Auntie Sonya
Peter Jenkins
Uncle Vanya (Hampstead) Mayakovsky (Half Moon) Quite slight and tender adjustments of emphasis can have drastic effects on a Chekhov play and Pam Gems and Nancy Meckler, without violating the original, have shifted the focus of Uncle Vanya. Sonya, played in a spirit of defiance, becomes a tragic heroine; the sexual undertones of the play become'overtones; some of the theatricality from which Chekhov was trying to escape is reinstated; and the play is given a more overt social significance.
Gems's version of the text does not take great liberties with the professional translations but all the way through she points it up, makes matters a little more explicit and the dialogue a little punchier. For example, Sonya's wide-eyed, romantic defence of Astrov's passion for trees in Act One ends with her describing life in warm and well-forested lands. In the Elisaveta Fen (Penguin) version she says: 'Science and the fine arts flourish among them; their philosophy is cheerful and there is a great refinement and courtesy in their attitude towards women.' Gems gives the speech a punchline: 'and they're much nicer to women.' It is delivered with feminist spirit.
Yellena, by contrast, becomes an almost catatonic pussy cat. She is without resource other than the beauty which inflames men, both Vanya and Astray. But this is not what Chekhov's characterisation, always ambiguous. quite suggests: she knows that she has wasted her life, just as Vanya has, and he. in the despondency of middle age, accuses her of stifling her youth, vitality and capacity to feel. Moreover, until tempted by Astrov she has found neither the courage nor the energy for a love affair. That's what Vanya is complaining about and when she lets go, in the final act, and embraces Astrov she says, 'Well here goes — for once in my life.' Gems, however, has her refer (in the tearful scene with Sonya which ends Act Two) to 'my little romances' and the line is spoken with girl-to-girl frankness. The women, thus, are made into much more than counterpoints to the men. Vanya does not merely peck foolishly at the hand of Yellena, he throws himself lustfully ether feet. Sonya's peroration of resignation and hope is delivered in a spirit of defiance and it is her own utter misery and dejection, rather than Vanya's self-pitying depression. which is the abiding emotional impact of the 'play. Indeed, by the final act it had me thinking that women are truly more heroic than are men and more capable of experiencing tragedy. A dominating performance by Alison Steadman as a Sonya alive with repressed passion and feminine anger is the anchor of this fascinating production. I don't want at all to give the impression that Gems and Meckler have turned the play into a feminist tract; indeed, Nigel Hawthorne is an outstanding Vanya, in a manly version of the part. and Ian Holm is on top form as an unglamorised Astrov, a man who has been reduced to preferring trees, and the bottle, to people. Both of them have to. and here do, live up to Astrov's line near the end: 'In the whole of this province there have been only two decent, cultured people — you and The reading of Yellena is more controversial but given what was intended Susan Littler achieved the difficult art of plunging the depths of shallowness; one result is to make her a more sympathetic creature than usual.
None of this is brought off without costs, however. Chekhov's plays have been compared many times with music and what Gems and Meckler have done turns Uncle Vanya from legato to staccato. By pointing everything up, character and action as well as language, they forfeit the poetic flow and a good deal of the mood and atmosphere in which we are accustomed to bathe in the Chekovian theatre. The somewhat awkward and dully-functional set didn't help in this, but I suspect that they intended to give us a less comfortable version of the play and I see no reason why not. A great deal of what we call Thekovian' is no more than a traditional style of playing and. as this production so excellently shows, he is a quite great enough artist to be explored in new ways.
I am nearly always grateful to the Half Moon for its adventurous literary choices but not always for having to sit through the result on its hard seats. Its best work is usually in the expressionist-to-futurist vein which, of course, contains most of the best left-wing theatre. Mayakovsky is a modern play by the East German writer, Stefan Schutz, but it is done in the manner of the early revolutionary period and on a constructivist-futurist set.
It is interesting chiefly in two ways. First, because of its anti-Stalinist, and antisurviving Stalinist, polemical force; it has never, of course, been performed in East Germany. Second. because of its central device which is to present Mayakovsky as two selfs played by two actors: one is Mayakovsky the revolutionary poet and the other is Mayakovsky the Soviet apologist and official hack; the idea is that schizophrenia is the condition of the artist under Soviet communism. The poet's eventual suicide is at the hand of the propagandist. The highly stylised acting of Peter Attard, Robin Soans and — as always — Robin Hooper is excellent but the evening is without much theatrical impact. It didn't tell me much about Mayakovsky or make me care, not about the fate of the poet under Soviet communism but about the fate of the poet Mayakovsky.
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