A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre

by Christopher Innes (ed)

  To the accompaniment of tasteless conversation and jokes, the domestic spectators take their places on the long bench and the tree stumps, their backs to the public, very much like sparrows on a telegraph line. The moon rises, the sheets fall, one sees the lake, its surface broken with the silver gleams of the moon. On a high eminence that resembles the base of a monument sits a grief-stricken female figure wrapped in manifold white, but with eyes that are young and shining and cannot be grief-stricken. This is Nina Zarechnaya in the costume of World Grief, the long train of which, like the tail of a snake, is stretched over grass and undergrowth. The wide cloth was a courageous gesture on the part of the artist, a gesture of deep meaning and beautiful generalized form. How talented is this Treplev with the soul of Chekhov and a true comprehension of art.

  Nina Zarechnaya is the cause of the failure of Treplev’s talented play. She is not an actress, although she dreams of being one so as to earn the love of the worthless Trigorin. She does not understand what she is playing. She is too young to understand the deep gloom of the soul of Treplev. She has not yet suffered enough to perceive the eternal tragedy of the world. She must first fall in love with the scoundrelly Lovelace Trigorin and give him all that is beautiful in woman, give it to him in vain, at an accidental meeting in some low inn. The young and beautiful life is deformed and killed just as meaninglessly as the beautiful white seagull was killed by Treplev because he had nothing to do. Poor Nina, before understanding the depth of what she is playing, must bear a child in secret, must suffer hunger and privation many years, dragging herself through the lower depths of all the provincial theatres, must come to know the scoundrelly attentions of merchants to a young actress, must come to know her own giftlessness, in order to be able in her last farewell meeting with Treplev in the fourth act of the play to feel at last all the eternal and tragic depth of Treplev’s monologue, and perhaps for the last and only time say it like a true actress and force Treplev and the spectators in the theatre to shed holy tears called forth by the power of art.

  […]

  Some of the actors were praised by Chekhov, others received their full meed of blame.

  […]

  At the special performance he seemed to be trying to avoid me. I waited for him in my dressing-room, but he did not come. That was a bad sign. I went to him myself.

  ‘Scold me, Anton Pavlovich,’ I begged him.

  ‘Wonderful! Listen, it was wonderful! Only you need torn shoes and checked trousers.’

  He would tell me no more. What did it mean? Did he wish not to express his opinion? Was it a jest to get rid of me? Was he laughing at me? Trigorin in The Seagull was a young writer, a favourite of the women – and suddenly he was to wear torn shoes and checked trousers! I played the part in the most elegant of costumes – white trousers, white vest, white hat, slippers, and a handsome make-up.

  A year or more passed. Again I played the part of Trigorin in The Seagull – and during one of the performances I suddenly understood what Chekhov had meant.

  Of course, the shoes must be torn and the trousers checked, and Trigorin must not be handsome. In this lies the salt of the part: for young, inexperienced girls it is important that a man should be a writer and print touching and sentimental romances, and the Nina Zarechnayas, one after the other, will throw themselves on his neck, without noticing that he is not talented, that he is not handsome, that he wears checked trousers and torn shoes. Only afterwards, when the love affair with such ‘seagulls’ is over, do they begin to understand that it was girlish imagination which created the great genius in their heads, instead of a simple mediocrity. Again, the depth and the richness of Chekhov’s laconic remarks struck me. It was very typical and characteristic of him.

  The critic, N.E. Efros, who was present at that first performance and helped to create the legend of The Seagull and the Moscow Art Theatre, describes the “great uneasiness” of the audience in the opening act at what Gorky had called the “heretical” quality of the play: “the life that was speaking from the stage was a different life, as though life had refined its outer vestures and through them had shown its soul”. And by the close of the play “All were shaken. There were no longer sceptics and jokers … The Rubicon was crossed. The Art Theatre had irrevocably become Tchekhov’s Theatre” (Theatrical Reminiscences of Tchekhov, 1927). Nemirovich-Danchenko’s letter to Chekhov provides the director’s view of the occasion.

  The reviews of the Moscow Art Theatre production clearly indicate the amount of attention attracted by the play, with Novosti praising the performance as “powerful and irresistible, something that moved the spectator deeply and startled him, upsetting all his preconceived … views on art” (No. 9, 1899), and Novoye Vrema hailing it as “an important stimulus for the future. The theatre is entering on a new phase” (18 January 1899). There was general criticism of the most extreme naturalistic elements in the staging, both the lighting of Acts I and IV – “dim and ominous, it made it difficult to see and hear” – and particularly the “long bench … placed rather awkwardly across the stage, so that the actors sat with their backs to the audience” (The Courier, 19 December 1898 and Stage News, 13 January 1899). However the analysis of the play itself was surprisingly sensitive and open to the new dramatic qualities introduced in The Seagull, with several reviewers commenting on the “delicate mood” of “that particular atmosphere which alone could serve as a true background for the melody of despair” (Russian News, 20 December 1898; Russian Thought, January 1899; Theatre and Art, 10 January 1899).

  By contrast, when it finally reached England in 1912, most of the reviewers and the public were clearly confused by the play. In particular Chekhov’s type of objectivity conflicted with the moral expectations established for naturalistic drama by Ibsen and particularly Shaw. As a generally sympathetic review of the published text of The Seagull (translated by George Calderon) remarked:

  Futility is the characteristic which all his people share … They have no force to help life or to hinder it. Implicitly they deny the greatest force in the many of which what we call Life is composed – the spirit and the will of man …

  Russian melancholy we know; this futility may be another side to it… But it is not a feeling which we share in Western Europe, and the difference of temperament may well keep Tchekhov from our affection. Crude, barbaric, and false as our English drama often is, it is all reared on the assumption that men and women either have the chief say in what shall happen to them, or at least are great enough to fight their fate to the end. It exalts passion, ambition, and the will. And it is quite possible that impatience with the flabby people whom Tchekhov shows us yearning vaguely, talking glibly, suffering helplessly, may blind the public in general to the beauty of his work.

  (The Times Literary Supplement, 1 February 1912)

  As the reviews also show, the style of English actors at the time was also unsuitable for the type of ensemble work required by Chekhov. The failure of the play in England, even with a former member of the Moscow Art Theatre troupe in the cast, helps to underline Stanislavsky’s achievement.

  5.3.5 Vladimir Nemirovitch-Danchenko’s report to Chekhov on the first performance

  Translated by John Cournos

  DEAR ANTON PAVLOVITCH!

  From my telegrams you already know of the general success of ‘The Sea Gull’. In order to paint for you a picture of the first performance, I must tell you that after the third act there reigned behind the wings a kind of drunken atmosphere. As some one has aptly said, it was just as on Easter Day. They all kissed one another, flung themselves on one another’s neck; all were excited with the mood of the supreme triumph of truth and honest labour. Just consider the reasons for such joy: the actors are in love with the play, with every rehearsal they discovered in it more and more new pearls of art. At the same time they trembled because the public was so unliterary, so poorly developed, spoiled by cheap stage effects, and unready for a higher artistic simplicity, and would therefore be unable to apprec
iate the beauty of ‘The Sea Gull’. We gave up our whole soul to the play, and we risked everything on this one card. We régisseurs, i.e. Alekseiev and I, bent all our efforts and capabilities so that the astonishing moods of the play might be intensified. We had three dress rehearsals, we examined every corner of the stage, we tested every electric-light bulb. For two weeks I lived in the theatre with the decorations, the properties; I made trips to the antique shops, seeking out objects which would give the necessary touches of colour. But why dwell on this? I am speaking of a theatre in which not a single nail has been overlooked.

  […]

  We played … in this order: Knipper is an astonishing, an ideal Arkadina. To such a degree has she merged with the role that you cannot tear away from her either her elegance as an actress, or her bewitching triviality, stinginess, jealousy, etc. Both scenes in the third act – with Treplev and Trigorin, the first in particular – had a tremendous success. And the departure which concluded the act was an unusual piece of staging, without superfluous people. After Knipper comes Alexeyeva – Masha. A marvellous image! Very characteristic and remarkably touching. She was a great success. Then Luzhsky – Sorin. He played like a major artist. Then Meyerhold. He was tender, touching and definitely a decadent. Then Alekseiev. He used a successfully mild, will-less tone. He spoke the monologues of the second act excellently, marvellously. He was a bit sugary in the third act. Roxanova was not so good; Alekseiev disconcerted her, forcing her to play the role of a little fool. I was angry and demanded a return to the previous lyrical tone. The poor woman got all mixed up. Vishnevsky has not yet quite merged with his role of the tender-hearted, shrewd, observing and all-experiencing Dorn, who was however very well made up in the style of Alexey Tolstoi and superbly ended the play. The remainder of the cast maintained a harmonious ensemble. The general tone was restrained and highly literary.

  The public listened to the play with such absorbed attention as I have rarely witnessed. Moscow is in an uproar over it. In the Small Theatre they are ready to tear us to pieces.

  The play is sure of a run. You’d have enjoyed the first act – and, in my opinion, the fourth, in particular.

  I am infinitely happy.

  I embrace you.

  Yours,

  VLADIMIR NEMIROVITCH-DANTCHENKO.

  What about letting us have ‘Uncle Vanya’?

  5.3.6 Reception in England

  John Palmer, Saturday Review, 13 April 1912

  Mr. William Archer has dragooned the intellectually accessible public and the junior critics of his time into thinking and writing in a sane and reasonable manner about Ibsen, while Mr. Shaw, who by precept and example has founded a school of dramatic criticism for the intelligent appreciation of his work, has drilled the London playgoer into turning up at his plays for hundreds of nights in succession, and has hypnotised the whole Press into believing that he is an inexhaustible fountain of good copy. [But] … If we escape the stigma (of having stoned our own particular prophet of the day), it will be more by good luck than good management. […] That we should look as foolish as every other generation has looked in similar circumstances there is no doubt whatever; for within the last twelve months the most exclusive, superior and advanced audience in London has succeeded, as thousands of audiences similarly qualified have succeeded before it, in looking foolish on a scale which can only be described as small for the reason that its mistake will never be set right so publicly and universally as the mistake that their predecessors made about Ibsen. The mistake of the Stage Society about Chekhov will never be fully discovered in this country; for it is in the interest of no particular group or clique to drill the public into realising it; and Chekhov, not being a social missionary, will never become a watchword with reformers and social prophets.

  Chekhov’s career in London is disgraceful for all concerned. As one of the most celebrated European dramatists he could not be altogether ignored by the various societies whose mission it is to discover for their members the acknowledged masterpieces of dramatic literature. Nevertheless, Chekhov’s first appearance was not in London, but in Glasgow, where Mr. George Calderon was invited to produce ‘The Seagull’ at Mr. Waring’s repertory theatre. I shall always regret that I did not see Mr. Calderon’s production; for I believe it was really adequate.

  A fortnight ago Mr. Maurice Elvey produced Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’ at the Little Theatre for the Adelphi Play Society. Players, audience and critics had in the meantime been instructed how to pretend a wisdom if they had it not (which is the true secret of criticism) by Mr. George Calderon’s preface to an admirable translation. One might reasonably have expected at the Little Theatre an excellent performance (Chekhov’s original heroine was in the cast), an appreciative audience, and critics who were not obviously preparing to denounce a third-rate farcical melodrama. As it turned out, things were a little better in the auditorium; but the performance was worse. […]

  The bad character of the Adelphi Society’s production was directly measured by the authority and merit of the principal players. I understand that Mr. Maurice Elvey, the Society’s producer, is a young man. He would therefore be entirely unable to compel Miss Gertrude Kingston or the Princess Bariatinsky to behave as she should. Anyhow, the play did not seem to have been produced at all. The result will be measured by anyone who has read – with understanding – a line of Chekhov’s comedy… . Not only does Chekhov’s play depend absolutely on the cumulative effect of a method which concerns itself rather with groups than with the individuals composing them; but he has in several passages of the play successfully portrayed group emotions. It is a commonplace of psychology that a group or crowd of people will behave collectively in a manner different from that in which any one of its members would behave. This commonplace, refined at times in the most subtle fashion, Chekhov has successfully illustrated in his comedies. As soon as we realise that the players, all and several, are hero of the piece the play falls naturally into perfect form. I dealt at length, in noticing the Stage Society’s production of ‘The Cherry Orchard’, with Chekhov’s technical skill in building up an impression of complete unity of form and idea by means of a style apparently discursive and in defiance of all the commonplaces of structure. Order comes into a superficial chaos as soon as we shift our view from the fortunes of this or that particular person of the play to the fortunes of the group. In the Adelphi Society’s production neither Miss Kingston nor the Princess Bariatinsky seemed to realise that her individual part was important only in correlation with the rest. It was not possible to be angry with Miss Kingston, for the whole tradition of British acting, which she so admirably adorns, was against her in this particular venture. But there was no sort of excuse for the Princess Bariatinsky. I hope I have made it clear how exactly these players offended. They had read their parts with care; they played with energy and skill; individually they were not seriously wrong for more than half the time; and they heavily impressed the audience. In spite of all this – or, rather, because of it – they succeeded in completely upsetting the balance and rhythm of the play. So far as Chekhov’s play was concerned my sensations were exactly what they would have been if I saw the two legs of a man I respected suddenly start walking in different directions… .

  4 THE CHERRY ORCHARD

  The play

  The Cherry Orchard brings together many of the themes from Chekhov’s earlier work, but presents them in a new key. The loss of a family estate, which Chekhov himself had experienced in childhood as a result of his own father’s mismanagement, had appeared in his earliest play, Platonov, and in various short stories during the 1880s, such as “Late Blooming Flowers” or “Other Peoples’ Misfortunes”. The parody of the semi-educated who have adopted misplaced Western attitudes at the expense of their own culture, embodied here in the servant Yasha, recurs in several stories, as well as (in a more serious form) in The Three Sisters. The confusion of values engendered by social displacement in peasants who have attained wealth, like the merchant L
opakhin, had already been explored in such stories as “Three Years”. The orchard itself, and its destruction, is a variation on the theme of forests, and the importance of planting trees, that recurs in The Wood Demon and Uncle Vanya. Chekhov’s mistrust of the intelligentsia, given its most memorable expression in Uncle Vanya, informs the portrayal of the superannuated student; and the ambiguity of Trofimov’s characterization can be traced to comments in Chekhov’s correspondence:

  As long as our boys and girls are still students, they’re honest and good, they’re Russia’s future; but as soon as those students have to stand up on their own and grow up, our hope and Russia’s future go up in smoke … I have no faith in our intelligentsia; it is hypocritical, dishonest, hysterical, ill-bred and lazy. I have no faith in it even when it suffers and complains, for its oppressors emerge from its own midst… I see salvation in individuals, scattered here and there, all over Russia, be they peasants or intellectuals.

  (Letter to Ivan Orlov, 22 February 1899)

  In the same letter Chekhov had expressed hope for the future – “science is inexorably moving forward, social consciousness is on the increase, moral issues are beginning to take on a more disturbing character” – and Anya’s optimistic vision has an analogue in one of Chekhov’s last stories, “The Bride”. There, in sharp contrast to The Seagull, The Three Sisters, and various stories where young girls are trapped in a stultifying world, the heroine manages to escape from the boredom of provincial life, the restrictions of a fixed social position, and the limitations of a traditional family structure.