Chekhov in Yalta
Unlike Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, John Driver and Jeffrey Haddow’s biographical Chekhov in Yalta doesn’t portray its historical characters in a rampantly ahistorical or anachronistic light. Nor does it descend to the level of the recent Edgar Allan Poe–Once Upon a Midnight at the Mercury Theater, piecing together a semblance of character from the poet’s writings alone–though Driver and Haddow obviously assign a great deal of importance to Anton Chekhov’s writings and their impact. Certainly an intimate knowledge of the details of Chekhov’s life heightens appreciation of their work, but it isn’t necessary. Standing on its own as a piece of theater, Chekhov in Yalta is the perfect marriage of history and dramatic art.
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Set at Chekhov’s villa in Yalta at the turn of the century, Chekhov in Yalta reenacts four topsy-turvy days in the life of Russia’s preeminent dramatist. Having just completed The Three Sisters, Chekhov spends his days fishing and shooting the breeze with Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin and Maksim Gorky and his nights being bored to tears by Lev Tolstoy’s war stories. But when the entire entourage of the Moscow Art Theatre arrives at Chekhov’s estate looking to score a hit with the playwright’s latest masterpiece, all his well-laid plans for rest and relaxation are laid to waste.
The entire Seanachai cast offers wonderfully rich, tremendously physical performances. In particular, Thomas Vincent Kelly as Chekhov demonstrates a true gift for comic timing: his Chekhov is aware of his own limitations but unwilling to accept them, drawing attention away from his physical infirmities with a barrage of acerbic one-liners. Equally appealing are Mark L. Montgomery’s roguish, flamboyant Gorky, Justine Scarpa’s overtaxed and underfulfilled Masha Chekhov, and John Dunleavy’s bumbling, self-absorbed Stanislavsky.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Chechov in Yalta theater still.
