than the
first
599
When
the
production opened on
9 December
she was singled out
for
particular
censure.
N. Iatsev, for instance,
remarked
that she
lacked
refinement and
humour,
and
Nikolai Efros
stated
that
her
portrayal
left him
cold and
unmoved.
600
These
opinions were not shared
by
all,
but her
performance
drew
a mixed response, which undoubtedly reflected
her difficulties in
rehearsals.
By
contrast,
there was almost unanimous critical acclaim
for
the
other actors and
the production as whole.
Beliaev
was played
by
the
handsome R. Boleslavskii.
Dressed in
a student's uniform, wearing a cap and with
Romantic flowing hair,
his
portrayal was said
to
have been
characterised
by
a sense of spontaneity,
S97Ibid.
Stanislavsky distinguished between
a
logical
pause that shaped the
written
text and so made
it
intelligible,
and a
'psychological
pause, which added
life
to thoughts,
as an eloquent silence
capable of
transmitting the pefoimer's emotions to an audience.
Reynolds Hapgood,
p.
106.
Stanislavsky described these
unseen rays of communication
in
terms
of'ray-emission' and'ray-
absorption'.
He
argued
that whereas under normal circumstances these
rays were
invisible, in
moments of
heightened
emotion or stress they
became
more clearly
defined
and perceptible,
both
to those emitting
them and
to those absorbing them.
This
enabled actors therefore to
communicate with each other, as well as conveying their inner
thoughts to their
audiences.
Magashack, 'Stanislavsky',
pp.
257-259.
598por
further details
on
the rehearsal process, see
Worrell, Moscow Art,
pp.
182-198.
59Worrall,
Moscow Art,
p.
186. In
early
November,
pushed to the
point of emotional
exhaustion,
she suffered something
like
a nervous
breakdown,
so that
rehearsals
had
to
be
suspended until she recovered.
Knipper's difficulties in
re Csal resulted
in
a
famous
exchange
of
letters between her
and
Stsffislavsky;
see
Let
er to
OPga Knipper, in Stanislavskii, Sobranie
VII,
pp.
453-454;
and
for Knipper's
response, see
Vinogradskaia,
p.
211.
600QUoted
in Grossman,
p.
158.
236
natural purity and youthfulness.
601
The highest
approbation was reserved,
however, for Stanislavsky's
refined and
delicate
playing of
Rakitin. In My Life
in Art, he interpreted
this as a ringing endorsement of
his
new approach:
CHCXTaKnb
H, B eacxaocIM, x caM B pone
PawTiua
HKens O CHb
6onb1QOA
ycnex.
Bnepaue 6WIH
3aMegeabt a ogeUeaat pesynbTaTU Moe* Aonrog
na6opaTOpno pa6oxai, xoTopas noMorna a[ae upKHecTs na cieHy Hosb[i[,
Heo6bena Ton a Maaepy arpaa, (yrnamaamae Meax tyr Apyrex aprscToa.
A 6wi
CV CTJ1ss a yAOBJI TsopCH He CTOAbKO nseabM aKTepCKHM ycfexoM, CKOabKO
upasaaaeeM Moero soaoro meToAa.
602
Although
the
first
acclaimed and successful production of the
play
had been
staged at
the
Aleksandrinskii in January 1879, Stanislavsky's interpretation did
much
to
establish
Turgenev
as a
dramatist
of real standing, and marked a
significant
development in
the
history
of
the
MAT. Moreover, his
perception
that
Rakitin
was
its
true
protagonist, as
Lordipanidze has
observed, came to
be
seen as entirely appropriate, not
to
say
the
'correct' interpretation for
several
decades. Indeed by
the
mid-1970s, although the
work was rarely performed,
the
role of
Natal'ia Petrovna
was viewed
in
serious critical studies as a
secondary one.
603
Efros,
characteristically, was
to
break
with
this
established
idea: in 1977 he
created what
Smelianskii described
as a concerto
for
violin and
orchestra',
by
making
her
the centre of attention.
604
For
the
present writer that
decision
restored
the more obvious
dramatic focus
of
Turgenev's
play.
He
not only saw
Natai'ia Petrovna
as
the
protagonist
but
also viewed
her
very
differently from Stanislavsky. For Efros it
was of central
importance
that
she
601C,
Msman, p.
162.
602Stanislavsk,
Moia
zhizn', p.
370.
603N.
L,
ordkipanidze.
'"Mesiats
v
derevne"', Vechernioia Moskva, 10 October 1977,
p.
3.
60Smeliansldi,
Nashi,
p.
142. This is
also the title
of an article on the
production
by
the
same critic.
See A. Smdianstii, 'Kontsat dlia
skripki s orkestrom',
Teatr, 11(1978) 42-48.
237
was a mature woman who
felt
that
her
time
had
passed.
At
the end of
Act II,
after
Vera, Beliaev
and
Kolia,
accompanied
by Natal'ia Petrovna, have left for
the
kite-flying
expedition,
Dr. Shpigel'skii, Lizaveta Bogdanovna
and
Rakitin
are
left
to
bring
up
the
rear, and
the
Doctor's
exit
line
to
Rakitin is: 'ABaurapgy,
BbI 3HaeTe, ogemb nerxo cneAaTbcx apHeprapAoM...
Bce
Reno B nepeMeHe
gapewi w.
'605 Efros identified in
this
jest
the
central
theme
of
his
production:
time
marches on, and an older generation must give way
to
a younger.
But in
this scene and
throughout the
drama, in his
view,
Natal'ia Petrovna
resisted
becoming
part of
the
rearguard.
For him
she
had
squandered
her
youth
by
marrying a man she
did
not
love,
and on
the threshold of
her
thirties
was afraid
of growing old; she
therefore
attempted
to
recapture a
life
never
lived,
and
experience passions,
joys
and
torments
never
felt.
The
catalyst
for
these
newly-felt emotions
is Beliaev, in
whom she sees the
hope
of renewal.
He, however, initially
seems oblivious
to
his
effect on
his
employer,
treating
her
with
the
deference due
to
her
age and station, not as
someone
for
whom
he dares
to
feel
affection, and
focuses his
attention on
Verochka, his
equal
in
years and status.
Efros in fact
suggested
that
Natal'ia
Petrovna's feelings for him
were
kindled first less by his interest in her
ward
than
by his lack
of
interest in herself,
which confirmed
her
worst
fears
about
growing old:
Y HaramI IIeTpoanN
awOosb Hananacb, MEe KaZeTca, c pessocn, Aaxce c
3aBacm.
Bae3auso,
cosepmeRHO aeozxAm ao Aua flee, oxa3arnocb 3aAeMM ee
caMonm6se.
Ilpnexan
aosu yasreab.
ON
MonoA, sesaBNCNM B AO
+tpC3BbN eoCTE K ae pasaoAymea.
.
rLlDI
3TOZ'o 9enoRCKa... Qua gacTb J oma, xax
605Mesiats
v
derevne, Act ll,
p.
90.
6'Efros,
Professiia,
p.
51.
Efros
also expressed
his
central
ideas
elsewhere
in
simpler terms. Noting
that
by
all the
characters other
than
Islaev
she
is
always addressed
formally,
using
her
name and patronymic,
he
suggested
that this was a
Natal'ia Petrovna
who wanted to be
a
Natasha. Accordingly,
when
he directed the play
in Japan it
was entitled simply
Natasha. Efros, Professua,
p.
242.
238
Bar 3ra asTaa Konossa ans 3TOT Aepesxssbt CTOJI sa BepanAe.
Tax
e, BO
BcxxoM cn"ae, xaaceTca.
K
3T0 ae TonbKO 06R llO, 3ro noBepraeT B cambie
rpycrbie pa3mb[mneaax o ce6e, o caoe iz3Hx, o cBoeM Bo3pacTe.
607
She is
tormented
by believing
not only
that
her
youth
has
gone
but
also
that
it
was never
lived. Indeed, in Act I
she confides
in Beliaev
that
her life
as a child
was controlled
by
a strict,
frightening father, in
whose presence she never
felt
free. Later,
as
he became
old and
blind,
she cared
for him but
was still terrified,
and
believes
that traces of
her
early
fears
and
long
captivity
have
stayed with
her.
608
Efros
noted also
that
she
feels
under constant watch,
imprisoned by
the
keen
eyes of the
ever-present
Rakitin.
609
Taking
this
as
his
cue, and when
working with
his
actors,
he
rejected the
notion
that
she
falls in love
with
Beliaev
simply
because he is
younger
than
she.
Instead he
saw
her desire
to
relive
her
life
as a revolt against
her
sense of
imprisonment,
a
bid for liberation from both
her
past and
her
present
61
For him
the
principal conflict
therefore
was not, as
for Stanislavsky, between
nature and nurture,
but
centred on
feelings
of
entrapment and
freedom.
Freedom,
at
least in Natal'ia Petrovna's
eyes, was personified
in Beliaev, but
also represented symbolically
by his kite,
a
huge
paper creation with a ten-foot-
long
tail.
According
to
Turgenev's
script
it is flown
once off stage, at
the
end
of
Act II, but in Efros's
production
it became
a recurring motif.
He
also
found
his
own metaphor
for
this
association
between freedom
and
flight,
a particularly
apposite one
because it
expressed at the
same time the
flurry
of
Natal'ia
Petrovna's
agitated emotions and the
real
tragedy
of
her
plight:
6071bid.,
p.
75.
608Mesiats
v
derevne, Act I.
p.
62.
609Efros,
Professiia,
p.
51.
6101bid
p.
336.
239
A
rjje-To HMI, 9TO eCTb
6a6ORKH,
KOTOpble RCHByr OAHH Aenb.
YTpOM
OHR
IIOIBJIBIOTCB Ha CBCT H3 KyKOJIKH, a BegepoM yMBpaioT, IIOpOJ{HB
.
im iHHOK...
A
uo y. aJ, 9To y 3T0t
6a60qKH
ne cynjecTByeT C03HaHn co6CTBenaoro Hecgqacmg,
KHK He CyfgeCTByeT erO B HaC TOJIbKO OrrOrO, 9TO Mbi JKHBCM Menbme, 9eM
opnbi, HHIIpHMep...
HO
BOT IIpeACTaBbTe ce6e
6a6o'Ky,
B KOTOpOh He IIpOCTO
IIpoCHyJIOCb co3HaUHe... No IIpocHynocb To cpaenumeAbHHOe CO3HaHae MH3epHOCTH
amyl eBHoro e pm* ZH3EH BpeMeHH...
A
Bor my
6a6o'Ky
crano My9HTb.
Ona
y3Hana, QTO 14pyrze
6a60'IKH
ZIByT j4Ba HJIH TjR AM, a HeKOTOpMe j[aZe
-
I(eJIOe 7ICTO, z QTO ecrb op nu a ecTm ropM H MHOroe j(pyroe.
H
e 3axOTenocb
IIpOZHTL 223Hb ]{pyrolk
6a609Ka
mm j(aace opna.
LICM
3T0 KoHQHnocb
-
J[erKO
ce6e IIpeAcTaBHT.
OHa
Be B ORCHna H jmn.
611
This butterfly is drawn
to
a
life it has
never
known,
that
seems almost
unimaginably
freer,
more
fulfilling
and more wonderful
than
its
own.
This idea
in Efros's
view was analogous
to
Natal'ia Petrovna's
perception of
Beliaev's
world:
he fascinated her because he
came
from
an unknown
faraway
place and
had
experienced a
life
completely
different from hers. But just
as
the
butterfly,
though capable of
flight,
cannot ultimately
free itself from
the
bondage
of
its
existence, so
the
hopes
she pinned on
Beliaev
would prove vain.
The
perception of
the
student as a representative of
freedom
was
Natal'ia Petrovna's
alone.
It
accorded neither with
his
view of
himself
nor
the
image
of
Beliaev
that
Efros
presented
to the
spectators.
He
was
in fact
a very unlikely candidate
for
such an exalted status:
To,
pro Ana
HaiajaH IIeTposmz
say IT aaa pacapcuon*eue, nx
Benaeaa
eerb
peanbaax zag., ay mg peuibaot Z1
-
caoa apeJemm, cads oxosbI, cson
aecBoga.
OH 6cAea,
anoxo Mar, oa aepcaen KU-Iro
4)paeuy3cra
pomas, 3a
50
pyne, ae 3aa2
4)panu+3cxoro
J [3U, Aso oTroro, To ayrpa 3aena; ero
6111bid.,
p.
199. (His
emphasis).
240
xyiaeT B cMyigaeT oTcyTcrsae Bocnrranna, Y Hero CBOH cnoxcaocra
-
6eAHoro
eenocKa, KOTOpI c paiaMH H rosopETb-To He yMeeT, B T. A. H T. II.
OEM
CROBOM, 3TO BOBCC He BpeaabsbL, a o6uxHoseHHN1 ManoJo genosex...
612
Oleg Dal'
played
Beliaev
as childish and
free-spirited, but
was not
dazzlingly
handsome
and was very simply
dressed, in black
trousers
and a white shirt.
His
portrayal was very much
in keeping
with
Rakitin's
view
that
he is 'a
student
like
any other',
but
was a radical
departure from Boleslavskii's
romantic and
heroic
one of
1909. It
was at odds
too
with
the
notion expressed
by
some
Soviet
critics
that
Beliaev is
a representative of
the
raznochintsy
(nineteenth-
century
intellectuals
of non-aristocratic
birth),
with a strong resemblance to the
revolutionary
thinker
Belinskii. This
view clearly
influenced A Kuzicheva;
while remarking
that
Dal"s
performance was characterised
by
a sense of gaiety,
she criticised what she saw as a
lack
of
intellectual
vigour.
613
Such
a naughty,
fun-loving Beliaev,
she maintained, was a match
for Verochka, but
could not
possibly attract an
intelligent
woman
like Natal'ia Petrovna. Beliaev,
who says
that
his
education was neglected as a child,
is
undoubtedly an autodidact.
He
also clearly
has
a
lively
mind, many practical skills and
indeed
creative talents.
However, his
true
intellectual
prowess, as
Efros's
own comments made clear,
is
open
to
question.
In
stressing the
apparent
lack
of
intellectualism in his
portrayal
by Dal', Kuzicheva
completely misunderstood the
director's
central
point:
Natal'ia Petrovna
was
drawn
to
Beliaev,
not
because
of
his beauty, his
mind or any other qualities
he
might possess,
but
rather very simply
because, in
her imagination, he
was
free.
Kozakov's Rakitin
was also very
different from
more traditional
interpretations.
He had little
of
Stanislavsky's knightly
nobility.
According
to
V. Potemkin,
612
jbid,,
p.
195.
613A.
Kuzicheva, '"Kak kborosbi, kak
svezhi
byli
rozy...
"', Moskovskaia
pravda,
24
December 1977,
p.
3.
241
with
his
greying
temples
he looked
older
than
his
thirty
years and was played as
a man who
had
seen much, whose sense of
duty hung heavily
upon
him,
and
who seemed,
though
he lacked
the cynicism of
Dr. Shpigel'skii,
to
be
almost
tired
of
life.
614
This interpretation
was
in keeping
with
Efros's
view
that
Rakitin, like Natal'ia Petrovna, felt
that
he
too
might soon
have
to
give ground
to the
young:
TyT
-
TeMa nonapannn KB apaeprapA, TeMa ycTapesanaa.
Onn
oha xax
6az
naXOABTCH B MoMeHT H3MeneBH7i B3rnRpa na Mp m UHTaIOTCI OTJjaTB ce6e oTqeT
B 3TOM.
Ero
MoHOnorn ne npocTo Mononorm peBHyioigero WIR O6EKCUHOro
9enosexa.
3ro
nonumm pa3rajjaTm, iiTo C66UHYA0Cb B MHpe.
3"
nbeca 0 TOM,
'ITO B Mape 9TO-TO C BHaynocb.
Kax
ecns
6u
B IIepBut pas JIOAH
II09YBCTBOBBJIH TOJMOK 3eMneTpaceHHB, eu'e ne Snarl R3 RCTOpHH, 'ITO 3TO
Taxoe.
615
The first
shocks of an earthquake are at
first barely felt, but it
gradually
increases in
strength and
intensity
until
it
rips
through the
earth
like
a shattering
explosion.
Efros
used precisely
this
image
to
describe
the
slow
building
of
emotional
tension that
he hoped
would underlie
the tempo
of
his
production.
In
his
notes
he divided
the
play
into
three.
He
meant
Acts I
and
II
to
be
played
in
a
gently
flowing
rhythm,
but
the third
and
fourth
acts explosively, until
the
point
at which
Islaev discovers Natalia Petrovna in
what
he
sees as a compromising
position with
Rakitin. Here
the
intensity
was
to
be
reduced,
but
only as a
temporary
lull, for
the
rhythm would
be forcefully interrupted
again
by
the
fervour
of
her
passion
in Act V
as she protests against
Beliaev's imminent
departure. The
exit of
the
other characters was
then to
be followed by
the
kind
of
deadly
calm
that
follows
a
destructive
quake.
Then her final
expression of
614V.
potemkin, 'Mesiats
v
dome,
gde razbivaiutsia serdtsa',
Veclernii Leningrad, 17
December 1977,
p.
3.
615gfWs,
Professiia,
pp.
336-337.
242
anguish was
to
be like
an after-shock.
In
contradiction
to
Turgenev's
directions,
she would
be
alone on stage.
At
the
end
there
was
to
be
absolute
stillness, providing a
deliberate
contrast
to the
earlier passionate outbursts
in
order
to
emphasise
her
total
isolation
and
tragic
desolation.
616
As Efros himself
argued,
this
perception of
the
play as one of passionate
emotions,
turmoil and ultimate
despair
was completely at odds with
Stanislavsky's description
of
it
as
'a delicate
canvas of
love
which
Turgenev
wove with such mastery'.
617
In fact, Efros later
admitted
that
he had
reacted
angrily against what
had been
the traditional approach:
'MHe
Ka3aJlocb, xrro
TypreHeB
sosce He TaxoI 3nerg'iHbI1, cnoxoRHblfi, KK mHorHe ero
BocnpHH>MaloT.
MHe
Hy3KHO
6bIJIO
H3BJIegb Hs
TypreHeBa
BCIO ero
pa.
Uamu"HOCmb.
'618
He
rejected
too the
idea
of containment
that
had
characterised
the
MAT
production:
)1a
a Tax na yZ cpepxcau
Typreaes? Y
nac cTpan oe upe7CTasneaBe o
xaaccHxax, o
'lexose,
aaapaMep, aim
Typresese. Mm
3axosbtsacu $x s
zecrxa xopceT.
Mescpy
reu oas normt oran,
...
aaCTO
-
omxpbUmrno ozHJi.
IIbecy
Mec, s aepesae 3aupenwia IeH3ypa, a TCIIepb eacTo sbmaeM ee
3a Racrannaposaeay)o soigy.
619
616
Ibid.,
pp.
337-378.
6171bid.,
p.
50.
618Ef
'
Prodolzhenie,
p.
99. (His
emphasis).
619E
frog, Professiia,
pp.
55-56. (His
emphasis).
Turgenev
wrote
the play
in Paris between 1848
and
1850. First
called
The Student
and then
Two Women, it
was
intended for
publication
In Sovremennik (The Contemporary),
but
ran
into trouble with
the censors who
demanded
changes on
both
moral and political grounds.
The
love
of a married woman
for
a man oder than
her
spouse was
deemed
an unsuitable subject
for
the
Russian
stage.
Accordingly, Natal'ia Petrovna
was
to be
turned into
a widow and
her
husband
Islaev
eliminated.
Similarly,
several sections
from Dr. Shpigel'skii's
monologues
in
which
he
referred
to the poverty of
his
childhood and
his hatred
of
his benefactor,
together
with
passages
that expressed
his
contemptuous and
hypocritical
attitude towards the gentry, were
also
to
be
expunged.
Renamed A Month in
the
Country,
the
play
first
appeared
in
print, with
the cuts
demanded
and some other minor changes,
in Sovrenunnik
in 1855,
and was
later
243
Nevertheless,
although
he
reacted so strongly
in
print against
traditional
interpretations,
to
judge from
critical comments and video evidence not all
the
ideas he
articulated
in
theory
were
translated
into
performance.
In
truth
his
production,
though
highly
charged emotionally,
had
a subtle, poetic quality not
seen
in his
previous work.
In fact in
this,
and
in
several other respects,
his A
Month in
the
County
can
be
seen as
to
some
degree
a repudiation of
his
earlier
approaches
to the
classics.
Furthermore,
although
he
made no attempt to
resurrect
Stanislavsky's 1909
production,
his interpretation
seemed
indebted in
some ways
to the
practices of
the
MAT. It
was almost as
if Efros,
who
had
once conducted ardent polemics with
the
past, was engaged
instead
now
in
a
dialogue
with
his
predecessor.
This
was
to
be
seen
in
the
way
his
production of
the play evoked
the
atmosphere of
its
era,
his
concern
for
the
inner
emotional
lives
of
the
characters, and
in
what was
for
the
most part a gracious and
fluent
style of performance.
Smelianskii has described
the
production as something of an
'artistic
compensation'
(sHyTpexium
xyAoxcecTBemian KOMneHcwm) on
Efros's
part
for his 'mercilessly
objective'
Seagull
at
the
Lenkom.
620
It
would
be
quite
wrong
to
suggest
that
his
staging of
Turgenev
constituted an apology
for his
treatment of
Chekhov, but
there
is
some
truth
in Smelianskii's
observation, as
the
following
comparative analysis shows.
Whereas he had divorced The Seagull from its historical
context,
in A Month in
the
Country he
sought
to
evoke
the
atmosphere of
its
time,
principally
by
the
use of music
(albeit
music of an even earlier
date). The
action was accompanied
included in
an edition of
Turgenev's
collected works published
in 1869. This
edition retained
all
but
one of
the censor's cuts.
A
complete, authoritative edition of the
play, with the
passages restored, was not published until
1962.
620Smelianskii,
Nashi,
p.
139.
244
throughout
by
excerpts
from Mozart's 40th Symphony.
621
As Liudmilla
Bakshi has
noted,
that symphony
has
plaintive passages, which
for her
reflected
the
sorrowful atmosphere
that
surrounded
Natal'ia Petrovna,
while
its
rising
crescendos and
dying diminuendos
expressed
the theme
of
'unspent feelings'
and
her desire
to reach unattainable goals.
622
Mozart's
work
is
also
characterised,
however, by delicate
tremolos and repeated whirling motifs that
create a enchanting
lightness. Moreover,
excerpts were played with such
frequency
that the
whole production seemed
to
have been
scored.
This
created
an overall sense of
harmony,
and at magical moments evoked a subtle
tranquillity, so
that
although, as we shall see,
there
was
little in Efros's
setting
to suggest
the
period of
the
play,
the
mood
that
prevailed
throughout
had
something
in
common with
Stanislavsky's 'epic
quiet of
the
Russian
estates'.
Whereas
at the
Lenkom Efros had
analysed
Chekhov's
characters with a
degree
of
detachment
that
allowed
him
to
reveal
but
not excuse
their
defects, his
attitude
to
Turgenev's
was
far less judgmental. He likened Natal'ia Petrovna's love for
Beliaev
to
a mental
illness
which
(in
the
course of
the
action) gradually took
total command of
her.
623
Accordingly,
as
E. Tikhvinskaia
observed,
he did
not
censure
her
reprehensible
treatment
of
her
ward,
because
this
was something
over which she
had
effectively no control.
624
Similarly,
although
his Rakitin
lacked
the
romantic qualities of
Stanislavsky's knight in
shining armour,
Efros
shared
the
view
that the
character was entirely
honourable. Thus,
according to
Potemkin, Rakitin's
willingness to
assist
Shpigel'skii's
scheme to
marry off
Verochka in
order
to obtain a troika of
horses from Bol'shintsov, behaviour ill-
621Given
that
Mozart
wrote
this
symphony
in August 1788,
some sixty-seven
years
before
Turgenev's
play was
first
published,
it is
not my
intention
to
imply
that the
music per se
created a sense of period,
but
rather that
certain of
its
qualities evoked a similar mood to that
manifest
in Stanislavsky's
production.
622Liudmilla
Baksbi, '"Tam,
gde
konchaiutsia
slova...
"', Don, 3 (1981), 185-189 (p. 187).
623Efros,
Professiia,
p.
76.
624E.
Tikhvinskaia, Drama
pozdnei
liubvi', Sovetskaia kul'tura, 22 July 1980,
p.
5.
245
fitting
a man of
honour,
was also not condemned.
625
In fact,
as
Ia. Bilinkis
noted, any
judgment
of
the characters was
left
entirely
to the
audience
626
Finally,
whereas
from
the
beginning
of
Chekhov's
play
Efros had
urged
his
actors
to
inject
aggression
into
their performances and
had
sought
throughout to
reveal raw emotions,
forcing
to the surface what might
have been
seen as sub-
text and making
it
the
substance of the work,
in 1977 his
overall
tone
was
gentler: especially
in
the
first
two
acts
(although
this
was consistent with
his
wish
to
suggest
the
gradual
build-up
of an earthquake) emotions were
kept in
check.
The
submergence of an emotional sub-text was also usually seen as
more characteristic of
Stanislavsky's
earliest productions
than
of
his.
Efros described
the
opening acts as
the
'revelation'
of
the
secret
that
Natal'ia
Petrovna believes is known
to
her
alone.
627 At
the opening
Turgenev
sites
the
action
in
two
places:
Anna Semenovna, Lizaveta Bogdanovna
and
Shaaf
are
seated stage-left playing prefrence, while stage-right
Rakitin is
reading
to
Natal'ia Petrovna in French. The
conversations
interconnect,
separate and then
intersect
once more.
In
addition,
Natal'ia Petrovna interrupts
the
reading
three
times with questions and observations,
forcing Rakitin
each
time to
begin
at
the
same
line. For Efros
the
alternating rhythms
inherent in Turgenev's lines
reflected what
he described
as
the
'zig-zag'
of
the
heroine's
emotions.
628
Olga
625potemkin,
p.
3.
The
perception, shared
by Stanislavsky
and
Efros,
that
Rakitin is
consistently
honourable
and
a man whose
behaviour is beyond
reproach,
is
problematic.
There
are at
least
two
points
in
Turgenev's
script
(other
than that
indicated by Potemkin)
that
belie
this
conception.
In Act
III, for instance,
when
Natal'ia Petrovna despairs
at the
prospect of
being
alone
if he
and
Beliaev leave
together,
Rakitin
suggests that
he
can
delay his
own
departure by
a
few days.
Natal'ia Petrovna is immediately
suspicious,
believing
that,
with
Beliaev
gone,
Rakitin is
hoping to stay and continue
their relationship as
before. Although Rakitin is insulted by her
inference, it is
possible
to suggest
that
he does indeed harbour
an ulterior motive.
Mesiats
v
derevne, Act III,
pp.
107-108. Similarly, in Act V, Rakitin's
words
to
Beliaev
undermine
his
reiterated
claims
to
be
an
honourable
man;
having just
confessed
his love for Natal'ia Petrovna
to
Islaev, he lies
to the young
tutor, saying that
his friend has
no grounds to suspect
him.
Mesiats
v
derevne, Act V,
pp.
144-145.
6261a.
Bilinkis, '"Mesiats
v
derevne"', Soren, 17 December 1977,
p.
3.
627E
frog, Professiia,
p.
50.
6281bid.,
pp.
58-61.
246
Skorochkina had high
praise
for Iakovleva's
ability to
express a wide range of
moods, a sentiment which was echoed
by Fridshtein.
629
Completely in
tune
with
her
role, she moved
from
gaiety
to
seductiveness,
from intellectual debate
to the
pensiveness of
her
monologues,
frequently
performed under a single
spot.
Moreover,
whereas
Knipper's
performance was said
to
have lacked
humour, Iakovleva displayed
a mischievous playfulness.
For instance,
at
the
first
appearance of
Bronevoi's Dr. Shpigel'skii
she offered
him
a chair,
but
as
he
made
to
sit adroitly pulled
it from
under
him. However, in
the
first
two
acts
in
particular, she expressed
herself
through
languid,
controlled gestures, which
only occasionally revealed
her inner
tension.
The
grace and
lightness
of
her
bearing
was considerably enhanced
by
the
floating layers
of a
light-weight
costume and strips of silk
thread that
hung from her
shoulders
to
her feet. Even
in her
more passionate scenes
in later
acts, she again produced moments of calm
and returned
to
her initial
graciousness.
Not
until
her final
moments
did
she
truly give vent
to the torments
of
her heart. Iakovleva
was
the
driving force
of
the production, controlling much of
its
momentum, so
that the
other actors'
performances were similarly modulated and conveyed a quiet
intensity.
In
contrast
to
Stanislavsky's
restricted spaces,
Efros
provided
his
actors with an
open playing area, only one
long
seat and a single garden chair, and at
times the
action moved at an electric pace.
Tikhvinskaia
suggested that
it
was as
if
the
events
took
place not over a month
but in
a
few hours. 630
Efros's
company
did
not play at
the
even
tempo
of
the
MAT,
and were not constrained as
Stanislavsky's had been in
their
physical means of expression.
For instance in
Act I,
when
Islaev
and
Beliaev
were
discussing
the
building
project,
Natal'ia
Petrovna
climbed up onto a
balustrade
and
listened
to their
conversation seated
62901'ga
Skorochkina, 'Ol'ga lakovleva', Teatr. 1 (1982) 55-63 (p. 62). Iu. Fridshtein, 'Taira
aktrisy',
Sovetskaia kul'tura, 7 March 1987,
p.
3.
630Tikhvinskaia,
p.
5. This
comment
is
useful as a
description
of the
alacrity of pace at
some points
in
the action,
but
contains an
inaccuracy. The
events
in
the play
do
not take
place over a month.
We learn from Verochka in
the
middle of
Act I
that
Beliaev has been
living
on
the estate
for
twenty-eight
days, but
the
five
acts cover only
four days.
247
on a rail.
However,
the pace was often slowed, and
therefore this
production
lacked
the sense of near-constant urgency
to
which
Efros in
the
past
had
often
goaded
his
actors.
The
actors' movements,
furthermore,
were supported
by
the
music, which according
to
Komissarzhevskii had
the
effect of moving the
characters onward, as
though
calling
them to
its
melody.
631
Thus for
the
most
part
their
actions were
delicate
and
flowing
as
if
they
had been
carefully
choreographed, and provided a
deliberate
contrast
to the
moments of more
frenetic
activity.
This
was seen especially
in
the recurrent
flying
of the
kite,
which was performed as a gracious
ballet.
In
the middle of
Act I,
after
Bronevoi had delivered,
at
lightning
speed,
his
comic
tale
about
the
antics of
his
acquaintance's
daughter, Dal'
entered as
Beliaev, bearing his kite
aloft.
He
was
followed by
a
laughing Verochka,
who
skipped about, attempting to
seize
it from his
grasp.
She
caught the
end of
its
long
tail and they encircled the
playing area, moving around
the
assembled cast,
and
leaping
and
dancing
very much
in
the
style of a pas
de deux. This
action
was repeated at
the
end of
Act II
and witnessed
by
the
others, who were seated
in
a row
like
an on-stage audience.
Verochka
was played
by E. Korneva.
Although
a
little
old
for
the
part, she portrayed the
childish
joy
of
her
character
with particular charm.
Later in Act IV
she provided a poignant counter-point to
Dr. Shpigel'skii's
mocking song
by
appearing alone and circling as she
had
done
twice
before
with
Beliaev. But
this time
her
once
joyous dancing
was
replaced
by
angular motions
that
expressed
her
anguish at
her
guardian's
betrayal,
and created
the
impression
of a young
bird
attempting to
fly
with
broken
wings.
The
performers' physical expression was assisted
in
no small
degree by
the
kinetic
set
designed by Efros's
son,
Dmitrii Krymov. Efros had
seen a
Polish
631Komissarzhevsk, '"Zhenitba"',
p.
104.
248
production of
Month in
the
Country, directed by Adam Hanuskiewicz
at
the
People's Theatre in Warsaw,
and played
in
the
round.
The
stage
floor had been
covered
by
a small
field
of real grass, on which
flowers
and a cherry
tree
had
been
rooted.
It
also
featured
a running
brook, from
which, at
the
opening, a
pair of
hounds drank
real water.
632
Although he
remarked on
the
prettiness of
this setting,
in his
own production
he
rejected any attempt at realism.
In
contrast
to
Stanislavsky's idea
of a glass-house protected
from
the
world,
Efros's
production was played entirely outdoors, as
though the
characters
lived
not apart
from
nature
but
within
it. This
effect was enhanced
by
the
costumes,
most of which were
in
similar styles and
hues
and
blended
with
the
background.
As Rakitin, Kozakov
was
dressed in
grey
trousers
with a
faint
stripe, a yellow
waistcoat, a
blue
cravat and a velvet coat of
burgundy brown. Dr. Shpigel'skii
wore grey, wide-striped
trousers,
and a green coat with a
darker decorative
trim.
Islaev
was similarly costumed,
in
a shorter
brown
coat with
black
trimmings and a cream waistcoat, while
Verochka darted
on
to the
stage
in
a
pale green summer
dress
with short puffed sleeves.
She later
changed
into
one
of cream and chocolate,
tied
with a
long brown
ribbon under
her bosom.
Natal'ia Petrovna had four
costumes:
for Act II
she changed
from her flowing
dress into
a rich,
dark-green
silk one with a
full flounce
and
trimmings,
and
cooled
herself
with a
feather-covered fan. In Act lII,
reflecting
her
elation after
the
kite-flying
expedition
the
previous
day,
she
tripped
on
in
a more
frivolous
dress
of
deep
pink, with
three-quarter
length
sleeves and a
decorative bodice,
carrying a parasol.
In
the
final
act,
in
which
Beliaev
appeared
in
a
blue jacket,
she wore a costume with
long flowing
sleeves and a
dark
yellow
bodice,
decorated
with a pattern
in burgundy
which matched the
colour of
her hooped
skirt.
632gf,
Professiia,
pp.
50-51.
249
Krymov
created a
backdrop
of
brown
and amber yellow whose colours
had
bled into
each other
(as
though washed
in
water).
This
created
the
effect of
golden sunlight
filtering
through the
foliage
of
branches in
a wood, a setting
which,
by
contrast with
Dobuzhinskii's
autumnal colours, generated
the
atmosphere of
the torpid
heat
of summer.
633
The
stage
floor,
washed
in blue
light,
was
bare,
and could
be
entered
from
several points.
For Potemkin,
setting
the
work
in
the
open, at a point where all
the characters converged,
created
the
sense
that the action
took place at a crossroads.
634 This
was
in
keeping
with
the
director's idea
that the characters
have
reached a point of
irrevocable
change
in
their
lives.
At
the
MAT Dobuzhinskii had
used
four
separate sets,
but Efros ignored
Turgenev's
directions for
changes and performed
the play on a single set.
This
allowed
the action
to
flow freely from
one act
to the
next, and
(in keeping
with
his
approach
in
previous productions) succeeded
in
translating many of
the
work's
central
themes
into
a single scenic metaphor.
A
two-tiered, circular
structure was placed centre-stage.
Its
top
layer,
supported on ornate pillars, and
surrounded
on all sides
by
a
balustrade,
was reached
by
steps at
the
back
of
the
stage.
This
staircase projected outwards and
downwards
to a
landing,
and
then
turned at right angles so
that
its lower
part ran parallel
to the
back
wall.
The
upper
level
allowed
the actors
to
make
interesting
use of vertical
dynamics,
and
several
dialogues
were spoken with one actor on
the
stage and
the
other above.
The
structure
looked like
a gazebo or
bandstand,
and was made of metal shaped
into
a
filigree-like
fretwork, incorporating flowers
and
interlacing
curves.
Its
633MikW Kozakov, I
teatr
-
eto vsego
lieh'
samopoznanie,
in Smelianskii
and
Egoshioa,
pp
207-224 (p. 221).
634Fotemkin,
p.
3.
250
delicately
woven metal was
intended
perhaps as a reference to
Natal'ia
Petrovna's lines in Act I:
A
BbI BHAMN, KaK xpyxceBO uneTyr?
B
Ryumux xoMaaTax, ne ABBFaacb c
Mecra...
Kpyzeao
-
npexpacHaa setup., no rnarox caeaxe BOW a zaps Aesb
ropavo nyqme.
635
In
these
lines
the
heroine is
clearly rejecting a man-made object of
beauty in
favour
of a natural phenomenon.
Similarly,
although
Krymov's
set was elegant
and
beautifully
constructed,
it
was artificial and
thus
out of place
in its
natural
setting.
Being
made of
iron,
moreover,
it
also
had
a cruel,
harsh
appearance, as
Komissarzhevskii
noted.
He
suggested
that all
living
things
-
people,
birds
and
flowers
-
would
die here.
636
When Natal'ia Petrovna
paced within
it,
moreover,
the
metal columns and curves resembled prison
bars,
making
it
a
visual metaphor of
her feelings
of entrapment.
A long,
curved,
high-backed bench, in
the
shape of a
half
moon, was soldered
on
to the
lower half
to
form
the
greater part of
the
circular side.
This
was set on
a
thin metal
track that
ran all around the
edge, so
that the
seat
itself,
when
pushed
by
the
actors, could revolve
through
360,
while
the
inner floor
remained still.
This
revolving seat
turned the
entire structure
into
a
fairground
carousel, gently whirling around the
actors standing within.
This
contributed to
the moments of merriment, and added a
further,
magical
dimension
to the
gliding and soaring music
that
accompanied
its
movements.
A
pair of small, wheeled coaches, each about
four feet in height,
were set either
side of
the
stage.
Their
shafts
held
no
horses, but
their
high-backed,
roofed
635Mesiats
v
derevne, Act I,
p.
46.
636Komi83a,
evSkii,
'"Zhcnit'W',
p.
104.
251
seats were
large
enough
for
the
actors
to
sit
in,
and
the
coaches were
periodically pulled
back
and
forth into
the
action.
In
the coach stage-left sat a
model coachman,
dressed in
a
dark
coat, white scarf and
little
top
hat. He
carried a whip, which
Natal'ia Petrovna
at one point
took
from his hand
and
idly
and playfully whirled.
In keeping
with
the
fairground
theme, the
coachman's
face had
the
bulbous
red nose and exaggerated cheeks of a
traditional
Petrushka
puppet.
A
sense of carnival
fun
was also a
feature
of
Bronevoi's
performance as
Dr. Shpigel'skii.
His
opening speech, about a woman who
loves
two
men at once, may
have
something
in
common with
the
patter of
fairground
performers outside a
balagan,
who
to
attract an audience provide a synopsis of the
drama
to
be
performed within.
Shpigel'skii's
role
has
elements of
the
grotesque of the
Commedia dell' Arte:, like
a
dottore
of
that tradition,
he
engineers a match
between
a pretty young girl and an old,
dull-witted
pantalone,
Bol'shintsov. 637
A
cynic and a clown,
he has
an exaggeratedly theatrical
manner and
is
a
renowned raconteur.
As Smelkov
remarked,
Bronevoi
clearly enjoyed the
part,
playing
it like
a number
in
a variety show
(xoxuepTHO).
638
He
exhibited,
however,
a gleeful cruelty
in his
treatment
of
the
benighted Bol'shintsov,
played
by K. Glazunov. The latter's diminutive
stature and gangly appearance made
for
a
farcical
contrast with a portly
Bronevoi,
who succeeded
therefore,
in
Potemkin's
view,
in being
at once comic and
frightening. 639
In fact, in
the
midst of
Efros's
playful and elegant carnival something
darker,
tragic,
and
destructive
could
be felt
to
be brewing.
Indeed,
if Stanislavsky's final
setting can
be
seen to
have
symbolised
resolution,
the restoration of calm after a raging storm, the
earthquake that
637WOffal1,
Nikolai Gogo4
p.
178.
638Iu.
Smelkov, 'I
zhizn',
i
slezy,
i Iiubov", Moskovskii konsomolets,
14 October 1977,
p.
3.
639potemkln,
p.
3.
252
gathered
in intensity
under
Efros's
carousel-cum-summer-house was
to
produce
at
his
conclusion a very
different
effect.
Following Beliaev's
exit,
the
departing
actors addressed
their
final lines
to
each other
but
also
to the
audience, as
if
as
both
performers and characters
they
were
bidding farewell both
to the
real
spectators and
to the tragi-comic
spectacle
in
which
they
had just
played.
As
noted earlier,
Efros
rejected
the
idea
of
the
closed
'circle
of attention', arguing
instead
that active
interaction
with
the
audience, a result of
breaking
the
boundaries between
the
stage and auditorium, produced a much more
interesting
dynamic.
TM0
The
actors' exits,
therefore,
signalled
the
end of all
illusion: both
Natal'ia Petrovna's
and
L'illusion
comique.
Left
alone on stage as
the
music played gently,
lakovleva
sat
in
the
coach stage-
left
and
tapped the
puppet-driver on
the shoulder, as
if
asking
him
to
move off
after
the others.
But
the
coach stayed motionless.
As
she climbed
down
the
music
built into
a roaring crescendo, and
the
actress, clapping
her hands
over
her
ears
to
block
out
its
sound, span and cavorted as
though
in
agony.
In
a
frenzy
of near-madness,
half-falling, half-running,
she returned
to the
coach.
She
picked up
Beliaev's
abandoned
kite from its
roof.
Pressing it
to
her
sobbing
face,
she moved
downstage front. Stage-hands
appeared with
tools
and
hammers
and
began
to
dismantle
the
set,
like
workers when a
fair is leaving
town.
As
the twisted
metal shapes piled up,
in Smelianskii's
account, the
blows
of
the
hammers
sounded
like
axes
in
a cherry orchard, as
the
bewitching
circle of
Turgenev's
estate was
broken
and scattered
by
the
wind of
history.
The
crowbars and mallets
brought Efros's
production
back
to the twentieth
century with a crashing
jolt,
to
a cacophony of sounds and music
like
trains
in
a
head-on
collision.
641
At
the
front
of the
stage
Iakovleva
was approached
by
one of
the stage-hands, who
took
her kite. She
clutched at
its
tail,
which was
6Efros,
Professiia,
p.
179.
641Smelianskii,
Nashi,
pp.
146-147.
253
then
pulled
through
her fingers for its
entire
length,
until she saw,
looking
down,
that
her hands held
only air.
In
the
closing moments,
trapped
in her
tragic present and
bereft
of all
hope,
Natal'ia Petrovna
stood on
the
same
threshold
as at
the
beginning,
as
though
reflecting on
her
own words
in Act III: 'Mbi
gacTo cBOero npotuenmero ue
nonmfaeM
...
rje 3Ke HaM oTBetiaTb 3a
6y
iyu ee!
'M2
Natal'ia Petrovna's future is
unknown,
but for Efros,
with
historical hindsight,
there
was
little doubt
that
it
too
would end
in
grief.
He, like Stanislavsky,
saw
A Month in
the
Country
as a prelude
to
The Cherry Orchard,
and when viewing
those
works
in 1977
understood
better
than
his heroine
what
fate had in
store:
...
OHa
u4yrxHynacb K Tolk zn3HH, Kasai
6yAeT
Korga-ag6yJ b, nocaie Toro Kai
AsopAHCIIax rae3A yze fie
6yAcT
H]1H uo+1TH ae
6yAcT. Ta
zz3sb elk KaXeTCft
3aMaWMBO*.
On
se 3saeT, ae MoZeT 3aaTb, irro, no-DR &omy, Tax Ze
6yAeT
yymaTh s csoe EpeM1 a Toro ice 3axo9CT
PaHescxax
H3 BHmuesoro caAa.
Ho
ecn$
6i HaTanbu IIeTpoBHa
3Hana, ecna
6m
Koraa 3aaTb, Rem
Paeescras
KoaMr!
...
Mama
ZNBeT as RITOM 3Taxce, IIpHXOZy K net, y Ree KaKae-TO
4pasiy3bt,
AaMbz, cmpbd narep c a$axrKo, a aaKypeso, neyioTHO.
MHe
BApyr cTano xKa. m
MaMbI, TaK xamb., x o6sana cc ronosy, czana pyxaMB H Be Mocy BbunycTHTm
Mama
1KY OM BCC nacxaJlacb, nmaxai[a.
(Aim.
BnmueabA Cajv.
)643
In 1982 Efros
produced
A Month in
the
Country (Natasha) in Japan, but
was
also requested
by his host
theatre to
re-stage
The Cherry Orchard,
which
he had
directed
there the previous season, so
that the
company might take
both
plays on
642Mesiats
v
derevne, Act III,
p.
94.
643Efros,
Professiia,
p.
197.
254
tour.
For
several
days,
therefore,
he
rehearsed them
back-to-back
on
the
same
stage:
Natasha in
the mornings and
Chekhov's
play
in
the
evenings.
He found
the
process
intriguing,
and noted:
KorAa
cMoTpaim 3TH ABe uaecu oAny 3a Rpyro, upmxoAR bB BOCTOpr a
OJ HOB eMeaao B yxcac.
B
BocTopr
-
oT Hx xyj{oaceCTBeBHOro cosepIIIeUCTBa, mx
seagHx.
B
ywac
-
o'r omWmeRNn KaTacTpoc)aeemm
6eryuero
3pemeHg.
644
In 1975, by
setting
The Cherry Orchard in
a graveyard,
Efros had
seen the
destruction
of
the
orchard not as
inevitable, but
rather,
from
the
outset, as an
established
fact. This
controversial production,
like his Three Sisters before it,
had been interpreted by
many as a reflection of
the
loss
of spirituality and
culture
in Soviet Russia. In 1977, Natal'ia Petrovna's
world was completely
destroyed,
and
her hopes for
a new
future,
effectively
Efros's
present, were
shown
to
have been
an
illusion. It
might
therefore
be
assumed that
reactions to
A Month in
the
Country
would
be
similar
to those
produced
by Efros's
stagings
of
Chekhov. Interestingly, however, it
neither provoked critical uproar nor was
viewed as a
damning indictment
of
the
society of
its
time.
We
must consider
why.
For Smelianskii
the
answer
lay in
the
fact
that this
production
lacked
much of
the sense of
immediacy
that
had
characterised
Efros's
overtly modern readings
of classics
in
the
past, and
had
therefore
created a sense of
distance between its
audiences and
the
action.
M5
This
estrangement,
in Smelianskii's
view, was
the
result, on
the
one
hand,
of what
he described
as
its
melancholy tone,
and on
the
other of what
he
saw as
the
director's fascination
with the
'epic
quiet' and
refinement of
the old culture, which was as captivating
for Efros
as
it had been
Efros, Prodolzhenie,
p.
423.
645Smelianskii, Nashi,
p.
138.
255
once
for Stanislavsky. Efros had
presented
the
past
in delicate,
pastoral
tones,
and
(as
noted
in
the
introduction)
this
led Smelianskii
to
identify A Month in
the
Country
as part of a new
tendency
in
the theatre
of
the
period
to
produce
Russian
classics
in
a more
traditionally
lyrical
and gentle style.
'
Efros
rejected
Smelianskii's interpretation,
Ml
asserting
that
he had intended
from
the
beginning
to
set
the
action
in
the past,
but in
a way
that
would make
it
accessible and comprehensible
to
a modem audience.
648
There
seems therefore
little doubt
that
he
was engaged
in
a
kind
of
balancing
act
between
the
past and
the present.
Such
a view can
be
substantiated
in
the
responses of other critics.
Their
opinions
divided
more or
less
equally
between
those
who remarked on
its
sense of old-world charm and others who stressed
its feeling
of modernity.
Bilinkis, for instance,
maintained
that the
director
allowed the
spectators
to
delight in
and admire
the
refined
behaviour
and gracious conversations of
the
gentry.
649
Potemkin, by
contrast,
described it
as a
fresh
and original
production, which presented characters with whom
the
audience could
identify
closely.
650
In
the theatre,
like
much of
Efros's
work,
it
would
be influential long
after
his
death. The
central
focus
of
Sergei Zhenovach's
production of
the
play, staged
at
the
Fomenko Studio in 1996,
was
Galina Tyunina's
performance as
Natal'ia
Petrovna. Zhenovach
worked at
the
Malaia Bronnaia
after
Efros's departure,
and
his
productions owe a
debt
to the
work of
his
predecessor.
The
present
writer saw
Zhenovach's A Month in Country in 1996. Like Efros, Zhenovach
succeeded
in blending
elements of a
light,
sparkling comedy with
the
underlying
tensions of conflict and
tragedy.
Vladimir Maksimov's
setting, together
with
646Ibid.,
p.
147.
647Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
264-265.
648Efros,
'"Mesiats
v
derevne"', Krasnoiarskii
rabochii,
28 July 1979,
p.
3.
649Bilinkis,
p.
3.
65opocemkin,
p.
3.
256
Aleksei Nenashev's lighting
and
the sporadic use of motifs
from Beethoven,
evoked a
light
and
delicate
atmosphere, complemented
by
the rotations of
two
pieces of an
incomplete
gazebo set centre stage.
The
present writer's commentary on
Efros's
production
has been founded
throughout on written critiques and also on a close analysis of a video.
This,
although
first
shown on
Russian
television
in 1983,
was
directed by Efros
himself,
and as
he himself declared
was not substantially
different from
the
stage performances of
1977.651 His
production, as we
have
seen, retained
some of
the
features
characteristic of
his
previous work,
but
also undeniably
was
indebted
to the
past, and pointed
the
way,
despite his
protestations,
towards
his 'quieter'
approach.
As
stated
in Chapter 1,
this
change of approach
would
be
most clearly seen
in his Three Sisters in 1982,
and was generated
by
the personal and professional crises
that characterised
his later
years at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. These in
turn
were exacerbated
in
part
by
the
failure
there
in
1980
of
his
production of
Road.
651M.
Lebedeva, 'Kazhdyi
sposoben poniat",
Televidenie i
radioveshchanie,
6 (1983), 46-47
(p. 46). It is
well recognised
that an analysis of video evidence
is fraught
with
difficulties.
The
viewer
is
at the mercy, so
to speak, of the camera operator, who controls
his/her line
of
vision.
This is
an experience very
different from
that
of theatre spectators, who are
free
to
focus
where
they will.
Moreover, the
camera
has
the effect of
bringing
the
viewer
inside
the
action, as
it
were, and
this too alters the relationship
between
performer and spectator.
Furthermore, the very act of
filming
a production
'fixes' it for
all time; it does
not therefore
allow
for
those changes
in
tempo, mood and meaning which naturally occur
in
a
live
performance
over
the course of
its
run.
I do
not therefore
intend
to
imply
that the television
version
was
identical to the theatre production,
but
only that
it
was the
same
in
essence.
257
Chapter 7
KyAa
K Heceiubcsl Tbc?
Road
(1980)
258
Road,
an adaptation of
Gogol's Dead Souls by Veniamin Baliasnyi,
was staged
by Efros
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia
after
his
return
from
the
USA. In interviews
and articles on
his
career
the
production was remembered
by
some as
flawed but
regarded
by
most as a complete
failure. When it
opened on
24 January 1980 it
received qualified and cautious responses
from
some reviewers and was
championed
by
only one,
Demidova,
who challenged
directly
the
views of
'one
of
her fellow
critics'.
652
This
was a clear reference
to
Smelianskii,
whose
article
'Four Circles',
to
be discussed in
more
detail later,
was published
in
the
highly-respected journal Teatr,
and
influenced
to
no small
degree
the
view
that
the
production was an unmitigated
disaster.
653
Staged in
an overtly
theatrical
style,
Road
was
indebted
to
both Meyerhold
and
Vakhtangov,
and challenged
Stanislavsky's
approach
to
Bulgakov's
adaptation
of
the
novel at
the
MAT in 1932. But following
the publication of
Smelianskii's
wounding critique,
Efros began,
as argued
in Chapter 1,
to
reject
his
earlier
work, and
to
re-discover,
indeed
to
celebrate,
the techniques
of
the
MAT. Road
therefore marked a
decisive
turning
point
in
the
reversal of
Efros's ideas.
Stanislavsky's 1932
production
had
proved a
huge
popular success, and was
to
remain
in
the theatre's
repertoire
for decades. It had drawn
on the talents
of
seasoned and well-loved actors such as
Moskvin (Chichikov), Leonid Leonidov
(Pliushkin)
and
Mikhail Tarkhanov (Manilov),
and
their
performances
had
become legendary. Although
over
time these
actors
had been
replaced, their
roles were
taken
by
other
luminaries
of
the
MAT,
who succeeded
in
recreating
vivid and comic portrayals of
Gogol's
characters that
became definitive for
generations of audiences and critics alike.
For E. Kotok
the
enduring
652A.
Demidova, 'Osobyi
mir',
Nedelia, 2430 March
1980,
p.
9. Alla Demidova is
an
actress who also writes critically about theatre.
653A.
Smelianskii, 'Chetyre kruga', Teatr, 10 (1980), 26-37. This
article
is
reproduced
in
Zaionts,
pp.
290-312. It
also
forms
the basis
of
Smelianskii's
final
chapter
'Vmesto
zakliucheniia',
in Nashi,
pp.
347-367.
259
impression left by
what
that critic
described
as
inspired
performances
by
stars of
the
MAT
complicated
Efros's
task
of recreating
the
characters anew.
654
Since
the
performance
history
of
Dead Souls
at
the
MAT has been
thoroughly
researched and
documented,
a
full
account
is
unnecessary
here.
655
It is
important
to
note,
however,
that
Stanislavsky's
production was a radical
reinterpretation of
the
adaptation of
the
novel
first
envisaged
by Bulgakov.
Dead Souls,
as
has been frequently
noted,
is
a remarkably complex work;
it
blends
realist
depiction
and
descriptive
passages with comic
hyperbole
and
the
grotesque, and
biting
satire with mysticism and
flights
of
fancy. The links
that
allow
these apparently
disparate
elements
to
cohere are provided
throughout
in
the commentaries and quintessentially
Gogolian 'lyrical digressions' by
a self-
conscious author.
The
translation
of so
intricate
and nuanced a work
to the
medium of
the theatre
is by
any estimation an extraordinarily
difficult
task.
Bulgakov for his
part stated
that
for
anyone
familiar
with
the
novel such an
undertaking was
'axiomatically impossible',
although
this
admission
did
not
deter him from
accepting
the
challenge with gusto.
656
Like Meyerhold in The
Government Inspector in 1926, he
aimed
to
produce
'the
whole of
Gogol',
to
reflect
Gogol's fantasy in
all
its
complexity; to this
end
he
researched not only
the
various versions of
the
novel
but
also
Gogol's
correspondence and the
reminiscences of
his
contemporaries.
657
654E.
Kotok, 'Fantaziia
na gogolevskie temy' Moskovskii komsomolets, 27 February 1980,
p.
3.
655For
more
detailed
analyses of this
history,
see
Lesley M. Milne, U. A. Bulgakov
and
Dead Souls: The Problems
of
Adaptation', Slavonic
and
East European Review, LII, 128
(1974), 420-440; K. Rudnitskii, '"Mertvye dushi" MkhAT
-
1932, in Teatral'nye
stranitsy
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1979),
pp.
145-85; A. Smeliansky,
Is Comrade Bulgakov Dead?:
Mikhail Bulgakov
at the
Moscow Art Theatre (London: Macmillan, 1993),
pp.
175-208,
and
M. Stroeva, '"Mertvye dushi", in Rezhisserskie (1973),
pp.
296-317.
656Milne,
p.
420.
657As
Milne has
noted
Bulgakov
and
Sakhnovskii based
their
work on the
version
in
volume
VII
of
the tenth edition of
Gogol's Collected Works
edited
by N. Tikhonravov
and
V. Shrenok,
published
between 1889-1896,
which contains all extant variants,
drafts
and redactions of
Dead
Souls;
see
Milne,
pp.
421422.
260
The
conception and structure of
Bulgakov's
version rested on
two
concepts:
firstly,
the
fact
that
Gogol had
written
Dead Souls in Rome,
and secondly the
inclusion
of a character representing
the
writer
himself, designated
as
the
Reader
('1Teu)
or
First Person (IlepBbIA
B mbece).
For Bulgakov Rome
evoked a
colourful world of guitars, sunshine and macaroni, and moreover
had
provided
Gogol
with a remote and
delightful
vantage-point
from
which
to
view what was
by
contrast a
dark
and
dull
provincial
Russia.
658
Bulgakov intended
the
action
to
flow between Italy
and
Russia,
an
idea incorporated into
the
early
design
of
the production as conceived
by Dmitriev. The Reader had his
own part of
the
stage, which represented a corner of
Gogol's
study
in Italy,
and
the
action as a
whole was
framed by
a
Roman
portal,
through
which at
different
moments
views of a verandah, an arbor,
Pliushkin's
orchard and so
forth
could
be
seen.
The Reader
was a complex character.
Dressed in
the
fashion
of a
Russian
traveller of
the
1830s, he functioned
as a
link between
the two
worlds.
In
some
scenes
he
was an active participant,
in
others an aloof observer.
He
addressed
the audience
directly, introducing
the
characters, articulating their thoughts
and
registering astonishment at
their
actions.
His lines included Gogol's lyrical
digressions,
and also
functioned
as a satirical commentary on
the
grotesque and
absurd
drama
played out
before him.
Bulgakov began
work on
his
version
in
the
summer of
1930. At
this
period
Stanislavsky,
partly
due
to
illness
and partly as result of the
changed political
circumstances of
the time,
had largely been
absent
from
the theatre.
The
task
of
directing
the
production
had been
assigned to
Vasilii Sakhnovskii,
working
under
the
supervision of
Nemirovich-Danchenko
and assisted
by Bulgakov
himself. But in February 1931,
one month
before
the
scheduled premiere,
Stanislavsky
took over
the
production.
At first he
tried to
come to
an
accommodation with
the
considerable work that
Sakhnovskii
and
Bulgakov had
658Smeliansky,
is Comrade,
p.
195.
261
put
into
the project,
but
their ambitious plans
had little in
common with
his
own
ideas. Focusing
on the
humour
of
the
work,
he
was
largely
unconcerned either
by its lyrical
aspects or
by Gogol's
social critique.
From
the
beginning he
was
unhappy with
the self-conscious author
figure
and with
his lyrical digressions,
which
interrupted
the
flow
of
the
action.
The
role of the
Reader
was ultimately
erased completely; so
too
was
the notion of
two
contrasting worlds.
Moreover,
at
this period
Stanislavsky
was working on
the
development
of
his
techniques
of actor
training, and almost exclusively on
the
inner
workings of psychology.
In
a
further
exploration of the
ideas
that
had
governed
his
much earlier approach
to
Turgenev, he
proposed that
gesture
be kept
to
a minimum and
limited his
performers' mobility.
Wanting
nothing
to
detract
the
audience's attention
from
the actors,
he
rejected
Dmitriev's
exaggerated and stylised settings
in favour
of
the
restraint and minimalism of
his favoured designer, Simov. Dmitriev had
worked with
Meyerhold
on
the
early
design
of
The Government Inspector in
1926,
and
his
approach
to
Dead Souls demonstrated
clearly
the
influence
of this
experience.
659
Thus in dispensing
with
his
work
Stanislavsky
was also
deliberately
rejecting
Meyerhold's
approach, eradicating
from his
own work
its
phantasmagorical elements, which
in his
view owed more
to
Hoffmann
than to
Gogol.
660
His
rehearsals at
this period were
in
effect a
laboratory for
experimentation
in
acting
techniques.
Increasingly he
concentrated
less
on the
result
(blocking
a
work
for
the
stage, or
devising
a complete mise-en-scene) than
on
the
rehearsal
process
itself. (Or
perhaps more accurately, as
Rudnitskii has indicated, his
focus
narrowed still
further
to the
use of exercises
in
rehearsals).
661
Working
not at
the
MAT but in
the relatively confined
space of
his
private theatre
at
659Meyerbold
later
rejected
Dmitriev's designs in favour
of
his
own conception.
660Smeliansky,
Is Comrade,
p.
196. Bulgakov is
said to
have disliked Meyerhold's
Government Inspector but
as
Milne
and
Smelianskii have
argued convincingly this
production
of
1926
exerted a considerable
influence
on
Bulgakov
a and
Sakhnovsk's
work; see
Milne,
pp.
424-429,
and
Smeliansky, Is Comrade,
pp.
194-197.
661
Rudnitskii, '"Mertvye dushi",
p.
174.
262
home, he
therefore tended to rehearse with
the
actors
in
pairs, producing
finely-
honed
and vivid comic
duos, in
which the characters' quirky
traits
were
meticulously
detailed. Although
the
final
production was
to
include
some
ensemble work,
this working method,
together with
the
removal of
the
Reader
as a
link between
scenes, meant
that the
play was reduced
in
effect
to
a series of
duets like
variety show performances,
that
roughly corresponded
to the
chronology of
the novel.
By
the time the
production opened
the
director had
so
altered and simplified
Bulgakov's
original work as
to
eliminate
it
almost
entirely.
662
Thus,
as
Lesley Milne has
remarked,
Bulgakov's
adaptation of
the
novel, as produced and
(later)
published,
became
a
'conscientious'
reading of
the plot
-
more
The Adventures
of
Chichikov
than
Dead Souls.
663
This
was not
the
only occasion on which
Stanislavsky
showed a
high-handed
and
blatant disregard for Bulgakov's
artistic
integrity. The
conflicts
between
662Stanislavsky's
rejection of
Bulgakov's
more complex version appears
to
have been in
keeping
with
the
ideas
of previous adapters who
took similarly reductive approaches.
The first
stage adaptation of the novel opened on
9 September 1842
at the
Aleksandrinskii in St.
Petersburg
as a
benefit for N. I. Kulikov. Written by Kulikov himself, this
simplified version
was staged as a vaudeville as part of an evening variety programme of comic pieces and
melodramas.
It
proved popular
but
was removed
from
the repertoire after eight performances
after
the
intervention by
acquaintances of
Gogol
to
whom
the
writer appealed
in
a
letter
written
from Rome in
which
he
stated
that
he had
not given permission
for
an adaptation of
his
then
new novel.
Several
more adaptations of
the
novel were
later
produced
including
three
more at
the
Aleksandrinskii;
one
in 1893 by P. I. Grigor'ev
and two
in 1889
and
1893 by A. A.
Potemkin
and
V. A. Krylov. These, like that of
Stanislavsky,
were composed of
individual
vignettes and scenes
that corresponded
to the novel's chronology.
In 1916
at the
Korsh V. K.
Tatischev
wrote and
directed
a version
in
which
he
chose
to
ignore
the
work's satirical content,
an aspect which
by
contrast
A. Schvatz
emphasised
in his
musical-hall version staged
in
Leningrad following
the
Revolution. Directed by P. Veizbrem,
this
version,
like
that
of
Bulgakov, included Gogol's lyrical digressions. For
a more detailed
discussion
of these
productions,
see
S. Danilov, Gogol i
teatr
(Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi
literatury, 1956),
pp.
157-62,221-94.
In 1935
the
Uzbek director V. Vitt
produced
The Government Inspector,
which
in
common
with
Meyerhold's
production
in 1926, included
excerpts
from
other works
by Gogol, including
Dead
Souls. This
experimental,
fast-paced
and
farcical
production was condemned as
'mistaken'
and was said
to
demonstrate 'dangerous' formalist
tendencies.
See Istoriia
sovetskogo,
IV (1968),
pp.
372-373.
There is
some evidence
to suggest that
Stanislavsky's
version of
Dead Souls
was used as part
of
the official promotion of
the
MAT
as a model
for
other theatres in
the
Soviet Union.
Selected
scenes
from
the
MAT
version,
together
with other pieces
from
celela ted productions
were presented
in Latvia
when
the
company toured there
in 1940. Later V. Toporkov,
who
had
worked closely with
Stanislavsky in his latter
years at the
MAT
staged a revival of
Dead
Souls
at
the
Lettish Theatre in Latvia in 1952. For
the
actor
E. Sil'gis,
performing
in
this
production
allowed
him
to
become
properly acquainted with
Stanislavsky's
'system'. See
Istoriia
sovetstogo,
V (1969),
p.
486.
663Milne,
p.
430.
263
them
over
the
staging of
Moliere in February 1936
are
legendary,
and as noted
above
the
writer caustically satirized
his
experiences at the
MAT in his lampoon,
The Theatrical Novel.
Efros,
although well-versed
in
the
history
of
that
fraught
relationship, always
held Stanislavsky in high
esteem, and could not
therefore
bring himself
to
condemn
his behaviour
completely.
However,
there
is little doubt
that
in
the
debates between
the
director
and author over
Moliere he
sided with
Bulgakov,
with whom
he felt
a personal affinity.
In his
staging of
Moliere in 1967 (and
later in his film for
television)
Efros had
seen
in
the
experiences of
both Moliere
and
Bulgakov
a reflection of
his
own
difficulties
as
Artistic Director
of
the
Lenkom, but he had
also approached
the
work
in
a way
he believed
was closer
to
Bulgakov's
perception, and
thus
redressed an
imbalance in
the
original
MAT
production.
As
mentioned
in Chapter 1, Efros
wrote
little
about
Road,
so
that
his
response
to
Dead Souls
at
the
MAT
and
his
own
intentions in
adapting the
work are
largely
undocumented.
However, Baliasnyi's Road incorporated
the
idea
of
the
dual
worlds of
Italy
and
Russia,
and
included
a character called
the
Author. It
might
therefore
be inferred
that
Efros's
production was
intended
as a
corrective
to
Stanislavsky's interpretation,
and as something of a
tribute to
Bulgakov,
albeit an apparently misguided one.
Stanislavsky's
solution
to the
difficulty
of staging so complex a work as
Dead
Souls had been
to
simplify
the task,
but
the
success of
the
MAT
production
indicates
perhaps
that
in
this
he
was not altogether mistaken.
If his
approach
was reductive,
that of
Efros
and
Baliasnyi
was expansive, and
it
would appear
that the
root of
their
problems
in
staging
Road lay in its
sheer complexity.
In
fact E. Kotok,
noting
that
Baliasnyi had
previously
worked with
Efros
on an
adaptation
for
radio of
Jack London's Martin Eden,
suggested that the
perplexing
Gogolian fantasy
they
created was
better
suited to that
medium or to
264
television than to the stage.
664
Indeed
critics were
divided
over
the
stage-
worthiness of
Baliasnyi's
adaptation.
Smelianskii
remarked
that
Efros's
production was at odds with a
'well-constructed
work', and
laid
the
blame for
its failure
almost entirely on
the
shoulders of
its director.
665
This
was a
burden
that
Efros
seemed prepared
to
bear: he
absolved
the playwright of
responsibility, stating
that the script,
though complex, was an
interesting
work.
666
By
contrast,
the
actor
Kozakov identified
a
flawed
script as
the
chief
cause of
the production's
lack
of success.
667 This
view was endorsed
to
some
extent
by A. Latynina. Rejecting
some of
Smelianskii's
comments as
too
harsh,
she suggested
that
he
should
have
paid more attention
to
Baliasnyi's
interpretation
of
the novel.
668
Unfortunately
the present writer
is
unable
to
pass
judgment
on
the script
because it
remained unpublished and the original
manuscript
has been lost.
669
Judging, however, from
the
descriptions in
reviews and articles,
Baliasnyi's
play was
indeed
extremely complex.
Based
on
the
first
volume of
Dead Souls, like Bulgakov's
version
it
also
incorporated
material
from Gogol's letters. The
action,
divided by
an
interval
into
two acts, was
in four
parts, entitled
'Road', 'Auction', 'Ball'
and
'Court'.
This
was a
free
version of
the
novel, which
blended
reality and
fantasy,
conveying
Gogol's
world
through
images,
and which,
taking
for
granted that
the audience were
familiar
with
the
narrative,
disrupted (as Stanislavsky had
not)
the plot structure of
the
original.
For instance,
although
in
the
novel
664Kotok,
p.
3.
665Smelianskii,
'Chetyre',
p.
32.
666Efros,
Prodolzbenie,
p.
282.
667Kozakov,
'I
teat', p.
223.
668A.
Latynina, Xwon i "eyes' izobretatei'stva"', Literaturaue
obozrenie,
8 (1981) 92-96 (p.
93).
669The
loss
of this manuscript complicates the task of
discussing
the
production
in full. This
discussion
is based
on
the
inevitably
subjective commentary of others whose views cannot
be
countered
or confirmed
by
reference
to a written text.
The
manuscript was
held in
the
archives
of
the
Malaia Bronnaia theatre
before being
stored
in RGALI. However
extensive searches
in
libraries and
in both
these
institutions
proved
fruitless
with each claiming the
other
had
retained
it. Efforts
to
locate the script through scholars and aquaintances in Moscow
were
equally unsuccessful.
265
Chichikov
conducts
his
transactions with each
landowner in
private,
in
the
second part of
Act I
these were
turned
into
a ensemble piece, staged as a public
sale.
This
was
devised in
the manner of a simultaneous chess
display in
which
the
Grandmaster, Chichikov,
played a game with each of
his
opponents.
Some
games
(or
transactions) ended quickly as
the antagonist was rapidly
defeated,
but
others continued with mounting
tension.
Similar
changes
to the chronology
included
the
ending of
Act I
with
Chichikov's flight in
the
famous bird-like
troika, which
takes
place
in
the
novel
at
the end of
the
first
volume.
This
reversal of events made
those
of
Act II
curiously retrospective.
The
act opened with
the
ball
scene, and culminated
in
Nozdrev's
startling revelations about
Chichikov's
activities
(whereas in
the
novel
it is Nozdrev's
rumour-mongering
that
prompts
Chichikov's
escape).
The final
part,
invented by Baliasnyi,
saw all
the
characters
in
turn,
and
then
collectively,
argue with and pass
judgment
on
the creator,
the
Author. As
Smelianskii
noted,
the
drama
presented
the
novel
in fragments:
the action was
divided
between
scenes of grim reality and moments of pure whimsy,
lending
the play
the quality of a
dream.
670
Pul'khritudova
similarly
described
the
action
as capricious:
it
not only moved
backwards
and
forwards in
time,
but
also
alternated
between
scenes
in
which one or
two characters appeared and others
involving
them al1671
Baliasnyi's
intricate
adaptation was matched
by Efros's
no
less
ambitious mdse-
en-scene.
It
was played on a single composite set
designed by Levental',
which
in Meyerhold's
manner
had
stylised and exaggerated
features
and which
incorporated,
like Dmitriev's,
the
idea
of two
worlds.
The Author
appeared
first in
a
little
theatre set centre-stage;
its
own
fanciful backdrop depicted
a river
67OSmeliansk, 'Chetyre,
p.
27.
671E,
pnJ i, TAot
suwmyi
"Kozel
otpushcheniia"',
Literaturnoe
obouenie,
7 (1980)
84-89 (p. 89).
266
bank bathed in
sunlight, on which a
boat
and exotic
foliage
could
be
seen.
Lighting
effects were used
to transport the audience
between Rome
and
images
of
Gogol's Russia:
a motionless carriage
in front
of
the
mini-theatre,
three
horses
positioned
left,
right and centre as though they
were pulling a troika,
and
a
huge
tilted
wheel
hanging
over
the
actors'
heads. Demidova
was charmed
by
this setting, which reminded
her
of
the theatre of
her
childhood.
672
V. Berezkin
suggested,
however,
that the
set pieces remained either purely
functional
or
entirely symbolic, and
therefore
failed
to
create a sense of unity.
673
Smelianskii
too was unimpressed
by
the
set's naive, child-like and all-too-obvious
symbolism.
674
In A Month in
the
Country
movement
had been
choreographed
to the
music of
Mozart. Now Efros
used a similar
technique
for Road. However,
whereas
music
had been
used
for Turgenev's
work
to
generate a sense of unity and
harmony, here it
was meant
to
do
the
opposite.
The
production was
accompanied
throughout
by
excerpts
from Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony,
a
work underscored
by
tension
and characterised
by dissonance
and
discord. For
Efros,
who characteristically
drove
the
action
forwards,
creating a sense of
urgency
and alarm,
the
music was
intended
to
invoke
an atmosphere of
phantasmagoria and
the macabre.
When Shostakovich had
written that
symphony
in 1943, it had
caused
immediate hostility from
members of the
musical establishment.
They
resented
the air of
foreboding
that
permeates the
work, maintaining
that
an element of
triumphalism
might
have
seemed more
appropriate
in
view of the
Red Army's
recent victories.
It had been
withdrawn
from
performance
for
some
fifteen
years, and was only restored to the
repertoire
after
Stalin's death. It is
generally accepted to
have been intended
as a requiem
for
the victims of
Stalinism, but
overtly and officially
was a memorial to the
672Demidova,
'Osobyi',
p.
9.
673V.
Bereakin, 'Stsenografiia
vtoroi poloviny
70-kb
godov',
Voprosy
teatra 81,174-175.
674k
Smelims, +
tyre
yoga', Teatr, 10 (1980), 26-37 (p. 27).
267
casualties of war and
in
particular of
Stalingrad. Thus
although
for Efros it
generated a particular atmosphere
his
choice of
it, in
view of
its
association with
anti-war sentiments, was a curious one.
Interestingly,
the
music was almost
the
only aspect of
the
production which
Smelianskii
enjoyed:
that
very association,
he
suggested, added another
layer
of meaning
to
Gogol's
work.
However,
there
is little in Dead Souls itself
to
suggest
images
of war, and
for M. Sabi
ina
the
use of
Shostakovitch
was ambiguous and
disconcerting.
675
In 1975,
when approaching
Marriage, Efros had
refused
to
see
Gogol's
characters simply as comic masks or
types,
regarding
them
instead
as eccentric
but
sympathetic
individuals. Similarly in Road he
rejected
(erroneously, in
the
present writer's view)
the
notion
that
Dead Souls
was a satire.
He
suggested
that
Gogol,
viewing
Russia from
afar,
had been
expressing a
longing for his
homeland,
and
therefore
had looked
on
his
characters with
kindness. He
aimed
to reveal what
he
saw as the
characters"poetic' aspects as well as
their
human
qualities.
676
He based his
conception of
Chichikov
on
Gogol's idea
that there
is
a
Chichikov
in
every one of us.
He
therefore
altered traditional
interpretations
of the
character, stressing not, as might
be
expected,
Chichikov's
chameleon-like
changes of mood or
his fantastical
traits,
but instead his
very ordinariness.
Pul'khritudova
was surprised
by
this
Chichikov's business-like
attitude,
by his
lack
of a cranberry-coloured
tailcoat,
and
by
the
replacement of
the
famous
inlaid
mahogany
box by
a commonplace
black
travelling-bag.
677
She
suggested,
however,
that this
unusual
interpretation had its
own advantages:
Chichikov's
very ordinary appearance made
him
somehow more
dangerous,
not
675M.
Sabinina, 'Novye
pud sinteza',
Sovetskaia
muzyka,
5 (1983), 62-72, (p. 68).
676Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
281.
677puJ'chritudova,
'Etot',
p.
89.
268
least in
the
final
act when
he
argued aggressively and
belligerently
with
the
Author
over what
he
saw as
his
moral right
to
a
life
of comfort.
This Chichikov
was not only a
departure from
tradition,
but
also stood out
amongst
Gogol's
motley group of
landowners. Efros's
conception of
this
group of characters,
in Demidova's
view, showed
the
influence
of
Vakhtangov,
because he had
aimed
to
find
a
balance between
grotesque exaggeration and
psychological
truth.
678
Efros himself
remarked
that the
key
to their
interpretation
was
to
find for
each a single characteristic
trait.
679
He
encouraged
his
actors
to
use stylised gestures, and
dressed
them
(in
a
departure from his
previous practice)
in fantastical
costumes with exaggerated make-up, almost as
if
they were wearing masks.
However, by identifying
particular characteristics
and
by
effectively making
them
play
in
masks
Efros
presented
his
performers
with a considerable challenge:
to
maintain a
balance between
their
overtly
theatrical and outlandish appearances and
the
expression of a more subtle
inner
lyricism
and
humanity.
In
several reviews
Iakovleva (Korobochka)
and
Durov (Nozdrev)
were singled
out
for
particular praise,
but
other performers were
judged
to
have lacked
the
skills required
for
such
demanding
roles, and therefore to
have
portrayed not
vital and credible
individuals but
caricatures.
Pul'khritudova
remarked that
Viktor Lakirev
as
Manilov
and
Volkov
as
Sobakevich
were completely one-
dimensional. Their
performances, moreover, were so out of
keeping
with
those
of
the
rest of
the
cast that they
appeared to
be in
an entirely
different
production.
680
678Domidova,
'Osoby; ',
p.
9.
679g,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
69
680E.
PWry
t va,
'Roman
v zerkale stscny',
Sovetskaia kul'tura, 11 March 1980,
p.
5
269
Smelianskii
similarly condemned a
lack
of consistency
in
the
actors' portrayals.
He
suggested
that
an excess of
theatrical gesture and costuming
had
turned the
cast, with
the
notable exceptions of
Durov
and
Iakovleva, into
marionettes.
681
He
remarked, moreover,
that
in
stark contrast
to
Efros's highly-successful
Marriage,
the
actors
failed
to
engage
the
audience's sympathy.
In
the
earlier
production
the
director had
turned
monsters
into humans, but in Road had
achieved
the
reverse.
682
Efros himself
appears
to
have
endorsed
that
critic's
harsh
assessment
by
admitting
later
that
as
the
production ran
its
course
he had
allowed
the
actors
to
overplay and so
to
lose
sight of a sense of
inner
truth
and
empathy.
683
For Efros,
as
for Stanislavsky,
the
most
difficult
aspect of
the
production was
the role of
the
Author. Stanislavsky had
opted
for
the
simple solution of
removing
it, but for Efros
the
Author
and
his
relationship with
his
creation were
centrally
important. He
presented
Dead Souls
not as a chronological narrative
but in fragments,
as a
kaleidoscope
of
images,
characters and events.
The
action switched rapidly
from
vignettes
to
group portraits,
from
the
earth-bound
to the
fantastical,
and
from Italy
to
Russia
and
back. For Pul'khritudova
the
hurried
pace and chaotic structure reflected the
free-flowing
thoughts
of a
writer's mind.
6M Similarly, Smelianskii described Road
as an attempt to
access
and present
in
concrete
terms the
creative processes
that
had
generated
Dead
Souls.
685
Efros based his
work on
the
premise that
Gogol's
novel
had
not yet
been
written, and was
therefore
quite
literally
to
be
created
before
the
spectators'
eyes, channelled as
it
were
through
The Author. Like his Marriage in 1975,
Road
opened with a parade of the
characters, who responded to the
Author's
first lines
as
though summoned
in his imagination: 'Mepmsbie
Teicyr zwo a
681
Smelianskii, 'Cbetyre',
p.
27.
682Ibid.,
p.
30.
683Efros,
Prodolzhenie,
p.
73
684NIld
riwdova,
'Etot',
p.
89.
685Smelianskii,
'Cbetyre,
p.
28.
270
MHe cosepmneHto xaxceTcg, xax
6ypTo
KB
Poccan:
nepeAo imoio Bce
HaITM.
'686 Like Bulgakov's Reader,
the
Author
was alternately
involved in,
and
separated
from, his
creation.
He
was played
by Kozakov,
who
had
previously earned critical acclaim
in
leading
roles
in Don Juan, Marriage
and
A Month in
the
Country. On
this
occasion
however,
critics, were
divided
over
Kozakov's
performance
in
general, and
in
particular over
his
ability
to
maintain
the
necessary
balance
between involvement
and estrangement.
Demidova
remarked
that this
was
his
freest
achievement
to
date,
and
this
judgment
was echoed
by Kotok,
who said
that
Kozakov's
skill
in drawing
the
audience
into
the
creative process was one
of
the
production's greatest achievements.
687
Pul'khritudova, by
contrast,
while acknowledging
his
gifts, also recognised
his difficulties in
playing
this
dual
role, suggesting
that
he
seemed
to
be
engaged
in
single combat with
his
part.
688
In
another review she
indicated
that
at
times the
Author failed
to
show
sufficient empathy with
the
characters
he had
created.
689
For Smelianskii,
too,
this
was a central problem of
Kozakov's interpretation. Though in
the
opening
scene,
he
noted,
the
actor was emotionally engaged with
the
others on stage, as
the
action progressed
he became increasingly
cold and aloof and withdrew
into
his little
theatre,
distancing himself
physically and severing a vital
link
with the
audience.
0
Kozakov
quite
literally distanced himself from
the
production
by leaving
the
theatre
for
good soon after
the
opening night, on which, as
he
recalled, many of
the audience
had departed
at
the
interval.
691
He later
admitted openly that
he
686Quoted
in Smeliansk. 'Chetyre',
p.
27.
687DeMidova,
'Osobyi',
p.
9; Kowk,
p.
3.
688pj'kriwdova,
'Ewe,
p.
89.
689puJ
j
va,
'Romau',
p.
5
69OSmeliansk,
'Chetyre',
p.
31.
691Kozakov,
'I
teat?, p.
223.
271
had hated
the part and
(as
noted above)
laid
the
blame for
the
production's
failure
almost entirely on
the
script,
in
which
Chichikov
on occasion repeated
lines
spoken
by
the
Author. This device
was perhaps
intended
to
suggest
that
they represented
in
some senses
two
sides of a single character,
but in
Kozakov's
opinion
this turned
Chichikov,
quite erroneously,
into
the
Author's
intellectual
equal
692
He described
the two-year rehearsal period as a
torment;
he had frequently
argued with
Iakovleva,
who
despite her
considerable
talents
could
be,
as
Efros himself
once admitted, extraordinarily
difficult.
693
He had
also
had
protracted and
heated
arguments with
Efros. According
to
Kozakov,
their most serious
disagreements
concerned
the tone
in
which
he
was
to
deliver
his final
speech at
the
end of
Act I,
when
the
'bird-troika'
was
heard
to thunder
into
the
distance. Its departure
at
the
end of
Part One
of
Dead Souls,
when
it
comes
to
symbolise
Rus' herself, is
accompanied
by
philosophical musings of
the
self-conscious narrator.
These include
the
penultimate
line
of the
first
part
and possibly
the
novel's most memorable words:
'Pycb,
xyAa z Heceumcsr mi?
Aa omeT.
He
AaeT oTBeTa.
'694 For Kozakov
this
speech was crucial
to
his
entire
interpretation: it
underscored
the
essence of
the
Author's
relationship to
the world
he depicted. He
wanted
to
deliver
the
line
as a question, expressing a
sense of curiosity and wonderment, and
in
support of
this
view referred to the
sentence
that
immediately follows,
which suggests
that
all other nations make
way as
Rus' flies
past
like
a
thundering
wind.
This final line
expressed
for
6921,
cikIail Kozakov, '"V
svoem
kvadrate"', in Zaionts,
pp.
112-124 (p. 123).
93Kozakov,
'I
teat?, p.
223.
694N.
Gogol', Mernye dushi in Sobranie
sochinenii,
7
vols,
(Moscow: Kbudozbestvennaia
literatura, 1967), V, Part 1,
pp.
7-286 (p. 286). The
etymology and multiple meanings of the
word
Pycb (Rus)
are
the
subject of
debate. Historically it denotes
a geographical area
between
the river
Dnieper
and
its
two
Western
tributaries, the
Irpen
and the
Ros,
with
the
settlement of
Kiev
at
its
centre, and also refers to the
people whose occupation of this
area
is documented in
early chronicles
dating from
at
least
the
11th
century.
It
refers
in
addition,
however,
to their
language
and orthodox
Christian faith,
and
because it is
associated with
Russia's historical
roots and
her
people's
distant
origins, also
has
romantic, mystical and spiritual connotations.
In
using
this archaic
term to
describe Russia,
symbolised
by
the
'bird-like
troika',
Gogol
was
evoking
(ironically,
perhaps,
though
arguably with a sense of awe) the
historical
might of this
land
and people,
but
also alluding to those
other connotations.
For further details
of the
debate
over
the origins and meaning of this word, see
for instance Henryk Paszkiewicz,
The Origin
of
Russia (London: George Allen
and
Unwin, 1954),
pp.
1-25.
272
Kozakov
what
he believed
was
Gogol's
ultimate
faith in Rus'.
695
Efros,
however, insisted
that
he
should
deliver it
as
though
in
the
depths
of
despair.
Efros's
previous successes
had been
created with actors who
trusted
him, in
an
environment
in
which
disagreements
centred on
the
creative process and were
therefore
largely healthy
and productive.
The
conflicts surrounding
Road,
which
led
to the
departure
not only of
Kozakov but
also of
Bronevoi
(Chichikov),
were personal and acrimonious and generated
low
morale.
They
undoubtedly contributed
to the
failure
of a complex work, staged
by
a
director
who on
this occasion
frankly lacked
a sure
hand
and a coherent vision.
After
Efros's death, Kozakov
published
two
articles on
his
experiences at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia, in
which
(with
the
exception of
the
rehearsals
for Road) he
wrote
positively about
Efros's
productions and
their
working relationship.
He had left
the theatre
before Smelianskii's fateful
critique was published,
but
suggested
that though
harsh it
was
just.
6
He
also
believed, however,
that
Road
was
the
failure
of a gifted man, not of a
jobbing director (nposan
zyyoxmma,
axe
peMecnemmKa).
697
Smelianskii himself
was rather
less
temperate.
He
savagely criticised the
lack
of
unity
in
the
actors' approaches
in
a production which as a whole
'loomed
cheerlessly and
indistinctly'.
6"
In justice
to
Smelianskii it
should
be
remarked
that
he
was aware of
the
internal
problems at the theatre,
and of a
discussion in
the press
before
the
opening night which suggested that the
production was
in
difficulties. In fact
this
awareness created a
dilemma for
the
critic when
he
committed
his
comments
to print.
Nevertheless his
article was
deliberately
targeted and
hard-hitting,
not
least because he
alluded to
Efros's
previous
69SKozakov,
'V
svoem', pp.
123-124.
6961bid.,
p.
123.
697Kozakov,
I
teatr', p.
223.
69sSmelimaakri,
'(hetyre,
p.
32.
6991bid.,
pp.
36-37.
273
successes, suggesting
that the celebrated
Marriage
of
1975
was
'a lost
paradise'.
70
He
also used
the
director's
own metaphor of a cardiogram to
condemn
the
production's
failure
to
engage
the
audience's sympathy.
As
noted
in Chapter 1, Efros
used
this
image
to
express
his
overall approach to the
shape
of a production,
in
which
the
changing emotions,
like
the
pulse of a
heart-beat,
should always
be felt
with absolute clarity
701
On
the
screen of a cardiogram a
lack
of vitality
is
signalled
by
a straight
line,
and
Smelianskii
used
this
analogy
to
suggest
that
a
lack
of emotional engagement was one of
the
serious
faults in
Road.
702
He
suggested
too that the
image
of a road was an appropriate
metaphor
for
the
production as a whole.
He
recognised that
Efros, by
experimenting with overtly
theatrical techniques,
was
in
some respects taking
a
new road.
But
this approach
had led
to a conflict of
different
styles that
saw
his
cast wandering aimlessly rather
than taking
a
determined
new course.
Without
himself
quoting
Gogol, Smelianskii
was effectively asking
Efros: 'KyAa
ze
Hecetrmcsi Tt?
'. He believed,
moreover,
that the
failure
of
the
production was
symptomatic of more
fundamental
problems
for Efros
and
his
theatre.
At best,
it
should offer
the
director
a salutary
lesson,
a means
by
which
to
correct
his
path
in
the
future. In
conclusion
he hoped
that
setting the theatre
on some new
road would not
be in
vain, and
that
Efros
would not miss this
opportunity
for
a
fresh
start.
(bypeM
Hages mcst, TM HOBast Aopora He xairpadHa.
BygeM
HaAewrbcg, 'rro He 3pR oHa AaposaHa TBOp1y.
)703
Following
the publication of
Smelianskii's
article,
Road
played
infrequently
for
only
two seasons
before being dropped from
the
repertoire.
The
critic's views
did
not actually close
the
production,
but
perhaps sounded
its death-knell.
Its
failure
prompted
in
no small measure
Efros's
artistic crisis, which resulted
in
7001bid.,
p.
32.
701
Repetitsiia,
p.
38.
702Smelianskli,
'Chetyre,
p.
32.
7031bid.,
p.
37.
274
his
need to seek solace
in
the
past,
his
re-evaluation of
the techniques
of
the
early
MAT,
and
his
reservations about
his
own previous productions.
These
concerns were
to
find
their
clearest expression
in his Three Sisters
at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia in 1982.
275
Chapter 8
Hyxdxbi
HoBbie cpopMbi, a ecnH HX HeT, TO
Mme HHliero He HyAIHO.
Three Sisters
(1982)
276
Efros's
reassessment
in
the
early
1980s
of
Stanislavsky
and
his legacy
(noted
in
Chapter 1),
was
in line
with a general
trend
in
theatre
at
this time,
as
the
following brief
excursus will show.
Efremov had first
staged
The Seagull
as
his final
production at
the
Sovremmenik in 1970. In
that
production
Efremov, like Efros in his first Three
Sisters
two
years
before, had
explored
the theme of
the
demise
of common
ideals in
contemporary society.
As
a result
Chekhov's
characters neither
listened
to
nor
heard
one another.
Instead
they
struck attitudes, squabbled and
made scenes.
As Smelianskii
noted,
Efremov had
turned the
play
into
a
pamphlet, reflecting
the concerns and
'ideological
confusions'
that
followed
the
Prague Spring.
704
But in 1980 he brought Chekhov back
to
his
original stage
in
a new production of
that play.
This
staging
(like Efremov's
earlier
production of
Ivanov in 1978),
as
Shakh-Azizova
remarked, was
intended
to
reflect
the spirit of new
times, combined with a
'grain
of
tradition'.
705
He
focused
now on
ideas
of reconciliation and understanding, and on the
concept
that transcendent nature
diminishes
the
scale of
human
conflict.
The
setting
designed by Levental'
was a
detailed
and sumptuous recreation of natural
beauty
amid which
Chekhov's
characters
became
part of
the
landscape. 706 Charged
since
his
appointment as
Artistic Director in 1970
with regenerating the
MAT,
Efremov had
assembled a new company, and emphasised, as
Stanislavsky had,
the
importance
of playing as an ensemble.
Long
pauses, a seamless
flow
of
action, and gentle rhythms, were
techniques
borrowed from his
predecessor,
and
the production also opened with an orchestrated score of recorded cries of
gulls and pealing
bells,
one of
Stanislavsky's
own most
favoured devices.
The design for Volchek's Three Sisters
at the
Sovremmenik in 1982
was
by
contrast
devoid
of
detail
and much starker than
Levental"s. This
production
704Smeliansky,
'Cbekbov',
p.
35.
705S6akh-Azizova, 'Chdchov',
p.
170.
706M.
Litvarina, 'Kliuch
of miaue'.
Moskva, 7 (1983), 172-82 (pp. 173-174).
277
too,
however,
assimilated
the
past:
it
reflected
the
spirit of optimism of previous
interpretations,
most notably
that of
Nemirovich-Danchenko
at
the
MAT in
1940. At
the
end,
the
sisters appeared on a rainbow-shaped
bridge
that
spanned
the
width of
the theatre.
Picked
out
in
the
light
of projectors, and
high
above
the
creation
in light
and sound of
Tuzenbakh's
advancing storm,
they
were
lifted
above
the
world, and
from
their
vantage-point gazed out
into
a
brighter
future. As M. Litvarina
maintained,
this
ending was no requiem
but
the
start of
a new
drama.
707
Volchek's
production emphasised, through
frequent
physical
contact,
the
loving
relationships
between
the
sisters,
in
an
interpretation
of the
play
that emphasised their
personal
tragedy.
Stroeva,
when considering the
approaches
to
Chekhov
adopted at
this
period
by Efremov, Volchek
and
Efros,
acknowledged
the
differences between
their three productions,
but identified
a
tendency common
to them
all: a
desire for historical
continuity rather
than
direct
reference
to the
contemporary world.
708
One
production,
however,
stood out
in
stark contrast to this
general tendency,
Liubimov's Three Sisters,
which opened at
the
Taganka
on
16 May 1981. This
aggressively anti-lyrical and overtly contemporary
interpretation
was seen
by
one critic as an anachronism, which was not only
indebted
to the
1960s
concept
of a
'cruel' Chekhov, but
also
took that
idea
to
its
utmost extremes.
709
In
a
production
devoid
of almost all period reference,
Liubimov's
controlling
idea
was
the
militarisation of
Russia
-
from World War II,
through the
aggressive
campaigns
in Eastern Europe
to the
recent
invasion
of
Afghanistan
-
and the
subsequent and all-pervasive regimentation of contemporary
Soviet life
that
stifled
individual
action.
710
Iurii Kononenko's
set was stripped of any
semblance of
domestic
comfort;
for Stroeva, it had
the
appearance of a
disused
7071bid.,
p.
180.
708M.
Strceva, 'Voennaia
muzyka',
Teatr, 10 (1982), 118-25 (p. 125).
709Nikolai
Putintsev, 'V
poiskakh
Chekbova', Literaturnaia
Rossiia, 2 July 1982,
p.
14.
710T.
Kniazevskaia, 'Providcbeskoe
u
Chekhova', Teatral'naia
zhizn',
4 (1994), 9-12 (p. 11).
For
more
detailed
analyses of
this
production, see also
Allen,
pp.
98-102;
Beumers,
pp.
179.
185; Litvarina, 176-178,
and
Strceva, 'Voeneia', 118-125.
278
church converted
into
a
barracks.
711
In
this
prison-like environment the
presence of
Chekhov's
military officers was consistently emphasised.
The
play
was punctuated
by
military music, which not only often
dictated
a rapid pace
and mechanical actions
by
the
actors
but
also created
the
sense
that
almost
everyone on stage was part of
this militarised world.
Most
of
the
men were
dressed in
army greatcoats, and although
Irina
and
Masha
were
dressed
at
first
in
white and
black (as Chekhov
prescribes)
Ol'ga's blue dress
was replaced
by
a
khaki
uniform, and at
Vershinin's
arrival a military coat was
draped
around
Masha's
shoulders too.
The behaviour
of
the
soldiers was not
that
of the
men
she
describes
as
the
'best-mannered,
noble and
best-educated' in
the town,
but
instead
openly
brutal. Time
was
telescoped,
and
Liubimov
constantly reminded
the audience,
by
using a wall of mirrors set
to
one side of a
dimly-lit
auditorium,
that they,
not
the
protagonists, were
the
subject of
the
drama. His
central message,
however,
was
delivered by
an
ingenious device
which
framed
the
production.
At
the
opening, and at
the
finale,
the
mirrors slid
back
to
reveal
an opening
in
the
side wall, exposing
the
audience to the
air, electric
lights
and
hubbub
of
the night on
the
Sadovoe kol'tso, in
the
very
heart
of
the
city.
With
striking
force
and absolute simplicity
the
production was
declaring
to
its
audience
that
Moscow,
rather
than
a
distant future
or a place of
dreams,
was all
around
them.
Liubimov's
startlingly novel staging
deprived
the
characters, and
more
importantly
the audience, of all
hope,
stating
boldly
that there
is
no
future,
only
the
bleak
present.
712
Liubimov's Three Sisters
was criticised
for
a
lack
of psychological
depth,
and
for
a purely
formal
approach
that
failed
to
reveal the
work's sub-text713
Efros
concurred.
Indeed, he declared
that
his
own
Three Sisters
at the
Malaia
Bronnaia in 1982
was staged
in direct
opposition to the
work of the
711
S
ttoeve,
' Voennala',
p.
120.
712Beumers,
p.
184.
713G.
Z,
amkovets,
'Variatsii
pod orkestr',
Tewral'maia
zhisa,
23 (1981), 28-29.
279
Taganka.
714
He
attacked
Liubimov's
production
for its
overtly contemporary
interpretation. Recognising
the
debt it
owed
to the
1960s
concept of a
'cruel'
Chekhov, he
remarked
that the
director
was pursuing a path,
that
he, Efros, had
already
travelled
but
now
intended
to abandon.
715
In his
view
Liubimov's
methods
had
once
been
seen as revolutionary and novel,
but
were now
outmoded and exhausted.
His
comments are
hard
to
justify, because
there
was
much
that
was
innovative in Liubimov's
production,
but he
qualified
them
by
stating
that they
were not
intended
as a personal attack
but
rather as a reflection
of artistic
difference. Like
the other
'nostalgic'
productions of
the time,
Efros's
production
by
contrast was
deeply indebted
to the past and
heavily influenced
by
the techniques of
the early
MAT. This
was a style of
theatre that
Efros had
once vigorously rejected
but
now chose
to
celebrate.
In
truth, therefore,
his
criticism of
Liubimov
was
less
an assault on a specific production
than
an
apologia
for
a reversal of
his
previous approach.
His
argument was not with
the
Taganka director but
with
himself.
As
we
have
seen,
in his Seagull
of
1967
and
Three Sisters
of
1968 he had
wanted
his
actors
to
put aggression
into
their
performances, and
had
used
'Brechtian' techniques
in
an effort
to
open up
the
drama
as a public
debate.
Furthermore,
in
some scenes of
his Cherry Orchard
of
1975
at
the
Taganka
the
established
methods of
that theatre
had
produced a
demonstrative
style of
performance.
But
now
he
asked
himself
the
following
question:
CraBwm
Knaccaxy aipccci non
am
cnoxouo?
...
ArpcccaaBo
-
aro ssawr
se xy3e*so, se xpecrouaTziso.
Arpecc*aso
-
sro Tax, "rro6b[ sbmnecxssam
E csOR co6MCNKUe cerOAMOMMe 9y=ma.
(ioxo
eo
-
3TO Be 3EaAMT max.
B
Aassog cnyQae a veto s ISM To cnoEOIcrsae, moe
6wio
is nepsoM
714Ef
,
'O blagorodstve',
p.
23.
71 S1bid.
An
edited version of
Efros's
article
'0 blagorodstve
appeared
in English in
the
following:
Innokenti
Smoktunovsky
and
Anatol Efros, B 'al Are Those
with a
Breadth
of
Vision: Excerpts from
a
Workshop', Soviet Literature, 4 (1988), 168-177.
280
cnerraicne
MXATa.
...
Paavme
a nPW Cpa(HBancn IIepso TO'1KR 3 CHHX as
UOCTaHOBKy xnaccKxH, a Tenepb CKJIOll Uocb K BTOpo.
716
As
a student and
in
productions
in
the
1950s
and
1960s Efros had
wanted
to
rejuvenate contemporary
Soviet
theatre,
and
in 1967 had identified
with
Treplev
in
calling
for 'new forms'. At
that time
his
way of achieving
this
aim
had been
to turn
his back
on
Naturalism
and
to
explore more overtly
theatrical techniques.
In 1982, by
contrast, although with
that
same aim,
he
rejected
this
idea. In
approaching
his
new
Three Sisters, he
took
his
cue once more
from Treplev,
and now suggested
like him
that these
'new forms' had become
routine and
overused.
He
claimed
that they
had led directors
to
become
excessively
concerned with styles of presentation rather
than
inner
truth,
and questioned
why everyone always recalled
the
character's
demand for 'new forms' but
never
remembered
his
words:
"'Reno
He B cTapbix aim HoBwx
4)opMax. J
eno B TOM,
MTO TO, irr0 nmmeun
,
AOJIZHO CB060AHO namCH H3 AyIuH
...
HT.
g.
CBo6ogHO! '.
717
If in
the
past
Efros had built his
theatre
on
the
basis
of
his desire
to
marry
inner
truth with
its
outer physical expression,
he
now asserted
that the
former
was
his
only
true
concern:
Mae
xa3anocb, TO Aeno Tont1o so enympenneii npaede, 'rro Tonbxo e ne we
penn.
Mae
ta3aaoca, Wo aaj o aoczasaT aosLie Tpa cecTpu a aosyio
Liaxy.
B
TOM cw3Zcne, '1TO6x saMra UOBL1X Aecmytouc nag, aosyto
716Efros,
ProdoWienie,
pp.
35-36.
717Efros,
Kniga,
pp.
375-376. (His
emphasis).
Although it
was clearly
his intention
to do
so,
Efros did
not stage a second produces of
The Seagull.
Efros is
paraphrasing
Chekhov. In Act IV
the playwright gives
Treplev
the
following lines:
'A
Tax Macro robopIJI 0 HOBMX
4opMax,
a TCHepb RyacTaylo, wo cam Maao-nouaJIy
cnon3aio it pyrase.
' Later in
the same speech
Treplev
states:
'Aa,
it we
6om
me il
6ofibme
Hpaxozy a y6ez eHmo, aTO j(ello Be a CTapblx a He B HOBM
$opuax,
aB TOM, iITO
9eAODCK namer, He J*YM SO =aVHT
lxipu*X,
HMteT, HOTOMM 'ITO 3T0 cao6o ENO a erca H3
ere M=.
' Chaika, Act IV,
pp.
55,56.
281
cpeJy, Home NA em, Ho BounoTwrb ax c TaKoio Xe cano BuyrpenHe npasyVbt,
Kax 3rro eorAa-To
6wno
B craprlx mxaToscKRx cneKTamix.
718
At
such a
distance in
time
it is difficult
to
assess whether
the
earliest productions
at
the
MAT
were
in fact
characterised
by
a powerful sense of
inner
truth
as
Efros
suggested.
Given
that
at
that
period
Stanislavsky's ideas
on
the
'creative'
actor were
in
their
infancy
and
that,
judging from his
notes
for The Seagull
and
Three Sisters, in
which
he details
every gesture,
he
was extremely prescriptive,
there
is
an argument
to suggest
that this
was not
the
case.
In
the
context of
the
period, and as a reaction against the
histrionic
style of nineteenth century
theatre, the
first MAT
actors undoubtedly created a greater sense of
fidelity
to
life. But
this
was
far from being
the
kind
of absolute naturalness
that
adherents
of
his later 'system'
would seek.
It is
therefore
possible
to
suggest
that
Efros,
who with
his Seagull in 1966 had destroyed
a cherished myth about the
MAT,
was seeking
by
contrast
in 1982
to
recreate another.
He
was aspiring now,
however,
not only
to
emulate
the
MAT by
returning to
its
past
but
also
to
recover
his
own: not
the
past of
his
startlingly
innovative
productions of
Chekhov, but
rather
his 'golden
period' at
the
CCT. He hoped
that
his
new
Three Sisters
would generate
the
sense of spontaneity and vitality
that
had
once excited the
audiences
for Rozov's Good Lack
.
719
He
was sadly
mistaken.
As
we shall see,
his
production
did
not
live
up
to
his
expectations
and
failed
to
impress
the
public.
As has been
argued
throughout,
Efros
viewed the
Russian
classics through the
prism of
his
own experience.
In his
earlier productions, as we
have
seen,
he
had been
accused of
taking
an excessively subjective approach,
deliberately
distorting Chekhov in
order
to
reflect contemporary
concerns.
He had
staged
718
Kniga,
p.
377. (His
emphasis).
7191bid
282
The Seagull
and
Three Sisters
as
though they
had
never
been
produced
before,
stripping
them
of past
interpretations
and
telescoping time
in
order to turn them,
as
it
were,
into
new
dramas. Moreover, in his first, deeply
pessimistic
Three
Sisters, he had
presented
the effect on society of the
irretrievable loss
of prized
cultural values as a stark
fact,
reflecting
the
disillusionment
of
his
audience, the
contemporary
intelligentsia. But in his
new production,
though
it
conveyed a
similar sense of
loss,
the
idea
of modernity was given a new emphasis.
In his
writings of this period,
he
made
frequent
comparisons
between
modern
practices and
his idealised
view of
theatre
in Stanislavsky's day. He
criticised
modem actors
for
a
lack
of professionalism, and
for
wasting
their
energies
by
working
in film
and
television.
Audiences
too
were
less
well-read
than their
predecessors and
had less
understanding of
high
cultural
ideas. In fact he
saw
the theatre of
the time
as a microcosm of society at
large,
which was equally
deficient.
720
His
new
Three Sisters
therefore
was not
'modern', but indebted
to
history,
creating a sense of
distance between itself
and
the modern world.
'Modernity'
was
intended
to
be
a negative example against which a positive
evocation of
the
past could
be
measured.
He
seems to
have hoped
that
in
staging
Three Sisters
again
he
could somehow recreate an
idealised
past and
restore
this cultural
loss. He
therefore
consciously
disassociated himself from
the
'avant-garde',
which
he
now saw as a
destructive force,
and advocated
instead
not
the
rejection of,
but
a sense of continuity with,
traditional
interpretations.
721
For
a
director
once condemned
for his
assault on
the
enshrined orthodoxy of
the
MAT,
this
was a radical change of
tack,
although
paradoxically a conservative and politically reactionary one.
His
rallying cry
for
the restoration of
tradition
was
the
'Return
of
Chekhov
to
Chekhov',
and
ironically he found himself in full
agreement with those
critics who
had
72OEfros,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
42-43.
721EfroS,
'o blagorodstve',
p.
24.
283
condemned
his
earlier work
for its 'anti-Chekhovian' failure
to
conform.
722
The influence
of
the
early
MAT
was
felt in
the
setting, mood, atmosphere and
pace of
his
new production, and can also
be
seen
in his frequent
allusions to the
work of
Stanislavsky,
and to a
lesser
extent
to that
of
Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Before
creating
his
new setting
he
studied
the
designs
of
Simov
and
Dmitriev
for
the
MAT
productions of
1901
and
1940. Making
a comparative analysis
between
the two,
he
concluded
that the
MAT's
so called
'realism', for
all
Stanislavsky's
attention
to
detail, had
retained what
he described
as an element
of
lyrical idealism'. His
own
design,
created
in
collaboration with
Levental',
while
it
was
in
no sense a carbon copy of either predecessor, reflected that
concern
to
recreate
this
lyricism.
72
Whereas in
many previous productions
he
had
used single, unchanging sets, charged with visual symbolism
but
abstract
and
devoid
of realist
detail, his
new
Three Sisters
evoked an atmosphere of
intimate domesticity
and comfort.
It included
many
features
of every-day
life,
from
the table
laid for Irina's
name-day celebrations to
vases of
flowers,
period
furniture
and multi-coloured
fan-lights
over each
door. As Nikolai Putintsev
noted, a sense of
historical distance between
the
characters and
their
audience
was created
by
the
use of a semi-opaque gauze
hung
over part of
the
stage;
actions performed
behind
this
were partly obscured, as
though
played out
in
a
mist of
time.
724 Significantly,
the
design
also
included
a
direct
visual quotation
from
the
1901
production.
A huge
panel across
the
back
wall
depicted
the
sisters
huddled
together
in
a way
that
for Putintsev
was very reminiscent of
the
famous
grouping created
in
the
finale by Stanislavsky? u
In his Three Sisters
in 1967 Efros had
consciously avoided
bringing
the
sisters together.
In 1982
by
contrast,
in
the
final
scene
he
repeated
the
quotation
by
grouping them,
7221bid.
723Efros,
Prodolzbenie,
pp.
33-34.
724putintSev,
p.
14.
7251bid.
284
down-stage left, in
the
same pose
that
his
predecessor
had
given
them.
This, it
will
be
recalled, was not
the
first
time
Efros had 'quoted'
the
MAT. But,
whereas
in 1967 MAT
actors
in
the
audience
for The Seagull had been
angered
by
the
naive
depiction
of a seagull on
the
front
curtains of
the
Lenkom in
apparent mockery of their theatre,
on
this
occasion
the allusion was not
intended
to
ridicule,
but
rather
to
show a
kind
of reverence and
to
imply
a sense of
continuity with
tradition.
Chekhov,
when writing
Three Sisters,
explored the
metaphorical
implications
of
photography as a method of preventing the
march of
time
and providing proof
of people's existence.
726
At
the
end of
Act I, Fedotik
takes
a group
photograph, and
this
moment
is lent
a greater significance
in Act III
when
he
declares
that
all
his belongings (including
presumably
that
photographic record)
have been lost in
the
fire. This
symbolic
destruction
of photographic proof
appears
to
imply
that time
cannot
be halted,
and that
people
in
the
past,
for
all
their
efforts, will not
be
remembered, which
is
underscored
in Masha's
assertion when speaking of
her
mother:
IlpeAcTaBbTe,
9 y3x HaMIxato
3a6bmam ee
,
moo.
Tax
ao Hac He
6yAyr
nom.
3a5yi
yr.
'727 By
contrast
Efros, in his
use of
this
same motif, appeared to
assert not only that the
past
could
be
recreated
but
also, at
least
symbolically, that
it
could
be
retained
in
the
imagination. He
achieved
this
not only
by
the
repetition of
the
image
of the
three sisters
(itself indelibly
printed on audience's minds
from
a photograph
reprinted
in history books) but
also
by framing
the
entire action as a
photographic still.
The
production opened and closed with a
familiar device:
the gathering of
the entire cast on
the
forestage,
presenting themselves
to the
audience.
He
moved
to the
beginning
of
the
action
Fedotik's
snapping of the
group as they gathered
to
admire
his
present.
For Smelkov
the
capturing
on
726waxall,
'Stanislavsky's',
p.
14.
727Tri
sestry,
Act I,
p.
128.
285
film
of
the
characters watching a spinning
top expressed
Efros's
entire purpose
in
a production
that
hoped
to show
that the
whirling passions and
ideas
of
these
people were
both frozen in
time
and also,
like history itself,
very much alive.
728
Moreover, by
a repetition of
this sequence at
the
end concrete evidence of this
vibrant past was preserved and, as
Smelkov
put
it, handed
to the
audience as a
'keepsake'.
In 1967
the
sacrificial victim
Treplev,
the
artist,
had been 'hung'
on
the
scaffold
of
his
own
theatre.
In 1975
the cherry orchard
had
not
been
merely
threatened
with
destruction but
already
buried in
a graveyard.
And in Efros's first Three
Sisters
a single plant with gilt
leaves had
stood centre-stage as an absurd
reminder of a
luxurious
past
in
a world overhung
by
the gnarled
branches
of
dead
trees.
Through
the
use of such concrete visual metaphors,
the
works'
central
ideas
and
the overall mood of
the
productions
had
not
been
seen
in
a
process of
development
or as subject
to
change,
but
rather
had been
established
from
the outset.
In
this
way
the
sub-text of
the
works
had
not simply
been
faintly discernible,
revealed only
in
what remained unsaid,
but forced
to the
surface as
the very substance of
the
dramas. In his
new
Three Sisters Efros
categorically rejected
this approach.
Referring
to the
gilt-leafed plant,
he
now
declared:
Heabsx
rp' gaca paccmaTpasaT yMepunit IBemi.
HaAo
y BzAem, icro caauna
neTKa se
6huco,
nOTOM 3TOT JBOTOK *Npoc,
noTOM on cTan xpacHBU, noToM
cTan yBiJ am.
0623aTOnbUO
AOMKCR
6b"
b npoiecc.
729
Thus, his focus in 1982
was on
developing
changing moods, on creating a
'flow
of
life',
and on
the subtle revelation of
the
sub-text.
In
all
this,
Efros
was
728Iurii
Smelkov, "Tri
Wavy"
1982', Moskovskii konisomokts, 27 July 1982,
p.
3.
729Ens,
'0 blagorodstve',
p.
24.
286
borrowing directly from
the
ideas
of
Nemirovich-Danchenko
and
Stanislavsky,
and was also
influenced by listening
to
recordings
from
the
1940 MAT
production.
While
working on
The Wood Demon, in 1889, Chekhov had
remarked,
apparently exasperated
by how frequently his
own characters were seen eating:
'ToAH
o6eAaloT, ToJIbxo o6eAaIOT, aB 3'ro BpeMx cnarae-rcx ux c-qacTbe a
pa36HBalYrcM xca31UH.
'730 Chekhov
used
The Wood Demon
as a
basis for
Uncle Vanya,
and
Efros, in his
notes
for
an unrealised production of the
later
play
in
the
1970s, incorrectly
attributed
this
comment
to
Nemirovich-
Danchenko:
Ha
He ysepea
(o
yzac!
),
wo upaa
He
pow
-gffleaxo,
roaopasomg, pro
cyj6bt repoea y
ilexoaa
pemaioTCA, xorja miogw o6ejaior, HanpIMep, ana
IIpoCTO MHpno CHgAT 3a cronoM.
731
Clearly interpreting
what
he believed
were
Nemirovich-Danchenko's
words to
mean
that the
play was reliant on a
hidden
sub-text and should
therefore
generate a gentle and calm mood,
Efros had
categorically rejected this
notion,
stating on
the contrary
that
in Uncle Vanya
the
characters' emotions should
be
displayed
sharply and openly as
'naked'
tragedy.
732
In his
new
Three Sisters,
however, he hoped
to
produce
just
such a sense of
the
flow
of
life,
and was
paraphrasing
this
idea
when
he
suggested:
HeRapoM
xe ende TorAa, RaBno, no
MXATC
apI yMaaca Taxae cnosa, xax
nTopo nnanr a UOArexcT.
A
To y sac 1euepb sToporo nnasa aacTo a ae
730A.
Gu
,
'Iz
vospominanii ob
A. Chekhove', in Surkov, Chekhov,
pp.
206-207
(p.
206).
73tEfrOs,
Professiia,
p.
340.
7321bid.
The
notes
for Uncle Vanya
were written sometime
in 1975
and
in his
conception of
this unrealised production
the open expression of emotions and passions
was
if
anything more
extreme
than
in
the works of
Chekhov he
actually staged.
See Professa,
pp.
339-349.
287
6uBaeT,
MM ero stlsoJIM B uepBbz.
14
uony'aezca unocxo...
A
Napo, qTo6m
xcassb Tema,
6yJ
TO n vcro CTpaulHOro m seT,
6yyro
sce s nopswe, a vro TaM, s
rny6HHe, MOAB oeeHb
6CCUOKOs1TCA,
TO 3T0 sew
-B
rny6Hue.
733
Thus,
although
in
the earlier production of
Three Sisters,
while charting the
sisters' changing moods,
Efros had
created an overriding sense of tragedy,
in
this
second version,
by
contrast,
he hoped
to
begin
on a more
buoyant, happy
note.
In
this
he borrowed directly from Stanislavsky. He
re-read
the
well-
known
account of
how in
rehearsals
for Three Sisters (recorded in My Life in
Art)
the tone of
the
production
had
seemed all wrong, and
how
someone
scratching a
bench,
making a sound
like
a mouse,
had fired
the
director's
imagination.
734
Stanislavsky had
suddenly realised
his
error and understood
that the
sisters were not revelling
in
their
melancholy
but longing for joy,
laughter, happiness
and wanting
to
live. Efros
admitted
that
in
the
past
he had
known but deliberately ignored Stanislavsky's 'ruling idea'. He
now concluded
that this
was not simply a possible
but indeed
an essential
interpretation
of the
work.
735
In
the
1980
production at
the
Taganka Liubimov, in
order to
remind the
audience of
how Chekhov had been
played
in
the
past, and as a
deliberate
allusion perhaps
to
styles of performance
he
was seeking to
reject,
had
used
recordings of
the
voices of actors
from
previous productions.
For instance
Tuzenbakh's deliberations
on
the
future in Act I had been
overlaid
by
the
voice
of
Vasilii Kachalov,
who
had
played
Tuzenbakh in Stanislavsky's
production of
1901. Efros
criticised what
he
saw as the
apparent mockery
in
this
use of
Kachalov's
voice as
'empty irony'
and condemned
it
as a piece of gratuitous
'trickery'. For him
the
recording served only to
demonstrate
the
beauty
of
the
733FI,
og,
Prodolzhtnie,
p.
30.
734Stanislavskii,
Moia
zhizn', p.
242.
735Ef
os,
Prodohhenie,
p.
49.
288
old actor's voice
by
contrast with
the
unappealing
flatter
ones of
the
Taganka
performers.
736
For Efros,
the
key
to
achieving
the
appropriate mood
for
the opening of
Three
Sisters depended, logically
enough, on
the
delivery
of
Ol'ga's first lines.
('OTeg
yMep poBHO roA Ha3ag, KaK pa3 B 3TOT geHb, n$Troro Max B TBoH
mieixm; bi,
I'Ipmia.... IloMiuo,
xorga o'ga Hems, To Hrpaiia My3bnca, xa
xnaig6aute cTpen
.
OH 6brn
reHepan, KOMaHHoBan
6pmraAo#,
Mez iy TeM
HapoAy Juno Mano.
')737 Although he did
not
incorporate
recordings as
had
Liubimov, in
order
to
find
the
appropriate
tone
for Olga he listened
to
a
tape
of
the
MAT
actress
Elanskaia,
and marvelled at
the apparent carefree tone
of
her
delivery,
which
barely hinted
at
the
emotions
hidden beneath
the
words.
738
It
was precisely
this
sense of subtle shading, which
he described
as a
'rare
combination of simplicity and wisdom'
that
he hoped
to
produce
in his
own
actors.
While
the
play was
in
rehearsal,
he
was also conducting a series of
workshops with young
directors, in
which
he frequently
referred
to
his
work
in
progress.
In
one session
he
carefully re-examined the
opening passage,
admitting
that
he had
once
interpreted
the
lines
as a melancholy reflection on
the
past, and
had
emphasised
Olga's
sorrow at
the
lack
of mourners at
the
general's
dismal funeral. But it
was possible,
he
now maintained, to
deliver
the
lines
differently,
not as
tragic
but
as a quiet acceptance that
all things
in life
must
pass.
739
Although
the production created moments of pathos and sadness, such a sense
of acceptance was maintained throughout,
and
Efros hoped
to
end on a note of
optimism, expressing what
he
stated was
his
admiration
for
the
sisters' youthful
736Efros,
'0 blagorodstve',
p.
23.
737Tri
Sentry, Act I,
p.
119.
,
fiXg Prodolzhenie,
p.
44.
739F.
+os, '0 blagamndstve',
p.
23.
289
purity and endurance.
740
This
more positive ending was
in
complete contrast
to
the
sense of
despondency
and pessimism expressed
in his
earlier
interpretation.
Like Volchek's, his
production also
had
much
in
common, moreover, with
Nemirovich-Danchenko's
staging
in 1940,
which
had
reflected the
accepted
Soviet interpretation
that
Chekhov himself had looked
to
a
better future.
In
the
1980s
such
ideologically-charged interpretation
was still prevalent.
When
at
the
Taganka in 1980 Irina had delivered her
speech
in Act I
on
the
need to
work
from
a platform stage
in
the
manner of a school-girl reciting
lines learnt
from
a
text
book,
and
had drawn ironic
applause
from her
on-stage audience,
G. Zamkovets had
objected
in his
review
to the
'evident
sneer'
in
the
speeches
about work and
the
future,
arguing
that
it
negated
'the
essence of
Chekhov's
world view'
-
his love
of
humanity
and
hopes for
a
better life.
741
Very
similar
criticism
had
once
been directed
at
Efros's ironic
treatment
of
Tuzenbakh's
and
Irina's
speeches
in his 1968
production.
At
that time
Smelianskii had
also
suggested
that this
was a searing
indictment
of
the
Soviet labour
camps.
742
Efros later denied,
somewhat
disingenuously, but
perhaps
to
avoid accusations
of political subversion,
that
he had
ever
intended
to
mock the
idea
of work.
743
He
now admitted,
however,
that
in his
previous production
he had been
unable
to take seriously
these
idle
people's
talk
of
the
need
to
work, and
had
treated
it
as romantic nonsense.
7
He
made
it
clear
that
his
attitude
to the theme
of work
had
completely changed, and
in
an extraordinary about-turn stated that
Chekhov's
message, and
therefore
his
own, was
that
'work is
the
only thing
that ennobles man'.
745
He
saw this
both
as a reflection of
his
personal
belief
and as a commentary on contemporary society.
He declared:
7401bid.,
p.
24.
741
Zamkovets,
p.
29.
742Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
70.
743Efrog,
Prodolziunie,
p.
32.
744Smoktunovsky
and
Efros,
p.
173.
7451bid.
290
I
work
from
morning
till night myself, and a
day
off
is
torture.
I believe
that
people who
don't
work are miserable.
The
main
thing
is
to ensure that this remark
[Irina's]
about work
does
not
leave the audience
indifferent
or sceptical.
I have
come to
understand one simple
truth.
We
are
haunted by
the
same problem as
Chekhov in his day:
people
don't know how
to
work and
they
don't
want
to
work.
That is
the main source of our troubles.
Life
would
be
completely
different if
everyone were
dedicated
to their
work and
did it
well
746
It
was
Efros's intention in
this
more
buoyant,
optimistic production
that
his
audience should
feel
a sense of
identity
with
the
sisters and share
their
heart felt
dreams: 'Mm
He AomKm AyMam, pro omm HecgacTHbi.
MbI
AojmcHbI AyMa!,
wo oHn xopoutme.
MbI
Ex jjon ximi nomo6am,
oneTb
3a Hxx H BMeCTe c
mnm Meirram, 'rro6bi Bce
6bino
xopomo.
'747 Statements like
these
indicated
a
change of attitude
towards the
characters
themselves.
Whereas in his
earlier
production
Efros had
viewed
them
(as it has been
suggested the
playwright
himself had)
with a
degree
of objectivity, seeing
the
philosophising officers
for
the most part as absurdly
ineffectual, he
now regarded
them
with greater
indulgence,
suggesting
that
although
they
were eccentric, and perhaps even a
little
naive,
they
were also essentially good-hearted.
748
In
the
earlier production
Solenyi had been
seen, unusually, as
the
most
honourable
and upright, and
Efros's
view of
him
remained sympathetic.
According
to
Putintsev, A. Kotove
created a memorable moment when, on
his knees before Irina,
after
issuing his
threat to
kill his
rival
in
a malicious
half-whisper, he
was as
it
were unmasked
and revealed
the
genuine suffering of a man truly
in love.
749
Similarly,
whereas
in 1968
the
sisters'
behaviour had been
criticised as contrary to that
of
7461bid.
747g
Prodolzhenie,
p.
30.
7481bid.,
p.
34.
749Patintsev,
p.
14.
291
cultured and educated women,
to the extent
that there
was
little discernible
difference between
them and
the
vulgar
Natasha, in 1982 Efros
encouraged
his
performers
to
play with greater
delicacy
and
finesse
and
to
move graciously,
qualities
Smelkov
admired
in 0. Sirina
as
Irina.
7S0
This
emphasis on
the sisters' graciousness,
together
with
his
wish
to
imitate
the
flow
of
life, led Efros
to
reject
the
energetic and accelerated rhythms
that
had
been
so characteristic of
his
earlier work.
He
now associated speed with
the
hectic
pace of modem
life,
and
in
order
to
create a sense of a more genteel,
leisured
existence
in
the past
he
slowed
the
whole production
down,
much
in
the style of
Stanislavsky,
using pauses and moments of quiet reflection.
751
Now
critical of
his
own
former
approach,
he
quite unjustifiably reproached
members of
his
company at
the
Malaia Bronnaia for
the
dynamic
style
he
himself had
encouraged
by his ideas
of
'acting
on
the
run':
A
RCKOTOpbLX CBOHX aKTepos 3araaJI a TaXO* lcMOTop, 9T0 o1E Ao CHx IIop H3
Hero HHKaK HC MOM sbtTx.
A
Le rosopio: tTyr
-
Mim, TyT sap o pyme
nojjyMaTb,
-a
oan use: KaKaa pyma?
AasaTe
cKOpee onpeAc=m
AC CTBKC...
HXC
rpyCTWWO nartioAaio co6CTaeaIblx 3axoTOpefabix
ygennxos.
I'na3a
ynx
6eraioT,
pyxa-aore 'epraioTcs, a mite am xotleTcg
CKa3aTb: ocTanOBITCCb,
6ora
paaa.
3TO
yze TOJIbKO cyeTa, MoTop,
Mexaa'Ka.
752
Although Efros
writes
here
of
'some
of my actors'
it
can
be inferred
that
in
truth
he is
referring
directly
to
Durov,
the most energetic performer at
the
Malaia
Bronnaia
and
the motive
force
that
powered some of
his best
productions.
Efros's
comments were unjustified, particularly
in
the
light
of the
performance
750Smelkov,
"Tri
sestry"
1982',
p.
3.
75lE+os,
'O blagorodatve,
p.
24.
7521bid.
292
Durov had
given as
Chebutykin in 1968. He had
created the
most memorable
moment of the
production
in his
wild
dancing,
which
far from being
purely
mechanical
had
expressed
his intense inner frustration
and
despair
at
the
absurdity of existence.
In
the
second production
G. Korotkov
was
directed
to
repeat
Durov's
action,
but
as
Irina Vergasova
remarked
this
dance
appeared
perfunctory, and
Putintsev
suggested that
it had
simply
been imported into
the
action, as a
'piece
of
business' (Bbir
r aTrpax1HoHoM) no
longer linked
to
the
character's
inner
torment.
753
Efros's
remarks may also
be
seen as an excuse
for having looked
outside the
Malaia Bronnaia for
the
cast of
the
1982
production.
Much
to the
understandable chagrin of
his
existing company,
he
selected
Iakovleva for
the
role of
Masha but
used very young actors, recent graduates and students
in
almost all
the
other roles.
Moreover, he
clearly saw
Three Sisters
as an
opportunity
to
rebuild and gather around
him
a
loyal
company to
replace actors
with whom
in
some cases
he had
worked all
his life. He declared
openly that
the
future
of
theatre
depended
on
the
young.
However, his
relationship
with
this new troupe
was not
founded
on collaborative creation
but instead
was
closer
to that of a master with
his
pupils.
He
consistently reiterated to them the
importance
of
his ideas
on a continuity with
tradition,
which as we
have
seen
was central
to
his
re-staging of
Chekhov.
However, in
mounting
this
production with all
its
allusions to the
past
he
also
had
another purpose.
He
was attempting to
resurrect a mission central to
Stanislavsky's
art:
the
creation of a
theatre
based
on the
values of so-called
high
culture, whose aim was
to
elevate and edify
its
audiences.
As
we
have
seen,
in
his
writing at
this period
Efros
made
frequent
comparisons
between
his
own
world and
his idealised
and romanticised view of
Stanislavsky's.
He described
7531
vergWvj, wie
po
krugu: "Tri
sestry"
A. P. C hekhova
v teatrakh
na
Maloi
Bronnoi i "Sovremeonik"', Sovetskaia Rossiia, 4 April 1982,
p.
3; Putintsev,
p.
14.
293
Stanislavsky
as an
'aristocrat', by
which
he
meant not a member of a manicured
nobility
but
an artist who was aristocratic
in
spirit, with a sense of refinement
and a
fundamental
understanding and appreciation of
high
cultural values
754
He further
suggested
that
Chekhov had been
elevated
from lowly beginnings
to
this
same exalted status, and
that the
world
in
which
these
men
lived (and by
extension
their productions at
the
MAT) had been infused
with
this
'artistic,
aristocratic spirit'.
Contemporary directors, he
reasoned, were not
'aristocrats'
but
members of
the
'nouveau-riche',
and
their
art was
by
contrast rough and
crude.
755
Moreover,
modern society was
less
refined, and modem audiences
less
cultured and relatively
ill-read by
comparison with
those
of
the
past.
Efros
saw
the
lofty ideals
and aims of
the
MAT
as
its
true
legacy. He described its
purpose as, at
its
simplest,
the
creation of
beauty,
a purpose which not only
should
be
preserved
but
also pointed
the
way
forward for
all
theatres.
A
gymaio, qTo SoBue TeBTpM go mum WE
...
no am Xp&COTM, naro y'iTO
orcylcTBxe aacToangero BOCUITaHIX, arcyTcTsae aoToxcTaeEHOCTH a
apeeMCTeBaocrs yZe CmmmoM CaJHO c[a=[s CMS.
756
As
already noted,
his Three Sisters
was perhaps the
most extreme example of a
general
trend
in
the treatment
of
Chekhov in
the theatre
of
the
period.
The
approaches of
Efremov
and
Volchek, had in
varying
degrees
shown a similar
conservatism
in
productions
that
had
also
borrowed from,
and expressed
(in
the
face
of social uncertainty
in
the
present) a certain nostalgia
for,
the
past.
This
tendency was viewed
by
some commentators as a welcome return to
what
had long been
regarded as
the
appropriate model
for
the
production of
Chekhov.
K. Shcherbakov
praised
Efros's depiction
of
the
sisters' resilience,
and
754Smoktunovsky
and
EfX6
p.
175.
75SEfros,
'O blagorodstve',
p.
24.
756lbid.
294
welcomed
his
rejection of
the
pessimistic
despair
of
his
earlier,
'subjective'
interpretation in favour
of revealing
the
multiple
layers
of
Chekhov's
script.
757
For him
this
staging
demonstrated how
the
Russian
classics could provide
'solace
and salvation'
for
their
audiences.
Such lofty
praise was not
however
endorsed
by
the
majority of critics.
Kuzicheva identified
the
inexperience
of the
young actors as a central weakness
-a
sentiment echoed
in
several commentaries.
758
Boris Liubimov
remarked
that
D. Shaboltas's Andrei
was a man content with
his lot,
and was
thankful that
someone who
demonstrated
so
little
erudition never
became
a professor.
759
Similarly, Putintsev
remarked
that the
portrayals of
Vershinin, Kulygin
and
Tuzenbakh
were
lacking in depth
and
largely
one-dimensional.
760
He
praised,
however,
the
refinement and
feminine
charm of
Iakovleva's Masha,
remarking
that
she created a memorable moment when
in Act II,
tossing
a
little ball
and
laughing,
she asked:
'Bce-Taxe
c icn?
'.
761
Similarly,
that
critic sensed
throughout
her
performance a subtle understanding of
the
sub-text of
Masha's
hidden
affection
for Vershinin,
until
it
was
forcefully
revealed
in her
admission
of
love.
762
These lines
were pronounced
in
a tone
of
defiance,
which turned
the
words
into
an
irrefutable fact,
and reflected
Masha's deep desire
to
free
herself from
the
imprisonment
of
her
situation.
For Boris Liubimov, however,
Iakovleva herself
appeared
to
be
a
'quotation' from Efros's
previous
production, and
the
strength of
her
performance served only to
underscore the
weakness of
the
others.
763
He justifiably
maintained that
Efros's
work
had
always
been founded
on
the
considerable talents
of
his former
troupe,
and that
757K.
Sbcherbekov, 'Svet fonaria
v
tumane',
Literaturnoe
obozrenie,
1 (1985), 83-88 (p. 84).
758A.
Kuzicheva, 'V
shkole russkoi
klassiki', Moskovskara
pravda,
25
June 1982,
p.
3.
759gors
Liubimov, 'V
puti',
Sovremennaia drarnaturgiia, 4 (1982), 225-235
(p. 229).
760Putintsev,
p.
14.
761Tri
sestry,
Act 11,
p.
147.
762putintsev,
p.
14.
763Liubimov,
'V
puti', p.
229.
295
by
comparison
this
new staging
had
all
the
hallmarks
of a
'graduation
show'
(1UnuiommLdi
cnewrawm).
Efros had
criticised
Efremov's 'gloomy' Seagull
at
the
MAT,
suggesting that
he
had
staged
it
as
'a
slow
death' in
which
the
conflict
between Trigorin
and
Treplev
was
lost in
a
'general Chekhovian
mood'.
764
His
own
Three Sisters,
however, lacked
passion and
dynamism,
and
his
reliance on old
techniques,
his
desire
to
recreate
the
past
in
spirit,
if
not
in
every
detail,
together
with
the
inclusion
of
the mechanical rendering of
Chebutykin's famous dance,
demonstrated
a poverty of
ideas. This
new production seemed
flat
and
insipid,
and certainly
for
most critics compared unfavourably with
their
memories of
the
innovation
and vitality of
the
old.
According
to
Shakh-Azizova, in 1978 Aleksandr Vilkin
staged
The Seagull
at
the
Maiakovskii
as a
bitter
and acid commentary on
the
'repentance
of
yesterday's
Treplevs
-
the
former
rebels of
the
artistic avant-garde who gave
up
their protest
to
favour
the
establishment and
the
mainstream
--
and
became
sterile'.
765
Vilkin
might as well
have been
addressing
Efros directly. Or
perhaps
Efros
would
have done
well
to
recall also
Treplev's
other
line
to
Nina
in Act I: 'HaAo
a3o6pazam sum; ne Taxoio, x oxa ecTb, it He TaKoio, K8K
Aonzxa
6brrb,
a Taxoio, Kax ona upeACrammeTCH B Me'J. Tax.
'766 If Efros
attempted
the
production of
his dreams he
can
hardly be
said to
have
achieved
it.
His 'new' Three Sisters
reflected a
hitherto
unprecedented aesthetic and political
conservatism.
He
may
have found
a new cast,
but
clearly
failed
to
realise
his
stated aim of new means and new
ideas. Nor,
moreover,
judging by
the
reviews above,
did his
young actors succeed
in
generating the
'same
powerful
764Efms,
Prodolzhenie,
pp.
51-52.
765Shakh-Azizova,
'Cbekbov',
p.
172.
766Chaika,
Act I,
p.
11.
296
sense of
inner
truth' that
he believed had
once
been
characteristic of
the
old
productions of
the
MAT.
Efros later
admitted
that
his Three Sisters
was
'too
quiet',
but
attempted to
lay
the
blame for
this
on
the
stage
design:
B
noacxax Bosom nosopoTa oeeab onacao onm6HTbca s o4op.. nenna.
Haum
nosbZe Tpa cecTpu na
Mano* BpoHao
sw. niAens asnaume cnoxo*m mi ,
MONCT
6NTb,
axeaao 93-3a ocpopmaenaa.
Canto
no ce6e ono,
6wiO
xpacxBo,
no yKJlaxb&Ba]IO ace aalte sayTpename noicxa B nexa* nenaii a3secTaoll
4opmbi. HaAo 6wio
ace-Taxe cAe]aam Tax, xax * KorAa-To npejjnomarm:
xomnaTN Aoma rae-To noj(
IIepMblo,
Maneabxae oxna, jjoMOTxambie
nonosaxa....
Ho,
sasepnoe, ney6eAareaibno o6aacnzn, ne ysnex
JleseaTan.
A
QOTOM, H3 yBaZeazz K CFO pa6oTe, me nacTOEI na nepeAeJixe.
BOT
a
poAanacb aeTO'ffioCTh, Kaxoe-To necosnaAenae.
767
In
this,
his
only criticism of
the
production,
Efros failed
to
acknowledge
fully
his
own responsibility
for its failure. It is hard
to
disagree
with
Vergasova's
assessment of
this
Three Sisters
as a tedious
and
'bloodless'
production that
had
assimilated
its
own central
image
of a
top
spinning pointlessly on
its
own
axis.
768
In
the
light
of such sharp criticism,
Efros's
own assertion
that
his
new
staging was well-received
by
audiences
is
also
hard
to
accept.
769
It is belied,
moreover,
by Smelianskii's
statement
that
at one performance many spectators
left
at
the
interval.
770
767Efros,
Kniga,
p.
24.
768Vergasova,
p.
3.
769EEros,
Prodolthenie,
p.
125.
770Smeliansky,
Russian Theatre,
p.
125.
297
By
rejecting almost every aspect of
his
previous approach, turning to the
past
for inspiration,
and creating a new company,
Efros hoped
that
his
second
Three
Sisters
would provide a new
beginning. In
truth
it
signalled the
end of an era.
298
Conclusion
299
In
a study of
this
scope
the
writer
has been
obliged to
concentrate on a single
aspect of
Efros's
output:
his
staging of
the
work of
the
Russian
classic
playwrights
Chekhov, Gogol
and
Turgenev
at
the
Lenkom, Malaia Bronnaia
and
Taganka. This
thesis
has
analysed
in depth his
productions of
The Seagull
(1966), Three Sisters (1967), Marriage (1975), The Cherry Orchard (1975), A
Month in
the
Country (1977), Road (1980)
and
Three Sisters (1982) in
the
context of
his
response
to their
performance
history,
and as a reflection
both
of
the changing socio-political circumstances of
his day
and of
his
own character
and
development. It has
shown
how his
approach
to these
works evolved,
changing
from
radical,
iconoclastic,
overtly contemporary re-interpretation
in
the
1960s
towards,
in
the
1980s,
as
he
reflected on
his
career and expressed an
increasing
concern
for
cultural and
historical
continuity, a more
lyrical
style and
one more clearly
indebted
to tradition.
In his Seagull in 1966 Efros
challenged
the
validity of
fixed
preconceptions and
committed what was perceived as
heresy
against
the
enshrined orthodoxy of the
MAT,
whose style of performance
had been long
regarded as the
only
acceptable one
for
the
performance of
Chekhov. This
production can
be
seen as
a
'rite
of passage',
in
which
its director,
asserting
his independence
and
breaking
with
his
own past,
deliberately
reacted against
the
play's performance
history
and consciously
'modernised' it in
order to comment on
his
own times.
In 1967 he
adopted a similarly
iconoclastic
approach
to
Three Sisters, in
which
he developed further his
techniques
of
'acting
on
the
run', and openly
expressed
the
loss
of
idealism felt by
many of
his
post-Thaw generation.
In his
radically new
interpretation
of
Marriage in 1975,
this
rarely performed
work was seen,
by
turns, as
both
tragic
and comic and
became
a treatise, in
the
tradition of
Absurdist Theatre,
on the
ultimate
futility
of
human
endeavour.
This
production
demonstrated
the
influence in
particular of
the
ideas
of
300
Meyerhold in its
creation of a surreal and
fantastical
world.
By
presenting such
a world, seemingly
divorced from immediate
social concerns,
Efros
exploited a
classic's potential
for
multiple
interpretation in
order
to
convey muted messages
to
his
audience at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. A
similar exploitation of
this
potential
was evident
in 1975 in his Cherry Orchard
at
the
Taganka,
although as a guest
director, Efros
was only partially successful
in
uniting
the
acting style of
that
theatre
with
his
own.
This
production was a
further
exploration of
the theme
of
cultural and
historical loss
expressed
in his first Three Sisters, but by laying
particular emphasis on
the tragic
aspects of
the
play,
Efros
provided the
first
hint
of the
beginnings
of a change of approach.
Although
this change would not
be fully
apparent until
his
second
Three Sisters
in 1982, it
was
foreshadowed in his A Month in
the
Country in 1977. In
the
creation of
the
atmosphere of
the
past, and
in its lyrical
performance style, this
production owed a greater
debt
than
Efros's
previous work
to the traditions
of
the
MAT. In his
work on
Turgenev he
was engaged no
longer in
a
debate
with
the past
but
rather
in
a
dialogue
with
Stanislavsky,
who
from Efros's
earliest
years
had
exerted
the
greatest
influence
on
his
approach.
In 1980 he directed Road,
an adaptation of
Dead Souls. This
production
illuminated his
approach
to
Gogol
as a whole, and saw
him involved
once again
in
a
dialogue
with
Stanislavsky. This ill-fated
staging, though
in
some respects
experimental, marked a
turning-point
in his
career.
The
sharp, though
justifiable
criticism of
Road
exacerbated the
difficulties
that
he
experienced
in
his later
years at
the
Malaia Bronnaia. He began
to
question
his
abilities as a
director
and
to
reassess
his
previous approach,
but
also turned
his back
on
the
Malaia Bronnaia
troupe,
with whom over seventeen
years
he had
created some
of
his finest
work.
The
period of social
instability in
the
early
1980s,
together
with
his
own sense of personal and professional
crisis,
led Efros
to
seek solace
301
in history,
to
attempt
to return
imaginatively
to the
past.
In 1982 he
took
a
much more
traditional,
'quieter'
approach
to
his
second
Three Sisters. In
this
he
attempted
to create
the sense of a
flow
of
life
and
the
lyrical
atmosphere
that
he believed
to
have been
characteristic of early
MAT
productions.
He
wanted
too to
rediscover an era
that
he
saw as more refined and cultured
than
his
own,
and to emulate,
indeed
to celebrate, a
traditional style of performance
that
he had
forcefully
rejected
before. He hoped
that
working on
Three Sisters
with a
newly-formed young company would
herald
a new
beginning, but instead it
signalled
the end of
his
time
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
and
his
continuing
problems
there
were responsible
in
part
for his decision
to
move
to the
Taganka
in 1984.
That decision
provoked controversy, creating antagonism and anger.
Efros
found himself isolated
and estranged
from
many of
the
Moscow
theatre
community.
At
that theatre,
however,
as well as
in his
successful productions
of
Tartuffe (1981)
at
the
MAT
and of
The Tempest (1983)
at
the
Pushkin
Museum,
there
were some
indications
that
he
was steering
his
work
in
a
promising new
direction,
which
his
untimely
death in 1987
prevented
him from
pursuing.
In
the
years
that
followed,
there
were expressions of regret and support,
but
the
artistic community remained
divided,
and attacks on
his
character and
his
work
continued.
In
recent years castigation
has
given way
to
a more
balanced
assessment.
It has been
possible
to we
his
actions
in
the
final
years of
his life
in
the context of
the turbulent
days
of radical social change
in
the
former Soviet
Union.
The
controversy
that
surrounded
Efros in
the
1980s
can no
longer be
allowed to
overshadow
his influence
on
the
development
of
theatre,
not only
in Russia but
302
also
further
afield.
This
thesis, confined
to a single,
though
significant area of
his
work, should
be
seen as only part of on-going research that
must encompass
his
whole career.
Over
thirty-six
years
he directed
seventy-four stage
productions, created
thirteen television
films, four feature films
and
four
radio
dramas. His
work
in
these
other media
has been ignored. His
productions at
the
CCT
at
the
beginning
of
his
career, and
his important
pedagogical
labours
at
its
end,
have
similarly received scant mention.
Likewise, his
stagings of
contemporary playwrights
like Arbuzov
and
Radzinskii have been
noted only
in
passing.
Moreover,
although
the
present writer
has
explored elsewhere
his
response
to the
plays of
Moliere, his
productions of
Shakespeare
and other
foreign
classics also
demand
attention.
As
yet
there
has been
no
full
study of
Efros's
work,
in Russian
or any other
language. The
present conclusion should
therefore
be
seen not as an end
but
as
a new
beginning,
and
this thesis
as a contribution
to the
continuing
interest
of
scholars and
theatre
practitioners alike
in his
enduring
legacy.
In Russia
the
importance
of
Efros's
work
has long been
recognised
by
audiences, critics and
theatre
directors. In Moscow loyal
spectators can still
witness
his Don Juan
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
as well as reconstructed
productions of
his Napoleon I
and
Tartuffe
at the
Maiakovskii
and
MAT
(Chekhova). Over
the
past
decade his
work
has
also
been
recalled and
celebrated
by
those
who
knew him. In 1993
a retrospective exhibition of
photographs, set models and other archive material relating to
his
productions
was mounted at
the
Bakrushkin Theatre Museum. In January 1996,
on the
tenth anniversary of
his death
the
present writer was
invited
to
(and
recorded on
tape) a marathon six-hour celebration of
his
work at
the
Maiakovskii in
Moscow. This drew
together
over a
thousand
people as spectators
and
participants
in
a progamme of performances
of
scenes
from his
productions,
303
musical
interludes
and personal recollections.
Some
of
those
same participants
(actors, directors
and critics) contributed articles
to
a collection of memoirs
edited
by M. Zaionts (already
cited) and published
in 2000. A
new
biography
by Efros's
widow
Natal'ia Krymova,
extracts
from
which
have
already
appeared
in
print,
is
on
the
way.
The importance
of
Efros's
contribution
to the
performance
history
of
Chekhov
is
acknowledged
in
critical commentaries and
the
impact
of
his ideas is
also to
be felt in
the
practice of a new generation of
Russian directors. Sergei
Artsibashev's Marriage has been in
the
repertoire of
Teatr
na
Pokrovke
since
1996
and owes a
debt
to
Efros's long-running
production.
It is
played as a
fast-
paced comedy,
but
the
character portrayals are
full
of endearing
human
warmth,
which produces a pervasive sense of sorrow at
the
shattering of
their
dreams
of
happiness. In
addition,
Agaf is Tikhonovna is
visited, as
in Efros's
staging,
by
shadowy and eerie apparitions.
77' Similarly,
as
has been
shown, a recent
production of
A Month in
the
Country by Zhenovach
clearly reflects
Efros's
interpretation
of
Turgenev. According
to
John Freedman,
moreover,
Efros's
approach
is
also echoed
in
the
work of
directors
as
divergent in
style as
Iurii
Pogrebnichko
and
Vladimir Mirzoev.
772
771Sergei
Artsibashev joined the
Taganka
as a staff
director in 1981,
worked under
Liubimov
and was
ESns's
co-director
for One
and a
Ha4fSquare Metres in 1984. In 1991 he
established
Teatr
na
Pokrovke (The Timm
on
Pokrovka Street),
where
in 1997
the present writer saw
his
productions of
Three Sisters
and
Marriage (when
the
latter
transfer
ed to the
Vakhtangov).
For
further details
see
John Freedman, Moscow Performances The New Russian Theater 1991-
1996 (The Nolands: Harwood, 1997),
pp.
195-196,256-258.
772Jo6n
Freedman, 'The Marriage (final
performance),
Malaya Bronnaya Theatre', in john
Freedman, Moscow Performances 11. Tice 1996-1997 Season (The Netherlands: Harwood,
1998),
pp.
15-16 (p. 16).
Iurii Pogreboichko trained under
Liubilwv
at the
Taganlut
and
is
currently the
Artistic Director
of
The Theatre Near Stanislavsky's House,
where
the
present writer
has
seen
his
remarkably
innovative interpretations
of
Chekhov, Gogol
and
Shakespeare.
Viadimir Mirzoev
trained first
as a circus
director, lived in Canada for
a number of
yeas, where
he
established his
own theatre
Horizontal Eight in Toronto in 1989. In Moscow
theatre
circles this
young
director is
renowned as an enfant terrible and
is
noted
in
particular
for bis
radical reworldngs of
Gogol's
Marriage
and
The Government Inspector
at
The Staislavsky
Theatre. For
a more
detailed
account, see
Freedman, Moscow Perjormonces Il,
pp.
101-105.
304
Efros
worked not only
in Russia but
also
in Japan, Finland
and
the
United
States. Although it has
not
been
possible
here
to
discuss in detail his foreign
productions,
the
influence in America
of a
director
who
'reinvestigated
classical
texts
in
a
fresh
and
imaginative
manner'
has been
acknowledged
in
a recent
interview by Robert Brustein,
the
founding director
of
the
Yale Repertory
and
the
American Repertory Theatres.
773
Vera Gottlieb is
one of a small group of
Western
critics who
have
already recognised
Efros's
contribution.
Most
recently,
in
paper given
in March 2002
at
the
National Theatre in London, in
which she
discussed
the
reinterpretation of
Chekhov
on
the
British
stage, she
suggested
that
one of
the
earliest
impetuses for
the
rejection of
traditionally
gloomy and
'deadly'
theatre
productions of
his
work
had been Efros's Cherry
Orchard in 1975774
Efros's
approach
to
rehearsals and
to
individual
productions,
his discussion
of
the
work of contemporaries, and
his
reflections on
Soviet
theatre
and society,
are
documented in his four books. James Thomas
of
Wayne State University
(Detroit, Michigan) is
soon
to
publish
these
in
translation,
and so will provide
the
English-speaking
world with
fuller insights
on
Efros.
Finally, it is
possible
to
speculate that
audiences and scholars may
be
able to
witness at
first-hand
the
impact
of
Efros's
work.
Michael Boyd directed
recently a cycle of
four
of
Shakespeare's history
plays
for
the
Royal
Shakespeare Company. In
an
interview (published
on
the
internet in December
2000), Boyd
revealed
that
his
experiences of
Russia
under
Brezhnev, 'at
a
time
when
Sir Francis Walsingham [and
espionage] were a reality',
had
given
him
a
773Brustein
indicated in
an
interview
with
Gideon Lester
on
12 May 2000
and published on
the
internet that the
work of
directors like Efros
and
Eftemov in
the
United States had had
a
significant
influence
on
American directors
as
diverse
as
Lee Brener
and
Julie Taynor.
See Gideon Lester, 'Brustein's American Theater. A Theatrical Giant Maps his View', 1-2 (p.
2).
www.
theateimaniacom/news/feaaueJindex. cfnn? story=668&cid1
Viewed 4 August 2002.
774Vera
Gottlieb, 'Rough Chekhov', Plat
orm
Papers, 7 Match 2001,1-11
(p. 6).
www. nationaltheatre. org. uk/platforms/veragoUfieb_chekov.
html Viewed 21 July 2002.
Gottlieb is
referring
here
to the concept of
Deadly Theatre',
evolved
by Peter Brook. For
further details,
see
Peter Brook, The Empty Space (London: Penguin, 1968),
pp.
11-46.
305
greater understanding of
the
world
in
which
Shakespeare had
operated.
775
More importantly, he
expressed
his
astonishment at
the
'aesthetic
and
intellectual
rigour'
that
he had
encountered
during his
year of study,
between
1978
and
1979,
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
while
'sitting
at
the
feet
of the
great
man',
the theatre
director Anatolii Efros.
On 24 July 2002
the
board
of
the
RSC
appointed
Boyd
to
follow Adrian Noble
as
Artistic Director
of
the
Royal Shakespeare Company. He is
to take
up
his
appointment
in March 2003. Sixteen
years after
Efros's death, his
enduring
legacy
may very well
be
assured, not only
in Russia but
also much closer to
home.
775See
'Letter from London's RSC, CyberTheatre Monthly,
December 2000,4-5
www. zoeuope-stories. com
Viewed 4 August 2002.
306
Appendix 1
Systems
of
Censorship
and
the
Organisation
of
Soviet Theatres
307
In
the
years
following
the
October Revolution,
the theatre,
as an
important
tool
in
the
dissemination
of political
ideas,
was under
the
control of
the
People's
Commissariat
of
Enlightenment (Narodnyi kommissariat
prosveshcheniia,
NKP
or
Narkompros),
created
in 1917. Anatolii Lunarcharskii
was
in
charge of
this
body,
although
he
also served as
the
first Minister
of
Culture,
and as a
playwright
had
a particular
interest in
theatre.
During his
tenure,
responsibility
for
theatres
was
delegated
to the
Theatre Department
of
Narkompros
(Teatral'nyi
otdel
Narkomprosa, TEO)
and
theatre
repertoires were controlled
by Glavrepertkom,
a censorship committee established
in 1923,
and
discussed
in
more
detail below. In
the
late 1920s, following
the
sacking of
Lunarcharskii
in 1929,
and
during Stalin's
regime
the theatre
was
increasingly
subject
to
more
rigorous scrutiny
to
ensure
ideological
purity.
By 1953 direct
control of
the
theatre repertoires
had been
transferred
from Glavrepertkom back
to the
Ministry
of
Culture itself.
The Ministry
of
Culture
received
directives from
the
Council
of
Ministers
and
the
Secretary for Ideology
of
the
Central Committee
of
the
Communist Party,
but in
turn
delegated direct
responsibility
for
most theatres
in Moscow
to the
Glavnoe
upravienie
kul'tury ispolkoma Mossoveta (The Main Administration
of
Culture
of
the
Moscow City Council Executive Committee, GUKiM).
776
Through
various sub-sections
this organisation controlled the
budgets both for
the general administration of
theatres
and
for individual
productions.
It
was
also responsible
for
sending unpublished scripts to
Glavlit,
a
body
established
in 1922
under
the name
Glavnoe
upravknie po
delam llteratury i izdatel'sty
(The
Chief Administration
in Matters
of
Literature
and
Publishing),
which was
later
changed
to
Glavnoe
upravienie po okhrane voennykh
i gosadarstvennykh
tain
v
776Most
but
not all
theatres were unft
the cootrO of
GUKIM. The Boishoi, Maly
and
MAT
were
the
direct
responsibility
of the
USSR Ministry
of
Culture,
and the
Vakbtangov in
Moscow
and the
Kirov in Leningrad
were subordinate to the
RSFSR Ministry
of
Culture.
308
pechati
(The Chief Administration for
the
Preservation
of
State Secrets in
the
Press). In
theory
its
officials were responsible
for
the
removal
from
printed
works of any material which endangered military or state security.
In
reality
however Glavlit had
wide-ranging powers of control over all printed matter.
It
was responsible
for
the exportation and
importation
of
literature both
native and
foreign,
and could
'recommend'
the
elimination
from
a work of any material
deemed ideologically
suspectm
Glavrepertkom
was a sub-section of
Glavlit
and
(as
noted above) was
established
in 1923. According
to
a statute of
1934 it
was responsible
for
the
censorship of
theatre,
music, variety,
the
representational arts, gramophone
recordings and artistic radio
broadcasts.
778 Glavrepertkom
was also
responsible
for drawing
up
lists
of permitted and
banned
productions.
Once
a
script
had been
scrutinised and passed
by Glavlit, it
was returned to
GUKiM,
whose representatives gave
the
initial
consent to a
theatre
for
the
play to
be
produced.
GUKiM
officials
then monitored
the
rehearsal process, and also
viewed
the production at
the
final dress
rehearsals
before it
opened.
GUKiM
could make mandatory requests
for
omissions and additions
before issuing
a
licence
permitting public performances.
Once
the
production
had been
cleared
for
public viewing,
the theatre
was required to
reserve two
seats no
further back
than the
fourth
row
for
censors, who
(theoretically
at
least)
could view any
subsequent performance
to ensure
that
lines
were not changed.
The Party
could also exert control over
the theatres through
its local district
committees, and the
larger
theatres
had internal
systems of control
Indeed
most
777Glavlit
was split at a
local level into
separate organs
(krailit,
obRit, railit, gorlit), each of
which was responsible
for
the publications produced
in
their geographical
area, and censors at
any publishing
house had
to
be
approved
by
the
plenipotentiaries
of
Glavlit.
For
a complete
list
of
the
subject matter which was officially subject to the
scrutiny of
Glavlit,
see
R. Conquest, The Politics
of
Ideas in
the USSR (London:
The Bodley Head,
1967),
pp.
43-44. A list
of
information
of what
in 1956
officially constituted
a state secret
is
provided
in Appendix I in
this same
boor,
pp.
61-63.
78RSFSR
Laws, 1934,10: 66.
309
had
their
own party organisations.
These
cells were responsible
for
education
programmes among
the staff, such as
lectures in Marxist-Leninist ideology,
and
in
accordance with
the
remit of a given
theatre
(the Lenkom, for instance)
were
instrumental in
organising performances
for
specific groups.
Theatres
were
therefore an
integral
part of a wider political network.
The
representatives of various official
bodies liaised
closely with each theatre's
Administrative Director,
who was appointed
directly by
the
Ministry
of
Culture,
and
held
responsible
for
any
infringement
of procedures.
The Administrative
Director
could command considerable
influence. It
will
be
recalled
for instance
that
Kogan
was
instrumental in 1983 in
securing
the
dismissal
of
Dunaev,
the
official
Artistic Director
at
the
Malaia Bronnaia,
who
had
permitted
Efros
to
work with relative
freedom.
All
theatres also
had
their own artistic councils
(khudsovety)
which were
introduced in 1956, in
the
relatively
liberal
period prior to the
Hungarian
revolt.
These
councils, chaired
by
the
Administrative Directors,
were made up of
actors, staff
directors,
theatre
critics,
intellectuals
and other theatre
practitioners,
and
functioned
as advisory
bodies
to the
Artistic Directors in
the
matter of the
selection and production of plays.
In
some cases
they
had
considerable power;
Liubimov for instance
was particularly adept at ensuring the
election to the
artistic council of
the
Taganka
of
influential intellectuals
and critics prepared to
vouch
for
the theatre's
integrity
when
it
was under attack.
In
other cases,
however,
the
councils came
to
function
as a potent political
force. This
was
particularly
true
after
1963,
when
it
was suggested at a
joint
meeting of
the
Ministry
of
Culture
and
the
Union
of
Writers
that these
councils should
be
expanded
to
include
writers and representatives
of
'public
and creative
310
organisations'.
The implication
would appear
to
be
that
orthodox views should
where necessary
be injected.
779
7790
t, p.
49.
311
Appendix 2
Efros's Productions
on
Stage, Television,
Screen
and
Radio.
312
Efros's
productions are
listed in
chronological order.
The
names of
those
works not written
in Russian
are given
in English
only.
However, if
these
were
performed under a
different Russian
title this
is indicated.
The information in
the
brackets
reads as
follows: Author's Name, Assistant
or
co-director
(as
appropriate),
Theatre
or
Film Studio (as
appropriate).
The following
abbreviations are used:
MODT (MocxoscKH
o6nacTxo
ApaMa n ecKH Tearp,
The Dramatic Theatre
of
the
Province
of
Moscow),
RODTim. O (Psr3aHCiRR
o6naCTHOf ApamaTHqeCKIEft Tearp HM.
A. H.
OcTpoacxoro, The Ostrovskii Dramatic Theatre
of
the
Province
of
Riazan'),
CCT (Central Children's Theatre, Moscow), T-s K (TeaTp-CTYAH31
KHoarrepa, The Film Actor's Theatre Studio, Moscow), LK (Lenkom
Theatre, Moscow),
and
MB (Malaia Bronnaia Theatre, Moscow).
1951
Ilpata
ocmaemca Motif
(Prague Remains Mine) (K. Buriakovskii; Touring
production.
)
I1puezvcame
e
3osmoeoe (Come
to
Zvonkovoe) (A. Komeichuk; MODT. )
1952
The Dog in Nie Manger (Lope de Vega; RODTim. O. )
Jla6oab
Apoeau
(Liubov' larovaia) (K. Trenev; RODTim. O. )
1953
jjeouya
-
xpaa+. wcw
(Beaut4 ful Girls) (A. Simukov; RODTun. O. )
Jla6oee
Na paoceane
(The Dawning
of
Love) (Ia. Galan; RODTim. O. )
Kotaa
AONamne Kovbx
(When They Break
a
Horse) (N. Pogodin;
RODTim. O. )
Kaaauu
a ne'saus
(Gall Stows) (A. Makaenok; RODTim. O. )
1954
Yyxcax
po. *
(Someone Else's Role) (S. Mikhalkov; CCT. )
B o4ms
vae!
(Good Luck! ) (V. Rozov; CC'T. )
1955
Mw
ee poe soe aas i no geAwry
(We
Three Together
Went
to the the
Virgin
Land) (N. Pogodin; Co-director: M. Abel; CCr. )
313
1956
CKasm
o ero. 3X
(A Story About Stories) (A. Zak
and
I. Kuznetsov; CCT. )
1957
Hedda Gabler (H. Ibsen; T-s K. )
Bopuc roayHOe
(Boris Godunov) (A. Pushkin; CCr. )
B
sowaxox podounu
(In Search
of
Joy)(V. Rozov; CCT. )
1958
De Pretore Vincenzo (Under
the title:
Huxmo (Nobody); E. de Filippo.
Studio
of the
Young Actor (Sovremmenik). )
1959
BoAwswe
,.
oangro
(Their Own Masters) (Z. Danovskaia; CCT. )
The Visions
of
Simone Machard (B. Brecht; Ermolova Theatre. )
Jlppyt
io
Ko
ea!
(My Friend Kol'ka! ) (A. Khmelik; CCT. )
1960
Hepaea 6od (Uneven Fight) (V. Rozov; CCT. )
B
ioaxxx is
6mm (Home
and
Away) (A. Volodin; Ermolova Theatre. )
Bwaa
iyuxa
(Boys No More) (L Ivanter, CCT. )
1961
1ly.
wiw
deui (The Eventful Day) (Film
version of
Good Luck!; V. Rozov;
Co-director. G. Natanson; MosF lm. )
1962
I(.
sx-'ea iq. e wr
(7 he Magic Rainbow Flower) (V. Kataev; CCT. )
Hepe
y w. o. M
(Before Supper) (V. Rozov; CCT. )
Bmewrccoaia
tot)
(Leap Year) (Film; V. Panov; MosFilm. )
1963
Jjeoe
e a., wi
(Two Men
on
the
Steppe) (Film; E. KazalmVich;
MosFilm. )
Zeuum 6a (Marriage) (N. Gogol; CCT. )
1964
Own
is
(Us
and
Them) (N. Dolinina; CCT. )
B Mae
osa6b6m
(On The Wedding Day) (V. Rozov; GK. )
314
104
cmpaSUlfw npo
.
mo6oob
(104 Pages About Love) (E. Radzinskii; LK. )
1965
Modi 6e,
w
Mapam (My Poor Marat) (Also
translated
as
The Promise) (A.
Arbuzov; LK. )
CHui
aemca uwwo
(Making
a
Movie) (E. Radzinsk; LK. )
Kax 6o..
wy cooe
(To Each His Own) (S. Aleshin; Assistant director: L. Durov;
LK. )
1966
Vaika
(The Seagull) (A. Chekhov; LK. )
Cy6e6rsaa
xpoiwca
(Chronicle
of a
Trial) (Ia. Volchek; Assistant Director: A.
Adoskin; LK. )
Mowep
(Moliere) (Also
translated as
The Cabal
of
Hypocrites) (M. Bulgakov;
LK. )
1967
Tpu
eeaupw
(Three Sisters) (A. Chekhov; MB. )
1968
O6ouanumear Ko,
Ao6aulxuu
(The Seducer Kolobashkin) (E. Radzinskii;
MB. )
Iliamou Kpe'tem (Platon Krechet) (A. Korneichuk; MB. )
1969
Cwu:
m wetwe
dun
nec'wcarn., weoto w,. eoee ca
(The Happy Days
of an
Unhappy
Man) (A. Arbuzov; MB. )
Women Live Too Long (Under
the
Russian
title
)la
ewe - munaaia
(The
Rest is Silence); V. Delmar; Mossoveta Theatre. )
1970
Romeo
and
Juliet (W. Shakespeare; MB. )
C
oca unapono
Ap6ama (Tales
of
the
Old Athat) (A. Arbuzov; MB. )
1971
Bopuc Todyxoe
(Boris Godunov) (An
adaptation
for
television; A. Pushkin. )
iltjoeam
co canopomm
(7he Man from
the
Ou&id
e)
(L Dvoretskii; MB. )
315
1972
Mapam, Jluxa
u
Jleouudutc (Marat, Lika
and
Leonidik) (An
adaptation
for
television
of
My Poor Marat; A. Arbuzov. )
Bpam A.
ierua
(Brother Alesha) (V. Rozov; MB. )
HAamon Kpelsem (Platon Krechet) (An
adaptation
for
television; A.
Korneichuk. )
1973
Cumyaqus (? he Situation) (V. Rozov; MB. )
Don Juan (J. B. de Moliere; MB. )
Bceto
Neexo wo crave e vecmb : oaeoduna
de Moiwepa (Just
a
Few Words in
Honour
of
Monsieur de Moliere). (Television drama based
on
Bulgakov's
Moliere
and
Moliere's Don Juan. )
1974
TypAwa (The Holiday Resort) (E. Radzinsldi; Mossoveta Theatre. )
YeaoaeK
co cmopotbs
(The Man from
the
Outside) (An
adaptation
for
television;
I. Dvoretskii. )
Tam (Tana) (An
adaptation
for
television;
A. Arbuzov. )
Cmpaunqu
xcyp1a. 'sa
17evopusa (Pages from Pechorin's Diary) (An
adaptation
for
television of
repo
rcauuezo
epe.
enu
(A Hero
of
Our Time); M.
Lennontov. )
1975
3ifeIam66a (Marriage) (N. Gogol; MB. )
3weiof (Troop Train) (M. Roshchin; MAT. )
Buueteab
cad
(The Cherry Orchard) (A. Chekhov; Taganka. )
CuamsNd
is Hasxawennuil
(The Chosen
and
the
Dismissed) (Ia. Volchek;
Assistant director L. Durov; MB. )
1976
Othello (W. Shakespeare; MB. )
4Nu
maaax
(Fantasia) (An
adaptation
for
television
of
Beuwue
eobbi
(Torrents
of
Spring); I. Turgenev. )
Dear Liar (An
adaptation
for
television
of a production of this
play
by J. Kilty
originally staged at
the
MAT by I. Gaevskii. )
Martin Eden (An
adaption
for
radio
by V. Baliasnyi
of
Jack London's
novel.
)
316
1977
Mea
ue
depeeme (A Month in
the
Country) (I. Turgenev; MB)
1978
He3HaxoiKa (The Unknown Woman) (Efros's
own adaptation
for
radio of
Aleksandr Blok's
play.
)
BepaHda
e
.
necy
(A Verandah in
the
Woods) (I. Dvoretskii; MB)
Zeuwmb6a (Marriage) (N. Gogol; Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis. )
Islands in
the
Stream (A
television
adapation
by V. Baliasnyi
of
E.
Hemmingway's
novel.
)
1979
IlpodoAxcestue, lJon Kyaua (Don Juan Continued) (E. Radzinskii; MB. )
MoAbep
(Moliere) (M. Bulgakov; Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis. )
B
vemeepz u
6oewcue
nurcozda
(On
Thursday
and
Then Never Again) (A film
based
on
A. Bitov's
short-story
3anoee6Hux (The Nature Reserve); MosFilm. )
1980
)(opoza (Road) (A
stage adaptation of
Gogol's Mepmebte dyucu (Dead Souls)
by V. Baliasnyi; MB. )
Summer
and
Smoke (T. Williams; MB. )
Women Live Too Long (Under
the
Russian
title
Ja
Abuse
-
muwusa
(The
Rest is Silence) (V. Delmar;
an adaptation
for
television
of
Efros's 1967
stage
production.
)
1981
Buuweaug
cad
(The Cherry Orchard) (A. Chekhov; Tokyo, Japan. )
BocnoMwsa
se
(Recollection) (A. Arbuzov; MB. )
Tartuffe (J. B. de Moliere; MAT. )
1982
Tpu
cecmpa
(Three Sisters) (A. Chekhov; MB. )
Kamm,
uii zocmb
(The Stone Guest) (A. Pushkin;
on radio.
)
Zuooii
mpyn
(Living Corpse) (L. Tolstoy; MAT. )
Mecnq
ed epeexe
(A Month in
the
Country) (I. Turgenev
under the title
Hamauia
(Natasha); Tokyo, Japan. )
317
1983
Romeo
and
Juliet (An
adaptation
for
television
of
Efros's 1970
stage
production;
W. Shakespeare. )
Moyapm
u
Ca.
mepu
(Mozart
and
Sahen) (A. Pushkin;
on radio.
)
Napoleon I (F. Bruckner; MB. )
Mecsq
e
depeene (A Month in
the
Country) (An
adaptation
for
television
of
Efros's 1977
stage production;
I. Turgenev. )
Buuweewii
cad
(The Cherry Orchard) (A. Chekhov; Finnish National Theatre,
Helsinki. )
The Tempest (W. Shakespeare; Pushkin Museum. )
1984
,1
upeumop meampa
(The Theatre Manager) (I. Dvonetskii; MB. )
Ha due (Lower Depths) (M. Gorky; Taganka. )
1985
Y
sofabi
-
ne acencaoe
.
augo
(War Does Not Have
a
Female Face) (S.
Aleksievich; Taganka. )
A Lovely Sunday Crive-coeur (T. Williams;
under
the title
Hpe
epacnoe
eocxpecmbe
dAw
nuivxu+ra
(A Lovely Sunday for
a
Picnic); Taganka. )
Buuweear
cad
(The Cherry Orchard) (A. Chekhov; Taganka. )
1986
llo
Umopa xeadpameba Menpa
(One
and
A Half Square Metres) (B. Mozhaev;
Co-director S. Artsibashev; Taganka. )
The Misanthrope (J. B. de Moliere; Taganka. )
318
Bibliography
319
This bibliography is divided into four
separate parts.
1. This first
part
lists
all
the
published sources
in Russian
and
is divided
as
follows:
1 (i). Literary Texts
1 (ii). Secondary Material in Books
1 (iii). Articles
and
Chapters in Books
1 (iv). Articles
and
Reviews in Newspapers
1 (v). Articles
and
Reviews in Journals
2. This
second part
lists
all
the
sources
in English
and
is divided
as
follows:
2 (i). Books
2 (ii). Chapters in Books
2 (iii). Articles in Journals
and
Articles
2 (iv). Reviews in Newspapers
3. This
third
part
lists
sources
in French
4. This fourth
part
lists Internet Sources
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svoe
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Arbuzov,
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in lzbrannoe, II
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1981)
320
Chekhov, A., Sochineniia: P'esy 1895-1904, Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii
i
pisem,
18
vols,
XIII (Moscow: Nauka, 1978)
Dvoretskii, I., Chelovek
so storony
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pisatel',
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Veranda
v
lesu
and
Direktor
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1986)
Gogol', N., Revizor
and
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sochinenii,
7
vols,
Dramaticheskie
proizvedeniia,
IV (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura,
1967)
Mertvye dushi in Sobranie
sochinenii,
7
vols,
V (Moscow:
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__
Shine! ' in Sochineniia, 2
vols,
Povesti, I (Moscow:
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BY I.,
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stul'ev
(Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
izdatel'stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1956)
Korneichuk, A., Platon Krechet in P'esy (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe
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char!
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Turgenev, I., Mesiats
v
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i
pisem,
28
vols,
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321
Volchek, Ia., Sudebnaia khronika (Moscow: VUOAP, 1966)
1 (ii).
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6
vols
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sovetskii teatr
(Moscow: Iskusstvo,
1950)
Berdnikov, G.,
ed.,
Turgenev i
teatr
(Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1953)
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v
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1987)
Danilov, S., "7henit'ba" N. V. Gogolia (Moscow: GATD, 1934)
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Demidova, A., Vtoraia
real
most' (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1980)
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io
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moia
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ukazatel'
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Pozharskaia, M., Sovetskie khudozhniki
teatra
i kino 78 (Moscow: Sovetskii
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Rudnitskii, K., Spektakli
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Tairov, A., Zapiski
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besedy,
rechi, pisma
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1970)
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G., 0
professii rezhissera
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Vinogradskaia, I., Zhizn' i
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_
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