Latest news with #Chekhovian
Arab News
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: All the World on a Page
Author: Andrew Kahn and Mark Lipovetsky The Russian cultural tradition treats poetry as the supreme artistic form, with Alexander Pushkin as its national hero. Modern Russian lyric poets, often on the right side of history but the wrong side of their country's politics, have engaged intensely with subjectivity, aesthetic movements, ideology (usually subversive), and literature itself. 'All the World on a Page' gathers 34 poems, written between 1907 and 2022, presenting each poem in the original Russian and an English translation, accompanied by an essay that places the poem in its cultural, historical, and biographical contexts. The poems, both canonical and lesser-known works, extend across a range of moods and scenes: Velimir Khlebnikov's Futurist revolutionary prophecy, Anna Akhmatova's lyric cycle about poetic inspiration, Vladimir Nabokov's Symbolist erotic dreamworld, and Joseph Brodsky's pastiche of a Chekhovian play set on a country estate.
Telegraph
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Brightening Air: Rosie Sheehy confirms her star status in this terrific Chekhovian drama
The last time Conor McPherson staged an original, straight play was with The Night Alive in 2013. So The Brightening Air, his long-awaited new play that sees him returning as playwright and director to the Old Vic – where his multi-award winning Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country premiered in 2017 – feels like a major theatrical event. Stephen (Brian Gleeson) and Billie (Rosie Sheehy) are brother and sister living in a decaying farmhouse in County Sligo at the beginning of the 1980s. As another character puts it, they seem content to live and die with the house in which they were born. That is, until their self-made rut is disrupted by assorted family members. Chris O'Dowd is their brother Dermot, accompanied by Freya (Aisling Kearns), his age-inappropriate mistress who prompts his estranged wife Lydia (Hannah Morrish) to ask 'have you finished school, Freya?' For her part, Lydia will go to extraordinary and baffling lengths to win back feckless Dermot including tasking Stephen, who's been carrying a torch for her since they were teenagers, to fetch her a jar of water from a well known for its magical properties so that she can bewitch Dermot. Ex-priest and uncle, Pierre (Seán McGinley), who may or may not be blind but is certainly there for duplicitous reasons, accompanied by his helper Elizabeth (Derbhle Crotty) joins the fray. Into this melee of subtle and not-so-subtle digs, judgments and resentments also enters Brendan (Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty), a neighbour who has the hots for Billie. O'Dowd may be the star turn here but the standout performance in this eight-strong ensemble piece is Sheehy. The other actors are uniformly superb in a play that is by turns, convulsively funny, bleak and puzzling but it's Sheehy that my eyes kept seeking out among the bodies on stage – she channels Billie (bolshy and, to a modern audience, neurodivergent) so convincingly and with perfect comic timing. A major part of the success of this play is driven by its atmosphere, a kind of non-human character essential to highlighting its central enquiry of what home means, what it contains and how it morphs. It is richly steeped in Irish folkloric tradition and philosophical enquiry emphasised by designer Rae Smith's diaphanous screens that partition the set at various intervals. These depict the dilapidated farmhouse, as well as dream-like landscapes and shadowy figures moving like memories and unrealised dreams at the back of the Old Vic's cavernous stage. The play wears its Chekhovian allusions on its sleeve – the religiosity, rural setting, unrealised dreams, threats from outside and women who fawn over unworthy men are major themes within the story. In the programme notes, McPherson also states that he borrowed the four act structure from Uncle Vanya which he adapted in 2020. This isn't a standard family drama ticking off plot points, elaborating on character motivations or playing for laughs – even though it is very funny. In fact, some plot twists and revelations are never seeded earlier in the play, or even resolved at its denouement; some viewers may find the lack of answers disorienting. But if you can receive the play on its own merits, and tap into its stated query of 'how much living is really forgetting?', as Stephen disappears into the blackness of the recesses of the stage, then its haunting imagery will stay with you for a long time.
The Guardian
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Brightening Air review – shades of Vanya as a Sligo family squabble, tease and wrestle
Conor McPherson's family dysfunctional drama seems to take its inspiration from numerous sources: the title is a quote from WB Yeats's poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus, which lends it an air of poetic mysticism. There are shades of Uncle Vanya, a play McPherson has adapted, with a plot involving a family reuniting in the countryside to feud over the ownership of land and inheritance. There are elements of the American family dysfunction drama too, though this is distinctly Irish in its cadence, rhythm and setting. Individually, each influence is valid and every idea is a good one but together the play seems to swing on its hinges, like this family's clapped out farm-door. We are in the rural depths of County Sligo in 1981, inside a household run by two siblings: the stoic Stephen (Brian Gleeson), who is existing rather than living, and the eccentric and autistic Billie (Rosie Sheehy). They are marooned on the down-at-heel farm, just about making ends meet until their wealthier brother, Dermot (Chris O'Dowd) drops by. His presence coincides with the arrival of an old blind uncle and former clergyman (Seán McGinley) who has been ejected from church quarters and now shuffles into the family home with his housekeeper, Elizabeth (Derbhle Crotty), with a dispute over the farm's ownership – though this plot point does not emerge until late on. Comfy domesticity offsets abrasive sibling undercurrents as they gather around a dining table to eat, reminiscence and poke each other. McPherson, who also directs, throws in other tensions: Dermot comes with his inappropriately young squeeze, Freya (Aisling Kearns) while his estranged wife, Lydia (Hannah Morrish), still in love with her husband, puts her faith in 'magic water' that might return him to her. The pace is too easy in the first half, as the flotsam and jetsam of family life float by. There is a good Chekhovian mix of melancholy and humour in the cross-conversational currents between family members, but it all needs more momentum and emotional drive. The second half brings more intensity but also a plot that feels stretched to aburdism: there is a miracle in the vein of the biblical Bartimaeus (the blind beggar from Jericho) alongside the falling out and making up over inheritance. The mystical element sits well within the plotline of the magic water but becomes pronounced and protruding when characters talk about God and nothingness. You get the sense of a playwright preoccupied by big questions about the afterlife (with repeated mentions of reincarnation and the Ganges) but this sometimes sounds non sequitur in the mouths of his characters. There are none of the explosions of an American dysfunction drama here and angry face-offs between siblings steer close to the humorous and absurd. Sibling ribbing sometimes combusts into something more; there is wrestling between brothers, the lone sister is one of the 'lads', and home truths are occasionally spoken, or shouted, but you wish these scenes would dig into a few more nerves. Still, there are heaps of charm and a few searing moments. McPherson's last work at the Old Vic was the musical Girl from the North Country, and there is music here too, though it is not a musical. Lovely dramatic interludes feature piano music, songs carrying Celtic lilts but also, puzzlingly, a Bollywood number. An incredibly strong cast is gathered: O'Dowd is a delight as the family's self-regarding eldest brother and Sheehy, as always, is a standout force. She plays a largely comic character but infuses Billie with great emotion. The idea of love and its yearning is shown with delicacy. Every character seems unrequited, from the farmhand (Eimhin Fitzgerald Doherty) who is sweet on Billie, to the sexual undercurrents that swirl around Stephen and Lydia. Rae Smith's set is beautiful, full of diaphanous, overlying images of trees, water, misty mountains, sky, conjuring a vivid sense of place but also carrying a certain otherworldly magic. Sometimes this production lifts off, as if it is about to enter into the sublime, but is strangely dragged down by too many elements jostling to take flight. At the Old Vic, London, until 14 June.
New York Times
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Review: ‘The Float Test,' by Lynn Steger Strong
THE FLOAT TEST, by Lynn Steger Strong Writers are the worst, am I right? As a writer, I can say this. Whether we're following in the grand 'everything is copy' tradition of Nora Ephron or quietly 'borrowing' other people's stories, we cannot be trusted. But what happens when the writer is your beloved sister, and your whole family is kind of a disaster, with years of snubs, betrayals, and accidental and purposeful misdeeds between everyone, many of them aired in print by the writer? And what happens when, in the midst of all that, you have to go home? This powder keg of a dynamic is the backdrop to Lynn Steger Strong's latest novel, 'The Float Test,' which kicks off with an unexpected death. Deborah, the high-powered, demanding litigator matriarch of the Kenner family, suffers a fatal stroke while running. And so, during 'the hottest summer in the history of Florida summers,' the four semi-estranged Kenner siblings — Jenn, Fred, Jude and George, all middle-aged, with middle-aged problems aplenty — converge to mourn and help their now-widowed father. Jenn is the oldest of the siblings. She's the 'meanest and also sweetest,' and she now has six kids of her own. Fred, the writer, is next. She's left her husband, is living in a borrowed house, and finds herself unable to write anymore amid a crisis of conscience (and confidence) after the death of a friend. Jude, the third, who has secrets of her own, assumes the role of the novel's quasi-omniscient narrator, explaining, 'A lot of what I'm saying here I found out later; the rest, as Fred would say, I've imagined my way into , because why not.' Finally, there's George, the baby who brings to the table marital and employment problems, along with a Lhasa apso named Libby. If all that spiraling interpersonal drama isn't enough, I should mention that in the opening pages of the novel Fred finds her mother's gun. She carries it around in her bag, as we readers, in accordance with Chekhovian principle, wait for it to come out again. This, along with the mysteries of what's really going on with each sibling, and whether they can find a way to be a family again (also: why the heck did their mom have a gun in her closet?), adds propulsion, acting as a foil to the muggy daze of Florida heat and the suspended-in-animation feeling of grief imbued in the story. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Los Angeles Times
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Hugh Bonneville stars in an impressively poised revival of ‘Uncle Vanya' at Berkeley Rep
Berkeley — It's astonishing what a good director can do. The best among them can turn the disparate elements of theater into something seamlessly whole. Simon Godwin, artistic director of Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., pulls off this feat in 'Uncle Vanya,' a production at Berkeley Repertory Theatre that has one foot in the 21st century and another at the turn of the 20th. Irish playwright Conor McPherson has adapted Anton Chekhov's 1897 drama, and the result is a conversational English version without any of the starchiness that attaches to the more self-consciously 'classical' translations. McPherson takes liberties, setting the play in 1900 central Ukraine and, perhaps more consequently, elucidating the psychology where Chekhov was a tad more ambiguous. He also gives these Chekhovian wobblers more spine while curtailing some of the excesses that threaten to turn character into caricature. Godwin's superb company, led by Hugh Bonneville ('Downton Abbey') in the title role, smoothly delivers the dialogue as though it were one of McPherson's original plays. There isn't even any awkwardness about the clash of accents. At one point, Melanie Field, who plays Sonya, mocks the plummy British sound of Bonneville's Vanya. For a brief second, the fourth wall of Godwin's production is breached. But this momentary interruption in the normal order hardly matters because the ensemble is so comfortably aligned in the theatrical universe that Godwin has created. The staging has an aesthetic unity that's helped along by the airy, graceful scenic design of Robert Brill and the pastiche costumes of Susan Hilferty and Heather C. Freedman that balance the play's era and our own. Cellist Kina Kantor, an ensemble member who shadows the action, provides musical accompaniment that lends the human comedy an indisputable gravity. The freedom of this 'Uncle Vanya,' a co-production between Berkeley Rep (where it runs through Sunday) and Shakespeare Theatre Company (where it runs from March 30 through April 20), refreshes the play. Unlike last season's Lincoln Center Theater revival, directed by Lila Neugebauer, this production has a stylistic sure-footedness. All the actors are on the same page, equally at home with Chekhov's realism and buoyant theatricality. The success Godwin has had with Shakespeare — he directed a muscular 'Macbeth' last year starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma — is evident in the agility of his approach here. One of the mistakes directors make is assuming that Chekhov's plays offer a naturalistic slice of life. Chekhov bares the inner lives of his characters. No playwright of the modern era has more compassionately — or accurately — dramatized the human consciousness of time, loss and the gap between hope and reality. But the plays are rigorously composed works of art, availing themselves of a theatrical vocabulary that extends beyond photographic realism. 'Uncle Vanya,' in short, isn't a television drama, much as contemporary actors trained for the camera might barrel forward in a mumbling Netflix fashion. Godwin attends to the spatial patterns of the play, the movement of character across the stage in clean formal patterns that might suggest a dance piece titled 'Exits and Entrances' were Chekhov's artistic hand not so discreet. But it's the characterizations that distinguish this production. Bonneville, resembling a canceled journalist wallowing in sarcasm with a bottle of booze, lends Vanya a flailing, self-deprecating levity. Vanya doesn't need anyone to tell him that he's a miscast romantic, too goofy to have his heartbreak taken seriously. It's a credit to Bonneville's performance that we feel the character's disappointment in love and in life all the more acutely. The object of Vanya's mad infatuation is Yelena (Ito Aghayere), the much younger wife of the retired professor, Alexandre (Tom Nelis), who was married to Vanya's late sister. Alexandre and Yelena's arrival at the country estate managed by Vanya and Sonya, the professor's put-upon daughter, has thrown the household into chaos. Vanya can think only of Yelena while Sonya is in the throes of love for Ástrov (John Benjamin Hickey), who has become smitten with Yelena while attending to the hypochondriac professor and drinking with his old buddy Vanya. Aghayere's distinctive Yelena is too much a frustrated human being to come across, as she often does in revivals, as an aloof siren. Her dissatisfaction with her crabby old husband drives her into the same state of amorous turmoil that Vanya and Sonya find themselves in. Great beauty turns out to be no defense against the longings of the heart. Aghayere's Yelena represents an evolution of Chekhov's character. It's no wonder that, as she plays the piano despite her husband's demand for silence (a McPherson twist ), everyone falls under the spell of her seductive defiance. Field's somber, clear-eyed Sonya has ardent desires but few illusions. If it weren't for Yelena's meddling, she'd let the dream of a life with Ástrov pass her by without a murmur. The sorrow she feels is crushing but not new to her. Field's Sonya looks as if she has been holding back tears ever since her mother died. Her stoicism is all the more ennobling, given how much it costs her. Hickey never loses sight of the doctor's dual nature. The idealism that makes Ástrov so appealing — he's a passionate environmentalist and a medical humanitarian — doesn't negate the casual self-destruction and dismissive carelessness that lead him to guzzle vodka and ignore the tumult his visits engender. Nelis renders the professor a pompous and pedantic twit but not a heartless one. He isn't allowed to become the play's villain despite his selfish plan to sell the estate out from under his family. Sharon Lockwood's Maríya, Vanya's mother, is similarly endowed with redeeming qualities. She still drives her son insane with the way she worships the professor, but she's not as infuriatingly unreasonable as Chekhov permits her to be. McPherson extends Chekhov's soulful generosity throughout the cast. Craig Wallace's Telégin, known as 'Waffles' for his pockmarked skin, is an amiable fumbler yet suffused with kindness and possessing an implacable decency. Nancy Robinette as Marína, the elderly nanny who comforts those she has long served with maternal acceptance, maintains the long view in a household caught up in short-term squabbles. The ending of 'Uncle Vanya,' a theatrical oil painting of human endurance, is exquisitely executed. As Bonneville's Vanya and Field's Sonya take shelter from the devastation of their dreams in the daily grind of their work, an image of life as it is authentically experienced is renewed onstage. Chekhov may not falsely console, but he dignifies the human struggle in a secular parable that lives again through the magic of ensemble brio and a director at the top of his game.
