Theatre/John
Peter
Sunday
Times, August, 1978
Toby Robertson’s production of Ivanov
(Old Vic) would have pleased its author enormously.
Chekhov worried a lot over this play, the first of his tragicomic studies
of failure. And by all the rules
known to us it couldn’t possibly be a good play, being a portrait of a man who
is simply unfit to live.
This is fairly clear at the start and becomes clearer with each scene.
What saves it from being merely a rising scream of pain is an
extraordinary performance in the title role by Derek Jacobi.
Jacobi has understood that there’s no hope for Ivanov whatever, and
also that when the play opens Ivanov doesn’t yet know this.
He charts Ivanov’s path from spiritual bankruptcy to despair—that
special despair experienced only by intelligent people who understand its
finality. This lithe, athletic
actor seems to age a decade during the play.
When the curtain rises his face is that of a peevish failure; in the last
scene, that of a beaten dog.
The rest of the Prospect company is uneven.
During the Lebedevs’ ghastly soirée I wondered why some actors thought
that when Chekhov’s characters said they were bored stiff they really meant
stiff. But I liked Brenda Bruce’s
dragonish Babakina, John Savident’s fussy count, like a waspish, terrified
pouter pigeon; and Michael Denison’s dignified Lebedev—even though he
sometimes sounds like a wary clubman waiting for the port to pass.
I Am Who I Am, by Royce Ryton (Arts, Cambridge), is a history play
without an ending; a mystery play without a solution.
In other words it’s a play about the Grand Duchess Anastasia who may or
may not have perished with the rest of the Russian Royal family in 1918.
Ryton does nothing so crude as offer a solution:
if anything he relishes the open-ended nature of his story.
You could describe the play as a question-mark in two acts.
Is Anastasia genuine? Why
did some of her closest relations reject her?
Was it for the Romanov millions waiting in the Bank of England, or for
some more complex reason? Ryton has
written a piece of first-rate escapist entertainment which yet pulls and tugs at
your mind afterwards like a puzzling dream.
Roger Hume and Judy Wilson take some 30 supporting roles between them
with quicksilver agility, and Beth Ellis plays the lead with a dignity both
stern and touching.
In brief: Tennesse
Williams’ Vieux Carré, warmly received by Bernard Levin when it opened in
Nottingham, in May, has moved to the Piccadilly.
The National Theatre have revived their excellent Passion Play at
Cottesloe. I have also seen
Wedekind’s Death and Devil, a mordant sexual extravaganza at the New Arts
(lunchtime). It’s appalling
production, if that’s the word, by Jan Sargeant, made me think that someone
should urgently found a Society to Protect the Reputation of Frank Wedekind as
an Outstanding Minor Dramatist. I’ve
seldom spent a more excruciating 45 minutes anywhere.