Chekhov: a farce in four acts

To the theatre this evening. I happened to be in London, and discovering that Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’ was playing at the National theatre, the last performance tonight in fact, I decided to go along. I was fairly enthusiastic.

I shouldn’t have been. No sooner had I been ushered in belatedly by an irate and stupid young women, I realised my mistake. A young actress was scampering around the stage apparently naked. On closer inspection it transpired that she was wearing a skin-toned, body-hugging suit; but evidently the effect had been to make the audience ask, with soul crushing sadness, is that girl naked? Since the audience was comprised mainly of older generation this was a stupid and tasteless thing to do.

Not to mention that it’s shockingly out of place in Chekhov. Immediately, I was suffering torments to see just how these people were ruining the play. They evidently had no love of it, couldn’t care less about doing it properly and were more concerned about themselves, and their trick of looking naked. Children. A brief glimpse of the play was enough for me to see that this was not going to be Chekhov: quite apart from the fact that the actors and actresses were running around the stage with astonishing levels of neurosis, like the characters in Friends, and achieving new levels of annoyability, the like of which I have never in my life witnessed, the producers had decided – for incomprehensible reasons – to rewrite the play, to bring it up to date. I should have realised this when I saw the play being touted as a ‘version’ of the Seagull.

Of course it’s every writers dream to have their play rewritten according to how someone else wants to see it. Why else would a playwright deliberately set out to write a complete play, to give his or her characters specific words to say, that should be followed to the letter, if it wasn’t in the hopes of some buffoons, one or two centuries later being able to change all they wrote, bring it up to date and so make (a frankly dull play) interesting and accessible to the common mind?

So not only was the script ignored but cue lots of endless running around the stage, constant fuss and commotion in contrast to the serene, quiet, calm and intelligent way in which the play should be presented. The audience – at least those at the front – responded with laughing and much merriment, having, (like the production team and actors) utterly no clue what things were about, but laughing all the same as the characters buffooned their way through the play, in a sort of limp pantomime version of it; the pinnacle of which saw Doctor Dorn stand up on the table and do a monkey dance. The audience were unsure of the piece. The less pretentious scoffed; the more pretentious and the more sensitive laughed. They wanted to engage in the play.

Clearly everyone involved in the production had no respect for and no interest in Chekhov. They probably found it a chore to do, but nevertheless did it out of mixed feelings of guilt, and of reverence for the greater things in life and in theatre: deep down, I felt, they appreciated that the play was, in some way, magnificent. However, that inner feeling deeply buried, their everyday feelings towards the play, must have been that it was boring, slow, un-sexy and out of date. In reality, as their lives passed them by, and they trudged their way along the bridleway of life, the play offered no escape to them, nothing to enliven their miserable journey.

Thus they would do it, but their hearts were not in it. And they would rewrite it since it seemed so slow and boring. And moreover bring it up to date for the modern audience. If there’s one thing that brings out my bile it’s this notion of needing to update the classics. As if to make them understandable to our modern minds, since people were obviously such over pompous, sexually repressed bores in the old days, and it’s essential to make things hip, trendy and sexy for US, the modern generation, the first, real people born upon this earth. Especially given our modern attitude toward sex. I mean we’re all having so much sex these days, unlike in olden times, when people never even thought about it. These days it’s just sex, sex, sex, sex, sex.

In reality, all this rewriting of the play is just a fruitless, dumbing down process, a making of a meal into a soupy sludge, all so that it’s palatable for general consumption. It is a process of dumbing it down for the masses; though in the minds of the masses, the audience and the producers, it is Chekhov who is stupid and naive, an over pompous, sexually repressed professor and egg head and this version brings the play a little more into the realm of the masses, who of course believe they know everything. It makes it more like Friends.

It was evident that the actors had no respect for the play or their characters, and injected them with especial pomposity. They stood apart from their characters, despising them: they didn’t embrace the role. Rather, they played them as fools, they played them as bores, they played them with the contempt humans tend to reserve for the dead, the people of the past.

Acting is something I’ve never done, and is therefore, like music, a pursuit which I’m simply free to enjoy the product of, without any of the hassle of the background work. Anyone who’s ever got thoroughly involved in a hobby, be it sporting, artistic, or academic will know that getting too much involved, ultimately taints it. For example, my passion for literature has diminished due to over reading, trying to write, and being a Failed novelist. Whereas something like music still retains its purity for me, it is not contaminated by the everyday. I simply listen and admire and don’t wish to understand or take part.

And good acting, I absolutely love it. To see the immense skill of actor or actress in repeating under the spotlight, some facet of human emotion, as if no one was watching – I am gratified by it, by such honest human brilliance. But bad acting I hate. It incenses me. And this was bad acting.

The thing is, put the same actors in a modern day soap opera or film, where their characters are cool and sexy and they’ll immediately embrace the roles and act passionately and with conviction. They’ll give perfect performances. But put them in Chekhov and they become a little scared. They are scared of the play and what it represents. At the same time they have contempt for it. So they don’t embrace the roles: they won’t give themselves as Chekhov characters, because it would mean admitting something they just don’t want to admit. Like removing the floorboards from beneath their feet, the shaky foundations on which their lives are built. They are at their truest when playing the cool characters. For there they can escape.

The audience were mostly middle aged. There were those near the front, who were really trying to take an interest, the theatre aficionados. They maintained the laughter, trying to engage in the play. You see it’s a comedy, so there must be lots of laughter. In fact this is at least partly Chekhov’s own fault: he should never have labelled any of his plays as comedies.

The bulk of the audience, those toward the rear, had obviously come along to serve a penance: they would be glad to get out afterwards. Feelings of guilt, had brought them here, in the same way that adults will often take their children to museums and when their children complain that it’s boring, contradict them, even though they too are immensely bored. This was why they’d come. They knew it was good for them. Yet it was obvious they were very bored by the production and thought the play a load of rubbish. The thought that these people would go away with the idea that this crass adaptation, neither true to classic tastes nor something for the masses to enjoy was Chekhov, really irked me. They would leave with their prejudices confirmed: Chekhov was boring, stupid and doesn’t know anything about real life.

So then this farce of a play, disliked by both the Chekhov fan and the common man: ironically, despised by both. I love caviar; I love pot noodles; but put them together, try and mix one into the other and disaster strikes. They both have their place. Both should be respected, left as they are.

The man next to me had come along on a penance with two women and sat, from the off, typing away at his mobile/ipod/MP3 player, totally uninterested. And he didn’t, like so many others, resurface after the interval.

Peculiarly this was after three of the four acts. Having paid the money –17 British pounds – I decided to see it out. I stood alone in the vestibule irritated. Clearly none of these people had read or appreciated Chekhov, they couldn’t care less and weren’t even aware that the play was being grandiosely butchered. It is funny that we are sometimes at our most loneliest when we expect to be in the company of like minded people. Anywhere else with these people I wouldn’t have cared. But here I felt lonely. I just wanted to leave this gloomy, empty, building, this grand theatre devoid of all spirit and go and drown my sorrows in the hubbub of real life in Leicester Square. Like the literary world, the world of theatre is equally as hollow and lifeless: there is nothing to it. It is better to drink from the cup of the common mortal, than to imbibe the tasteless poison of the pretentious.

The buzzer went and we were all called in, returning to the theatre like Pavlov’s dogs for their din-dins. I was annoyed, bitter and angry by this: to feel like one of the herd, a clueless monkey plodding along with the others: some of whom were superior people, who in no way were aware of their imbecility. Tailing along after the other non thinkers, the herd, for our next portion of Chekhov’s soup sludge. Huh! I felt such anger! I wished to stand up, to flee the herd, to shout at these people and bring them into line. I should have been a general. The general of the theatre. Barking out orders to let the people know that this is all wrong. Demanding they give me twenty push-ups for their disrespectful indifference; a hundred star-jumps for failing to be nauseated by this rubbish; a million burpees for refusing to revolt against the production team. And then, like a good leader, to show them how it should be done. But I’m powerless.

Afterwards, I was glad to escape into the fresh, night air, and the atmosphere of the South Bank. I do love it here, there’s an atmosphere unlike any other I know. As if here there is a pervasion, a coming together of great artists. And yet scratch the surface, as I had done today, and you realise it’s no more cultured than Blackpool. It’s profoundly lonely, and insipid in fact. So best I guess in future only to soak up the ambience from afar.

I was depressed. What on earth was the point of Chekhov writing such a play if literally no one was ever going to understand or appreciate it. Rather, here we are a century later and it is being grossly misrepresented. Is that his fate? Is it the fate of all good writers, to be acknowledged yes, but then to have their works misrepresented and misunderstood in perpetuity?

I recall however that there was a film version of the Seagull made in the seventies; and though at the time I thought it had simply been performed as it should’ve been, now I looked on that film, its directors and actors with a happy hope, as if all was not lost. They had performed it correctly, they had embraced the roles and they were like a ray of sunshine to me now.

It seems that the players of history will always be remembered but their ideas, values and philosophies never understood but simply misrepresented. The Turner prize is another example of this phenomenon.

Yet more heinously this peculiar form of human behaviour occurs outside the arts, and should be considered a greater injustice here. Thus for centuries men have got together to go and rape, pillage and murder others. And in order to sanctify their behaviour and lend to it greater import and magnificence, they have done this under the banner of Christ. They have acted in complete contradiction to his tenets, yet they steal the name because they know of his importance, he was a great. His name glorifies their behaviour.

Thus so many of our great thinkers and philosophers will have their ideas utterly misrepresented. Yet in truth I guess, all great thinkers are selfish egotists, narcissistic glory seekers and so why should they deserve to be understood or appreciated more than anyone else?

Chekhov in particular was in many respects narcissistic. At least it seems that way to me. His works are difficult to read, can appear boring and uninteresting, a drain one one’s energies. It can’t be expected that he would be read by many, life is difficult enough for most people, they don’t need to know about Chekhov. He will only ever have a handful of fans – and they, on some level, will be insane.

And when I think back to when I first began reading Chekhov, and recall my attitude back then, I can’t really have any complaints if it now feels cold and lonely on the peaks of abstraction. Back then I desired to better myself, to read works of magnificence, to acquire wisdom. And I specifically recall feeling insecure: inferior to those who had already read Chekhov; and hoping that others, the common herd around me, weren’t going to read his works and gain his wisdom. I wanted the power all to myself. It was a secret potion, only for my advantage. I read out of a sense of elitism. I wanted to better myself, sure; and at the same time I wanted others to stay where they were. And though I did enjoy it on some level, Chekhov was a tough read to begin with, and it took a lot of concentration, energy and damn right insanity to wean my mind of its diet of junk TV and onto his works. And of course, when I began reading Chekhov, my mind was pretty much in the mould of the audience’s: that is why I understood their way of thinking.

I stood on a bridge overlooking the Thames. When I’m here on the South Bank on a Saturday night, I’m at my most relaxed, and nonchalant, I feel at home and in the zone. So I stared out over the river, contemplating, just meditating calmly.

And I always imagine that people look at me and realise that I’m something a bit different, that I know something they don’t. Perhaps they just see me standing alone and staring, and think I’m a mad man and a fool. But anyway, I like to flatter myself, like to believe that I stand out and that people see this.

One middle aged woman seemed to understand this. She saw me in such calm, relaxed meditation, and interrupted her walk to stand next to me, resting her arms over the railing and trying to look out on the river and the night city as I did. Trying to get into communion as I was. Her husband, a high powered, white collar man, lost in this world of Saturday night reflection, didn’t seem to understand her desire to stop and do this, but obliging her, stopped beside her.

And this had happened during the interval as well. A middle aged woman, also married to a white collar man, out of his element and bored at the theatre, came and stood next to me. Viewing me, I felt, as some sort of symbol of knowledge, someone who stood out, someone who knew, who held the key to culture in his hand.

And so both women yearned to be like me, to have what I possessed. To know something more, to be able to contemplate, to be in communion with life. Yet it is too late for them unfortunately. They can’t read Chekhov now. They are washed out, their lives are over. So I am sorry for them, but they are probably better off having lived as they did. They are middle aged now and perhaps regret their lives and want something more. But they lived in their youths. Had they’ve read Chekhov they would only have been flirting with craziness.