Tom Stoppard discusses Chekhov, the media, democracy, and the theater with David Remnick at BAM

Image via WikipediaTalking points from tonight’s Artist Talk with Tom Stoppard and David Remnick at BAM (not quoted verbatim):

The great innovation of Chekhov was his fundamental neutrality towards his characters. It seems jarring to consider The Cherry Orchard or Ivanov as comedies, but they are comedies in the same way that life is a comedy.

As he wrote in Ivanov, Chekhov recognized that in every human interaction the following conditions exist: I don’t know what you’re thinking, you don’t know what I’m thinking, and neither of us knows what ourselves are thinking.

In translation, it is not good to be a linguist. It is good to have an exactly literal translation as a reference point, but in translating it is more important to have to understand meaning and tone more than to strictly what is actually said (Stoppard doesn’t read Russian).

There is no such thing as a finished translation. When you write your own work, you’re done with it at the end of the day and you’re happy with it. But when you’re working on someone else’s work, there’s no way to compress and finish the creative process of translation.

In a free democracy, where there are no restraints on the media, the culture becomes saturated, and opinions lose their importance matter. But in a world where thought is restricted, media becomes a prime focus. Behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia and Russia, students would frequently go to the cafés asking for when the next article by a popular radical thinker came out.

It is hard to adjust from that mindset to one if a free-, media saturated society.
At the same time, it is not in human nature to see the positives of the good of a media saturated world. We want every opinion to matter, and can’t focus on the fact that thought is free.

In the New York theater world, there’s more of a focus on “how we’re doing “ than in London. The Broadway producer plays a larger role than the West End producer. It’s partly based on capitalism, but it’s more of a cultural focus on success and fear of failure.

There are more small theaters in New York than there ever were before. Despite the disparity between musicals and straight plays in New York, and increasingly in London, the next new play is still the great animal everyone in theater is trying to catch.

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Theater Review: The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov at Williamstown Theatre Festival

You could make a case that modern drama was redundant after Chekhov; he perfected what Ibsen started, and there would simply be no way to top the perfect equilibrium Chekhov reached between the strengths and weaknesses of his characters and their relationship with larger human struggles. Chekhov is the theatrical version of the sex and pizza theory: even a bad production of Chekhov is still pretty good. The strength of Chekhov's consistency, as expressed with equal strength by Paul Schmidt's distinctly contemporary translation, has certainly had its limits tested by the Williamstown Theatre Festival's production of The Three Sisters. Despite Chekhov being one of the purest, most finely-tuned purveyors of dramatic realism, Michael Greif's uneven production turns The Three Sisters into a play that feels like a distinctly pre-modern melodrama. It's the least Chekhovian production of a Chekhov play I've ever seen, and that includes Greif's inferior production of The Cherry Orchard at Williamstown back in 2004.

Whether the high melodrama and almost farcical tendencies of Greif's production are intentional I cannot conclude. The program notes emphasize Chekhov's understanding of human longing, and the pre-modern elements come in short bursts rather than extend for the entirety of the nearly 3-hour-long production. Greif has his actors act somewhat repressed and insecure, with the occasional screaming burst of insults and confessions. This is especially the case with Natasha (Cassie Beck). While smarter versions of The Three Sisters normally depicted Natasha as an Imperialist Russia townie unable to comprehend noble life, here she's seen as a loud, almost cartoonish brute of a woman. That's certainly a part of her character, but it's an exceedingly shallow interpretation to leave her at that.

The sisters themselves are the most consistent actors of the cast. While Aya Cash's Irina and Williamstown vet Jessica Hecht's Olga certainly have their moments, it's Rosemarie DeWitt's Masha that truly stands out. DeWitt is the only member of the cast who succeeds in breaking your heart on several occasions. But all three have a tendency to play with a continuous baseline anxiety with the occasional spike of emotion. The fact that this lack of nuance plagues all three sisters' performances indicates that the problem lies with Greif more than the actors themselves.

The men of the play are erratic and often oversimplistic. Keith Nobbs' Baron Tuzenbach is played like the archetypal foolish young upstart, lacking any real subtlety despite being one of the lynchpins of the play's social dynamics. Manoel Felciano certainly has his moments as Andrei, and his delivery is easily the most distinctive of the cast. But his pouting sometimes becomes too obvious, and he has a tendency to overact even to the back row. Meanwhile, Michael Cristofer's Chebutykin doesn't seem to know whether or not to play the drunk at any given moment, and his interpretation of senility and drunkenness are virtually indistinguishable. As Vershinin and Solyony respectively, Stevie Ray Dallimore and Stephen Kunken are the strongest actors in the cast and understand their characters the best. One wishes both of them had more stage time to show off their skills.

The play's aims to keep up Williamstown's technical level are certainly apparent, with a large-scaled set consistent of massive if unnaturally skinny birch trees and an excess of autumnal leaves in the fourth act. The play opens with a larger scene of social dancing, which I suppose is meant to set the tone for the life of crumbling nobility. Ultimately, it just serves as a weak, unnecessary add-on to an already overlong production. But worse than an excessive design of Chekhov is an excessive performance of Chekhov. It's almost as if Greif doesn't realize that Stanislavskian acting was invented with this playwright, as the acting seems to come from centuries ago. It may instead just be that Greif has a hard time conveying the deeper methods of expressing Chekhov's understanding of human emotion to his actors. That's not an unforgivable flaw: greater directors (and writers) have struggled with the same.

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Through July 27. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. Translated by Paul Schmidt. Directed by Michael Greif. Sets by Allen Moyer. Costumes by Clint Ramos. Lights by Kenneth Posner. Sound by Walter Trarbach. Playing at the Main Stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Photos by T. Charles Erickson.

Starring Jessica Hecht (Olga), Rosemarie DeWitt (Masha), Aya Cash (Irina), Michael Cristofer (Chebutykin), Keith Nobbs (Baron Tuzenbach), Stephen Kunken (Solyony), Roberta Maxwell (Anfisa), Peter Maloney (Ferapont), Stevie Ray Dallimore (Vershinin), Manoel Felciano (Andrei), Jonathan Fried (Kulygin), Cassie Beck (Natasha), Cary Donalson (Fedotik), and Joe Tippett (Rohd).