Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories seems like an appealing idea, at least in theory. Linking two works by the often disagreeing but mutually admiring Russian friends Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy suggests recognizing themes and ideologies that the celebrated authors shared.
There’s something to that. Chekhov’s 1896 short story, “An Artist’s Story” and Tolstoy’s 1885 fable, “What Men Live By,” both deal with love and spirituality. The former links romantic love with spirituality, while the latter exalts the spiritual life as enhanced by the abiding presence of human love. Each, by the way, was adapted with varying degrees of success by the English playwright and character actor Miles Malleson.
In “An Artist’s Story,” the brooding eponymous figure Nicov (Alexander Sokovikov) has begun to spend time in a countryside garden, dividing his time between two sisters, social reformer Lidia (Brittany Anikka Liu) and idle, constant reader Genya. Though slowly finding himself attracted to Genya, Nicov is unable to stop arguing with Lidia over their disparate views of the world. She devotes herself to improving the community and impugns Nicov for contributing little to society by way of his landscape canvases. He castigates her for failing to see how much art contributes to the enjoyment of life.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★ review here.]
How the debate—much of “An Artist’s Story devolves into debate—went down when Chekhov was publishing or in 1917, when Malleson had his adaptation staged, may be difficult to report now, but today Nicov’s stand may be harder to champion than Lidia’s. Malleson lifts Nicov’s contention from Constance Garnett’s translation, part of which goes, “We have plenty of doctors, chemists, lawyers. Plenty of people can read and write, but we are quite without biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. The whole of our intelligence, the whole of our spiritual energy, is spent on satisfying temporary, passing needs.” Not a thoroughly convincing contention is 2020, is it?
Though Genya is controlled by tendentious Lidia more than by their conciliating Mother (Katie Firth), that doesn’t stop Nicov from falling under the young woman’s spell—and her falling under his. That they eventually confess love doesn’t necessarily seal their future, which is where Chekhov demonstrates, as he does in his beloved plays, that affections are more often thwarted than not.
Indeed, Chekhov’s way with a story, especially his descriptive powers, exceed by good measure Malleson’s snatching the original from the page. Although the mood is partially caught by Roger Hanna’s set—with its upstage renditions of a tree in autumn—and is further enhanced by Matthew Richard’s lighting, the play at 40 minutes or so stints on, even excessively truncates, the master.
Missing most from the transformation is an element Chekhov fully provides in his writing: the chemistry between Nicov and Genya. On stage Genya seems to be little more than pleasant. Lentz may be trying to compensate for the missing ingredients as she sits in the colorful peasant costume Oana Botez has her wear, but she doesn’t get far enough.
The one doing the compensatory acting duty is Sokovikov. Making his American stage bow, he’s a graduate of Moscow’s Russian Academy of Theater Arts. His performance is probing, whereas the others seem merely to be sketching in their characters. As directed by Mint’s producing artistic director Jonathan Bank, Sokovikov gives heft to what is otherwise a pallid first Chekhov/Tolstoy half.
Unfortunately, Tolstoy’s “What Men Live By”—translated by L. and A. Maude—and here called “Michael—doesn’t ameliorate the pallor. The problem lies more with Tolstoy than with adapter Malleson or with Jane Shaw, directing straightforwardly (as well as providing the lighting and original music designer for the entire program). Yes, Tolstoy wrote himself a fable, but whereas fables often draw on charm, he chose to present his prose prosaically, a noticeable distance from the expansive, frequent harsh prose of his great novels.
Simon (J. Paul Nicholas), a shoemaker, and wife Matryona (Katie Firth) live in poverty, often because his debtors are so impoverished they can’t pay their bills. Nevertheless, one day he brings home a stranger calling himself Michael (Malik Reed). In no time, the mysterious, often impassive Michael becomes better at sewing leather than Simon.
All goes well until one day a Russian noble (Sokovikov) arrives with expensive leather and the promise of a high price for Simon’s making a pair of boots in a hurry. As the nobleman departs, Simon hands Michael the leather, and Michael instantly cuts it into pieces that preclude boots being built from them. Though Simon and Matryona are distraught, their distress is lifted when the nobleman’s servant (Lentz) enters with the news that her master has died. The boots are no longer needed but slippers for the corpse are.
At about this time in a play that features Vinie Burrows shuffling around as an old woman, Michael begins to glow—or that’s what the audience is told, as no attendant lighting effect eventuates. Finally, his origins are announced. He steps downstage center so’s to be certain no one misses the point and bluntly expresses Tolstoy’s moral. It won’t be repeated here, but it does contain, as the Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Story title suggests, something about love.
Whether today’s audience believe the hopeful message at a time when fear more than love appears to be making the world go round, exiting Mint patrons may find that the actual production reward offered is a pressing desire to read—or reread—the Chekhov and Tolstoy stories.
Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories opened February 10, 2020, at Theatre Row and runs through March 14. Tickets and information: minttheater.org
