Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015: A "Russia of the Theatrical Mind"? 3030443329, 9783030443320

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Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015 A “Russia of the Theatrical Mind”? Cynthia Marsh

Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015

Cynthia Marsh

Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015 A “Russia of the Theatrical Mind”?

Cynthia Marsh Emeritus Professor of Russian Drama and Literature Department of Modern Languages and Cultures University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-44332-0 ISBN 978-3-030-44333-7  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: zhouyousifang This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Citing Reviews and Sources

Much of the source material in this study is taken from theatre reviews. Due to their brevity and frequency, citing these sources can lead to complexity in the referencing. Every attempt has been made at consistency, and shortness of reference. Since, overall, the number of theatre reviewers is small, the same names recur. The format of the footnotes is designed to keep the reader on track with which piece by this or that reviewer is being cited at any one time. Due to the accessibility of the invaluable Theatre Record, when a review has appeared in this source as well as a separate publication the Theatre Record information is given as well. However, the style of Theatre Record has changed in its history. Originally known as London Theatre Record (LTR) it was founded in 1981, and became Theatre Record (TR) at the beginning of 1991. In LTR/TR titles of reviews have not always been given, and sometimes not even the date of the source. The guiding principle is that the Record operates roughly as a fortnightly digest of current reviews. So, for example, the first review reference appears in the Prologue in note1 as follows and sets the format: 1Susannah

Clapp, Observer, 20 December 1998 (TR, 3–31 December, 1998, p. 1702). To make references as concise as possible, I have omitted the LTR/TR volume and issue numbers, while retaining the period covered. Due to seasonal demands and printing deadlines, sometimes as in the above v

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CITING REVIEWS AND SOURCES

example the period overruns the fortnight, and might even contain reviews from just outside the designated period. There is, however, in each issue a list of plays mentioned, and an annual index. The digitisation of the index in recent years has greatly facilitated the search for reviews. Since the various reviews of a production are usually published together in LTR/TR, where a second or third reference in sequence is from the same edition, then ibid is used within the bracket. For example, notes59–61 in Section 1 are as follows: 59Sheridan

Morley, The Spectator, 9 April, 1994 (TR, 26 March–8 April, 1994, p. 370). 60de Jongh, Evening Standard, 30 March 1994 (ibid, p. 371). 61Morley, The Spectator, 9 April 1994 (ibid, p. 370). The first name of the critic is omitted on second or further citation of a review, but where it is the same critic writing on a different production the first name is reinstated. So since note74 refers to one of the same critics writing on a different production, it reads: 74Nicholas

de Jongh, ‘Bristol: ‘A Month in the Country’’, The Guardian, 20 April 1979 (Bristol Old Vic [BOV] Theatre Archive). Where reviews predate LTR/TR and were found in archives or other sources, then the relevant details are given. Back runs of newspapers are not always easily accessible, even in these electronically driven times. So note62 reads (LTM stands for London Theatre Museum). 62Harold

Hobson, Sunday Times, 6 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting).

Not all materials held in archives are fully referenced, and press clippings may not always contain the full name of the reviewer, the date or sometimes even the source of the review. In any case, many reviews were anonymous before the 1960s. In these instances, as much data as possible is included. In LTM, reviews are to be found in files named after theatre (Theatre File) where the production took place, and then after the play (for example, Ivan Turgenev, Month in the Country 1965, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford. Theatre file).

Contents

Section 1 Prologue: The Project 1 Bibliography 8 Section 2 Setting the Scene 11 British Theatre and Foreign Plays 12 English as Host Language 13 Translating Culture 13 Drama: Translation and Adaptation 17 Transcreation 19 Adapting Novels and Stories into Plays 21 Categorising Translated Performances of Russian Theatre 21 Selecting Texts for Translation and Performance 24 Reception: Historical and Cultural Considerations 25 Stereotypes 27 Audiences 29 Reviewers 29 Marketing 30 Database of Productions 33 Turgenev’s ‘A Month in the Country’ (1855, 1869) 34 Bibliography 50

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CONTENTS

Section 3 Gogol’s Russia: Plays from the First Half of the Nineteenth Century 53 The Shadow of the Eighteenth Century: Fonvizin and Griboedov 53 Pushkin and Lermontov 59 Gogol 68 Bibliography 86 Section 4 From Merchant to Gentry Russia: Plays from the Mid to Late Nineteenth Century 89 Ostrovsky 90 Turgenev 102 The Late Nineteenth Century: Tolstoy 106 Bibliography 125 Section 5 Bridging the Centuries: Chekhov and Gorky 127 Chekhov: A Discussion of His Influence 128 Gorky 136 The Lower Depths in Britain 136 Bibliography 160 Section 6 Confronting Modern Russias: Twentiethto Twenty-First-Century Russian Theatre in Britain 163 Visiting Russian Companies 1945–2015 165 Translated Soviet Plays 1945–2015 172 Glasnost and After: 1986–2000 179 The Twenty-First Century 181 British Reception of Modern Russian Theatre: An Overview 186 Bibliography 213 Section 7 Staging Russian Prose 215 The Skills and Pitfalls of Adaptation 217 New Directions 222 Adaptations by Russian Companies and/or Directors 225 British Adaptations 229 Novels 230 Short Stories 234 Plays ‘After’ Novels 238 Prose Adaptation on the Stage: Some Conclusions 243 Bibliography 253

CONTENTS  

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Section 8 Epilogue: A “Russia of the Theatrical Mind”? 255 Bibliography 265 Appendices 267 Bibliography 373 Index 385

Abbreviations

Used in the Text, Including Footnotes (See Supplementary List for the Appendix of Productions) BAC Battersea Arts Centre, London BITE Barbican International Theatre Events Festival, London. BOV Bristol Old Vic, Theatre Collection CUP Cambridge University Press LAMDA London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art LTM London Theatre Museum, Olympia (Victoria and Albert Museum archive) MAT Moscow Art Theatre NT National Theatre, London RADA Royal Academy of Dramatic Art RSC Royal Shakespeare Company STA Scottish Theatre Archive, University of Glasgow (on-line) LTR London Theatre Record 1981–1990 TR Theatre Record 1991–2015–2020 available on-line. WW1 World War 1 WW2 World War 2

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Seaside Plaque, Dorset (Lyme Regis Town Council plaque, which was prominently displayed in several places along the promenade. In 2016 it was replaced with a more modern and accessible image) 27 Programme for The Cherry Orchard, Aldwych Theatre, 1989 31 Programme for Isaac Babel’s Marya, The Old Vic, 1990 32 Programme for Turgenev’s Three Days in the Country, NT, 2015 38 Gobo design, ‘Three Sisters: Birch 2, 76570’ Rosco Theatrical Lighting Catalogue, 2020 132 Programme for Gorky’s Summerfolk, NT, 1999 149 Programme for Slava’s Snow Show, Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 2007 171 Programme for Bulgakov’s Flight, NT, 1998 195 Programme for Dreamthinkspeak, Underground, 2005 224 Programme for Giffords Circus, War and Peace, 2011 234

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Illustrations

and Acknowledgments

1. Author’s personal photograph of plaque on Lyme Regis promenade, c2010. Image by permission of West Dorset District Council. p. 27. 2. Programme for Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Aldwych Theatre, 1989. By permission of DeWynters. p. 31 3. Programme for Isaac Babel’s Marya, Old Vic, 1990. By permission of Old Vic Theatre, London. Cover design by permission of Andrzej Krauze. p. 32 4.  Programme for Turgenev’s Three Days in the Country at the National Theatre, 2015. By permission of National Theatre Archive. p. 38 5. Current advertisement for a theatrical gobo called ‘Three Sisters, Birch 2: 76570/6570’ from the Rosco theatrical lighting catalogue. All intellectual rights in Rosco’s requested Materials, including trademarks and copyrights in the gobos are owned by and used with permission of Rosco Laboratories, Inc. p. 132 6.  Programme for Gorky’s Summerfolk at the National Theatre, 1999. By permission of the National Theatre Archive; and original photograph by permission of Special Collections, Leeds University Library. p. 149 7. Programme for Slava’s Snow Show, at Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 2007. Photograph taken by Véronique Vial of Slava Polunin in Snow Show. By permission of GAAP Bookings and Véronique Vial p. 171 xv

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ILLUSTRATIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

8. Programme for Mikhail Bulgakov’s Flight at the National Theatre, 1998. By permission of the National Theatre Archive. p. 195 9. Programme for Dreamthinkspeak’s Underground, adapted from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, 2005. By permission of Tristan Sharps and the Dreamthinkspeak Company. p. 224 10. Programme for the Giffords Circus adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, 2011. By permission of Nan Gifford and Giffords Circus. p. 234

SECTION 1

Prologue: The Project

In embarking on this book I wanted to pose some questions which I thought, initially, were straightforward. Why in British minds is Russia pictured as an endless forest (of birch trees) with the odd clearing containing an aristocratic country estate? Why do the inhabitants endlessly drink tea (admittedly from strange glasses rather than china cups), wear flowing skirts and lace decorated blouses or white linen jackets (the kind beloved of English country vicars a generation or three ago)? And why do these inhabitants mull (endlessly) their own mortality and/or the future of Russia? This description probably represents a run-of-the-mill production of any Chekhov play. In their turn, other questions soon emerged: why is Chekhov so dominant in British theatre culture? Does his presence even exceed that demanded by his world stature as a dramatist? Experience of theatre in Russia had also demonstrated to me that Chekhov is probably not as dominant there as we imagine. And what about all those other writers I was busily introducing to students of Russian drama? Many of them are very different from Chekhov: in their works there are few birch trees, and even fewer country estates, and a complete absence of elegantly clad ladies and gentlemen in the informal clothing worn by vicars, country or otherwise. These queries resolved themselves into a key question thanks to a review by Susannah Clapp of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country1: have the British staged a “Russia of the theatrical mind”? Consequently, when I turned to an analysis of Russian theatre in Britain, I wished to discover how dominant Chekhov is and exactly © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_1

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2  C. MARSH

who the other Russian members of the British repertoire are. Dorothy Barlow, an indefatigable research assistant, and I set about building a database for our own purposes of the British Russian repertoire. Even though much of the work on locating the Chekhov repertoire had been done by Patrick Miles,2 it quickly became clear we had launched ourselves on a gargantuan task by choosing to examine the other dramatists. Russian theatre is popular and the number of productions of Russian plays in total is quite high, higher we suspect than for other national repertoires, though we shall leave the assembly of these comparative figures to others. Much of this material was not digitised, when we began our investigation just before the millennium. I shall be eternally grateful to Ms. Barlow for her willingness to travel to regional theatres and archives as well as for her many trips to the old Theatre Museum in Covent Garden and then to its new home as part of the Victoria and Albert collections housed in Olympia, London. Work has been done by others, notably Laurence Senelick, Stuart Young and Ros Dixon3 on Chekhov4 and Kate Sealey Rahmen on Ostrovsky,5 but no broad picture of Russian theatre in English in the British repertoire in the post-WW2 period has been generated. An earlier context for this work has come more recently from Laurence Senelick. He has researched views of Russians on the nineteenth-century British stage in drama written in English, and traced the first direct arrivals and adaptations from Russia herself.6 The growing interest in modernism has initiated exploration of the early decades of the twentieth century. It has provided access to the story of Russian theatre in Britain up to our starting point in 1945. For example, Stuart Young has begun to examine writers other than Chekhov in the period of modernism.7 His 2013 article confirms trends I have found in the post-war period, and together our work gives a comprehensive view of Russia’s dramatists apart from Chekhov since they became popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet another branch to the modernist approach comes in a recent study by Claire Warden. Through the prism of modernism, she has traced British discovery of Russian writers and companies, their different theatrical practices and theories, in her study Migrating Modernist Performance.8 She locates herself principally in the disciplines of theatre studies and performance in distinction to translation studies which drive the present work, and stays within the period of British modernism. Projects have to be finite, and Ms. Barlow and I defined the post-war period as our field of search. The period 1945–2005 was identified early

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on, largely because data is more readily available than in the first half of the twentieth century, and sixty years provided a good spread of time for sufficient variation to be revealed. However, in this new digital age locating material has become less complex than when we started in the late 1990s. Creating some considerable delay to publication, the database was extended to 2015 providing a somewhat ‘biblical’ seventy-year stretch of reference, but a representative survey. As we built up this reference source, we appreciated its value more and more. It is included as an Appendix to this present book. We sensed a paradox lurking in the background of such a project. On the one hand, was the uncomfortable, even hostile British attitude to texts not in English, and yet on the other, an evident love affair with Russian theatre, as part of the British admiration for classical Russian culture. In the original project, it was decided that, given the work that had already been done, and the size of his production repertoire in Britain, focus on Chekhov’s plays would not be central to this study. However, productions of his plays do figure in the database. There is inevitable and recurrent discussion of them since they are most frequently taken as the standard for perceptions of Russia, as the opening paragraph of this Prologue suggests. Discussion of the impact of Chekhov’s work, particularly on British reception of the Russian nineteenth-century repertoire, is included in its appropriate chronological place as a bridge between the two centuries in Section 5. As the book was assembled, it quickly became evident that treating individual dramatists as the structuring device was impractical. Such an approach would have produced a dictionary-type work of, if not gargantuan, at least of encyclopaedic proportions and style, where some of the most challenging facets could not be addressed. It is also important to explore the differences in attitude afforded to writers from the nineteenth century from those to writers from the twentieth century. Exploration of such difference would give the study historical as well as cultural impact. A further original intention was to focus on English language staging. However, I was fortunate enough to receive a very relevant collection of materials from Martin Dewhirst on his retirement from the University of Glasgow. Dr. Dewhirst had frequently worked as a translator and interpreter for visiting Russian theatre companies and consequently had amassed an archive. As a result, material relating to productions visiting from Russia in the original language has also been included. The impact of this visiting theatre on British understanding

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of Russian theatre has been considerable. It has led to collaborative work between British and Russian companies, notably, for example, between Cheek by Jowl and the Russian Chekhov International Theatre Festival.9 As a consequence, I have taken a topic-based approach in writing this book. The result may seem idiosyncratic to some, partial to others. The selection has been guided by an academic career in Russian Studies (specialising in drama and literature), by long term practical experience of theatre directing, experience of translating drama and by being a member of many audiences. Section 2 literally ‘Sets the Scene’ exploring the contexts, theoretical and practical, for this study. My aim was to introduce the key concepts from translation studies and its modern descendent, cultural translation, and a steer from contemporary adaptation studies, since a significant proportion of the staged material is adapted from Russian novels and stories. I was determined not to allow these interventions make the account heavy with theoretical language. This theoretical approach enabled me to ‘read’ the mass of information provided by the reviews, often my main source of response to individual productions. Equally, I wished to consider some of the practical issues concerning choice of texts, and the work of the different practitioners engaged in production and adaptation. I also wanted to explore the implications of utilising review material, to underpin the analyses. I have included a case study of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country in this opening section as a demonstration of how the study of each author was undertaken. Analysis of the database indicated the following categories. The majority of productions are of nineteenth-century plays, so two sections were allocated to their staging: ‘Gogol’s Russia’ and ‘Gentry Russia’ (Sections 3 and 4). The former deals with the ‘long’ eighteenth century up to and including Gogol, and the latter treats the period 1850–1895. Section 5 opens with a discussion of the reasons, for Chekhov’s immense popularity at the expense of the other writers. Gorky’s plays date from the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century up to the 1930s and provide an effective bridge into the very different type of theatre which emerged in the Soviet period. His works were taken as models for Socialist Realism. Accordingly, Section 6 deals with plays of the modern Soviet period and reference to the new work, both texts and performances, emerging from post-Soviet Russia, which has been seen in Britain 1945–2015. Finally, Section 7 deals with British and Russian adaptations from Russian prose and stories as a separate genre with its own issues. It includes works

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which come from the whole historical period covered in Sections 3, 4, 5, and 6. The Epilogue draws together observations on British perceptions of staged Russian writing 1945–2015 in the light of the preceding sections, and reconsiders the question posed in this Prologue: what kind of Russia have the British staged for themselves? Then follows the Appendix of located productions which it is hoped will be a useful point of reference and consultation for professionals, scholars and students alike. New items emerge all the time as archives become accessible. The difficult aspect is often the tracing of the reviews on which this study depends. The database is, then, and probably never will be, one hundred per cent complete, but it provides a rich representation of how Russian theatre has fared in Britain.10 The Bibliography contains the sources referenced in compiling this book, including a list of cited, published translations into English. It is hoped that this may prove a starting point for those keen to explore Russian theatre other than Chekhov. Finally, the book is completed by an index. A word or two is in order on what this book does not cover. As indicated, this study does not contain a detailed analysis of the British reception of Chekhov’s plays. The reader is recommended to Patrick Miles, to Laurence Senelick, and to Stuart Young, Ros Dixon, Elizabeth Mitchell11 and others who belong to a younger generation. They have done and are undertaking the ongoing analyses of his important impact. Re-translation and re-interpretation of Chekhov’s plays continues. It is to be hoped that some of the conclusions of the present study, since they exist mostly in direct relation to Chekhov, will find their place in this continuing scholarship. Consideration of other art forms is relevant if we place theatrical culture in a broader sphere. Opera and ballet have been continual channels for transmitting Russian culture. Study of them, I think, would have broadened my canvas considerably. However, as disciplines they require analytical tools quite different from theatre, and would therefore not have integrated easily with the identified theoretical discourses. Russian opera is not de rigueur sung in English, and the body language of traditional ballet (still a key Russian cultural export) remains strongly defined by that Russian tradition. Similarly, film, though closer to the stage as a medium, operates according to its own laws, especially for analysis. Reviews of films play less of a part in reception: in distinction to the ephemeral nature of play production, in film there is one

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canned performance and it will be replayed many times in its lifetime. The reviews do not accumulate in the same ways nor with the same frequency (where plays can sometimes show multiple productions) as in theatre reception (or indeed, opera and ballet). There is also a notable growth of British interest in Russian visual and plastic arts if the popularity of recent exhibitions is anything to go by. The list is becoming extensive. Exhibitions bringing works from Russia include the following: ‘Russian Landscape in the Time of Tolstoy’ (National Gallery, 2004); ‘Circling the Square: Avant-Garde Porcelain from Revolutionary Russia’ (Somerset House 2004/5); ‘From Russia: French and Russian Master Paintings, 1879–1925’ (Royal Academy, 2008); ‘Alexander Rodchenko’ (Hayward Gallery, 2008); ‘Rodchenko and Popova’ (Tate Modern, 2009); ‘Building the Revolution: Soviet Art and Architecture, 1915–1935’ (Royal Academy, 2011–2012); ‘Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky’ (National Portrait Gallery, 2016); and most recently, ‘Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932’ (Royal Academy, 2017). There have also been in-house exhibitions such as ‘Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909–1929’ (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2010/11). The visual and plastic arts are set, in this new era of greater freedom of exchange, to become influential on British perceptions of Russia. However, the visual and plastic arts are less open to the translational interpretative processes of the theatre disciplines: the pictures come ready-framed, the sculptures ready-made. For a number of years I have been engaged in directing productions in English of Russian plays as well as student productions in Russian. This activity was to a considerable degree responsible for my engagement in this project. In particular, it was the source of my acquaintance with Dorothy Barlow, when she played Vassa in a production in English in 1994 of Gorky’s Vassa Zheleznova (1910; trans: Tim Suter, Tania Alexander). The questions posed at the beginning of this Prologue arose in rehearsals for this and other productions and are precisely the issues that I hope this book will begin to clarify. I am extremely grateful to such curious performers some of whom were also so committed and enthusiastic they would submit to learning some Russian from me to authenticate their pronunciations and penetrate Russian culture. Ms. Barlow and I are also very grateful to all the archivists and librarians who have helped us in this search, especially at Mss. and Special Collections, University of Nottingham. Dr. Jill Warren’s research on translation was an inspiration to me and her support in formatting the

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original submission manuscript was invaluable. This book is a testament to them all.

Notes





1. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 20 December 1998 (TR, 3–31 December 1998, p. 1702). 2. Patrick Miles, Chekhov on the British Stage, 1909–1987 (Cambridge: Sam&Sam, 1987); Patrick Miles, ed., Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), which contains not only Miles’ article, ‘Chekhov and the Company Problem in the British Theatre’ (pp. 185–193) and an Appendix compiled with Stuart Young (see below) but also outputs from the conference organised by Miles in Cambridge in 1987. 3. Ros Dixon’s untimely death in November 2010 was a great loss especially to family and friends, but also to her students, and to Chekhov studies and the other spheres of her research. These include the Russian director Anatolii Efros, and Chekhov in Ireland. She was still in the opening stages of a career as an academic nourished alike by her interests in drama, performance and Russian theatre, which she taught at the University of Galway, Ireland. 4. Laurence Senelick, The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of the Plays in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Stuart Young, ‘Changes of Direction: Mike Alfreds’ Methods with Chekhov’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 169–184; with Patrick Miles, ‘A Selective Chronology of British Professional Productions of Chekhov’s Plays 1901–1991’, ibid., pp. 237–250; ‘A Blind Spot: Chekhov’s Deepest Horizons’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Spring 2007), 65–78; ‘Making the “Unstageable” Stageable: English Rewriting of Chekhov’s First Play’, Modern Drama, 52, 2 (2009), 325–350; Ros Dixon, ‘From Iconoclast to Traditionalist: A Study of Anatolii Efros’ Productions of Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002); ‘O Chekhov, Thou Art Translated’ (Paper for Conference of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, Charles University, Prague, July 2005); ‘Chekhov Bogged Down? Tom Kilroy’s Version of The Seagull’ (Paper for Conference of the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster, Derry, April 2004) published in Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in Twentieth Century Irish Drama, ed. by S. Boltwood (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2009). Dixon also organised, along with Irina Ruppo, The University of Galway Conference: Ibsen and Chekhov in

8  C. MARSH Ireland (2009); for proceedings see Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage, ed. by Ros Dixon and Irina Ruppo Malone (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2012). 5. Kate Sealey Rahmen, Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs 30 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999); The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823–1886) (Lampeter: Mellen, 2011). 6. Laurence Senelick, ‘“For God, for Czar, for Fatherland”: Russians on the British Stage from Napoleon to the Great War’, in Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, ed. by Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 19–34. 7.  Stuart Young, ‘A Month in the Country in the British Theatre’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1994), 207–227; ‘“Formless”, “Pretentious”, “Hideous and Revolting”: Non-Chekhov Russian and Soviet Drama on the British Stage’, in Russia in Britain, 1880–1940, pp. 87–112. 8. Claire Warden, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels Through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). On p. 4 she references bibliography generic to this approach for the early period. 9. See Section 5, material on Chekhov. 10. Stuart Young’s article ‘“Formless”….’, pp. 107–112 (see n. 6), provides a list of Russian plays staged in the period 1903–1940 by Chekhov and other dramatists. 11. Elizabeth Mitchell, ‘The Reception of Chekhov in the UK, with Particular Reference to 1997–2001’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Keele, 2003).

Bibliography Beasley, Rebecca, and Philip Ross Bullock, eds., Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Dixon, Ros, ‘From Iconoclast to Traditionalist: A Study of Anatolii Efros’ Productions of Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002). ———, ‘Chekhov Bogged Down? Tom Kilroy’s Version of The Seagull’ (Paper for Conference of the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster, Derry, April 2004) published in Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in Twentieth Century Irish Drama, ed. by S. Boltwood (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2009). ———, Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage, ed. by Ros Dixon and Irina Ruppo Malone (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2012). Gorky, Maxim, Vassa Zheleznova, adapt. and trans. by Tania Alexander and Tim Suter (Oxford: Amber Lane Press, 1988).

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Miles, Patrick, Chekhov on the British Stage, 1909–1987 (Cambridge: Sam&Sam, 1987). ———, ed., Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Mitchell, Elizabeth, ‘The Reception of Chekhov in the UK, with Particular Reference to 1997–2001’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Keele, 2003). Sealey Rahmen, Kate, Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs 30 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999). ———, The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823–1886) (Lampeter: Mellen, 2011). Senelick, Laurence, The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of the Plays in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). ———, ‘“For God, for Czar, for Fatherland”: Russians on the British Stage from Napoleon to the Great War’, in Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, ed. by Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 19–34. Warden, Claire, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Warren, Jill K., ‘Acculturating Shakespeare: The Tactics of Translating His Works Under Stalin in the Light of Recent Theoretical Advances in Translation Studies’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015). Young, Stuart, ‘Changes of Direction: Mike Alfreds’ Methods with Chekhov’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by P. Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 169–184. ——— with Patrick Miles, ‘A Selective Chronology of British Professional Productions of Chekhov’s Plays 1901–1991’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by P. Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 237–250. ———, ‘A Month in the Country in the British Theatre’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1994), 207–227. ———, ‘A Blind Spot: Chekhov’s Deepest Horizons’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 21, 2 (Spring 2007), 65–78. ———, ‘Making the “Unstageable” Stageable: English Rewriting of Chekhov’s First Play’, Modern Drama, 52, 2 (2009), 325–350. ———, ‘“Formless”, “Pretentious”, “Hideous and Revolting”: Non-Chekhov Russian and Soviet Drama on the British Stage’, in Russia in Britain, 1880– 1940, ed. by Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 87–112.

SECTION 2

Setting the Scene

At first glance, studying foreign drama translated into one’s own tongue presents a simple option. However, only a cursory examination of the material soon demonstrates the deceptiveness of this simplicity. Tense issues such as national identity and the history of the relations between source and host culture quickly arise, not to mention the theoretical considerations implied in the arts of translation, adaptation, production and performance. Then there is the complex area of reception dependent on the work of reviewers and audience responses. In order to set the context for the reception of translated Russian theatre in Britain, these opening pages introduce some key ideas from translation studies and translating cultures. Ideas pertinent to drama translation and transfer are included to indicate how they feed into the categorisation of approaches described later in the section. The historical and cultural climates in which the post-war reception of Russian theatre has taken place are also referred to. Finally, a sample analysis of one play to exemplify my approach is included towards the end of this section. So ‘setting the scene’ for the discussion in the book as a whole is very much the purpose here.

© The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_2

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British Theatre and Foreign Plays David Johnston has identified a central problem in the British theatre’s reluctance to deal with translated culture: British theatre […] hasn’t yet clarified its relationship […] to the journey towards otherness that lies at the heart of our experience of non-English language theatre.1

This reluctance in my view is in no small way related to the position of English as a world dominant language. English language-based culture can afford to select what it chooses to receive from other cultures. As a result, the so-called ‘minority’ cultures suffer the most. For example, Sirkku Aaltonen writes of the difficulty of getting Finnish plays into the British repertoire and of the problems of getting ‘minority’ culture work translated: Finnish writers are still relatively unknown in the English speaking world. In the year 2000, only eight works of prose and poetry, four plays, six radio plays, four anthologies, one children’s book and seven works of non-fiction were translated into English.2

Aaltonen continues that translation is often undertaken at the expense of the minority culture: the work has to be modified or ‘acculturated’ for prospective British and, through English as the medium, global tastes; and in these circumstances, national identity, ‘Finnish-ness’ in her case, may be under threat. Fifteen plus years on from her study the situation is much the same. However, as cultural translation studies indicate, many aspects are at work within a host culture which shape and control what is transferred into English. It must also be said that in focusing on a cultural interchange between Britain and Russia, this project remains mostly Eurocentric, at least of greater Europe, and concentrates on a relationship between Britain and Russia for most of our period. At the same time, the project draws on post-colonial studies and theoretical writing on the transitions and tensions between minority and dominant cultures.

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English as Host Language English language as the host within Britain comes with in-built complexities. These days the word England as opposed to Britain is almost a political statement; and in this post-colonial world the English language has fragmented into many different variants. I would define the target language of translation for the British stage as British English, which is just one of these variants. The English of England is now too narrow, but it is its standards which have probably most influenced the way we have viewed Russian theatre since the Second World War (WW2). And even British English as a concept already carries many further variations within itself. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the term ‘British’ also implies multicultural connotations as immigration has become an increasing factor in British society. Russian theatre in English potentially plays to multiple populations and therefore to ethnically diverse audiences: it may only be played in Britain, but it already travels far. Jatinder Verma is founder and artistic director of Tara Arts, a company dedicated to the development and exploration of British Asian theatre. A defining feature of Tara Arts productions is their use of texts from the scripted theatre of cultures other than the domestic British. Verma called his approach ‘Binglish’, a gloss on the term Singlish for Singaporean English.3 He uses this term to capture the ambivalence of Asian and black life in modern Britain which is regarded as ‘not quite English’, but at the same time striving to ‘be English’ (p. 194). His theatre in this respect is a challenge to the unthinking conventions of the British English stage. I wonder if we should develop a term ‘Tringlish’ to accommodate English as a vehicle of a translated other cultural source. As this study will show, English as the target host language and culture raises many issues. One of our aims is to alert practitioners and spectators alike to the distinctive properties such ‘Tringlish’ possesses.

Translating Culture The ‘translating’ of cultures is fundamental to this project. André Lefevere, a prolific writer on these issues, pointed to the difference between ‘translation’ and ‘translating cultures’:

14  C. MARSH There is now general agreement among those who think and write about translation, that the activity called ‘translating’, which involves mediation between at least two code systems, should neither be equated nor confused with the wider cluster of problems associated with ‘translation’, or ‘translation studies’.4

While I agree with Lefevere’s desire to draw distinctions here, I find his emphasis wrong. It seems to me that the problems associated with intercultural transfer number more and are more complex than those which arise in translation studies. Undoubtedly translation studies is the older discipline and has witnessed some considerable changes in recent years, but translating cultures is complex and continues to grow in density as it embraces ever more disciplines including anthropology and the more recent ones such as post-colonialism and geopolitics. So what are the processes involved in, to use Lefevere’s term, ‘translating’ cultures? The fact that we use ‘translating’ for both activities suggests how close in some respects the issues are. At the same time there are significantly different expectations from translating culture as distinct from translating language. Transferring a product, in our case a play script for performance from one culture to another, engages an intricate process. Patrice Pavis famously took the model of the hourglass to represent this process of transfer.5 The upper bowl represents the source culture, and the lower bowl the host, receiving or target culture.6 He focuses on the processes which happen in the narrow passage from one bowl to the other. The multilayering in both bowls of the hourglass shows the multiplicity of considerations and the number of practitioners involved. Pavis repeatedly uses the metaphor ‘to flow’ in relation to the sand (standing for the ‘text’ in its mutating forms) passing between the two bowls of the hourglass. In my view, such a process of transfer between cultures is one of upheaval and distortion, rather than fluidity. The narrow neck of the hourglass is perhaps not the best metaphor. While we consciously mirror the original text in the transfer from one culture to another, the process of assimilation into a host culture is often an uncomfortable, makeshift affair, exhibiting slippage and appropriation to the host culture’s concerns. How these aspects may be identified will be discussed shortly, but first let us look at some further developments and considerations about cultural transfer. Lawrence Venuti has been a key figure in translation studies. He among others has done much to clarify the multiplicity of positions

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a translator can adopt. The ideas most closely associated with him are referred to as ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignisation’. These two terms are a modern gloss on what is probably a very old idea. Quoting Lefevere, Venuti acknowledges Friedrich Schleiermacher, the early ­nineteenth-century philosopher, as a source of the idea that the translator has two choices: either to move his reader closer to the author of the original or source text, or to move the author to the reader of the translated text.7 Venuti then explains that the foreignisation/domestication model which has emerged from Schleiermacher’s observation is much more of a variable than it may appear. For example, he writes: The “foreign” in foreignising translation is not a transparent representation of an essence that resides in the foreign text and is valuable in itself, but a strategic construction whose value is contingent on the current situation in the receiving culture. […] British and American cultures, in contrast have long been dominated by domesticating theories that recommend fluent translation. […] a fluent translation […] inscribes the foreign text with a partial interpretation, partial to English language values, reducing if not simply excluding the very differences the translation is called on to convey.8

And defending himself against his critics, he adds: the terms “domestication” and “foreignisation” do not establish a neat binary opposition that can be simply superimposed on “fluent” or “resistant” discursive strategies.9

The importance of this distinction between ‘foreignisation’ and ‘domestication’ has been enormous. Discussion of its implications has enabled clarification of the different strategies it is possible for the translator to take as well as pointing out the numerous choices to be made in the translation process. These ideas are central to the production of translated drama texts, and to the way I go on to categorise the various approaches. One relatively recent model was produced by Manuela Perteghella.10 She attributed an anthropological impetus to the process. She stated her rationale in the following: Because this research is interested in the relation [italics in the original] of the cultural product (the translated play text) to its makers (translators, adaptors) and users (directors, actors, audience, readers, and so forth), it is already dwelling on an anthropological concern.11

16  C. MARSH

Consequently, her model differentiates between the issues of interlingual translation and its problems and intercultural concerns which embrace the societal functions of the text translated into performance. The first is the raw act of translation in all its forms; the second is all the cultural baggage which comes with a text migrating to a host culture. Although offering a comprehensive explanation of the processes, Perteghella’s model is complex and perhaps does not lend itself easily to application to data encompassing multiple texts such as in this study. Another theorist who writes mostly about drama translation and its performance leads more specifically on to the issues confronting a translator of drama. Susan Bassnett has pointed to a specific complication arising from the usage of the word ‘translation’: Discussion is […] complicated by a tendency to refer to the performance as the ‘translation’ of the written text, which suggests that a play can only fully be realized in performance, hence a translation of that play into another language will always be incomplete.12

Another term which might be used is ‘transmission’, but where Bassnett sees an incompleteness with the word ‘translation’, so perhaps there is too much of a completeness with ‘transmission’. This alternative term is used in this study to indicate the stage beyond translation. The work by Bassnett in which this understanding of translation is raised is related to Shakespeare. It provides a good example of the way the issues of translated performance have been addressed mostly not with Britain as the host culture but with the debate in mind about changing attitudes to British culture in the post-colonial world. The focus on Shakespeare concentrates on the degree to which his works are now assimilated or not assimilated into emerging cultures formerly dominated by Britain. In the theoretical sphere of translation which covers all aspects of literary culture, it is generally recognised that performance which engages the translation of scripts is an area with its own inherent problematic. All the while, we should also be aware of the ephemeral quality of cultural transmission in the realm of performance. The transmission lasts only as long as the individual performance and then resides, or does not reside, in the memory of the spectator, perhaps longer in the memory of performers or directors and others involved in directly creating the performance. And yet witness how strong those reactions sometimes are

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when the performance does not live up to the cultural expectations of those (like me) engaged in the study and transmission of other cultures. A semiotician by training and inclination, Patrice Pavis has really taken us to the heart of drama translation and the ensuing performance. He has made us understand that not only language, but also the received gestural traditions are embodied in the text.13 There is acknowledgement that this awareness has somehow to mould not only performance, but also the translation that is produced. Pavis describes this awareness as the ‘language-body of the text’.14 This ‘language-body’, therefore, should be explored in the creation of any performance, but translators, too, need to be aware of its potential. Some directors strive for polyglot performance, where means are devised for the language of the original text still to be present, or for there to be sufficient awareness of the text as a translated piece in the actual performance. This type of practitioner has a difficult task, a task that is accomplished only after years of work by directors with an intercultural approach such as Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook and Adrienne Mnouchkine. They attempt to unpick the anthropological codes which condition us as performers within our own national cultures.15 In translation studies there have been changes of direction, especially within the area of play translation. There is now awareness of the constraints imposed by notions of equivalence and fidelity in play translation; and as we have just seen in the models put forward there is a widespread sense that the performance, rather than the translation, is the key part of the process.

Drama: Translation and Adaptation Along with transposition into the target language go the processes of translation. For example, as a modern linguist I was educated to accept that translation is largely an act of betrayal of the source culture (traditore traduttore); a well-known film, among other things, has made the notion ‘lost in translation’ into a catchphrase.16 However, as theorists of translation, such as Susan Bassnett point out, translation offers many gains. This idea is achieving wider acceptance. Not long ago, a leading article in The Times gave rare and welcome prominence to the act of translation. Its gains were identified as ‘making other cultures intelligible’; and the potential for the creation of ‘towering works of literature’ in their own right, was noted. At the same time, a paradox

18  C. MARSH

was formulated: the invisibility of the good translator.17 In some ways the article was disappointing in not allowing for the range of motive and difference in type, both positive and negative, that is attributable to what the article refers to as this ‘noble and necessary art’: translation can ensure survival. In its best aspects translation can become a form of new writing offering a mode of ‘transcreation’,18 where the product is a piece of creative writing in its own right; or transcreation is conceived as ‘a radical translation praxis’ which utilises the translator’s local, existing tradition.19 Equally though, the post-colonial experience has taught us that translation can act as a form of censorship, as a means of containment and assertion of supremacy by the host culture. This censorship may be as anodyne as the situation where only works congenial to the host culture are translated, or as explosive as the deliberate rewriting of uncongenial works. These are uncomfortable issues, and there are a number of echoes to be found in the selective way the British stage has assimilated only certain aspects of the Russian repertoire. Yet others see that translators quickly become adaptors. This last word has had an ambivalent career. Claims were made for recognition of the literal translator, often discounted in theatre credits, as opposed to the ‘adaptor’. Often in recent years this latter role has been taken by a writer, already well known in the theatre. Such adaptors have been vilified for claiming works that are not strictly their own. On the other hand, Stephen Mulrine, a well-known translator of Russian plays, was taken aback to discover that the BBC’s standard contract paid adaptors a higher fee than it did translators.20 However, there are several ways of regarding this issue. Theatre is a performance art and writing a play for performance requires professional skills that are not within the remit of many translators. Additionally, theatre has to be a commercial enterprise and if a successful dramatist with a ‘name’ can not only provide a skilful play but also attract an audience, then that must be welcomed. Much is made of the place occupied by the adaptor’s name on the published script. For example, Brian Friel added ‘After Turgenev’ as a subtitle to his version of A Month in the Country.21 Firstly, this tactic is a kind of negotiated settlement from Friel’s point of view, and perhaps puts his version as an independent text in dialogue with Turgenev’s source text. It indicates that Friel is speaking through Turgenev’s text to some degree. Secondly, others thought this ­self-assertion the height of vulgarity and that all the credit should go to Turgenev. However, it can also be seen as an act of humility: Friel

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acknowledges the source of his work so as to enhance awareness of his own ‘derived’ play. It is at this point that the threshold to an original piece of work is reached. The dramatist Patrick Marber has added to this practice recently. His adaptation of A Month in the Country changed the text considerably, and his choice of a new title, Three Days in the Country, signalled his own strong claim to the text.22

Transcreation The notion of ‘transcreation’ is becoming ever more familiar, legitimised perhaps by the passage of texts from a dominant to a ‘minority’ culture, rather than translation into the dominant European languages familiar to us. Borderline cultures that exist in constant dialogue with other dominant cultures, such as the culture of Québec caught between its French heritage and North American culture, have seen fruitful work in this area. For example, a translation, from whichever encoding, is shown to be of a worth equal to the original source work. This egality is demonstrated by experiments in parallel text and commentary where which text is the translation and which the original work is deliberately left ambiguous.23 Such ambiguity throws up for consideration the murky area of ownership in the practice of translation. The director-performer Robert Lepage has recently re-examined this problematic issue in his new work 887 (Edinburgh Festival 2015). He juxtaposes the Canadian English and Québécois French languages and cultures, and demonstrates through his own life experience how the Québécois French-speakers had to fight to be heard.24 ‘Transcreation’ provides an illuminating test case enabling the theoretical discourses of translation studies and intercultural transfer in theatre to be distinguished, in an era when their interests seem frequently not only to overlap but also to collide. From the point of view of translation studies ‘transcreation’ is a legitimate and useful tool to separate translators as professional linguists from creators who are professional dramatists and who engage in adaptation from one genre to another (e.g. from prose to drama). Ideally, perhaps, professional translators should not be engaging in ‘transcreation’ since their job is to transmit the text into the host language, with explanations of points of obscurity or of aspects of the source culture for which no satisfying form can be found in the target language. Despite the now widespread recognition that the performance mode is inscribed into the original dramatic

20  C. MARSH

text, ideally translators should not be improvising the means by which this performance can be realised in the host theatre, unless they belong to that rare breed who are both translators and dramatists in their own right, such as Michael Frayn, for example. Transcreation, however, clearly operates in the work of the adaptor who is properly required to have knowledge and experience of writing for the stage. It does, however, operate at varying degrees of intensity: the greater the degree of intensity, the less the product will bear the stamp of originality. Wholesale transcreation will be seen as transgression or fail to be mentioned or be consigned to the categories of influence or intertextuality. However, some transcreation is undertaken for reasons which remain legitimate within intercultural discourse. It has been argued that such ‘cannibalisation’, can even be regarded as a process of respect.25 In the Russian repertoire, the work of Brian Friel provides a case in point. Friel is well known for his ‘transcreations’ of Chekhov’s plays. On his agenda is what has been called the ‘Irishisation’26 of Chekhov’s texts and contexts. Friel’s appropriation of Chekhov (and indeed Turgenev) has brought irritation from his English reviewers, but its benefit has been to show how unwarranted the anglicisation of these writers’ plays is. The process in this example has been one of borrowing from a dominant culture (British) in favour of a previously colonised one (Irish). Had the process been reversed then, no doubt, it would not have been regarded as legitimate. The great irony here of course is that the source culture (Russian), a dominant one in its own sphere, is not held up to scrutiny. In Friel’s case I guess such transcreation was not done out of respect.27 Other figures also participate in the process of adaptation: namely, all those who have a role in creating the performance in the host culture, the directors, designers, technicians, performers, the reviewers and ultimately, of course, the audience. It is usually the case that very few, if any, of these participants will have knowledge of the source language, and at best only a ‘received’ knowledge of the source culture. These are the intermediaries who provide the multilayeredness and complexity to the transition process shown in the different models proposed by Pavis and Perteghella above.

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Adapting Novels and Stories into Plays In the period 1945–2015, there have been a significant number of stage adaptations from Russian prose. One suggestion from adaptation studies is that adaptations of prose for the theatre are designed to reach a different public from their initial readership. Sometimes they are born out of literary anniversaries, or new topicality if they are works from the past, or for commercial reasons, piggybacking on contemporary publishing success. Or that the source texts possess particular characteristics which lend them to theatricalisation. The practice of publishing in serial form, for example, produces an especially ‘scenic’ (both visually and in terms of dialogue) type of writing which lends itself well to stage performance. However, exploration in this study of the reception of ‘culturally other’ sources, that is originally written in another language and for another culture, indicates some new motivations, sometimes political, sometimes aesthetic. It seems to be the case that adaptation studies as a field has been less directed at passage across cultures than transition between genres.28 So issues such as which Russian prose writers have been adapted, and which strategies well-received adaptations have utilised, are explored in Section 7.

Categorising Translated Performances of Russian Theatre From the points of view of translation theory and for analysis of British reception of the Russian repertoire, I have identified three different categories: collision, hybridisation and acculturation. These categories are based on concepts drawn from studies both in translation and in translating cultures, but not necessarily specifically in relation to drama. Each category will produce different types of translation and subsequent production, and within each category, there is, admittedly, a range of variations. They are broad categories. Another important distinction to draw is that they operate to degrees of intensity which in the translation process are very different from that of production. Indeed, the infinite variety of production possibility often entails an overlapping of these categories. With collision, there is a deliberate attempt to allow the awareness of translation to remain uppermost, to allow the two cultures, the source and the host, each to enact their differences.29 This approach is likely to be the least frequent of the three identified. It entails knowledge of the

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source culture; it demands careful research; it implies persuasion of the value and significance of difference, and it fosters a sense of alienation. All these aspects are either not easily attainable, or arguably off-putting to an audience, who are not only the arbiters of the production, but also the source of crucial revenue. At its best the collision approach respects an ‘ethics of difference’ (as Venuti defines it30) in that attention is paid to both sides of the cultural divide. However, usually the result is skewed to one or other of the participating cultures depending on the production agenda. For example, Declan Donnellan’s ‘Cheek by Jowl’ production of Three Sisters with Russian actors, utilising surtitles in English, achieved a genuine cultural collision, almost entirely enriching in its authenticity and difference but one which demanded an intrepid spectator, unafraid of confronting the text in its source language. As with the foreign spoken language, the surtitles function as an obvious indication of a text in translation. The audience member has a choice whether or not to watch the surtitles, but may quickly discover that they are visual distractions rather than aids to understanding. Their quality is important: typos, mistranslations and omissions are all unwelcome diversions. This kind of production is an obvious example of collision: other forms might be engineered with a target-language (i.e. in our case English) speaking cast, and a source language (i.e. Russian) director; or there are collaborative experiments such as that adopted in the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) festival of Russian theatre which began in 2009.31 In this RSC example, new plays were translated and continuously worked on with both author and translator in residence during rehearsals and early performances. However, there were some unexpected outcomes. Two young representatives of the new drama in Russia, the Durnenkov brothers (Mikhail and Vyacheslav) participated in a panel in 200932 on the contemporary arts scene in Russia. The brothers’ play Pianye (The Drunks) had been commissioned by the RSC for the festival. To the question whether or not the play would or could be staged in Russia, the brothers commented that the play would have to be re-adapted for Russian consumption, away from the version that was currently being staged in Stratford. Answers to other questions revealed that the play had gone through substantial changes in the process of translation and modification for British staging. It seems that collision of this kind can also produce reverberations in the source culture. From these examples, it can be seen that in many senses, collision is often very much a director-centred approach.

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The second approach I have termed hybridisation.33 There is much discussion among translation theorists as to what the description ‘hybrid’ implies, from the notion that all translations are by definition hybrid to the notion of the ‘mutant’ text which ‘deliberately mimics the linguistic spontaneity of the target culture’.34 A broad definition might be that the hybrid text is the type of translation where a conscious effort is made to retain elements of the source culture. At the same time, however, the effort is made to ensure explanatory aspects of the home culture are sufficiently present to smooth reception and understanding. The aim would be to avoid the sense of alienation or collision as described in the first category. This second category might be seen as the most audience-centred of the three approaches. The result is that the source culture is mapped on to recognizable aspects of the host culture in an honourable effort to increase accessibility. However, frequently the result is only to mask or downplay the potency of the source culture, leading to a semblance of appropriation. In drama, in particular, owing to its additional ‘texts’, described for example by Pavis, and owing to the number of practitioners who create the performance, the situation is complex. Sometimes explanation or accommodation is offered at the textual level of dialogue (for example, using Russian names or a halfway house towards them), or sometimes at the level of design in costume, sound effects or set. In the desire to achieve as broad a communication as possible, this approach has a tendency to rely on stereotype. The materialisation of Moscow as a dolls-house type model in Laurence Olivier’s NT production of Three Sisters (1967), at least in the filmed version (1970),35 emphasised the British (probably not solely British) stereotype of Moscow as a collection of exotic domes and turrets, rather than the familiar and family-centred memories of Chekhov’s sisters. Finally, there is acculturation: the source culture is tamed, the domestic host culture is inscribed into the text, and at the extreme the text may be utilised for domestic purposes. In some senses, acculturation begins with the notion of the ‘mutant’ mimicking extreme described in connection with hybridisation. So domesticated have Chekhov’s plays become that production in Britain might be said to operate at the extreme of this approach closest to the hybrid. Many productions subscribe to existing views on Chekhov, and are mounted to ensure the continuation of the tradition. This tradition is embedded frequently in drama schools where Chekhov is the standard vehicle for training in the System developed by Stanislavsky. In this type of production, a diva might play

24  C. MARSH

Madame Ranevskaia,36 or three closely related members of a dynastic theatrical family might play the three Prozorov sisters37 in settings of rural tranquillity. While the acculturated production pays lip service to audience needs, it is in fact the most writer/adaptor centred of the three approaches and, at its furthest extreme, often the most consciously ideological. Such versions are frequently created by an established writer who will often be directly involved in the production. Trevor Griffiths’ updated language and political approach in his Cherry Orchard (1977), which saw Trofimov as a zealous revolutionary, would be an appropriate example here.38 The ideological effect is sometimes also achieved by translocation of setting. An example would be Mustapha Matura’s Three Sisters39 relocated in place and time to the West Indies in WW2. It offers opportunities to counter the dominance of white English British productions and language. Further examples would be Janet Suzman’s Cherry Orchard set in South Africa,40 or a resetting to Ireland such as in Thomas Kilroy’s Seagull.41 Powerful as they are, these productions are not focused on the production of a Russian classic. To return to transcreation for a moment in relation to enshrined Russian dramatists such as Chekhov: there is also the practice of sequel writing such as the play Mrs Vershinin42 created round a character in Three Sisters, or the process whereby a play makes obvious references to its source text, Three Sisters Two43; or indeed, the practice of parody, The Cherry Sisters.44 Each of these examples has moved well over the threshold between source and target culture such that issues of translation have very little impact on the finished product. However, a knowledge of the pretext/s is often required. In other times and with other concerns, these practices, as analysis of Shakespeare’s sources teaches us, have been commonplace and unremarkable.

Selecting Texts for Translation and Performance A significant difference between the translator and adaptor lies in their respective powers to choose their source texts. Adaptors (especially if they are established dramatists) have a greater degree of influence over choice of writer and/or play than do the translators who may be contracted to an individual piece of work. Patronage lies in the hands of the commissioning agencies such as the theatres and theatre companies themselves, drama providers such as the BBC and the other TV and radio companies, and festival organisers, or other funding initiatives.

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The established canon also has a deciding influence, and clearly has had in the case of Russian theatre with Chekhov. A writer who becomes canonical will not only have all works translated, be they major or minor, but will be retranslated. This process serves as one of reinforcement of the canon and continued marginalisation of those deemed outside it. Retranslation also provides a framework for suppression of the fact that a dramatist is from another culture. This misleading situation adheres to writers such as Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov and Brecht among dramatists, and to many more among novelists (Tolstoy, Cervantes, Turgenev, Balzac and so on). As the writers are retranslated and reperformed or reread, it becomes ever more of a surprise to the uninitiated that these works were not originally written in English. In itself, retranslation is essential. A factor identified by Bassnett is the ‘intertemporal’ characteristic of translation as well as the more easily recognised interlingual and intercultural aspects.45 Her point is that through translation, works frequently travel across time periods to emerge not only in another culture, but in an era patently not their own. In addition, translations themselves date quickly. So retranslation is not always the compliment to an individual writer it may seem. It is often a response to the demands of an individual director or dramatist who seek a text to reflect particular views of given writers or existing fashions in production of their works, not least is the need for a contemporary, accessible, host-country idiom.

Reception: Historical and Cultural Considerations Geographically one of our near neighbours, Russia is alluring in its strangeness, seemingly European but tangibly different. Russia’s national identity was formed long ago for the British. In the newly emergent accessible verbal cultures of Renaissance England, Russians were demonised as barbarians and anthropomorphised into bears,46 clichés we have never quite lost. And here we begin to touch on problems of national character and cultural difference. This issue in modern theatre and in modern theory has mostly been tackled across vastly different cultural divides. The issues are viewed from a global perspective as two cultures meet and processes such as appropriation, colonisation and conflict are more obviously present for examination. From this global perspective, Britain and Russia have a lot in common, but this proximity has rarely been demonstrated by their histories whether considered separate

26  C. MARSH

or intertwined. At this juncture, study of works in transition engages with modern Russian and British history and Russo-British political relations. Moving forward, the first point to mention is that the years after the end of WW2 were soon overshadowed by a different form of aggression: the non-combative but equally damaging Cold War. As Britain engaged after WW2 with its own reconstruction towards an ever richer and materialist society so Soviet Russia began to learn the secrets of her own birth and childhood, and engaged with a relaxation of conditions in her various ‘thaws’. By then she had cut herself off, retreating behind that impenetrable curtain of iron, which divided Europe into East and West. The Soviet Union created an empire in which social and material conditions seemed painfully primitive to western minds. Whether or not this view was rightly conceived, it held powerful sway. Britain found itself central to a new concept of ‘The West’ which embraced not only our close European neighbours but also the vast English-speaking nation across the Atlantic, North America. It is not insignificant in understanding the impact of the actions of the Soviet Union on reception of Russian culture as a whole (not just Soviet) in Britain that the sole year with no professional productions of Russian material was 1957. Did Britain respond to the Soviet intervention in Hungary in 1956 by banning Russian culture from our stages? The fault may be mine due to the difficulties of tracing productions in the early years of the post-war period, but the absence does seem marked. From the 1960s onwards, Russian dissidents punched peepholes in the iron curtain and made what seemed enormous, often mortal, sacrifices by doing so. Russian culture took on a questionable, dual character: either hopelessly politicised and therefore untrue, or sacrificial and therefore almost religiously prophetic. The Russia of the 80s and early 90s appeared as a disintegrating entity. Its momentous change was watched with excited interest while tales of the suffering of her people were widespread. Modern, post-Soviet Russia witnessed a violent rupture with its past after the collapse of the old regime in 1991. An exodus of wealthy ‘new’ Russians able to capitalise on the structural and economic change, has begun to alter perceptions of the Russians as individuals. In recent times, Russia seems to be returning to its past, to become a country of excessive wealth and extreme poverty and unquenchable aggression. In addition, she is now overrun by the maladies of modern society: consumerism, political apathy, violence and lawlessness and a drug culture, while

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sustaining the alcoholism that has scarcely ever left her. Or are these just the stereotypes we also seem so readily to fall back on?

Stereotypes The trap in perception and reception is to rely on stereotypes. And yet there are clear distinctions in the power of examples from different cultures. One graphic and telling, but harmless, instance will serve as an illustration. One of the best known plays in the translated Russian repertoire is Chekhov’s The Seagull. The implied view in Chekhov’s play is of a bird flying free, alone, over an inland lake, indifferent to human life, until its freedom is curtailed as it is shot down unnecessarily by human agency. A British audience brings a quite distinctive view of this bird to a performance. This wall plaque in a well-known seaside town, for example, relates to the same bird (Fig. 2.1).

Fig. 2.1  Seaside Plaque, Dorset (Lyme Regis Town Council plaque, which was prominently displayed in several places along the promenade. In 2016 it was replaced with a more modern and accessible image)47

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It sums up the British stereotypical view of this bird. It suggests that in many respects we would be better off without them and that many Britons could cheerfully shoot them. In the Russian play, the seagull is presented in quite a different way. The manner of its death conveys hints of violence and human indifference which orchestrate the fates of two characters, Konstantin and Nina. Just as views on the same bird differ, so does each culture’s view of the other vary. How is this gap to be bridged? Can it be bridged in any reliable way? Have we managed to bridge it? Or are we at the mercy of so many variables that full perception of one culture by another is virtually impossible. We are in the grips of a dilemma: how do we render another culture accessible, and yet also preserve the integrity of that culture at the same time? Perception and reception of another culture are rarely excavated in their full complexity. For example, the last two centuries of Russian theatre are received in very different ways. There is nostalgia and respect for the nineteenth century; a sceptical almost unwilling acceptance of twentieth-century experimentation muddied by the imposed conformity perceived at the heart of Socialist Realism, the central policy of Soviet cultural life. During the last three decades theatre writing has been superseded by vibrant theatre performance and a desire to give the classics new impact in a new Russia. These perceptions, however, do not attach only to theatre. British reception of Russian theatre is driven by a hierarchical perception of the products of Russian culture, which probably places Russian novels at the top of the scale along with music, closely followed by opera and ballet, but trailing theatre, and then poetry coming some way behind. This hierarchy is crucial and is responsible in my view for much of the way nineteenth century Russian theatre is regarded by the British: it is imprinted with their view of Chekhov and driven by the British English love affair with the Russian novel. The twentieth century is inevitably politicised: the experimentation of its first three decades is seen as an irrevocable loss that has still to be recuperated. Consequently, attempts are made to bridge and somehow submerge the aberration that was the Soviet period. Reception is coloured by the dissident novelists and exiled composers, and poetry is given a higher accolade even than theatre. A further explanation for the relatively low ranking of twentieth-century indigenous theatre of the Soviet period relates to the public nature of the medium. The Soviet Union placed excessively strict controls upon theatre and its practitioners

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and meted out draconian punishments for transgression, undoubtedly affecting creativity and international significance. The new post-Soviet theatre arrives in Russian and utilises surtitles, and relies to a great degree, perhaps mistakenly, on British awareness of its own culture (productions of Shakespeare) and Russian classics already established in Britain (Chekhov).

Audiences Of all the contexts in which a translated cultural product is received the most complex and the most difficult to unravel is audience. Audiences are many and varied. Firstly, there is the implied audience of the translated guest text, often different from the implied audience of the source text. This implied audience of the translated guest text may be difficult to define, since translations often operate as trail finders to see if this or that dramatist can survive in the host environment. There are a number of examples where a guest Russian text has been given one or two productions and then never repeated (Lermontov’s Masquerade, in 1976, for example, or the two performances of Afinogenov’s socialist realist play, Distant Point in 1958 and 1991). The commercially targeted audience of a translated text could also be different from the implied audience of the text, though deliberately undertaking such a path would be a risky business. Such a risk may often hamper the reception of untried works. Secondly, audiences are consumers, expected to pay for the privilege of seeing this or that text in performance. Thirdly, there is the distinction to draw between the audience of the spectacle and the readership of the translation, if it is published. A translation no less than the process of intercultural transfer has to bear all these different audiences in mind to secure acceptance. Moreover, canvassing views among all these audiences and ascertaining which views to relate to which types of audience is an uncertain business. Audiences rarely leave records of their views beyond the indications of commercial success or failure.

Reviewers Theatre performance is ephemeral. As a rule performances leave only traces, rather than complete records. Not all productions are archived through prompt books, articles or publicity material. So in a survey

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such as the present one, reviews play a crucial part in determining perception and reception. However, care must be taken not to overstate their responses. The majority of the reactions in this study come from newspaper and journal reviews. Reviews are not the best of materials on which to make judgements, but they contain in a focused and also often magnified form the weaknesses of any literary critical material: cultural prejudice, political bias (often determined by the newspaper or journal in which they are published) which together raise the issues of nationalism, transcultural complexity and ethnicity referred to earlier. There is obsession with particular issues, such as translation and national style; and the date of the review is crucial as opinion is affected by the state of ­Russo-British relations at the time. It is also worth noting the small number of critics who recur in the reviews (being a theatre critic can, it seems, encourage longevity!) and even to date, in our comparatively liberated times, critics are frequently male. The fact that theatre critics rarely know Russian or indeed much about Russian culture is not the drawback it perhaps might be feared to be. In fact, as regards the reviews used in this survey such a lack is often a strong point: reviewers are often accurate barometers of general British perception. On the other hand, it is they who create perceptions, recycling myths and reinforcing stereotypes. It is also important to date a review and locate it historically within the theatrical preoccupations of the time. Another important factor in this study relates to the quality of perceptions to be found in reviews. In presenting parts of this study as papers at conferences, I have become aware of the ease with which reviews can be plundered to raise a comic reaction. I have subsequently modified some of these quotations, not wishing to undermine the inestimable value of the review as a reaction that is entirely contemporary to a production.

Marketing In 2014, I curated an exhibition, called Chekhoviana, exploring the marketing of Chekhov’s plays in Britain. My chief sources of material were theatre programmes and flyers. I was genuinely surprised to discover how few images are used to sell Chekhov’s plays in Britain. The endless repetition of trees, specifically birch trees, or the misleading seagull, or erroneously large and aristocratic, country houses, situate Chekhov in an endlessly arboreal landscape punctuated by lakes or ponds, even the

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Fig. 2.2  Programme for The Cherry Orchard, Aldwych Theatre, 1989

seaside, and draped with cherry blossom (usually pink rather than white) in relation to his final play. Sometimes the trees become quite fanciful (Fig. 2.2). The productions by Konstantin Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries

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are repeatedly visually quoted. Little attention, however, is paid to Chekhov’s frequent disagreement with the MAT interpretations of his plays. This imagery locates Chekhov’s world, irretrievably almost, in the late nineteenth century. It has a lot to answer for. Is it little wonder that the representation of Russia on our stage has been so imaginary? A second non-gentry, abstract stream focuses on caricature in relation to comic Fig. 2.3  Programme for Isaac Babel’s Marya, The Old Vic, 1990

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writers such as Gogol, Mayakovsky and the Presnyakov brothers, or on colour and contemporary design in relation to Gorky, Trifonov or Babel in efforts to find their modernity (Fig. 2.3). This design by Andrzej Krauze brilliantly married the contemporary (1990) signs of collapse in the USSR to the social collapse during the Russian Civil War 1919–2021, the topic of Babel’s play. Of course, these writers are much less frequently seen in Britain and so this stream is somewhat submerged.

Database of Productions The material on which the study was based is continually being added to, as new productions emerge and older ones are discovered. Consequently, the database sometimes refuses to stand still and be counted. No doubt it will be added to in years to come. Unfortunately, not all performances are reviewed. The aim is for a representative sample. The database includes London theatres, some of which are commercial touring bases, some producing theatres, with or without a resident company, and some are institutions such as the National Theatre; it includes regional theatres, but not all regional theatres, as they do not all have archives or a production list; and not all regional theatre is reviewed and not all the reviews have been archived. There is sometimes an uneasy relationship between professional, semi-professional and amateur. And where do the productions done by students in drama schools stand? These are strictly not full public performances, but due to the potential theatre careers of the participants their role in forming the canon is immense. All these factors in some small way or another will affect reception and perception. Most of the items in the database are drawn from sources such as Theatre Record (formerly London Theatre Record), in print since 1981. Its methods of collection and presentation have changed during its history. Other sources are theatre archives, national ones, as well as those in local libraries and record offices, and occasionally still kept by the producing theatre itself. The writing of this book has coincided with huge leaps forward in data collection and storage. As a result, modern tracking of productions of Russian source plays in translation has become generally more comprehensive and efficient. However, there are still fault lines in the available material. It is difficult, if not impossible, for example, to locate a production if it was not reviewed, and certainly so if the production date was before Theatre Record and in the regions. Theatre Record

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has only carried a substantial regional list since 1991, and then not an exhaustive one. Inclusion was dependent upon the editors receiving notification and reviews of individual productions. The Edinburgh Festival (international and fringe material) has not always been fully covered either, and at times no Festival supplement to Theatre Record was published. The reviews we have are generally multi-purpose covering several productions a night. Many festival events do not get reviewed at all. As a result, I am reluctant to produce league tables, as it were, of the most frequently staged writers with precise figures. It would be invidious to equate frequency on the British stage with the quality or significance of the original writing in Russian. I am confident though, that the number of items in the data base is sufficient to give an indication of the general patterns of frequency of production. There is a difference, however, moulded by history, between reception of the nineteenth and twentieth century writers. This difference has become signally evident in the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century. Britain is now open to new writing and new experimental companies from Russia, and to new collaborations with Russia to a greater degree than before. Innovation rarely made its way out of Soviet Russia. Extending the span of the database to 2015 allowed experimentation from Russia, and the fledgling changes in translating Russian theatre here, to be recorded. As an example of the challenges which have been faced in compiling this study, the following account of reactions to Turgenev’s A Month in the Country48 will enable us to illustrate the strengths as well as the hazards of this approach.

Turgenev’s ‘A Month in the Country’ (1855, 1869)49 Turgenev was chosen for the following reasons. Firstly, a key review of A Month in the Country is the source of the question whether the Russia we confront in British theatre is an illusion. In this survey that illusion will be placed in its precise context with reference to Turgenev. Secondly, initial analysis of the writers other than Chekhov represented on our stage in English threw up some startling and not so startling facts from the database. After Chekhov, the dominant playwright, and this you might expect, is Gogol with 74 productions. This figure includes 4 foreign language productions, and contains both original plays and adaptations from his prose between 1945 and 2015 (but compare at least 390 for Chekhov). The second figure in the

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overall list (if Chekhov is excluded) may surprise, since this writer is not a dramatist at all. Dostoevsky has 45 (5 foreign language items) to his credit. Hence, a section on prose adaptations for the stage was included in this study. Third comes Ostrovsky with 38 productions (3 foreign language), closely followed by Gorky with 37 (6 foreign language). Then come two almost on level pegging: Turgenev at 26(0) and Tolstoy with 25 (plus 1 production in Ireland (The Power of Darkness, 1991)). Only in fifth and sixth positions do we find the first post-revolutionary twentieth century writers: Arbuzov on 23 and Bulgakov on 21 (including his adaptation [1963] of Gogol’s novel Dead Souls in Russian). All of this indicated that the sample dramatist in this section should preferably be from the nineteenth century. Post-revolutionary plays come with characteristics of their own, and are therefore treated in a separate section too. Gogol’s popularity rests on just one play (The Government Inspector) and much on adaptations of his stories. Apart from him, the first substantial dramatists of note in the list are Ostrovsky and Gorky. Ostrovsky’s contribution has already been closely examined by Kate Sealey Rahmen,50 and Gorky’s work is considered in some depth in Section 5. After them comes Turgenev, whose plays have rarely been considered closely.51 This account contains more detail than can be the case throughout this study. The amount largely depends on the number of reviews available and so varies from production to production. This sample analysis is also designed to illustrate theoretical issues outlined hitherto. Two of Turgenev’s 26 productions derive from stage adaptations of his novel, Fathers and Sons (1987, 2014), and 3 from his minor plays (A Poor Gentleman, 1977 (also translated as Fortune’s Fool, 2013) and A Provincial Lady, 1977). In the case of A Month in the Country, the review material is produced by and large by 12 of the remaining 21 productions The other productions were either sparsely reviewed or the review material has so far not been traceable. Although individually so short, reviews contain material relevant to many issues. The review material for A Month in the Country is rich. It airs the following recurrent points: British views of Russians; British views on nineteenth-century Russians; references to the links between Turgenev and Chekhov as standards; lack of awareness of Turgenev’s irony; the importance of the piece as a play as opposed to a novel; changing interpretations in the light of shifting Russo-British relations; and finally, translation issues.

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In the reviews of the 1940s, the British/English national perception of Russian plays in general was that they were ‘gloomy’ and tainted by the ‘ideological’ impact of Soviet theatre.52 When the Michel St. Denis production of A Month in the Country came in 1949, reviewers found the comedy of the production a ‘poor Turgenev’.53 What I think they meant was ‘poor’ in relation to their pre-conceived notion of Turgenev from his novels. There was also wistful reference to an earlier production of the Emlyn Williams’ 1943 version.54 The central role in A Month in the Country, Natalia Petrovna, has occasionally been used as a vehicle for a star performer. It has attracted actresses as varied as Ingrid Bergman (1965), Dorothy Tutin (1974/5), Prunella Scales (1979) and Helen Mirren (1994), of whom Bergman and Mirren created the greatest sensations, but interestingly assessment of them is polarised. Bergman was commented upon for being ‘statuesquely beautiful and glacially controlled’,55 while Mirren uncovered the sex and the passion in her Natalia Petrovna.56 Some reviewers found Natalia Petrovna a perfect role for Bergman, inappropriately seeing her Scandinavian ‘glaciality’ (another national stereotype?) as a good match for these ‘melancholy ineffectual Russians’57 but disliked her struggling with her accented English!58 These comments suggest a hybrid production hampered by being played by a foreigner, however popular she may have been. By 1994 we were viewing a different Russia and could therefore perhaps find a different Turgenev. Sheridan Morley thought the company, and especially Mirren, had got it ‘dead right at last’,59 while another reviewer found the play a ‘warning on the dangers of sexual passion’.60 Both these comments suggest another highly effective hybrid interpretation, but our view of the Russians was also changing, both culturally and politically. Turgenev is rarely compared with anyone other than Chekhov, indicating perhaps the hold that Chekhov has on our imagination of what Russian theatre is. A selection of these comparisons is as follows: ‘A Month in the Country is the one that isn’t by Chekhov’61; ‘it’s the best Chekhov play that Chekhov never wrote’.62 Turgenev ‘anticipates Chekhov’(!)63; ‘influenced Chekhov’64; ‘predates Chekhov’65; A Month in the Country is a ‘flawed test run for Chekhov’66; ‘a Chekhovian play’ (!)67; ‘diluted Chekhov’68; ‘Chekhovian in style’69; ­‘proto-Chekhovian’70; and, this play had ‘pre-echoes of the Chekhovian’.71 However, these comments seem to me to indicate, if anything, misunderstanding of Chekhov. Chekhov spends a great deal of time ironising

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Turgenev, beginning with his unflattering implied references to the writer in his Trigorin of The Seagull. Critics report at length on the ‘ennui’,72 ‘languid (people)’ (and languor)73 and ‘torpor’74 of life on the nineteenth-century country estate as viewed in translated Russian theatre. So engrained has the myth become that reviewers are even surprised when a production does not match their expectations: As cold as the wind blowing off the Russian steppes, the National Theatre’s sparse gaunt production of A Month in the Country does not easily conjure up Turgenev’s hothouse atmosphere of the nineteenth century or the summer in which it is set.75

It takes the more astute critic to point out that these are in fact nineteenth-century Russians at the height of summer and on holiday ­ and therefore to some degree legitimately languid. However, exactly to whom the holiday implications of the title apply seems deliberately ambivalent. We are not told, but I suspect that the Islaevs (due to the extent of their commitment to their estate) have made it their permanent home with, as in the case of many others, only winter excursions to places of sophistication. Islaev, the husband, appears to be working hard, completing the provision of a water supply for his new mill, and Natalya Petrovna, the wife, organises the household and the education of her ward and her son, employing and overseeing a tutor to occupy them. So whose holiday ‘month in the country’ is it? It could be the student Beliaev’s, but he is employed as tutor and hardly on holiday. Even so, the play makes clear he is not aristocratic. The obligatory doctor, noted by several critics of the production as common to Turgenev and Chekhov,76 seems also to be somewhat at leisure: he does mention an elderly patient, but also seems to have the liberty to stay the night or several nights, and is anyway a regular habitué of the household. Moreover, the estate seems to present a model set-up with its new mill and the new threshing machine waiting at the door. So the stereotype of permanently bored, leisured and aristocratic Russians on their estates seems to have little foundation, though the idea is repeated endlessly of this play and other nineteenth-century plays, so as to have become a cliché. In his recent adaptation (2015) Patrick Marber cracked open the debate. His title, Three Days in the Country, refers to the three crucial days that drive the plot, so he shifts the weight of the production away from life-style

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to the plot and its outcome. Such a concentrated focus intensifies the emotional cruxes of the play and changes the tension levels towards melodrama. His skilful adaptation and direction raised the comic levels of the play considerably. The programme cover has its own irony: the close-up on one tree and the fraught, reaching, child-like wrist and hand and disappearing body are their own comment on the ‘joys’ of the Russian pastoral (Fig. 2.4). Along with this notion of leisure go false conceptions of the grandeur of these estates. Only in the most recent productions of A Month in the Country has a sense of the dilapidation of the Russian countryside been perceived, perhaps stimulated paradoxically by the new awareness of the material decay of Russian economic life from the 1990s onward.

Fig. 2.4  Programme for Turgenev’s Three Days in the Country, NT, 2015

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The 1994 production provoked comment on the ‘peeling verandah’ in the set by Hayden Griffin77; and in the 1998 RSC production there is a reference to the ‘tottering tarnished gentry’.78 The point is that many of these estates were difficult to maintain, not least because of their distance from the hubs of civilisation, but also due to the comparative poverty of the owners inhabiting the stagnant economy in this ‘heyday’ of the Russian gentry. Whether they became the ‘caged confines’79and ‘inescapable environments’80 of British perception is a debatable question. If it was not appreciated in the immediate post-war, ‘gloom’-ridden perceptions of Russian culture, commented on earlier, the comedy of A Month in the Country was later (before Marber) generally welcomed with delighted surprise. The imposition of the British English languorous Chekhov onto Turgenev meant that the comedy (as at periods in productions of Chekhov) had not always been perceived. And one or two critics noted the British lack of attention to the ironies of style in the architecture of Turgenev’s form. The ending of A Month in the Country, for example, sets a mood of precipitate departure and escape (so much for ‘caged environments’): the departure of Beliaev is mirrored in the rapid escape of other characters such as Rakitin; or by contrasting couplings in marriage: the happiness of Lizaveta and the Doctor, and the misfortune of young Vera, paired up with the unsuitable, middle-aged neighbour Bolshintsov.81 Perhaps it is this irony, this counterpointing to the sadder outcomes, which is absent from Patrick Marber’s version. There are only one or two comments on the impact of A Month in the Country as performance. One indicates an understanding of how dangerous Turgenev’s play must have seemed to mid nineteenth-century Russia, where political views were being aired in the public forum of a theatre,82 but that sense of risk is largely lost on British audiences. The other is a reference to the performative texture of the piece as a whole: ‘there is in fact two plays. An inner one acted out among the characters and an outer one addressed to the audience in confidential monologue’.83 Greater awareness of these aspects could well bring new interpretations of A Month in the Country. Translation is a major issue. Its consideration alerts us to contentious issues of translocating plays from one culture to another. Six main translators of Turgenev’s play stand out in performances of our period. Chronologically, they are: Constance Garnett, Emlyn Williams, Isaiah Berlin, Richard Freeborn, Brian Friel and Patrick Marber.84 What is clear is that their responsibility is enormous, though it is not

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always recognised as such in the British theatre. Garnett, whose 1934 translation was used for the 1949 production (by Michel St. Denis), is unfavourably compared with Williams (1943) for her ‘stilted’ version which left ‘the audience in occasional doubt as to what reaction is expected of it’.85 In 1965 Bergman dominated the reviews of the production at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, also the theatre’s opening night. Her delivery of the Williams’ translation seemed ‘hesitant’,86 she ‘clothes herself in the rhythms of English speech, but some effort is inevitably discernible’,87 and was too ‘embarrassed by the foreign language to be capable of any subtlety whatever’.88 Little space was given to comment on Williams’ translation. Berlin’s translation was commissioned for the 1981 NT production. It was praised, on the one hand, as concise and ‘transmitting the elegance of the hothouse’89 and, on another, was ‘unobtrusive, natural’,90 perhaps underscoring Berlin’s particular view of the languorous Russians in the play, whose empty lives and unrequited love conformed to the existing stereotype. To yet other ears, Berlin ‘conveyed the nuances of class antagonisms I had not noticed so heavily emphasised before’, though this reviewer also found the translation ‘precise and rather formal’.91 Two of the later translations, by Richard Freeborn ([1991] NT, 1994) and Brian Friel ([1992] RSC, 1998), seem to have been landmarks in presenting a different Turgenev. Freeborn caught the contrasts of country life, its ‘country listlessness and raving outbursts’92 and ‘twists the more melodramatic elements for comic effect while maintaining the undercurrent of tragedy (…) poignant and bitter – but extremely funny’.93 Was the quality of this translation at last giving us an opportunity to understand some of the complexity of the play? Here it is clear that the translation was crucial to enable the comedy of contrasts to emerge. Moreover, the socially critical role of the Doctor was perceived for the first time in this production: […] a remarkable outburst from the doctor, [who]reveals his cynicism and envy at the end of his brutally matter-of-fact wooing of Lizaveta. The mask of geniality and concern slips to uncover anger at his poor childhood and the rich ladies he must attend.94

Freeborn’s translation may be seen as an example of the best aspects of collision in its attempt to make the source culture accessible, while also respecting the need for the English audience to respond to the comedy.

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Similar to Berlin, Freeborn’s immense accomplishment as a scholar, who has written much on Turgenev and nineteenth-century Russian culture, is no doubt central to this success. Friel’s translation, or version,95 despite the controversy it raised, also broached some of the deeper significance not only of this text but of the whole business of translocation. He made audiences aware, as was indicated earlier, of the mechanics of a piece of theatre that is translated into English. In Friel’s version the idiom is Irish. Those reviewers who managed to swallow their indignation at Friel’s colonisation to the Irish of this play saw that Friel had liberated the play from the prevailing English view of its Russianness. Many hated the modernity of the translation, rejecting phrases like ‘for Christ’s sake’ or ‘who the hell does he think he is’.96 As already suggested above, Friel had the humility, some say the vulgarity, to write ‘After Turgenev’ on the cover of his published script. Friel’s version provides an example of a strongly acculturated text at two levels. His choice of Britishness as his target is the first level; the second is that he acculturates the play to an Irish context, in the process staking a national claim to this Russian classic. No literal translator was acknowledged by Friel in the RSC theatre programme. Susannah Clapp saw that Friel was pointing up exactly the absurdity of the British English view of Turgenev’s Russia. She wrote perceptively, providing the key question for this present book: This is the Russia of the theatrical mind, a place which is so pleasant to look at – its lightness dappled with shades as if touched by the branches of a metaphysical silver birch – that can make frustration and desperation look like graceful melancholy.97

In this comment, we can see the influence of translation theory. Current ideas are now beginning to assert in this post-colonial age that the original work, the source text, is not sacred and can be transcreated as well as translated, and that each nation should question the cultural picture it has formed of other nations. Perhaps we should reassert ‘gained’, rather than ‘lost’, in translation? But Clapp has also offered an answer to the question posed at the beginning and to another concerning the prominence of stereotype in the formation of British views of ­nineteenth-century Russians. The birch trees, and estates peopled by characters dressed in the fashions of nineteenth-century English aristocracy is an illusion fostered by the theatre. Its danger is that it turns

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to dismissible languor or ennui the genuine despair of the people who inhabit this setting, whether created by Turgenev or Chekhov or another nineteenth-century Russian writer. The best received recent production has been Three Days in the Country (NT 2015), adapted by Patrick Marber. Like Friel and Williams, Marber is primarily a dramatist. His version relies upon a literal translation by Patrick Miles. Marber’s distance from the language (and culture?) of Russia allowed him to take many liberties with the text. As indicated, he produced a highly enjoyable comic version probably aided by the fact that he was also able to direct it. In its backdrop, the set design explored the open, rolling Russian landscape. This sense of space was intensified by the openness of the set (no standard walls, only movable glass ones, no doors, except one red enigmatic central one, the landscape always visible) and the fluidity of the scene transitions, and the fact that actors were always on stage watching the performance. He updated the play, made it accessible, but perhaps lost some of the intimacy of language and complex nuancing of relationships, which the original play introduced to Russian theatre in the mid nineteenth century. Most of all, he lost the political edge. His Doctor Shpigelsky became the source of a magnificent comic turn, which although it brought the house down (acculturation), utterly masked the character’s cynicism at the intransigence to change of well-heeled provincial Russians of the period. As well as being the object of desire for the lady of the house, Beliaev, the summer tutor, had imported more than a whiff of political turbulence into Turgenev’s original play. Several critics remarked upon the absence of the ‘obligatory ­birch-trees’ but noted they were etched into the glass walls of the ultra modern set.98 Phrases such as ‘Pre-Chekhovian’,99 ‘anticipates the world of Chekhov’,100 ‘invented Chekhovian theatre decades before Chekhov’101 and the most up-to-date ‘Chekhov scripted by a Chekhov app’102 echo the British, familiar approach to Turgenev. ‘Chekhovian’ is defined in the following: its country-house setting in high summer, its languid and superfluous landed gentry having pointless love affairs and angsting about the futility of their lives, and an atmosphere of rich tragicomedy.103

Chekhov’s major plays come nearly 50 years after Turgenev. Chekhov’s provinces are remote, run down and stultifying places where comedy

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rarely exists in its own right, only as a momentary escape from plangent despair. Chekhov uses the Russian provinces as a metaphor for the human condition. His brushstroke is broader but his colouring ineffably deeper. In the early 1850s while living in France, Turgenev wrote his play in Russian for the highly censored Russian stage and the times. It was caught up in the censorship, not staged (until much later [1869]), but was published and widely read. His play’s political edge in characters such as the tutor Beliaev and Doctor Shpigelsky was electric: Russia was still reeling from imperial reaction to 1848 in Europe; in 1849 Dostoevsky had been sentenced to death, commuted to hard labour at the last moment as he waited to be shot, for participating in a discussion group on French utopian socialism. Michael Billington succinctly captured the loss of the original in Marber’s adaptation, which ‘tilts Turgenev’s exquisitely balanced mix of psychology and politics too far in the direction of a satire on a group of social parasites’.104 This brief survey of productions, translations and reviews of Turgenev’s play together shows the variety of translation and adaptation strategies available. It also implies that the British stereotypical concept of the nineteenth-century Russian country estate as a locus for languorous boredom needs revision. We fail to notice the irony, are surprised by the comedy, do not appreciate that these are some Russians on holiday amidst the continuing hard work of the estate holders both male and female. We continue to regard languorous leisure as the dominant component of Russian life. We seem mostly to deny the sex and passion potential (is that a British English view, too?), and perhaps above all need to learn to distinguish our Turgenev from our Chekhov and other ­nineteenth-century Russian writers. As a result the reviews are treated in this project as sources for points of discussion, rather than the main means for producing a narrative on Russian theatre on the British stage.

Notes

1. David Johnston, ‘Theatre Pragmatics’, in Stages of Translation, ed. by David Johnston (Bristol: Absolute Classics, 1996), pp. 57–66 (p. 66). 2. Sirkku Aaltonen, ‘Olga’s Eightsome Reel in Edinburgh: A Case Study of Finnish Drama in English Translation’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 121–135 (p. 121).

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3. Jatinder Verma, ‘The Challenge of Binglish: Analysing Multi-Cultural Productions’, in Analysing Performance, ed. by Patrick Campbell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 193–202. 4. André Lefevere, ‘Composing the Other’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 75–94 (p. 75). 5. Patrice Pavis: ‘Problems of Translation for the Stage: Interculturalism and Post Modern Theatre’, trans. L. Kruger, in The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture, ed. by H. Scolnicov and P. Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 25–44. For an edited and expanded version and an extended chapter on translation for the theatre see Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 1–23 and 136–159 respectively. The diagram is on p. 4. 6. Each of these terms is used to designate the culture to which a product is transferred. They are not entirely interchangeable; ‘host’ seems to suggest a degree of invitation; ‘receiving’ is more passive; while ‘target’ suggests a degree of purpose. 7. Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 15. The embedded reference is: André Lefevere, ed. and trans., Translating Literature: The German Tradition from Luther to Rosenzweig (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977), p. 74. 8. Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, p. 16. 9. Ibid., p. 19. 10. Perteghella, Manuela, ‘A Descriptive-Anthropological Model of Theatre Translation’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 1–23. The models are reproduced on pp. 7 and 13–14, respectively. 11. Ibid., p. 2. 12.  Susan Bassnett, ‘Engendering Anew: Shakespeare, Gender and Translation’, in Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, ed. by Ton Hoenselaars (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004), pp. 53–67 (p. 53). 13. Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture, p. 147. 14.  Also discussed in Cynthia Marsh, ‘Whose Text Is It Anyway? On Translating and Directing Gorky’s Egor Bulychev’, in Drama Translation… (2004), pp. 137–149. 15.  I make the argument for a collision of source and target texts in translation in this same article. 16. Lost in Translation (2003), written and directed by Sofia Coppola, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson.

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17. ‘Found in Translation: To convey the writings of other languages is a noble and necessary art’, Times, 11 January 2010, p. 2 (unsigned Times leader). The phrase ‘invisibility of the translator’ had already been used by the prominent translation theorist, Venuti, for a collection of essays, criticising the lack of profile given to the translator’s work in the history of translation. See Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. 18. The term ‘transcreation’ is used by theorists of translation studies to imply the importance of the translator as creative writer. It has now become a common term in translation skills, implying modification of the source text to the culture of the target market. 19.  Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, ‘Liberating Calibans: Antropofagia and Haroldo de Campos’ Poetics of Transcreation’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 95–113 (p. 110). 20.  Stephen Mulrine, ‘“A Man with Connections”: Adapting Gelman’s Naedine so vsemi for Radio’, in Stages of Translation, ed. by David Johnston (Bristol: Absolute Classics, 1996), pp. 123–130 (p. 127). 21. Brian Friel, A Month in the Country: After Turgenev (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 1992). In his Preface (p. 7), Friel acknowledged Christopher Heaney as his literal translator. 22. Patrick Marber, Three Days in the Country, A Version of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country (London: Faber and Faber, 2015). The literal translation was by Patrick Miles. On the cover to this published translation the phrase ‘after Turgenev’ was added after ‘…Country’. The full title quoted above is the title stated inside the front cover. The theatre programme used the full title. 23. See for example, Sherry Simon, ‘Translating and Interlingual Creation in the Contact Zone: Border Writing in Quebec’, in Post-Colonial Translation … (1999), pp. 58–74. Simon writes about the work of Jacques Brault, Nicole Brossard and Daniel Gagnon. 24. 887. Ex Machina. Written directed and performed by Robert Lepage, Edinburgh International Conference Centre, August, 2015. European première. International première, Toronto, 2015. 25. Vieira, p. 98, ‘respect’ may be used in the sense that cannibalisation as ritual is seen as a means of absorbing another’s strength. 26. Ros Dixon, in her paper ‘O Chekhov! Thou Art Translated’, given at the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature Conference, Charles University of Prague, 2005, explored this aspect of Friel’s translation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1981). She used the term ­‘Hiberno-English’ to describe Friel’s language.

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27. For a different interpretation of this situation regarding Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness and John McGahern’s play of the same name, see, Cynthia Marsh, ‘Bridging Cultures? John McGahern’s Power of Darkness,’ in Tolstoy I00 Years On (forthcoming). In this paper, given at the ­neo-Formalist Conference at Oxford in 2010, I argue that rather than being ‘cannibalism’ only, such appropriation may enable the spectator better to understand the source culture. 28. See, for example, Renata Kobetts Miller, ‘Nineteenth Century Theatrical Adaptations of Novels: The Paradox of Ephemerality’, in The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. by Thomas Leitch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 53–70. 29. See Marsh (2004), ‘Whose Text Is It Anyway?…’, pp. 143–144, 147. 30. Lawrence Venuti, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 1998, 1999, 2003), pp. 82–83 refer to a translation project following an ethics of difference. 31. The Festival was set to evolve over four years from 2009 and was the inspiration of the then RSC artistic director, Michael Boyd. 32. One of a series of public ‘brunch sessions’, this panel took place on 20 September 2009. 33. The debate about the hybrid text was focused on in Across Languages and Cultures, 2, 2 (2001). The concluding article: Christina Schäffner and Beverley Adab, ‘The Idea of the Hybrid Text in Translation Revisited’ (pp. 277–302), outlines the diversity and complexity of the issues. 34. Ibid., p. 281, Schäffner and Adab acknowledge here an article by Niall Bond in the same volume, ‘Interpreting the Objectively “Strange” and the “Strangely Objective”: Hybrid Texts in Social Discourse and in the Social Sciences’, pp. 251–259. 35.  The Three Sisters, trans. by Moura Budberg, Directed by Laurence Olivier for the NT, distributed by Warner Home Video (UK) Limited, Copyright Alan Clore Films, 1970. 36. Any number of “Cherry Orchards” have proceeded along this path. The result is that the centrality implied by stardom or diva-status is transferred to the character Ranevskaia, producing a particular but predictable reading of this play. 37.  Among examples are the Redgrave sisters and their niece, Jemma (London: Queen’s Theatre, 1990) and the Cusack sisters (Dublin: Royal Court and The Gate, 1990). 38. Premiered at Nottingham Playhouse, March 1977 (directed by Richard Eyre). 39. For example, Nottingham Playhouse staged Mustapha Matura’s adaptation of Three Sisters (after Chekhov) in 2006 (and on tour). The action

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47

was relocated to the West Indies; the period was changed to WW2; and the characters’ names were changed, as were their status and professions where applicable, and so on. 40.  Janet Suzman’s free adaptation of Roger Martin’s version, staged at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg (1997) and called The Free State: A South African Response to Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’, was staged at Birmingham Rep in 2000 (published by Methuen, 2000). 41. Thomas Kilroy, The Seagull, 1981, commissioned for the Royal Court Theatre (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981). 42. Helen Cooper, Mrs Vershinin, at Riverside Studio 2, London, 1988. 43.  Roza de Wet, Three Sisters Two (1997), at Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, 2002. 44. Michael Green et al., The Cherry Sisters, in The Coarse Acting Show 2, Samuel French, London, c. 1980. 45. Bassnett, ‘Engendering…’ (2004), p. 54. 46. J. W. Draper, ‘Shakespeare and Muscovy’, Slavonic and East European Review, 33, 80 (1954), 217–221. Shakespeare’s chief source was accounts of the voyages taken to Archangel, and the national experience of the Russian ambassador and company in London from 1557 onwards. See also Anthony Cross, Anglo-Rusica, Aspects of Cultural Relations Between Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited, 1993), p. 1 on Russians as barbarians. 47. L yme Regis Town Council plaque, which was prominently displayed in several places along the promenade. In 2016 it was replaced with a more modern and accessible image. 48. The analysis of reviews of Turgenev’s Month in the Country formed part of a paper delivered at the Neo-formalist conference in Oxford in 2006. This material has been updated to take account of period 2006–2015. The original paper was published as ‘Post-War British Month(s) in the Country’, in Turgenev and Russian Culture: Essays to Honour Richard Peace, ed. by Joe Andrew, Derek Offord, and Robert Reid, Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics (vol. XLIX) (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 221–232. 49. The play was written 1848–1850, and was published in 1855 in a censored version. Turgenev revised his play and republished it in 1869. The first performance (the revised version) took place in 1872. 50. See Prologue, n. 5. 51. A notable exception is Stuart Young’s ‘A Month in the Country in the British Theatre’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, 1994, 207–227. His article deals with the pre-1945 stage history and goes up to 1994. It also concentrates on the lack of exploration in British theatre of the

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political and social aspects of the play. Where I have concentrated on reviews to assess reception, Young draws his key evidence from comparison of various translations. 52. T. C. Worsley, ‘Arts and Entertainment: A Month in the Country’, New Statesman and Nation, 31 December 1949 (London Theatre Museum [LTM], press cutting). 53. Harold Hobson, ‘Costume and Cosmetics’, Sunday Times, 11 December 1949 (LTM, press cutting). 54. W. A. Darlington, ‘Subtle Acting’, Daily Telegraph, 1 December 1949 (LTM, press cutting). 55.  Milton Shulman, ‘A Triumphant Occasion—And a Play to Match’, Evening Standard, 2 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 56. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 30 March 1994 (Theatre Record [TR], 26 March–8 April 1994, p. 71). 57. Punch, 16 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 58. Comments in Sunday Express, 6 June 1965; Sunday Times, 6 June 1965 (LTM, press cuttings). 59. Sheridan Morley, The Spectator, 9 April 1994 (TR, 26 March–8 April 1994, p. 370). 60. de Jongh, Evening Standard, 30 March 1994 (ibid., p. 371). 61. Morley, The Spectator, 9 April 1994 (ibid., p. 370). 62. Harold Hobson, Sunday Times, 6 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 63.  James Fenton, ‘Turgenev: A Passion for Reality’, Sunday Times, 11 February 1981 (National Theatre [NT] archive, press cutting). 64. Martin Esslin, ‘First Nights: A Month in the Country’, Plays and Players, 13 January 1966, p. 44 (LTM, press cutting). 65. Steve Grant, Time Out, quoted in London Theatre Record (LTR), 12–25 February 1981, p. 78. At this point in its history, LTR did not give the relevant dates for the reviews it contained. 66. Robert Cushman, Observer (ibid., p. 81). 67. Peter Jenkins, Spectator (ibid., p. 82). 68. Michael Billington, Guardian, 30 March 1994 (TR, 26 March–8 April 1994, p. 369). 69. Neil Smith, What’s On, 6 September 1994 (ibid., p. 372). 70. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 31 March 1994 (ibid., p. 373). 71. Patrick Carnegy, Spectator, 2 January 1999 (TR, 23 April–6 May 1999, p. 569). 72. Felix Barker, Evening Standard, 6 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting); Nightingale, Times, 31 March 1994 (TR, 28 March–8 April 1994, p. 373); and Esslin, ‘First Nights: A Month in the Country’, Plays and Players, 13 January 1966, p. 44 (LTM, press cutting). 73. Barker, Evening Standard; Nightingale, Times; Esslin, ‘First Nights….’, p. 44; Billington, Guardian, 30 March 1994.

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49

74. Nicholas de Jongh, ‘Bristol: A Month in the Country’, Guardian, 20 April 1979 (Bristol Old Vic [BOV] Theatre Archive). 75. Michael Smith, Daily Express (LTR, 12–25 February, 1981, p. 82). 76. Nightingale, Times; Steve Grant, Time Out. 77. Michael Coveney, Observer, 3 April 1994 (TR, 26 March–8 April 1994, p. 370). 78. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 16 December 1998 (TR, 3–31 December 1998, p. 1700). 79.  Milton Shulman, ‘Love’s Labour’, Evening Standard, 21 November 1975 (LTM, press cutting). 80. Irving Wardle, ‘A Month in the Country’, Times, 21 November 1975 (LTM, press cutting). 81. John Elsom, Listener, quoted in LTR, 12–25 February 1981, p. 82. 82. Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 3 April 1994 (TR, 26 March–8 April 1994, p. 372). 83. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, quoted in LTR, 12–25 February 1981, p. 83. 84. Constance Garnett: Ivan Turgenev: Three Plays (London: Cassell and Co., 1934); Emlyn Williams: Ivan Turgenev: A Month in the Country: A Comedy, adapt. into English by Emlyn Williams (London: Heinemann, 1943); Brian Friel, A Month in the Country: After Turgenev (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 1992); Isaiah Berlin, Ivan Turgenev: A Month in the Country: A Comedy in Five Acts, trans. and intro. by Isaiah Berlin (London: Hogarth, 1981; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983); Richard Freeborn, Ivan Turgenev: A Month in the Country, trans. and ed. by Richard Freeborn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); and Patrick Marber, Three Days in the Country: After Turgenev, 2015. 85. W. A. Darlington, ‘Subtle Acting’, Daily Telegraph, 1 December 1949 (LTM, press cutting). 86. M. T., Sunday Express, 6 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 87.  Sunday Times, 6 June 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 88. Esslin, ‘First Nights…’, Plays and Players, p. 44. 89. Irving Wardle, ‘Turgenev with All the Discomforts’, Times, 21 February 1981 (LTM, press cutting). 90. Michael Billington, Guardian, quoted in LTR, 12–25 February 1981, p. 80. 91. Milton Shulman, New [Evening] Standard (ibid., pp. 79–80). 92. Coveney, Observer, 3 April 1994. 93. Louise Doughty, Mail on Sunday, 10 April 1994 (TR, 26 March–8 April 1994, p. 371). 94. Hewison, Sunday Times, 3 April 1994 (ibid., p.372). Also noted by Neil Smith, What’s On, 6 September 1994 (ibid., p. 373).

50  C. MARSH

95. See n. 21. Friel acknowledged his translator, so this is a ‘version’ with a degree of reorientation. 96. John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 20 December 1998 (TR, 3–31 December 1998, p. 1703). 97. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 20 December 1998 (ibid., p. 1702). 98. Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday, 2 August 2015 (TR, 16–29 July 2015, p. 761); John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 30 July 2015 (ibid., p. 760). 99.  Ibid.; Sam Marlowe, Times, 29 July 2015 (TR, 16–29 July 2015, p. 759). 100. Paul Taylor, Independent, 31 July 2015 (ibid., p. 761). 101. Christopher Hart, Sunday Times, 2 August 2015 (ibid., p. 762). 102. Lloyd Evans, Spectator, 8 August 2015 (ibid., p. 763). 103. Hart, Sunday Times. 104. Michael Billington, Guardian, 30 July 2015 (TR, 16–29 July 2015, p. 760).

Bibliography Aaltonen, Sirkku, ‘Olga’s Eightsome Reel in Edinburgh: A Case Study of Finnish Drama in English Translation’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 121–135. Bassnett, Susan, ‘Engendering Anew: Shakespeare, Gender and Translation’, in Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, ed. by Ton Hoenselaars (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004), pp. 53–67. Bond, Niall, ‘Interpreting the Objectively “Strange” and the “Strangely Objective”: Hybrid Texts in Social Discourse and in the Social Sciences’, Across Languages and Cultures, 2, 2 (2001), 251–259. Cross, Anthony, Anglo-Russica: Aspects of Cultural Relations Between Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited, 1993). Draper, J. W., ‘Shakespeare and Muscovy’, Slavonic and East European Review, 33, 80 (1954), 217–221. Kobetts Miller, Renata, ‘Nineteenth Century Theatrical Adaptations of Novels: The Paradox of Ephemerality’, in The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. by Thomas Leitch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 53–70. Johnston, David, ‘Theatre Pragmatics’, in Stages of Translation, ed. by David Johnston (Bristol: Absolute Classics, 1996), pp. 57–66. Lefervere, André, ‘Composing the Other’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999). Marsh, Cynthia, ‘Whose Text Is It Anyway? On Translating and Directing Gorky’s Egor Bulychev’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by

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51

Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 137–149. ———, ‘Post-War British Month(s) in the Country’, in Turgenev and Russian Culture: Essays to Honour Richard Peace, ed. by Joe Andrew, Derek Offord, and Robert Reid, Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics, vol. XLIX (Rodopi: Amsterdam and New York, 2008), pp. 221–232. Pavis, Patrice, ‘Problems of Translation for the Stage: Interculturalism and Post Modern Theatre’, trans. by L. Kruger, in The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture, ed. by H. Scolnicov and P. Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 25–44. ———, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (London: Routledge, 1992). Perteghella, Manuela, ‘A Descriptive-Anthropological Model of Theatre Translation’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 1–23. Schäffner, Christina, and Beverley Adab, ‘The Idea of the Hybrid Text in Translation Revisited’, Across Languages and Cultures, 2, 2 (2001), 277–302. Turgenev, Ivan, Three Plays, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Cassell and Co., 1934). Contains: A Month in the Country, A Provincial Lady, A Poor Gentleman. ———, A Month in the Country: A Comedy, adapt. by Emlyn Williams (London: Heinemann, 1943). ———, A Month in the Country: A Comedy in Five Acts, trans. and intro. by Isaiah Berlin (London: Hogarth, 1981; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983). ———, A Month in the Country, trans. and ed. Richard Freeborn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). ———, and Brian Friel, A Month in the Country: After Turgenev (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 1992). ———, and Patrick Marber, Three Days in the Country: After Turgenev (London: Faber and Faber, 2015). Venuti, Lawrence, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 1998). ———, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008). Verma, Jatinder, ‘The Challenge of Binglish: Analysing Multi-Cultural Productions’, in Analysing Performance, ed. by Patrick Campbell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 193–202. Vieira, Else Ribeiro Pires, ‘Liberating Calibans: Antropofagia and Haroldo de Campos’ Poetics of Transcreation’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 95–113. Young, Stuart, ‘A Month in the Country in the British Theatre’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1994), 207–227.

SECTION 3

Gogol’s Russia: Plays from the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

As we saw in the previous section, the data (see Appendix) revealed some surprises in the ranking of writers according to frequency of production in Britain. Moreover even when Chekhov and Gorky are excluded, the Russian nineteenth century still provides the weight of the input. The dramatists who have been staged from this century include Fonvizin, Griboedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Ostrovsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy.1 Gogol is by far the most popular. Since stage adaptations from prose works, especially from Dostoevsky’s novels, are frequent, they are treated separately in Section 7. Here we begin with Fonvizin, admittedly from the late eighteenth century, but an inescapable influence on Russian comedy. Then we deal with the dramatists up to and including Gogol. The later nineteenth-century writers are discussed in Section 4 as ‘gentry literature’.

The Shadow of the Eighteenth Century: Fonvizin2 and Griboedov3 The British repertoire in the post-war period has seen only a marginal presence of the early dramatists of Russian theatre in comparison to some of the leading figures. Two early plays not only set the context for Gogol’s blockbuster, The Government Inspector (Revizor, 1835) but also became staples of Russian theatre in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As far as it is possible to trace, the eighteenth-century Fonvizin © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_3

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is represented on the British stage by one play in only one production (1989), The Infant (1781). Similarly, Griboedov’s Woe from Wit (1824) has been seen just twice (1993, 1994) in Britain. Both were known to Gogol. The former play was regularly staged in Russia, while the ­latter was banned, and circulated in manuscript in the difficult early years under Nicholas I when Gogol was young. Although they were written more than 40 years apart, these two plays were original Russian plays in cultural times that were heavily influenced by Europe. As well as being a throwback to styles of theatre of the eighteenth century, in theme the piquant verse comedy Woe from Wit was equally a reaction to p ­ ost-Napoleonicwar libertarian attitudes of the early 1820s. In the 1780s, Fonvizin brought satire to the Russian stage. He clothed both his plays in the ethics of the Enlightenment where social criticism and comedy operate hand-in-hand towards an educative purpose. By contrast, in the 1820s, Griboedov’s play tilted satire towards tragedy as his hero, Chatsky, could genuinely not find a place in the fatuous Moscow society the play presented. Both writers’ criticism was two-pronged: the hero was as much at fault as the society that was condemned. Subsequently, in the 1830s, Gogol took both aspects to task in his own play, The Government Inspector (1835). He dispensed with the heroic, and adopted a critical stance. However, fearing the reaction of a newly nationalistic establishment, he blunted this satirical darts by making his central characters not obviously didactic, but absurd (Khlestakov), or so realistically lifelike and corrupt (the mayor) that members of the St. Petersburg audience were forced to individual acts of unpleasant self-recognition. In these ways, Gogol initiated the age of fantastic and comic realism in the theatre. The central character of Fonvizin’s The Infant is the loutish son of a wealthy provincial family with pretensions. Mitrofan remains unable to marry (and so a ‘minor’) until he can pass examinations in basic literacy. This policy was introduced by Peter the Great earlier in the eighteenth century to raise educational standards in Russia. Mitrofan’s mother, barely touched by education or enlightenment principles, idolises her son. She has plans to marry him off and hires inappropriate tutors in an attempt to enable him to become qualified (a literacy certificate was required for marriage). He remains ignorant and lazy for which he blames his mother. Finally, she is arrested for maltreatment of her serfs and vilified for attempting to marry off her young ward Sophia to an ageing, wealthy profligate from the city.

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Much credit was given to The Gate in 1989 for its ‘successful disinterment’4 of Fonvizin’s ‘fascinating curio’.5 A little disingenuously this same critic was amazed it had not been performed before, but recognised there were few venues prepared to support ‘unjustly neglected international drama’.6 Comparisons were drawn in the reviews with European eighteenth-century dramatists such as Goldsmith and Diderot,7 and Molière from the seventeenth century.8 Surprisingly, both the cited reviewers referred to Ostrovsky, but only a handful of Ostrovsky’s plays had been staged. The closer link to Gogol was not perceived. Historically, the latter half of the eighteenth century was dominated by Catherine the Great. More than one reviewer referred to her pervading presence, seeing The Infant’s satire aimed largely at her.9 The ‘monstrousness’ of the ‘serf flogging virago’10 (the Infant’s doting mother; she was also perhaps more than a small gesture in Catherine’s direction) at the centre of the play indicated the darker tones underpinning the satire. Another critic assured us we would have disliked Fonvizin had we been his contemporary. He adds that while these ‘bad characters […] are horrid caricatures’, even the ‘supposedly good characters […] are quite obnoxious in their knowing sneers and self-righteousness’.11 It seems that two different value systems drive even the limited number of reviews we have. The content was coloured as much by cultural otherness as by historic period. Some of the Russian behaviour was ‘barbaric’, and was unfavourably compared with the English sense of fair play, since the ‘English comedies […] usually give both sides a fair run’.12 Fonvizin’s abilities to attack ‘not only by lampoon but by homily’ and to mix the ‘conservative and the progressive in the play’s system of values’,13 were noted as specific features of his satire. It was only Michael Billington, through referencing an essay by Simon Karlinsky,14 who understood that it was the ‘insistence on goodness that saved the play’ and that it did ‘not attack serfdom as such: merely the abuse of the system’.15 Only one reviewer commented on the role played by the ‘urbane reforming zeal of the French Enlightenment’,16 a characteristic that the British perhaps had tended to suppress. Cultural difference runs deep, and here the different perceptions of the ways a third nation, France, influenced two countries of Europe is evident. Stereotypes are never far removed, however, for two critics noted similar traits, claiming understanding of the preoccupations of Russian national culture. On the one hand, there is the ‘money grabbing and brazen philistinism of the

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squire’17 and on the other, the broader ‘eternal Russian fascination with corruption and greed’.18 The critics displayed a similar polarised attack in reactions to Griboedov’s Woe from Wit, given one production in 1992 (as Wits End), and one in 1993 (as Chatsky or The Importance of Being Stupid). Written in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, most probably between 1818 and 1823, this play concerns the return of Chatsky, an intelligent and outspoken young man to Moscow from a period of self-imposed exile, spent in travel and education. His childhood sweetheart, another Sophia, has in the meantime abandoned him for a sycophantic womaniser, and society in general has taken a turn for the worse, indulging in gossip, fashions, scheming and slander. A chance remark from this former sweetheart that Chatsky is insane runs like wildfire through the guests at a fashionable ball and turns society against him. Chatsky can only retaliate with bitter words and a return to exile. In style, the play borrowed much from eighteenth-century conventions: it was didactic and directed at contemporary society; it was written as a verse comedy, a hangover from the eighteenth century still popular in Griboedov’s own time. Its characters were relentlessly patriarchal and patriotic in the Moscow style, that is generally sceptical of western influence in comparison to St. Petersburg. The play’s language was full of puns and epigrams, witticisms and jokes, which have become a source of many Russian sayings that are still heard in the modern language.19 The play’s polarisation between a not altogether attractive individual on the one hand and a corrupt society on the other was a duality which was seen in Britain as a sign of stylistic weakness. Misunderstanding the eighteenth-century context, in 1993 British critics regarded it as a ‘stingingly satiric view of Moscow at the time’20 through a hero (Chatsky) who, if he is such an ‘intelligent chap, why is he wasting his intelligence on such dolts as Famusov and Skalozub?’ (the apparent pillars of Moscow society in the play).21 Others wrote of the ‘peculiar combination of romantic sentiment and crude corrosive satire’22 or a play that ‘turned on a five penny piece from bravura high comedy to a terrible brutality’,23 and contained a hero who was partly ‘a romantic rebel’ and partly the ‘eternal plain dealer’,24 and who was also seen as a ‘dashing Byronic hero’25 and ‘Hamlet-like’.26 The reviewers were struggling to pin Chatsky down, largely due to their own ignorance of the Russian historical and cultural contexts.

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The critics flailed around trying to reconcile the extremes. They even found them in the language, calling Anthony Burgess’s 1993 translation27 a ‘verbally pyrotechnic version in verse’ which ‘swoops from grandiloquence to colloquialism in the space of a rhyming couplet’.28 They seized on cultural difference as an explanation, sensing a ‘wild discrepancy between the Russian sense of humour and our own’,29 and a language whose ‘colloquial witticisms and scathing rhymes cannot easily be smuggled across national frontiers’.30 Another explanation lay, thought Robert Hewison perceptively, in the concept of the intelligentsia, a word of ‘Russian coinage that we have taken over into English. But while British intellectuals have usually been a docile lot, the Russian intelligentsia has been alienated and subversive’.31 Here we have a stereotype coloured more by twentiethcentury experience than historical knowledge. Michael Billington was more to the point in seeing Griboedov’s play as ‘a profoundly Russian work in its vision of the outsider railing against society’, and in linking it directly to Molière’s Le Misanthope.32 With faulty hindsight, Irving Wardle found the writing ‘Gogolesque’ and commented, half rightly, that Griboedov provided a link between Molière and Gogol.33 Had he forgotten about Fonvizin already? Reviewers found little of relevance to modern Britain, an apparently important imperative when indulging in foreign period drama. Benedict Nightingale shrewdly observed: ‘To try too strenuously to equate the Russia of 1824 and the Britain of 1993 is to draw attention to the differences’. He found, however, that ‘there may be parallels with Russia in 1993’, when ‘a crazed nationalist starts praising a friend’s brutish violence’.34 Others were more brusque. Absence of resonance for our times makes ‘period satire […] alienating and cold’.35 It seems that lack of relevance to the host culture’s modern times can be compensated by relevance to the source culture’s contemporary period, but of course that is much harder for audiences to spot in a translated play. Burgess had given his version for the Almeida Theatre a new title, Chatsky or the Importance of Being Stupid, a ‘cleverly misleading’ title since ‘it suggests genial comedy’,36 and in the view of another critic endowed the play, quite wrongly, with ‘Wildean’37 overtones. Whether it is clever to mislead or not, Burgess’s title suggested an emphasis distinctly opposite to the original. The more normal translations of the title pepper the reviews: The Mischief or Misfortune of Being Clever,

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Woe from Wit, Wit Works Woe, Bitterness out of Intelligence or Wit’s End, as it had been called in the production the year before, 1992, at the New End Theatre. One 1993 reviewer remembered this ‘robust prose version by Stephen Walshe’.38 In 1992, others had found the Wit’s End translation less worthwhile, calling it ‘flat, unwitty’,39 but recognising the importance of this ‘treasure house of foreign proverbs’,40 which possessed a ‘complex metric form’.41 This critic, Claire Armistead, went on in the same review to put her finger on the problem, in describing Griboedov’s play as ‘a peculiarly Russian mixture of bitchery and bombast’, arising from Chatsky’s disquisition on the ‘hijack of Russian culture by French affectation’. The infiltration of French culture into Russia is a peculiarly Russian experience but, in fact, presaged the thoughts about the Enlightenment and the intelligentsia expressed more forcibly in the reviews of the 1993 production. Another reviewer in 1992 felt that the production as Wit’s End failed to realise the play’s ‘comic potential’ by showing that ‘Griboedov’s characters condemn themselves out of their own mouths’. He found only a muted version of Griboedov’s ‘censoriousness of those who denigrate learning and his sharp barbs at the cowardice of social conformity’.42 Both these characteristics were hallmarks of Chatsky. He was a freethinking intellectual educated in the Enlightenment school but who could find no place for himself in the Russia to which he had returned after the Napoleonic wars. All in all, these two productions launched Griboedov’s play, but the critics felt insecure with the intellectual debate, and found the humour generally did not travel well. The productions retained a reverence for the plays as classics, and left the critics confronting concepts of the intelligentsia they hardly understood, placing the productions perhaps at the mild end of the category of collision. In stagings such as these where the collision is between the classic text and a largely floundering audience, uninitiated into the history of the source culture, the result is to consign the plays to continuing oblivion. A genuine collision would be a deliberate attempt to show how these texts might function in a receiving culture,43 by allowing the two cultures to clash openly within a production. In the end, Russia’s so-called ‘long eighteenth century’, meaning the period lasting through the Napoleonic wars to the death of Alexander I in 1825, remains largely unstaged in Britain.

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Pushkin44 and Lermontov45 Pushkin and Lermontov, two writers who were Gogol’s peers, also made their contribution to theatre in this period. Although regarded in Britain as almost as marginal as the two dramatists discussed above, their work has drawn some interest due to their reputations in other genres. Best known as poets, they wrote prose works and experimented with drama. Some of the prose adaptations are discussed in Section 7. Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov (1825) is better known in Britain as Mussorgsky’s opera (1869); and his ‘novel in verse’ Evgenii Onegin (1829) as Tchaikovsky’s opera (1879). His Little Tragedies (1830) also surface from time to time both in Russia and in Britain. Inspired by Shakespeare, Russian historical drama of the 1812 period, and by Nikolai Karamzin’s new history of Russia, published in 11 volumes between 1818–1824, Pushkin turned to drama and the late seventeenth century for his play, Boris Godunov. In 1598, Godunov, a powerful boyar, became the ruler of Russia, whether by intrigue or popular acclaim, or both, is hard to disentangle historically. Pushkin utilises both in his play, suggesting crimes in Godunov’s past in murdering legitimate claimants to the throne, but also suggesting it was the power of the people that enabled him to maintain his position. In a jibe at his own times, Pushkin suggests that people power is crucial, but is itself subject to manipulation by the established regime. Godunov is troubled by pretenders to his throne who announce their legitimacy by attacks on his strongholds. Guilt at his past actions troubles his soul: his inner turmoil is matched to the outer conflict in Shakespearian dimensions and style. Pushkin’s play was controversial. It was written against the build-up to the events of the December Revolution of 1825,46 the first public demonstration against autocracy in Russia. Boris Godunov also represented a rejection of the patriotism of those historical dramas produced in the period of the 1812 French invasion of Russia. They had borrowed historical tales of Russian bravado and victory to stir up contemporary pride in their country. Pushkin, though, capitalised on their example of ploughing up the past to make points of contemporary relevance. Boris Godunov was rejected by the censorship in the sensitive months of 1826 during the investigation into those involved in the Decembrist uprising. The play has had a chequered history in the Russian theatre, subject to bans and censored performances. It was no less controversial in the twentieth century for its implied stance against powerful totalitarian regimes

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of any kind. Yuri Lyubimov47 rehearsed it for several years, but it was never fully to see the light of day until the change of regime in the 1980s. Lyubimov’s production was shown in Russian at the Edinburgh fringe in 1989. Boris Godunov was first tackled by a British director in 2001. It was directed by Declan Donellan but with a Russian cast. This theatrical event provoked comments about the Russian actors’ extraordinary skills and ‘passionate commitment [which] soars over the language barrier’.48 Charles Spencer thought he was meant to draw parallels ‘between the vodka swilling Boris Godunov and his namesake Yeltsin while the false pretender to the Tsarist crown, Grigori Otrepyev, is reminiscent of Vladimir Putin in his mixture of cool calculation and ruthless ambition’.49 So the production in Britain offered clear ways of conceiving the text within a modern Russia, indicating the continuing strength of Pushkin’s discussion of the politics of power. The interesting inference drawn here by the critics is that a text in Russian and performed by Russian actors must be discussing modern Russia, despite the presence of a British director. Even that view drives to a stereotype in ‘a sense that the Russian people are victims of cyclical tragedies’.50 Such views were enabled by the fact that the production was in modern dress with ‘power battles in Moscow, trouble on the Lithuanian border, nightly TV bulletins’.51 At one point the cultural divide collapsed: ‘Moscow’s proles loyally cheer at the play’s close, the lights rise on the audience too’,52 and ‘[t]he audience becomes part of the sceptical crowd’.53 This unity leads to a striking prediction of more than cultural understanding for it may lead to a ghastly political affinity. Susannah Clapp remarked of the audience at the Brighton Festival performances: [T]hey may also glimpse a dark vision of contemporary Russia, and a nightmare version of a future Britain as they witness spin-doctors working their charms in the shadow of the Kremlin-style bulbous towers of the Brighton Pavilion…54

Such retention of the ‘other’, the source culture, in the Russian language, the acting style, of the performers provides a powerful sense of collision as the two cultures met and confronted one another. Pushkin’s Boris Godunov first reached the British professional stage in English in Michael Boyd’s production for the RSC at Stratford in 2012.55 ‘Russophile’56 Boyd’s period of training in Russia to be a director gelled

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with his long Shakespearian experience. The logic was that Shakespeare was writing in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the period in which Pushkin’s Boris Godunov is set. More than one critic picked up on this coincidence by referring to Pushkin’s play as the ‘Russian Macbeth’.57 The effect was ‘a staging that is largely straightforward but with occasional irruptions of ritual or symbolism’.58 In this way, Boyd was utilising a Russian production tradition and creating a recognisable culturally other setting, while ‘the Shakespearian references abound’, as one critic put it.59 Adrian Mitchell’s translation was called ‘fluent free verse’60 and ‘blank-verse translation, not poetically florid’.61 Its ‘bluntness’ commented one critic, ‘works well with Lloyd Hutchinson’s (Boris) Northern Irish accent’.62 Mitchell’s modernity was reflected in the production’s theme: ‘Boyd deploys [the play] as a metaphor for Russian political history through to Vladimir Putin today’.63 Consequently, the costumes and soundscape were affected, and emotive. While beginning and ending in ‘suits and ties’, midway the ‘production becomes traditionally clad with furs, regalia, crowds in grey wool rags and deep throated chanting monks’.64 This was a clever approach: Boyd utilised the RSC Shakespearian context while calling in his authentic Russian experience, making this unwieldy classic more manageable for his audiences. It was, thought Michael Billington, a ‘subversive political parable flecked with satiric comedy’ and ‘emphatically […] a play for today’.65 Finally, Susannah Clapp evaluated Boyd’s achievement in the following way: At a time when the stage has been overflowing with Chekhov, but largely free of his contemporaries or antecedents, this project is particularly refreshing and worthwhile.66

Created as Boyd’s ‘swansong’ as artistic director at the RSC, this production echoed immensely fruitfully the work he had undertaken with young Russian dramatists in the RSC Festival of Russian theatre (2009– 2012). It is not an exaggeration to state that it might be seen as an example of an almost ideal ‘hybrid’, to bring in the terminology discussed in Section 2. The production of a key Russian classic was in accessible modern English, brought up to date and yet so redolent of its source culture. Venuti’s idea of respect for an ‘ethics of difference’ is clear, even if this difference is tempered with some acculturating factors, as here.

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Pushkin’s other plays, The Little Tragedies, date from 1830. They consist of four works: The Stone Guest (Don Juan), Mozart and Salieri, The Miserly Knight and A Feast in the Time of Plague. They are experiments in the tragic form, and are structured on irreconcilable oppositions as their central formal device. They are also linked by some overall themes such as their exploration of different human emotions (envy, miserliness, love). The Little Tragedies all have non-Russian settings, and were in fact all drawn from sources foreign to Russia or reflected common contemporary European themes. The Stone Guest retells the Don Juan story; Mozart and Salieri is set abroad in the Hapsburg court and concerns the death of Mozart; The Miserly Knight is set in medieval times and is a well-used theme; and A Feast in the Time of Plague is based on a sixteenth-century play by Barry Cornwell and is set in England. They are all in blank verse, and known for their concision and brevity. They are essentially chamber pieces, perhaps designed as insertions into longer programmes or to be performed together to fill a whole evening’s programme. Two of them surface in the latter part of the post-war period in Britain raising specific issues about the transfer of cultures. They highlight Pushkin’s and Russia’s immersion in European culture in this early part of the nineteenth century. Such ‘westernism’ was a recurrent feature of Russian life, if sporadic in its intensity, and is not always fully acknowledged in Britain. Mozart and Salieri was staged in 1989. The reviews found it overshadowed by Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus (1984).67 Little recognition was given to the fact that Pushkin’s ‘playlet’68 may well have inspired the Shaffer effort. A key context for this production was the means of its arrival in Britain. It had been translated into German by the director Manfred Karge and played in Berlin and Vienna. The German version was then translated into English by Lore Brunner (Karge’s wife) and Tilda Swinton. Both these actresses then took on the central roles, causing some red herrings in the response to the text itself.69 Moreover, the cultural intersections were considerable. Firstly, the Russian play has a foreign setting (the eighteenth-century Hapsburg court), has non-Russian characters but who are internationally known; secondly, the translation was branded as ‘strange’.70 It mixed the ‘archaic and the prosily demotic’,71 and its distribution of words in the line was semantically German: ‘It sounds like an opera libretto translated by a German professor into English’.72 The enterprise was seen as a commendable collaboration when it reached the Almeida where it was billed as a co-production with the German and Austrian Institutes: ‘This exercise in

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international cooperation is rather more fascinating than play or performance’.73 However, in this cultural enmeshing Pushkin and the Russian origins of the text became, it seems, completely lost. Despite the provision of a voiceover ‘recounting Pushkin’s sense of identity with Mozart and the circumstances in which he wrote the play’, this ‘sketch’ failed to impress.74 Harry Crabbe, wrote of ‘Pushkin’s fiercely unintelligent play’ but found the production ‘intriguingly bi-cultural’.75 There is a substantial point to be drawn from this example. It can be taken a number of ways. Plays that are international in theme lend themselves to a bi-cultural or multicultural interpretation, but lose their own identity in the process; is this kind of ‘multi-acculturation’ fully justifiable? Or should the English version have stemmed more from the Russian text? No doubt there were strong arguments for bringing this production in this German version. Or should we rather rejoice that unfashionable Pushkin, can at least surface on the British stage in this way? The critics pointed out that British culture had served this text well anyway: reference was made to Antony Wood’s ‘fine’76 1982 translation as well as to the Shaffer play. Similar considerations mark the second appearance of this play in 1991. The Actors Touring Company took their version ‘inspired’77 by Pushkin (adapted and directed by Ceri Sherlock, no translator indicated) to several locations, including Watermans in April. It was utilised as part of the ‘Mozart bicentennial industry’78; and was ‘adapted, padded and provided with 22 musical illustrations’.79 This 1991 production was a ‘dramatic entertainment’ which contained ‘a lot of singing and piano-playing interspersed by bouts of acting’.80 Mozart’s songs were sung in their original language (Italian) and the Russian context was further submerged. The adaptation was seen as ‘diffuse’ and as Alastair Macaulay went on to reveal: ‘We don’t understand Mozart better, or Salieri, or Pushkin’.81 The experimental concision of the Pushkin text appears to defy adequate production, though Harry Eyres did note that its ‘pregnant brevity compresses a remarkable amount of dramatic possibility’ and depth of theme. However, he also thought the production was ‘cut-price Shaffer’.82 When a version of the subject matter already exists in the host culture, despite being inspired originally by the cultural import, interest and appreciation can be both inflated and deflated, it seems. The Feast in the Time of Plague was given a fringe production in 1995. The Clod Ensemble according to Time Out turned the piece (no adaptor or translator cited) into ambitious music theatre (there are

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some songs indicated in the original). At the same time, the company served Pushkin’s ‘disarmingly simple fragment lit by flickers of sharp perception’ well.83 From these two examples, it appears that culturally specific music can play a potent role in cultural transfer, though perhaps not if it adds superfluously to the cultural mix. Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin (1825–1832) expands this musical transposition further. It is best known as the source for Tchaikovsky’s opera. Pushkin’s hero Onegin, a wealthy, bored young man without firm purpose, dallies with a young provincial girl, Tatiana, but then rejects her for her sister, Olga. He ends by being challenged to a duel by his friend Lenskii for having made approaches to Olga, Lenskii’s fiancée. Onegin kills Lenskii in the duel and subsequently leaves the country. Much later, Tatiana, now married, and still captivating, rejects Onegin’s declaration of love to her on his return from abroad, and stays loyal to her husband. Subtitled a ‘novel in verse’, the work engaged Russia as much for the worrying flaws in the Russian hero as for the charms of its heroine, and its comments on contemporary Russian life under Nicholas 1. Although seen by Pushkin as possessing aspects of the novel, the work is included here rather than in the discussion of adapted prose, as this production was conceived of as musical theatre, and fits well with the discussion of the Little Tragedies. A dramatic version of the original poem was staged in London (The White Bear) in October 1999, in connection with the bicentenary of Pushkin’s birth. One critic highlighted the value and difference of dramatising poems as ‘they suit recitation as well as solitary perusal’, though he also commented on the ‘failing to replace the texture and embroidery of the poetry’.84 Links to Byron’s Don Juan85 and to the fact that England was a source of inspiration to Pushkin were perceived as acculturating factors, though this reviewer also ruefully commented that the latter would not do much to raise his (Pushkin’s) profile.86 Michael Billington noted the production’s ‘Russian rustic atmosphere’87 presumably redolent of the Russian country estate so highly regarded by the British. A music theatre version of the opera at the Lyric Hammersmith in June 1999 was a relentless process of acculturation and updating. Tom Sutcliffe lamented the losses entailed: ‘displacing the Russian soul washes out the intensity and epic resonance of Tatiana and Onegin’s jarring, badly timed, angst-filled encounters [….] exploiting Tchaikovsky for insufficient pay-back’.88 Rodney Milnes found himself ‘in the English home counties’ and ‘the Petersburg ball becomes a London Officers’

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mess in the Blitz’, and thought it Music Theatre London’s ‘best show yet’.89 He applauded the direction, the ‘band’, the doubling of parts and integration of soloists and chorus, perhaps inevitably judging the show on standards of little relevance to Pushkin but on its acculturation factors. Indeed, Tchaikovsky figures more in these reviews than Pushkin. Nevertheless, anniversaries (bi-centenaries in particular), it seems, as far as Pushkin is concerned, discharge a valuable duty in airing classic works, even if the productions lean on existing icons such as Russian composers and operas. What is also important but not always appreciated in Britain is just how much Pushkin’s plays operated as a negative touchstone for Gogol and Lermontov. Gogol’s The Government Inspector (1835) rejects the aristocratic and gentry figures. He satirises them in Khlestakov, who is a liar, cheat and parasite. Gogol’s play conceives him as an essentially contemporary Russian figure. It seems that Gogol set out to be comic, but his Khlestakov, allied to his corrupt mayor, were taken by some as a toxic comment on Russia. Gogol’s Russia was subject to sudden bouts of surveillance from the capital of whole towns as well as suspect individuals. In a similar fashion Lermontov wrote in reaction to Pushkin. Retaining the aristocratic and metropolitan settings, he countered Pushkin’s incisive and urbane style with melodrama and emotion. Known best as a lyric and epic poet and novelist (A Hero of Our Time [1841]), Lermontov wrote several plays in the early years of his career. Only Masquerade (1835) became a noted success in the Russian theatre, particularly in the hands of Meyerhold in the early twentieth century.90 Written at approximately the same time as Gogol’s Government Inspector, Lermontov’s Masquerade could hardly be more different. Influenced by the romantic movement, especially the German theatrical variant, and in Russia by the contemporary popularity of melodrama, the central tortured personality of Arbenin provides the arena of action. His psychology is explored through his suspicion and jealousy of his beautiful, innocent young wife Nina. In the end, he poisons her, and is himself then driven to madness. Framed by gambling and a masked ball, where nothing is quite what it seems, the action also profiles the vanity and vacuity of contemporary Russian society. In his use of verse, Lermontov echoes Griboedov, Schiller and Pushkin, and endows Arbenin with an articulate intelligence of Shakespearian proportions. The reviews of the 1976 production of Maskerade (sic), the first, and so far only one traced in English, caught these tones in their acculturated

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references to an ‘Othelloish’ ‘madness’.91 It was staged at the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre. Robert David Macdonald’s translation was admired for his ‘polished prose’ and ‘echoes of tags of Shakespeare to Wilde’.92 The ‘racy neo-Wildean epigrams’93 were matched by updating the action to the fin de siècle atmosphere of the 1890s. This chronological resetting, a different reviewer felt, bridged the gap between Lermontov’s 1830s and the 1970s by referring to an era in between which ‘we feel we know more intimately from photographs and grandmother’s tales’.94 While late nineteenth-century Russia knew little of Wilde, the gap, it was thought, was narrowed by bringing the clichés of a British perception of nineteenth-century life into the action and the costume design: ‘men in suave evening dress who drop their long-skirted, fur-lined greatcoats to the floor for the servants or poor relations to pick up’.95 This aristocratic barbarity conforms to the stereotype of nineteenth-century Russia, but seems incongruous when set into the brittle Venetian-like posturing of Lermontov’s masquerade. The late nineteenth century, Wilde, Shakespearian blank verse and long-skirted fur-lined greatcoats are all efforts at acculturating Lermontov to British tastes. Rather than to the 1870s fashions of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, however, such costumes and behaviours relate more closely to the medieval boyar class under Ivan the Terrible, and which had been largely emasculated by the middle of the seventeenth century. One powerful stereotype, closer to the modern age and more pertinently theatrical was invoked by the stage history of this play and this production’s design by Philip Prowse. One reviewer mentioned ‘Meyerhold’s historic version’96; another described the set with its ‘two levels’ and ‘grandly cobwebbed secrecy’ and a ‘mysterious stranger [who] oversees the action’.97 The set was described by Cordelia Oliver as a ‘seemingly boundless hall of mirrors with huge square mirror-clad central column’,98 and in which, at one point, remarked Michael Coveney, ‘the theatre and its dumbstruck audience are seen in swift and brilliant reflection’.99 Oliver went on to recall the cast of 200 that Meyerhold brought to his production of Maskarad on the eve of Revolution in 1917. In the Glasgow production, music was used to reflect and increase tension in the purest of melodramatic ways: the ‘astonishingly gruesome scene’ of Arbenin watching his wife die was ‘underpinned by surging quotations from Rakhmaninov’.100 Perhaps it was more operatic than melodramatic, Oliver concluded, not taking into account that it is in opera that melodrama has had its nineteenth-century stage presence most powerfully

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sustained. So the British can enter into this production since what were thought of as the characteristics of non-Chekhov Russian theatre were handsomely in place: Meyerhold, Russian opera, fur and gruesome spectacle. These aspects confirm the cultural stereotype, but there is also a resort to the acculturating and familiar (Shakespeare) to comfort the audience. In 1999 the Little Theatre of Vilnius brought their version, Masquerade, which played to a ‘packed’101 Derby Playhouse, reported Jeremy Kingston. It had already visited the Belfast Festival, and was on its way to Coventry and Brighton. The attractions to a British audience of ‘Tsarist St Petersburg’,102 Kingston continued, were magnified by the production’s imaginative use of an ever-increasing snowball which was eventually ‘huge enough to push the surviving characters off the stage’. The key to the success of this non-English language production, Kingston went on, was the director Tuminas’s ability to ‘broaden the play’s field to behaviour that is world-wide’. Lithuanian directors are as subject to the same theatrical influences as in Britain, it seems, for Kingston also referred to a performance device which, it seems to me, recalls Meyerhold: a ‘tight group of people swiftly shuffling across the stage’, suggesting ‘a crowd whose purposes have become identical. What is comic is also serious’. Even though so sparsely reviewed, this production is a salutary reminder, if it be needed, that other cultures recycle stereotypes of Russia similar to British ones, and that there is always the tendency to universalise content so as to make it more generally applicable. Such universality was probably not one of Lermontov’s prime targets. The play was directed at the corruption of Russian society contemporary to him and was an exploration of the Russian national character in the hero Arbenin. He was seen by Kingston as the ‘familiar Russian Romantic gone sour’.103 Before we meet with Gogol, let us sum up the British view of this rich early nineteenth-century context. Pushkin and Lermontov, Russia’s two key romantic writers, flicker occasionally on our stage, enough to remind more of their genius in other areas. Frequency of performance is circumscribed by the lack of commercialism and popularity that romantic theatre engages as a whole. Romanticism flourishes in opera where expectations of sensationalism, passionate encounters and the transmission of stereotypes have been much less under interrogation. The two earlier writers, Fonvizin and Griboedov, both crucial to Gogol’s comic theatre, remain almost impenetrable ‘classics’. There

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is little else in the British knowledge of Russian culture of their period to enable revealing connections to be made. In addition, Pushkin and Lermontov convey both the decaying rustic idyll and troubled urban social scene typical of their Russian times. They represent a societal polarisation not always associated by the British with Nikolayevan Russia between two great European wars: the 1812 Napoleonic invasion and the 1855 Crimean war. Gogol, however, strikes out in yet another direction.

Gogol104 Gogol’s work provides the first chronological point of popularity in the British stagings of nineteenth-century writers. This popularity is due both to his plays and to adaptations of his prose, particularly his short stories (discussed in Section 7). His play The GovernmentInspector(1835)ismostlyresponsible,buttwoofhisothers,Marriage (1835–1842) and The Gamblers (1842), have also been explored with interesting results. Gogol’s slapstick and caricaturistic skills inspire memorable design and directorial work. Equally, Gogol’s willingness to address contemporary Russian issues openly, in contrast to Pushkin’s allegorical reference, has drawn attention to him; while his readiness to confront the inexplicable and darker sides of existence differ substantially from Lermontov’s psychological studies of personality. Gogol appears 74 (including 4 foreign language productions) times in the database. In our 70 years, there have been 40 (plus 2 foreign language) productions of The Government Inspector. Some of these productions have left little trace, while others have set a production history of their own, so the variation in significance among them is considerable. Regarded by British critics as a nineteenth-century classic, The Government Inspector accumulates a number of different genre descriptions: ‘classic Russian comedy’105 ‘great satire’106 ‘deeply cynical farce’,107 ‘neat ironic masterpiece,108 and ‘vicious satire’.109 Gogol himself is relegated to the critical realist and fantasist extremes, often perceived in writing on Russian nineteenth-century literature. As Michael Ratcliffe commented, ‘there are at least two Gogols: the meticulous social observer of rotten human behaviour, and the wild ­proto-expressionist who undertook a pilgrimage to Palestine and dreamed of flying through the air in a troika’.110 These extremes are later subsumed into ‘fantastic humour’ followed by a justification taken from Russian culture itself (or at least the British view of it), since it ‘lurks inside both Chekhov and Bulgakov, but

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he [Gogol] lent them his sense of the real as well as the grotesque’.111 The more usual literary term used to describe Gogol’s work is fantastic realism. Another point of reference for the reviewers is the twentieth-­century writer Vladimir Nabokov. Showing arguably both the strength of the analogy and the consistency of the reviewer, Nabokov’s thoughts about Gogol’s ‘private nightmare peopled with [Gogol’s] own incomparable goblins’ are quoted by Billington in his reviews of this play at different periods.112 Set in a remote provincial settlement (hardly a town in our terms), The Government Inspector chronicles the arrival of a supposed inspector from St. Petersburg (as the centre of government) and the local officials’ attempts to convince him of the quality of their work. The visitor they take, wrongly, to be the inspector is Khlestakov, who is on his way to his home in the country. A member of the poor gentry from the provinces, who had been sent to make his career in Petersburg, he is holed up with his ragged servant, a serf assigned to him by his father, in the local hotel. He is on the point of being thrown out by the hotel owner as he has run out of money. Khlestakov has an intriguing personality of his own: he loves to impress and will say almost anything to secure attention. He just escapes the town before the arrival of the real inspector at the end of the play, having proposed to the Mayor’s daughter (and flirted with his wife), and received many bribes from the town’s officials to write a favourable report. Unfortunately, the town is in a parlous condition but the Mayor is so convinced that inspectors are bribable, and so bewitched by his personal pretentious ambitions, that he fails completely to see through Khlestakov. He and the rest of his officials and their families are left literally struck dumb as they face the real inspector at the end of the play. They are shocked into a grotesque tableau of various attitudes of terror. So prolific have productions on the British stage been that a British production history has become established. Key productions (i.e. referenced by various reviewers and literary critics) have become: the 1966 RSC production at the Aldwych; at Nottingham Playhouse in 1974; at the NT, 1985 and the wholesale adaptation of 2005, The UN Inspector (also NT). In addition, three translocated productions in the 1990s are significant: 1990 Tara Arts, reset to India; 1994 Dubblejoint, translocated to Dublin; and the Almeida version of 1997 where the action was transposed to Scotland.113 The 1966 RSC production, directed by Peter Hall, came hard on the heels of the second visit by MAT to London in 1964.114 Among

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the glistening Chekhovs, MAT had brought an adaptation of Gogol’s novel115 Dead Souls (1842) which had rekindled interest in Gogol as a writer. The Government Inspector had not been seen in a major production since 1948 at the Old Vic. References in the reviews suggest the RSC 1966 production ‘had taken on the mantle of the Moscow Art Theatre’,116 though there was also an implied debt to Meyerhold that was not always recognised. There is a mention of the ‘alienation effect’ since Hall had ‘alienated us at once by placing a small stage in the middle of the Aldwych’s real stage and putting all the action on that’.117 This tactic is reminiscent of Meyerhold’s landmark production of The Government Inspector in 1926.118 Similarly, another reviewer noted Hall’s ‘welding [of] his crowd of townsfolk into a mass so closely packed that the individual can scarcely move’.119 However, for the Times critic the production missed the ‘meticulously individualised caricature […] found in Moscow’,120 and another found that, set against MAT, ‘Hall’s ­end-of-term romp seems superficial, frivolous and facile’.121 Here and elsewhere in the responses to this play there is confusion over the nature of the locale: some refer to it as a ‘village’ others as a ‘provincial’ or ‘small town’. The cultural resonances of any of these terms are misleading, for the British. Here the gaps between source and hosted texts and target audiences open up. Gogol’s town probably does not exist: the mayor states in the play’s opening minutes that the town is at least three years’ gallop from any of Russia’s frontiers.122 So where is that? It has the characteristics of a bureaucratically managed town: after all, it is subject to inspection. So there is a potential loss in translation here which modifies subsequent responses. British regional accents are imported and become a feature of British productions: so in 1966 the ‘muster of stagey and mummerset “funny” accents […] ranged from Irish to a painfully elongated and costive cockney’.123 In 1974, Nottingham Playhouse injected local colour from Glasgow and London (Cockney) for Khlestakov and Osip, respectively. The play was reset to an unnamed post-WW2, Yorkshire town, ensuring broad accents for the rest of the cast, and confirmed in the importation of ‘Nikky Goggle’, ‘a cheeky chappy in a fur coat’,124 to lead the exposure of (British) s­ mall-town corruption. The lead comedian-narrator in a large coat and battered hat is a stereotype of music hall. The fact that he wore a fur coat could have been some kind of oblique reference to his Russian origins, though the majority of the audience probably had in mind the ‘good time gal’ of ‘all

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fur coat and no knickers’ notoriety, if not the British comic duo Flanagan and Allen. Nottingham’s theatrical image for Gogol’s play merits study as an exercise in visual hybridisation and/or acculturation. The domestic inscription of a ‘northern’ stand-up comedian is overlain with reference to the domestic historical double act, noted above. Was this tactic a direct example of a ‘mutant text’ mimicking the linguistic conventions of the host culture (hybridisation)?125 Or was it in some way meant to smooth reception of the migrating text (acculturation)? In an oblique reference to the play’s cultural origins the coat does echo the cliché of the Russian fur coat. This echo, however, is confusing: it is both diminished and inflated by the character’s distorted Russian name (Gogol becomes ‘Goggle’). These are two examples of extreme acculturation, especially since neither bears any relation to Gogol’s play. The visual impact could hardly be further from the culture of surveillance under which the piece was written in 1835. This production provides an exaggerated example of acculturation or indeed, may have been conceived as an attempt at hybridisation, which has failed. However, in the shifting grounds of translated theatre such contamination of signs is frequent. The use of terms like mayor (or governor), schools’ superintendent, postmaster and so on, suggests pompous dignitaries, hierarchy, an old-fashioned, almost toy-town, municipal mentality. It is easily transposable to the towns of Britain fed by the fruits of the industrial revolution. In the Russian context, though, Gogol’s town was probably a legacy of the eighteenth-century colonisation of vast areas of Russia. Those who served the state as important soldiers or civil servants were rewarded with far-flung pockets of land. By the 1830s, there was growth in Russia’s urban population as small towns began to multiply. Moreover, these ‘towns’ were required to supply rudimentary welfare and educational facilities, which were to be regularly inspected by the centres of government. Their distance from these centres of civilisation was both cartographically and psychologically immeasurable. Perhaps, something of ‘outback’, ‘tin pot town’ or ‘trading post’ is closer to the mark. But in their desire to emulate the best in the capital cities, and indeed the West, these remote Russians went to extraordinary lengths to have some aspects of what they would think of as civilisation: thus there is an hotel, and the mayor’s wife and daughter would follow, at a time lag, what they thought to be the latest fashions from the illustrated journals and catalogues of the period.

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Forward projection to twentieth-century Russia from Gogol’s ­ ineteenth-century scenario of inspection speckles the reviews. The 1985 n NT version, although ostensibly set in the 1830s, inspired the following comments with their underlying modern overtones: ‘gets closer than any version I have seen to the notion of people living out a Russian nightmare (…) you feel the authentic frisson of living under a dictatorship’126 and ‘[t]he prying twins (Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky) miss entirely Gogol’s intention of showing incompetent surveillance methods with a collapsing door entrance…’,127 though the latter remark applied equally well to Gogol’s Russia.128 The urge to refer to the Meyerhold legacy with this text is an imperative which brings in reference to ­twentieth-century politics. In her first paragraph on the 1985 production Rosemary Say referred to ‘the closing down of the Meyerhold Theatre in 1938 for “systematic deviation from Soviet reality” after a performance [of The Government Inspector]’,129 and more opaquely but with a vocabulary closer to modern rather than nineteenth-century concerns, Giles Gordon in a review of the same 1985 production wrote of the loss of ‘Gogol’s angry work’.130 These comments with their reference to modern times predate by a year or so the cataclysmic events that were to emerge from Russia with perestroika and its rejection of the recent forbidding past. Here we have a strong indication of how current British political perspectives of Russia have coloured interpretation of her classics. David Farr’s new play, ‘freely adapted from The Government Inspector’, The UN Inspector, was staged by the NT in 2005.131 Set in modern times, it provoked a reversal of views as critics in a new post-Soviet age sought to readjust their reactions and attacked not ­ Stalin’s Russia but the West in the name of a Russian play. Farr, wrote Aleks Sierz, was ‘laughing at the new democracies and mocking the patronising attitudes of the West’.132 However, in this instance, Farr’s fully acculturated version may well have moved sufficiently away from the original for this to happen. Hindsight underscores the reviews. There is still the echo of Meyerhold’s greatness, as Sierz continues that the play is ‘contemporary and grotesque in a way that reminds you of the great Russian modernist theatre before Stalin silenced it’. Another critic commented on an essential difference in that Gogol’s play was ‘rooted in an absolute sense of Russian orthodoxy in which everyone knew their place and where they belonged in the state structure, now everything is up for grabs’.133 Refreshingly resisting stereotypes, John Peter pointedly commented:

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No present day western European can comprehend the backwardness, corruption, stupidity and credulity of small-town officialdom in tsarist Russia. To satirise Soviet and post-Soviet […] needs a different tone.134

As well as this vision of monolithic power, another stereotype emerges in comment on Gogol. It differentiates him from Pushkin and Lermontov and, gesturing to our central theme, it rarely figures in comment on Chekhov. It is seen in remarks such as ‘overrun by Old Mother Russia herself’,135 and the ‘epic suffering of Mother Russia’.136 These remarks pertain to the demands in Act 4 of The Government Inspector from local traders for justice against the mayor for his maltreatment of them. It is evidenced in the appearance of many hands holding petitions for justice thrust through the windows; and from the tableau sequence in Gogol’s stage directions shortly afterwards: The door opens on to a figure in an overcoat of cheap Frisian cloth, unshaven, with swollen lips and a bandage round his jaw. In the distance stand several others.137 ‘Mother Russia’ has currency in English as a comment on twentieth-century Russian political developments as if they do not represent the real Russia. Moreover, the use of the term to refer to nineteenth-century society makes us realise how little this real Russia appears in the plays that we have seen in the last 70 years. The 1991 Government Inspector at Greenwich, a new version by Ronald Eyre based on a literal translation by Michal Schonberg, toyed with the kitschy stereotypes of old Russia in its set design. Irving Wardle commented: ‘The most Gogolian element […] is […] [the] set – a steeply raked ramshackle revolve that spins round like a fairground icon of Mother Russia to some catchy balalaika numbers’.138 Even so, incongruously, the hero quoted Keats in this production. Small Russian townships of Gogol’s period rarely, I would suggest, had such colour or such cultural expression. Such acculturation by means of drawing on British colourful versions of Russian culture and re-sourcing the quotation from Russian writing (Pushkin) into British culture (Keats) exemplifies a very strong colonising treatment of the source text in this production. By the 1990s, the experiment in relocation hinted at in the 1974 Nottingham production and the concept of ‘local colour’ took on an altogether more serious function. Not only did Tara Arts reset their Government Inspector of 1990 to ‘a tin pot town in India’ but ‘[u]sing traditional Eastern performance forms’ they imported ‘a bizarre mix of English and Indian quotations from sources as diverse as Shakespeare, Kipling, Tennyson and Eliot’.139 The theme became relations between a

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colony and its imperial masters, and the ‘argument sidesteps local responsibility for corruption pretty neatly’.140 The relation between the satellite and the hub is a point that is treated ambivalently in Gogol’s play, resulting in the diametrically opposed interpretations found in the critics at the time. The Tsar liked the play for its criticism of corruption in a genial, comedic frame; the freethinking critics of the intelligentsia liked it for the critical realism of its exposure of malpractice, and the exploration of the peculiar mentalities of the inhabitants of remotest Russia. Verma’s agenda was to raise awareness of Asian theatre and issues by means of the British stage. His acculturation of a Russian classic in a ‘ripe, exotic evening’141 allowed him to make his critical points with a degree of obliqueness sufficient to avoid uttering outright criticism, though his ideological viewpoint was clear. The appropriation of a Russian classic to this agenda is, however, an uneasy moment. One result is that reference to the Russian context of the play almost disappeared from the reviews in favour of the issues pertinent to the relations between the chosen exotic, geographical setting and Britain. Further translocations of The Government Inspector were to come. They were directed, ever more pointedly, at Britain as a colonial power. When the translated text becomes a tool in this way an important question is raised: how far can the displacement of the cultural and historical context of the source text be condoned by the political points being made for the receiving culture, whether the points themselves are justifiable or not? This example demonstrates the acculturated text being stretched to the ideological extreme. It is becoming a commonplace of drama translation in general. A scan of the reviews of two further productions along these lines in 1994 and 1997 may help to define how far an acculturated production may go before it loses credibility. Dubblejoint’s version of The Government Inspector (1994, adapted by Marie Jones) transferred the action to ‘turn of the twentieth century Ireland’ setting ‘a gaggle of Irish tricksters’ against ‘uneasy colonials’.142 One or two comments indicate that this elasticity showed the quality of Gogol’s play: ‘offering both an intriguing angle on the Ireland of the time and enjoyably refreshed sense that this is one of the greatest comedies in world drama’, but, at the same time, this same reviewer suggested that the ‘tremendous point and punch’ came from the shift to the new location rather than from the source text itself.143 The experience was, quipped another in the shorthand of the review style, ‘more knockabout than thinkabout’.144

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In 1997, in the adaptation by the Scottish playwright John Byrne, the location was Scotland. The production was seen as ‘farcical rather than comic’.145 At least the translocation was a way of overcoming the use of regional accents to imply provincialism. The same reviewer also noted Khlestakov’s ‘affected English Sloane amidst a bevy of antique Scots’. Another critic, David Nathan, put his finger on one frequent difficulty of Russian theatre in translation: ‘the final blow to any glimpse of reality, any particle of truth – and it is a satire on very real corruption in a truly hideous outback of Tsarist Russia – are Scottish characters with Russian names like Osip, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky’.146 And John Gross eloquently found another: ‘the Scottishness of Scots actors pretending to be Russians […] more obtrusive than the Englishness of English actors […] may well end up reflecting on the differences between Scotland and Russia rather than the similarities’.147 Such is the risk to the source text when translated plays are put to the service of a new agenda, though of course this new role can result in a gain of popularity for the original text. Many enjoyed this Scottish transition. However, this acculturated production also lost ‘Gogol’s social sting’,148 while it raised issues, irrelevant to Gogol’s text, about the difference in ‘the comic strain north and south of the border’.149 However, the assimilation of a foreign text is often not just to present the foreign text to a new audience but to provoke debate within the receiving society.150 The outcomes may prove useful markers for setting the threshold over which a text in transition takes the features of adaptation a ‘step too far’, where the source and hosted texts end up completely distinct from one another. These markers seem to be when the text provokes discussion almost entirely unrelated to the source culture (discussion about Scotland and England rather than Russia). Or when the production provokes discussion unrelated to the host culture in which the performance is taking place (discussion about differences between Scotland and Russia rather than the similarities). It is also when the production in the name of the local discussion loses essential features of the source text (loss of the political and social contexts of Gogol’s play). Or finally, a marker may also show when the clash of cultures produces juxtapositions inappropriate to the style of production of the play and then audience credulity is stretched to breaking point (Scottish locale and accents along with Russian names). Some productions, of course, miss essential features anyway.

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Gogol’s play has an epigraph, which makes it a telling text for the modern exploration of cultural transfer. The epigraph, which he quoted in his native Ukrainian, is a comment on reception: ‘Don’t blame the mirror if your own face is crooked’. This all-purpose caveat sets up a dialogue between the author who positioned this epigraph at the beginning of his text and those who now come to read it, but more arguably to see or review it.151 The epigraph would only have made its mark when the original text was edited, published and available for reading, usually post-première in Russia. For receiving cultures, however, an epigraph is present as a framing device from the beginning; it is frequently quoted in programme material and so continues to make its comment. If we are to judge by the categories identified in Section 2, then both hybridisation and acculturation as part of cultural transfer, if to different degrees, lead the host culture to remake the source text in its own image. If a production fails to make its mark, then the critics may turn on the source culture or at the very least only marry their perceptions to their existing stereotypes of the source culture, either of the period of the source text, or less felicitously of the culture as a whole. Two further statements, beyond the references to dictatorships and Mothers Russia, from the material on The Government Inspector will illustrate this point. Perhaps surprisingly, one quotation comes from the, usually, more abrasive end of the market: the critic in Time Out of the 1991 production at Greenwich wrote that the play ‘should provoke a lot of deeply Russian thoughts’152 (or perhaps his use of ‘should’ suggests a touch of irony?); and similarly one reviewer wrote of the Almeida Scottish production in 1997 that it ‘plunges us into the colour and emotion of 19th century Russia’.153 Now, would that be ‘the Russia of the theatrical mind’, by any chance? Gogol wrote other plays, mostly less successfully. Two have been seen in Britain. He completed Marriage in 1835–1841 (first published 1842) and Gamblers was first published in 1842. Marriage makes great capital out of the matchmaking market, designed, it appears, to trap unwilling bachelors into a marital union. This play figures four times in the postwar period. In the 1940s it was seen as ‘comedy in the true Russian style of sharp caricature without a serious thought’154; and, it was written by Gogol as a diversion from the ‘malice and satirical anger’155 of The Government Inspector. This view was taken to extremes when a new version (The Marriage Brokers) in the 1960s by Robert Gillner gave the play a happy ending, that is, a marriage. Previously the unwilling fiancé made

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an alacritous escape through an open window in the final moments. The shift in the title already suggests a step too far from the more generalised theme of marriage in the original. Such changes led to comments on the ‘routine farce characters’,156 ‘characters taken from stock’,157 ‘museum piece’,158 denying the darker fears of the matrimonial state the play contained, and ‘robbing the piece of any ironic quality it possesses’.159 Its most recent outing in 2001 was not well received, the one review commenting that the British public would not be seduced by interval offerings, ‘Free vodka and red caviar do not make up for overpriced, substandard fare’.160 Gogol’s other play, his unfinished Gamblers, has provoked much more interest and excitement among the critics. There have been five productions in total. One view of the 1992 production was that it exposed the ‘dark underbelly of gambling’161; in another it was ‘an expressionistic nightmare, with a sense of evil palpable in the air’162; and elsewhere was ‘a dark, almost macabre dance around the themes of deception and self-delusion’.163 This production in a version by the playwright Chris Hannan, with direction by the Lithuanian Dalia Ibelhauptaite and design by Oleg Sheintis, was regarded as an achievement of ‘authenticity’164; and ‘their affinity with Gogol is clear’.165 I wonder on what basis these judgements were made. Clearly, the production found a new side to Gogol’s work but why this Lithuanian direction and Russian design presence should necessarily be more ‘authentic’ is hard to understand. The lead was played by a Russian actor, Oleg Menshikov, in English. His accent had improved immeasurably since his appearance in a play about Isadora Duncan the year before,166 but his accent was perhaps misread as authenticity in response to Gogol, rather than the fact that here was a Russian enunciating his English poorly. Moreover, perhaps the ‘expressionist nightmare’ in Gogol is more attributable to Menshikov’s acting talent and style? As the reviewers put it, he was ‘scuppered by a very artificial delivery’,167 and ‘[y]ou feel you could scrape layer after layer away from this character and not reach the actor’.168 Joe Spence was taken to task for his new (1999) ‘free and easy adaptation’169 of Gamblers from a literal translation by Ivan Mazur, which ‘playfully employs literary borrowings and contemporary clichés to good effect’.170 Such an adaptation may seem a good exercise in translation and acculturation, until another critic comments on ‘his mistrust of the term “neglected classic”’,171 and wrote in conclusion that the desire for

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entertainment (the production quoted Dickens and Walt Disney) outweighed any sense that this was a classic piece. In 2000, with updated action the play was seen only as a ‘straightforward farce-cum-satire on avarice and gullibility’.172 Authenticity is an exacting standard by which to judge a translated play. As this instance shows, it is, perhaps paradoxically given the nature of authenticity itself, a judgement often built on the shifting grounds of assumption and subjectivity. The dark side of Gamblers perhaps indicates what is generally missing from productions of The Government Inspector. The thrusting hands and mysterious figures, referred to above, and the occasional presence of the inexplicable, the grotesque, and even absurd, in the modern sense, in the play, reflected Gogol’s eerie fantastic realism. It is also worth mentioning that Gogol is seen as a dramatist quite different from Chekhov, evidenced by the lack of reference to Chekhov in reviews of plays by Gogol. In fact, Chekhov, in company with many other Russian dramatists, owed a considerable debt to Gogol. Chekhov’s staging of slapstick and chaos scenes bears the imprint of Gogol, especially in his early one-act pieces and is still there, if heavily adapted, in the major plays. There is not a little of Gogol, for example, in the comic grotesque of the shooting scene in Uncle Vanya (end of Act 3) and in the handling of the chaos of the ball scene (also Act 3) in The Cherry Orchard. The interesting comparison is that Gogol tended to reach chaos and confusion as a climax while Chekhov, in his mature work, takes his audience to life beyond it, usually a return to a new, often tragic, acceptance of normality. As well as being distinct from Pushkin and Lermontov, Gogol belongs to a different strand of Russian theatre from the Turgenevs and the Chekhovs. It is not simply matters of chronology or realism which distinguish his work. It may be the social class of his characters, but I suspect his individuality goes deeper. His work is a profound exploration of the eccentricities and distinctiveness of the Russian national character. In this interest in the Russian character as such he echoes Fonvizin and Griboedov, where we began in this section. He displays an ability to peel away the veneer of Europeanism, which paradoxically makes his plays less accessible to a British audience. They also provide, though, a distinctly different darkly comic contrast to the pastoral of the Turgenevs and Chekhovs. Much the same may be said of the hugely successful dramatic works of Ostrovsky which dominated mid-century Russian theatre for nearly three

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decades. Ostrovsky’s plays owed not a little to Gogol’s in their depiction of grotesque, larger-than-life family tyrants, but Ostrovsky’s were drawn from a world new to Russian theatre, the merchant class. This class of Russian society was unexplored on the British stage until Ostrovsky’s plays became popular. In the next section, we turn to realistic theatre as Ostrovsky ushers in the dramatists of the second half of the Russian nineteenth century.

Notes





1. For other nineteenth-century dramatists rarely or never performed in Britain, see Section 5, nn. 14–19. 2.  Denis Fonvizin (1746–1792), whose education benefitted from the best of the educational reforms under Catherine the Great, worked as a civil servant in a translation department. He is known principally for two plays: The Brigadier (1766) and The Infant (aka The Minor) (1782), both of which take a satirical look at the Russia of his time and put into practice some of the Enlightenment principles which guided his education. For translations, see The Dramatic Works of D.I. Fonvizin, trans. and intro. by Marvin Kantor (Bern: H. Lang, 1974); The Infant is in Four Russian Plays, trans. with introduction and notes by Joshua Cooper (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 47–124. 3.  Aleksandr Griboedov (1795–1829) had a career as a Foreign Office civil servant and diplomat; and a parallel career as a comic dramatist. Woe from Wit (1822–1823) is his best known piece. For translation, as Chatsky, see Four Russian Plays (1972), pp. 125–213. Also translated by Anthony Burgess, as Chatsky (London: Almeida Theatre, 1993. Published as part of the programme). 4. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 11 January 1989 (LTR, 1–28 January 1989, p. 8). 5. Hilary Fields, What’s On, 18 January 1989 (ibid.). 6.  ibid; and see Annalena McAfee, Evening Standard, 6 January 1989 (ibid.). 7. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 15 January 1989 (ibid., p. 9). 8. D. A. N. Jones, Sunday Telegraph, 8 January 1989 (ibid., p. 10). 9. Peter Kemp, Independent, 7 January 1989 (ibid., p. 9); Jim Hiley, The Listener, 12 January 1989 (ibid., p. 10). 10. Kemp, Independent, 7 January 1989 (ibid., p. 9). 11. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph, 5 January 1989 (ibid., pp. 10–11). 12. Ibid., p. 10. 13. Kemp, Independent, 7 January 1989.

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14. Simon Karlinsky, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 151–171. 15. Michael Billington, Guardian, 7 January 1989 (LTR, 1–28 January 1989, p. 11). 16. Ratcliffe, Observer, 15 January 1989 (ibid.). 17. Hiley, The Listener, 12 January 1989 (LTR, 1–28 January 1989, p. 10). 18. Billington, Guardian, 7 January 1989 (ibid., p. 11). 19. For example, the final lines (Act1) of frustration from Famusov at his wayward daughter, translate as: “God in Heaven, what a mess, to be the father of a grown-up miss!” (ACT 1, ll.485-7). 20. Paul Taylor, Independent, 18 March 1993 (TR, 12–25 March, 1993, p. 296). 21. Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 298). 22. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1993 (ibid., p. 299). 23. Jack Tinker, Daily Mail, 17 March 1993 (ibid., p. 295). 24. John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 300). 25. Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1993 (ibid., p. 299). 26. Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 297). 27.  Burgess is better known as author of A Clockwork Orange (London: Heineman, 1962; film, 1972, directed by Stanley Kubrick; Warner Bros). 28. Aleks Sierz, Tribune, 28 March 1993 (TR, 12–25 March 1993, p. 295). 29. Kenneth Hurren, Mail on Sunday, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 299). 30. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 18 March 1993 (ibid., pp. 296–297). 31. Hewison, Sunday Times, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 297). 32. Michael Billington, Guardian, 18 March 1993 (ibid., p. 298). 33. Wardle, Independent on Sunday, 21 March 1993 (ibid.). 34. Nightingale, Times, 18 March 1993 (ibid., pp. 296–297). 35. Neil Smith, What’s On, 24 March 1993 (ibid., p. 298). 36. Hewison, Sunday Times, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 297). 37. Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times, 18 March 1993 (ibid.). 38. Wardle, Independent on Sunday, 21 March 1993 (ibid., p. 298). 39. Keith Stanfield, City Limits, 24 September 1992 (TR, 9–22 September 1992, p. 1121). 40. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 23 September, 1992 (ibid., p. 1122). 41. Claire Armistead, Guardian, 24 September 1992 (ibid.). 42. Stanfield, City Limits, 24 September 1992 (ibid., p. 1121). 43. ‘Receiving’ is used here to include audience reception. 44.  Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) is acknowledged as Russia’s greatest poet. He is also credited with turning Russian attention to the prose genre. His dramatic works, largely unperformed in his own time, interested Russian readers in historical drama and tragedy. His radical tendency (he was involved, in the background, in the 1925 Decembrist movement [see below, n. 46]) brought him to the attention of the new

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Tsar Nicholas 1. The authorities feared the power of his ‘voice’, and kept him under surveillance. Pushkin was killed in a duel at the age of 37, and his funeral was an occasion for great public mourning, unprecedented for a writer. 45.  Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) was Pushkin’s younger contemporary, and like him died in a duel. His ‘voice’ was emotional: he disliked the world of society, he sought the exotic and engaged with melodrama. His style was uneven, but captivating and lyrical in its complaints against loneliness. He served as an officer in the army, after an education in the capital. For writing a ‘seditious verse’ on Pushkin’s death, Lermontov was sent into exile to the Caucasus, to participate in the defence of Russia’s frontiers. Like Pushkin, he was a poet, prose writer and dramatist, though produced much less due to his death at the younger age of 27. 46. The Decembrist Revolution, 1825: the army officers who returned after 1815 from Alexander I’s defeat of Napoleon grew increasingly concerned at the lack of freedom in Russia. They took advantage of a brief interregnum on the death of Alexander in December 1825 to persuade several regiments to follow them. Those in the Guards Regiments, both in the North and the South of Russia, made a public demonstration of their dissatisfaction at the proclamation of Nicholas as tsar (his older brother Constantine had secretly abdicated his right to the throne) by refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Nicholas, and demanding a constitution. They were known as the Decembrists. Subsequently the leaders were condemned to death and many others exiled to Siberia. See Anatole Mazour, The First Russian Revolution of 1825 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961). 47.  Yuri Lyubimov (1917–2014): actor, director and teacher. In 1963, he founded the Taganka Theatre, Moscow, famous for its avant-garde style and politically daring productions. Frequently in trouble with the authorities, Lyubimov was eventually stripped of his Soviet citizenship and went abroad in 1981. Rehabilitated in 1989, he returned to the Taganka, eventually retiring in 2011. He subsequently directed opera at the Bolshoi. When life was difficult in Russia he took to touring memorable productions to UK, USA and Europe, mostly of Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, rather than Russian plays as such. His adaptations of Dostoevsky are discussed in Section 7. 48. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 13 June 2001 (TR, 2–15 July 2001, p. 878). 49. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2001 (ibid.). 50. Michael Billington, Guardian, 18 May 2001 (ibid., p. 879). 51. Ibid. 52. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 18 May 2001 (ibid.). 53. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 20 May 2001 (ibid., p. 880). 54. Ibid.

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55. The production utilised a new adaptation by Adrian Mitchell produced before his death in 2008: Alexander Pushkin, Boris Godunov, adapt. Adrian Mitchell, trans. by Alisa M. Voznaya (London: Oberon Books, 2012). This production was the first professional one in English in Britain as far as I have been able to trace. 56. Jane Edwardes, Sunday Times, 2 December 2012 (TR, 18 November–1 December 2012, p. 1279). 57. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 2 December 2012 (ibid.); Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 27 November 2012 (ibid., p. 1278). 58. Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 1 December 2012 (ibid., p. 1279). 59. Clapp, Observer. 60. Libby Purves, Times, 27 November 2012 (TR, 18 November–1 December 2012, p. 1278). 61. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 2 December 2012 (ibid., p. 1280). 62. Shuttleworth (ibid., p. 1279). 63. Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail, 30 November 2012 (ibid., p. 1278). 64. Purves, Times. 65. Michael Billington, Guardian, 30 November, 2012 (ibid., p. 1279). 66. Clapp, Observer. 67. James Hiley, Listener, 20 April 1989 (LTR, 26 March–8 April 1989, p. 421); Martin Hoyle, Time Out, 12 April 1989 (ibid.); Paul Taylor, Independent, 10 April 1989 (ibid., p. 422); and Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 10 April 1989 (ibid., p. 423). 68. Hoyle, Time Out. 69. Several reviews commented on two actresses playing the male roles: Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 16 April 1989 (LTR, 26 March–8 April 1989, p. 421); Hiley, Listener, 20 April 1989 (ibid., p. 421); Paul Anderson, Tribune, 14 April 1989 (ibid., p. 421); and Taylor, Independent (ibid., p. 422). 70. Hoyle, Time Out. 71. Taylor, Independent, 10 April 1989 (ibid., p. 422). 72. Hoyle, Time Out. 73. Coveney, Financial Times, 10 April 1989(ibid., p. 423). 74. Ibid. 75. Harry Crabbe, What’s On, 19 April 1989 (ibid., p. 422). 76. Coveney, Financial Times, 10 April 1989 (ibid., p. 423). 77. This was the subtitle to the production; see header (TR, 9–22 April 1991, p. 477). 78. Ian Shuttleworth, City Limits, 18 April 1991 (ibid.). 79. Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times, 27 March 1991 (ibid.). 80. Shuttleworth, City Limits. 81. Macaulay, Financial Times. 82. Harry Eyres, Times, 21 January 1991 (ibid., pp. 477–478).

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83. Kate Stratton, Time Out, 7 June 1995 (TR, 21 May–3 June 1995, p. 695). 84. Jonathan Gibbs, Time Out, 3 November 1999 (TR, 22 October–4 November 1999, p. 1437). 85. Alix Buscovic, What’s On, 2 November 1999 (ibid.). 86. Gibbs, Time Out. 87. Michael Billington, Guardian, 2 November 1999 (ibid.). 88. Tom Sutcliffe, Evening Standard, 4 June 1999 (TR, 21 May–3 June 1999, p. 709). 89. Rodney Milnes, Times, 3 June 1999 (ibid.). 90. Meyerhold’s production of Maskarad ran in Petrograd in February 1917, on the eve of the first revolution that year; see ‘Masquerade’, in Vsevold Meyerhold in the series, Directors in Perspective, ed. by Robert Leach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 139–151. 91. CG, Strathclyde Telegraph (no day) October 1976 (Scottish Theatre Archive (STA), Ea 3/6 press cutting). 92. OT (Ossia Trilling?), ‘Glasgow ‘Maskerade’, Stage and Television Today, 23 September 1976, p. 11 (ibid., press cutting). 93. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 4 October 1976 (ibid., press cutting). 94. Cordelia Oliver (ibid., unidentified press cutting). 95. Ibid. 96. Ossia Trilling, Moscow News, 43, 1976, p. 14 (STA, Ea3/6, press cutting). 97. Coveney, Financial Times, 4 October 1976 (ibid., press cutting). 98. Oliver (unidentified). 99. Coveney, Financial Times. 100. Oliver (unidentified). 101. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 11 November 1999 (TR, 5–18 November, p. 1533). 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., p. 1534. 104. Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) wrote plays, short stories and novels. He began writing plays in the early 1830s, mainly short pieces, until his comedy Marriage. The staging of Government Inspector (1835) in 1836 with the personal approval of the Tsar ensured Gogol reached a theatre public. However, the play was controversial as many, especially government officials, were affronted by its implied social criticism and the fact that Gogol had treated them comically. Gogol escaped abroad, and subsequently dedicated himself mostly to prose. The Government Inspector, however, became the most popular Russian comedy on the Russian stage. It stood out among a host of translated comedies from Europe. 105. N. C., Birmingham Mail, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting).

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106. Bernard Levin, Manchester Daily Mail, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 107. Clive Hirschhorn, Sunday Express, 3 February 1985 (LTR, 30 January–12 February 1985, p. 98). 108. Kenneth Hurren, Mail on Sunday, 3 February 1985 (ibid., p. 100). 109.  Robert Gore-Langton, ‘Satire and Snobbery on a Shoe String’, Daily Telegraph, 15 February 1994 (TR, 20 January–11 February 1994, p. 146). 110. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 3 February, 1985 (LTR, 30 January–12 February 1985, p. 102). 111. John Peter, Sunday Times, 28 April 1991 (TR, 9–22 April 1991, p. 472). 112. Michael Billington, Guardian, 2 February 1985 (LTR, 30 January–12 February 1985, pp. 99–100); Guardian, 20 December 1997 (TR, 3–31 December 1997, p. 1634); and Guardian, 17 June 2005 (TR, 4–17 June 2005, p. 817). 113. Details of all these productions can be found in the database. 114.  For a discussion of the impact of these visits see: Cynthia Marsh, ‘Chekhov-Reviewed: The Moscow Art Theatre’s Visits to Britain in 1958, 1964, and 1970’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (1993), pp. 113–125. 115. Gogol’s novel was subtitled ‘An epic poem (poema) in prose’, a possible deliberate response to Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin, which was given the subtitle ‘A novel in verse’. 116. David Nathan, Sun, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 117. B. A. Young, Financial Times, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 118. See for comment and illustrations, Leach, Vsevolod Meyerhold, passim. 119.  W. A. Darlington, Daily Telegraph, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 120. Drama critic, Times, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 121. Alan Brien, Sunday Telegraph, 23 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 122. The Mayor, Act 1, scene (i). 123. Philip Hope Wallace, Guardian, 20 January 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 124. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 16 March 1974 (Nottingham Playhouse Archive, production file). 125. See Section 2, n. 33. 126. Michael Billington, Guardian, 2 February 1985 (LTR, 30 January–12 February 1985, p. 100). 127. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 1 February 1985 (ibid., p. 101). 128. For an examination of the surveillance service and methods in this period see Sidney Monas, The Third Section; Police and Society in Russia Under Nicholas I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). It is still one of the best examinations of this topic.

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129. Rosemary Say, Daily Telegraph, 3 February 1985 (LTR, 30 January–12 February 1985, p. 102). 130. Giles Gordon, Punch, 13 February 1985 (ibid., p. 97). 131. David Farr, The UN Inspector (London: Faber and Faber, 2005). 132. Aleks Sierz, Tribune, 24 June 2005 (TR, 4–17 June, 2005, p. 820). 133. Sheridan Morley, Express, 17 June 2005 (ibid., p. 817). 134. John Peter, Sunday Times, 26 June 2005 (ibid., p. 821). 135. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 1 February 1985 (LTR, 30 January–12 February 1985, p. 101). 136. Sheila Fox, City Limits, 8 February 1985 (ibid., p. 103). 137. Revizor, Act 4, scene xi (translation by CM). Frisian refers to the heavy, coarse woollen cloth from which the coat is made. 138. Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday, 28 April 1991(TR, 9–22 April 1991, p. 472). 139. Nick Curtis, Time Out, 28 March 1990 (LTR, 12–25 March 1990, p. 397). 140. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 24 March 1990 (ibid.). 141. Ibid. 142. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 4 February 1994 (LTM, press cutting). 143. Paul Taylor, ‘Cattle prod’, Independent, 7 February 1994 (LTM, press cutting). 144. Andrew St. George, ‘Government Inspector Palls in the Peat’, Financial Times, 7 February 1994 (LTM press cutting). 145. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 28 December 1997 (TR, 3–31 December 1997, p. 1631). 146. David Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 26 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1633). 147. John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 28 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1634). 148. Michael Billington, Guardian, 20 December 1997 (ibid.). 149. Carole Woddis, Herald, 20 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1636). 150.  The word ‘receiving’ is used here to imply the breadth of audience sought, not just those who host a text, but the audience which comes to watch it, and its wider social connections. 151.  Gogol’s play was first performed in 1836. The epigraph was added for the 1842 edition of the play, and is regarded by some critics as a response to the reviewers of the first performances. See Revizor: The Government Inspector: A Comedy in Five Acts, ed. by M. Beresford (Lewiston and New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), p. 183. 152. John Morrish, Time Out, 1 May 1991 (TR, 9–22 April 1991, p. 473). 153. Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times, 20 December 1997 (TR, 3–31 December 1997, p. 1635). 154. ‘Reluctant Lover’, Evening Standard, 22 October 1948 (LTM, press cutting).

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155. W. A. Darlington ‘When Russians Were Gay: Gogol and Chekhov’, Daily Telegraph, 15 October 1948 (LTM, press cutting). 156. Milton Shulman, ‘A Laugh at the Terrors of the Marriage Tie’, Evening Standard, 3 February 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 157. W. A. Darlington, ‘Gogol Gives Relaxed Enjoyment’, Daily Telegraph, 3 February 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 158.  Felix Barker, ‘It’s Comedy and Love from Russia’, Evening News, 3 February 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 159. Philip Hope-Wallace, Guardian, 3 February 1965 (LTM, press cutting). 160.  See Sophia Veil, What’s On, 25 July 2001 (TR, 16–29 July 2001, p. 965). 161. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 16 September 1992 (TR, 12 August–8 September 1992, p. 1045). 162. Michael Aditti, Evening Standard, 10 September 1992 (ibid., p. 1043). 163. Clare Bayley, What’s On, 16 September 1992 (ibid., p. 1044). 164. Sheridan Morley, Spectator, 19 September 1992 (LTM, cutting). 165. Aditti, Evening Standard, 10 September 1992 (TR, 12 August–8 September 1992, p. 1043). 166. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 7 September 1992 (TR, 12 August–8 September 1992, pp. 1043–1044); Aditti, Evening Standard (ibid., p. 1043). 167. Edwardes, Time Out. 168. Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday, 13 September 1992 (TR, 12 August–8 September 1992, p. 1045). 169. Nigel Cliff, Times, 16 March 1999 (TR, 26 February–11 March 1999, p. 303). 170. Maeve Walsh, Independent, 17 March 1999 (ibid.). 171. Brian Logan, Time Out, 17 March 1999 (ibid.). 172. Madeleine North, Time Out, 11 October 2000 (TR, 23 September–6 October 2000, p. 1283).

Bibliography Beresford, Michael, Gogol’s ‘The Government Inspector’, Critical Studies in Russian Literature (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1997). Fonvizin, Denis, The Infant, in Four Russian Plays, trans. with introduction and notes by Joshua Cooper (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 47–124.

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———, The Dramatic Works of D.I. Fonvizin, trans. and intro. by Marvin Kantor (Bern: H. Lang, 1974). Contains: The Brigadier and The Infant. Gogol, Nikolai, The Government Inspector, in Four Russian Plays, trans. with introduction and notes by Joshua Cooper (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972). ———, The Government Inspector: A Comedy in Five Acts, ed. by M. Beresford (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996). Griboedov, Alexander, Chatsky, in Four Russian Plays, trans. with introduction and notes by Joshua Cooper (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 125–213. Karlinsky, Simon, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Leach, Robert ‘Masquerade’ [Lermontov], in ibid., Vsevolod Meyerhold (Directors in Perspective) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 139–151. Marsh, Cynthia, ‘Chekhov-Reviewed: The Moscow Art Theatre’s Visits to Britain in 1958, 1964, and 1970’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 113–125. Mazour, Anatole, The First Russian Revolution of 1825 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961). Monas, Sidney, The Third Section: Police and Society in Russia Under Nicholas I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). Pushkin, Alexander, Mozart and Salieri: The Little Tragedies, trans. by Antony Wood (London: Angel [1982], 1987). ———, Boris Godunov, adapt. by Adrian Mitchell, trans. by Alisa M. Voznaya (London: Oberon Books, 2012).

SECTION 4

From Merchant to Gentry Russia: Plays from the Mid to Late Nineteenth Century

The reception of mid- to late nineteenth-century Russian culture in Britain may have cemented that imagined ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ that is being explored in this study. Turgenev and Tolstoy, more for their novels and stories than their plays, brought a desirable gentry existence to the fore. It took the arrival of Chekhov and his plays in the early part of the twentieth century, albeit slowly at first, for the British to realise they could actually watch these families in action on their own stage. This growing interest in Chekhov eventually took them to the plays of their favourite novelists, Turgenev and Tolstoy. Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky had delivered mostly historical Russia in opera and ballet. This rich tapestry of Russian culture was pre-Soviet, but became popular in Britain in the Soviet period between the 1920s and 1980s. It offered a means of escape from the harsh, ‘political’, modern culture propagandised by the USSR early on and subsequently in the Cold War.1,2 Gradually, such was the demand for Russian culture, that the British theatre began to look for more of the darkly comic world experienced with Gogol. Ostrovsky was discovered and eventually led to a different Chekhov too. So this section considers the social and genre changes that the theatres of Ostrovsky, Turgenev and Tolstoy introduced. The more audiences saw of nineteenth-century theatre, the more Chekhov, as its crowning glory, became the writer of choice. His influence has spread into twentieth-century British playwriting itself.3 A discussion of Chekhov’s legacy opens Section 5. © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_4

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Ostrovsky4 Alexander Ostrovsky, so the British critics have frequently indicated, is a gem waiting to be fully discovered. Phrases such as ‘classic’,5 ‘unknown’6 or ‘neglected for so long’7 pepper the opening paragraphs of many reviews of his work. The critics tend to receive Ostrovsky’s Russia with delighted relief, as a counter to the overly serious British perception of the ‘gentry’ views of Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov. They welcome the earthiness of Ostrovsky’s language, his choice of the merchant society in Moscow and the provinces, settings previously rarely explored on the British stage. They welcome his realism but are wary of his melodrama. Ostrovsky is most frequently compared, but not always positively, with Gogol, opera, Chekhov and, closer to home, with Dickens, Ben Jonson, restoration comedy, Molière and Beckett. And there is an anxious discourse on his politics. British production has focused on half a dozen texts from Ostrovsky’s more than fifty plays spanning the middle decades of the nineteenth century, from the 1840s to the late 1870s. Such focused attention has been driven by several factors, not the least of which has been the paucity of translation. In 1945 David Magarshack’s translations were available. As a scholar of Russian theatre rather than a dramatist or professional translator, Magarshack as translator was quickly superseded. Even when his Wolves and Sheep resurfaced in 1993, it was used as a basis for further adaptation (by Nick Dear). Rodney Ackland’s version of Diary of a Scoundrel (1948, retitled Too Clever by Half in 1988) has had an enduring success, being last given professionally in 1988 and not reworked. Since then it has sustained at least seven professional productions (the last being in 2013) as well as a number of student and amateur ones.8 A Family Affair, first adapted and published by Nick Dear in 1989 (translated by David Budgen)9 has been given three times since then, most recently in 2006. Artists and Admirers (1982) was well launched by an adaptation from Hanif Kureishi (translated by David Leveaux) that was ‘eminently playable’,10 ‘robust’,11 ‘fluent’,12 and ‘fascinating’,13 but which has not sustained a production history. Each of the two further productions of this play is by a different adaptor and translator (Kevin Elyot, translated by Helen Rappaport [1992]; and Anna Baron, both translator and adapter [2000]). The Storm (Groza, 1860) and The Forest (Les, 1870), perhaps the two most respected of Ostrovsky’s plays in British English translation, have attracted varied and stellar talents as well

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as standard literary translations aimed at readers.14 Doris Lessing adapted The Storm (1966; no translator credited), as did Frank McGuinness (1998; no translator credited). There had been another version by Stephen Lowe for the RSC in 1987 (translated by Fiona Foster). The Forest has achieved two versions: one by the duo, well known in Russian theatre translation and adaptation, Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks (1981),15 and the other, perhaps attracting the most celebrity, was adapted by Alan Ayckbourn in 1999 (translated by Vera Liber).16 Finally, one further play by Ostrovsky was premièred in 2013, Larissa and the Merchants (from Without a Dowry, 1878, adapted by Samuel Adamson [no translator cited]). Ostrovsky’s language draws comment usually by means of an analysis of the version or translation being performed. Since, of course, very few reviewers know Russian, any remarks on the original language seem to be drawn from handbooks and encyclopaedias. As usual, the translators themselves receive little attention: it is adaptors who stimulate the reactions. Nearly 40 years after its première, Ackland’s work on Diary of a Scoundrel (1948)17 was still being generally praised as ‘lively’ (1985),18 ‘eloquently adapted’ (1988)19 and ‘preserving the spirit of the original’ (1988).20 Only one critic, Michael Coveney, took the trouble to compare two translations, Magarshack’s and Ackland’s, and as a result opened up the role of the translation in the finished product. Coveney commented of the 1988 production that due to the discrepancies between the two versions the actor playing the central role (Gloumov) could not be blamed for missing ‘entirely the aspect of experimental adventurousness in the character’s exploits’,21 which had presumably been evidenced in the earlier production. But was that brought about by the translation, the direction, the actor’s performance or something else? It is almost impossible to say. This is the shifting territory through which this current exploration of staging translated drama has had to be conducted. Lessing disappointed with her Storm (1966, NT at the Old Vic). It was a ‘ponderous’ adaptation, which ‘ploddingly presented a series of introspective monologues and dialogues to the inevitable suicide’.22 She had ‘lifted it out of its period’,23 using ‘the flattest and most overworked expressions’,24 evidently aiming at that middle ground between cultures and periods which voids translation of most of its colour. Stephen Lowe’s version (1987) similarly failed to impress the critics, due to the ‘jarring intrusion of modern idioms’,25 and ‘manages to vulgarise Ostrovsky’s

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language’, and the line “it looks like she’s chucked herself off the cliff” ‘spoiling the play’s moving climax’.26 This RSC version of The Storm was overall not well received, and a year later it was remembered as a reminder of Ostrovsky’s ‘crude vigour’,27 and then a decade later as a ‘bore’,28 rather unfortunately for the British Ostrovsky repertoire. The modern approach led by an ‘abrasive’29 version by Nick Dear of A Family Affair (1988) has elicited the ‘coarse’,30 even ‘filthy’,31 qualities of the ‘modern comedy’32 in the plays, perhaps not always entirely true to Ostrovsky in the original. So we read of Dear’s ‘vigorously modern text’,33 or more directly ‘vituperative [….] translation’,34 ‘gorgeous, anachronistic and inventive’,35 and ‘language of lacerating vulgarity’.36 However, by the 2002 production, one critic noted ‘swearwords’, ‘including the f-word’ ‘to appeal to the young and underprivileged’, continuing: ‘Alas, rich Russian merchants would not have used them in their drawing rooms in the presence of women’.37 Undoubtedly, critics have different agendas for translation, as we have noted before. However, is Dear’s Ostrovsky perhaps moving just too far beyond the threshold of verisimilitude towards acculturation in the name of marketing and attracting a different, younger audience? Perhaps Dear’s expectations have become contaminated by the British ‘version’ of Ostrovsky which will be unravelled here, but he has undoubtedly drawn audiences to Ostrovsky. McGuinness’s Storm with its cadences of Irish English brought the inevitable comments: ‘selectively Irish version’38 and ‘hints at Irish parallels’,39 but ‘this connection pays off allowing the play to ‘regain contact with reality’.40 However, McGuinness’s version was not widely admired and was called ‘cool’, failing to capture the ‘storms raging within the play’41; and ‘commonplace rather than earthy; familiar rather than atmospheric’.42 As is perhaps to be expected, Ayckbourn’s version of The Forest drew approval, critics noting the similarity in the positions of the Russian dramatist and the British dramatist-adaptor. It had received a ‘fully populist makeover’ in Ayckbourn’s ‘breezy reworking’ in comparison to the ‘pretentious turn-off’ provided by McGuinness’s Storm, the year before.43 Some of Ayckbourn’s contemporary phrasing did jar: ‘mate’, ‘standard business practice’,44 and ‘oik’45 were quoted among other examples. One or two warning notes were sounded: this version ‘makes no dent in the innate Russianness of Ostrovsky’s world’46; or, ‘sounds remarkably like one of Ayckbourn’s own plays’47; and this ‘master of theatrical craftsmanship’ has ‘left its every individual scene feeling too

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long’.48 Here in a nutshell is a series of specific problems for the adaptor: should local colour be retained making a collision of cultures? Can a famous dramatist/adaptor avoid bringing in the characteristics of his own plays? Or do they only enrich? And how should the differences in theatrical conventions over a hundred or so years be dealt with? The lack of ‘dents’ made into Ostrovsky’s world suggests excessive acculturation. Relatively recently, an experienced translator of Russian theatre has entered the Ostrovsky scene: Stephen Mulrine published a new collection in 1996. As well as fresh versions of the existing Ostrovsky repertoire (Storm and Too Clever by Half) it contained two new translations, Crazy Money and Innocent as Charged.49 In 2003, came four more, of which Wolves and Sheep was performed in 2005.50 On the British stage, however, we have still seen around only ten per cent or so of Ostrovsky’s fifty plays. These differences in approach among the adaptors (and translators) have been attempts to capture the rich but idiosyncratic texture of Ostrovsky’s language. The plays set in Moscow are among the merchant community; in the plays set in the provinces, the action is still among the merchant communities, but those of the small, remote towns of the Volga basin. These two groups each have a different linguistic medium, perhaps best illustrated in The Storm when Katerina is impressed by the suave, to her, Boris from the Moscow merchant world. Adhering to merchant society convention, Katerina, married to feckless Tikhon, lives unhappily under the intensely vigilant eye of her m ­ other-in-law, Kabanova, in her new family’s house. During Tikhon’s absence on a business (and drinking) trip to Moscow, she falls for Boris, ironically also from Moscow, who is visiting his uncle in the Volga town of the play’s setting. Overcome by guilt she finally confesses her love for him publicly. Boris, however, refuses to take her away with him. Her ingrained fears of God and public disgrace unhinge her mind and lead her to drown herself in the Volga. The clash between Boris’ and Katerina’s language styles mirrors the difference between Boris’s urban, but not cosmopolitan, expectations and the back-of-beyond remoteness of the provincial, rural upbringing experienced by Katerina. This difference culminates in Boris’s rejection of her plea to take her away with him. At their moment of parting, Katerina’s speech is threaded with religious reference to a wrathful and vengeful God making her language sound archaic. By contrast, Boris’s concern is quotidian, arising from the threat of his uncle’s anger should he go against his wishes.

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An almost primitive religious deference, their merchant origins, their ability to drive a hard bargain, and their involvement in a family business and the control of its wealth, distinguish the inhabitants of Ostrovsky’s plays from the characters of other writers, including Gogol, with which the British stage is familiar. Gogol’s characters for the most part locate themselves in the ranks of the serving bureaucracy whether of the capital city of St. Petersburg, or the remote provinces. The outlook is also recognisably different in those plays by Ostrovsky inhabited by figures close to the landed gentry of Turgenev, Tolstoy and Chekhov (even among these writers there is a host of differences in the way the gentry is represented). Ostrovsky’s wealthier characters are opportunistic, fiercely selfand family-protective and close in spirit to the vast peasant population from among which some have only recently clawed their way upwards. They display distressingly little real interest in the universal scale of things, indeed little, beyond their immediate concerns of family and survival, enters their minds. This difference, sometimes seen as the impenetrable hardcore of Russianness, leads to descriptions such as ‘a style which is seen as alien and Slavic’51 and evokes use of cliché in the staging of Ostrovsky’s plays. The word Slavic, of course, embraces many countries and cultures of which Russia is only one. It is, though, this ‘Slavic’ difference which also draws frequent comparison with Gogol. This affinity, whether defensible or not, affects not only reception, but is present in the considerations of the adaptors and directors and other bodies who have a vested interest in play selection. Critics of Ostrovsky productions have noted a ‘Gogolian takeover’, ‘savage Gogolian realism’,52 ‘Gogolian intensity’53 and ‘Gogolian caricatures’ echoing ‘Gogol’s Government Inspector’.54 Ostrovsky’s relish for a grotesque realism which allies him with Gogol’s fantastic realism, and probably most closely with his prose, is not often commented upon. In contrast to Gogol, Ostrovsky’s style is less comedy, and more melodrama, but is none the less vivid. An example of grotesque realism is found in Kabanova, in The Storm. She is a m ­ other-in-law harshly tyrannical towards her new daughter-in-law Katerina, but excessively indulgent towards her spineless son Tikhon. However, the distinctions between Ostrovsky’s and Gogol’s work are also substantial but similarly, not often identified: Gogol wrote more about Petersburg than Moscow. Much of this comparison is based on Gogol’s one play performed here with much regularity, The Government Inspector. This play seems often to be taken to define a

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whole strand of Russian theatre. There is very little of Ostrovsky’s family or religious contexts in this play. The implied references in the reviews are to Meyerhold’s production of The Government Inspector and to Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. I should like to think that translators have a ­better-founded view of Ostrovsky, but as has been seen again and again, the translating aspect in the production chain is greatly minimised, and occasionally publicly ignored. As a result, to some degree, the ‘Russianness’ of Ostrovsky is already moulded before his work even goes through the required processes of acculturation to make him welcome to a receiving audience in Britain and to the critical body represented in the reviewers. Such Slavic cliché and the comparison with Gogol has infused three Ostrovsky productions 1998, and two in 1988, each memorable in its own way, but each also processing the original works through an individualistic agenda. The McGuinness 1998 version of The Storm gave us a ‘dome-dominated and tubular set bedecked with stars’55 and a ‘sti­ fling fug of incense’ and the ‘proceedings were canopied by a Russian Orthodox dome’.56 It provoked the reviewers, who of course are not specialists in Russian theatre, let alone Ostrovsky, to references to Mother Russia57 (which we come across on a number of occasions in this study), to ‘Slavic gloom’, ‘gloomy Russian literature’,58 ‘realms of darkness’,59 (at least this betrays some knowledge of the Russian reception of the play60), and to a ‘Slavic Madame Bovary’.61 One isolated comment seemed to suggest a different Ostrovsky, or at least have some grasp on the main thrust of the original: ‘If there is an angrier play than The Storm, in any language, send me its name’, wrote Benedict Nightingale.62 The ascribed affinity between Ostrovsky and Gogol raised Meyerhold in the minds of the designers and directors, and was spotted by the critics. He figured strongly in the reactions to the 1988 staging of Too Clever by Half at the Old Vic. The ideas were taken from Meyerhold’s 1926 staging of Gogol’s Government Inspector. Referring to the adaptation as a Gogolian takeover, the Financial Times critic described the set in the following terms: it ‘tilts and leans heaving with constructivist perspectives and pictures favoured by Meyerhold and Tairov’.63 The perceived affinity to Gogol led to the ascription ‘unmitigated burlesque’64 and the playing style was one ‘where comic distortion governs both their physical and moral worlds’.65 Cheek by Jowl’s production of A Family Affair at the Donmar a couple of months earlier, which in Dear’s translation/version was regarded as ‘vituperative, abrasive’,66

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had liberated Ostrovsky’s inherent comedy to the full. Milton Shulman commented: ‘Russian writers […] are not normally associated with extravagant fun. Even the so-called comedies of Chekhov usually leave audiences drenched in tears […] This […] Ostrovsky […] turn[s] out to be an event of joyous and infectious fun’.67 An unsubstantiated switching of names becomes easy: ‘The savage Gogolian realism is untempered with sentiment or even charm’.68 But is Ostrovsky’s realism so savage? Due to the assimilation of Gogol to the British attempt to understand Ostrovsky, these productions emphasised a satirical and caricaturish vision of the plays, not entirely at ease with the distinctive comic spirit of the Ostrovsky originals. While providing unusual routes into grasping Ostrovsky’s plays, opera and ballet may also have produced some misreading. Rimsky–Korsakov’s opera Snegurochka (1882) is based on Ostrovsky’s play The Snowmaiden (1873). One ballet version came with the Ballets Russes in 1919; a second version also of Russian descent came in 1961.69 The sense of artificiality is intensified in these genres, depicting Russia as an endless snowscape peopled by peasants in colourful costumes, reminding us of the kitschy concept found of Gogol’s Russia in the previous section. As far as can be determined, Ostrovsky’s play The Snowmaiden has not been staged in Britain in our period, possibly never,70 but knowledge of its versions in these other genres has at least had the function of bringing Ostrovsky’s name, even if overshadowed by the composers and choreographers, to a potential audience. The Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s well-known and admired opera Káťa Kabanová (1921) is an adaptation of Ostrovsky’s The Storm. Some critics are aware of these links and have openly preferred the opera to a staged production of Ostrovsky’s play. Each of the three productions of The Storm has drawn reference to Janáček’s opera. Melodrama is condoned as part of the opera but condemned as part of the play. ‘Janacek [sic] had the right instinct in making it into an opera’ but the National Theatre’s production of The Storm (1966) was an ‘unnecessarily operatic production’.71 These expressions imply prejudice against theatrical melodrama, though it is fundamental to Ostrovsky’s writing style. It is clearly present in Janáček’s opera. According to John Tyrrell, Janáček created an ‘emotionally charged’ style of music to capture the passionate character of his heroine Káťa and the dramatic intensity of the situations she has to face.72 This 1966 production at the Old Vic was referred to as the NT’s ‘first unquestioned failure […] an old-fashioned melodrama’,73 and described

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as having a ‘simple operatic plot’.74 One might ask, what is wrong with melodrama as a theatrical form? But the criticism was repeated for the RSC production of 1987 except that this time the situation was reversed as the reviewers sought the qualities of Janáček’s opera: the production lacked ‘the sweeping tragic drama Janáček brought to it when he turned it into an opera’,75 but the comment ‘highly melodramatic’76 is a negative one when applied to the play. We also find Ostrovsky’s ‘crudity of theatrical drawing’ and the statement that his play ‘luxuriates in emotional extremities of the sort that are best rendered in opera’.77 Then in 1998 (Almeida), from the same critic, we find: ‘half expect her [Kabanova, the mother-in-law] and the play to burst into opera’.78 At the same time another critic sees that the melodrama is linked to the ‘vivid picture of the savagery, intolerance and primitivism of mid ­nineteenth-century provincial Russia’79 offered by the play. ‘The opera is tense, single-minded, passionate’80 and the ‘melodrama adds up to sex, suicide, exclamations and cloudbursts’.81 Appreciating the seriousness of the play, one critic commented how fine the line is between the two extremes of genre, one theatrically acceptable, the other traditionally denied: the play ‘vacillates between tragedy and melodrama’.82 Attempts were made to reconcile this and other plays to the British melodramatic tradition but such is the British theatre’s prejudice against melodrama that these comments sound only negative. Ostrovsky was lined up with Pinero (Trelawny of the Wells) and Victorian melodrama.83 Melodrama may be ‘old fashioned’, ‘popular’, ‘naïve and cliché studded’,84 but is it not precisely because it has these qualities that it should be given due recognition? Occasionally Ostrovsky’s play receives praise (unbelievably simplistically) as ‘stormy’85 and ‘riveting’86 melodrama. At other times, Ostrovsky’s quality is regarded as superior to the British style of melodrama: ‘in Victorian melodrama the heroine’s decision would not be in doubt, but Ostrovsky seems more of a realist’87 (of Artists and Admirers). The ultimate accolade that Russian drama had ‘reached maturity while the British equivalent was arrested in a phase of popular melodrama’88 gave credit to Ostrovsky’s skills, but may have derived from a different cultural perception of the melodramatic form. Irving Wardle put his finger on the difference, in this comment on The Storm (1998): The problem with Ostrovsky is that the picture he gives of ignorance, superstition and domestic bullying represents the normal life of Russia’s merchant class, whereas to outsiders it is apt to seem melodramatically exaggerated.89

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The point may be that Ostrovsky’s plays such as The Storm and Artists and Admirers are not wholly melodramas but attempts not only to utilise evil and negative oppressive strands in contemporary life, but also to expose them. In attempts to acculturate Ostrovsky, the other writers and genres most frequently quoted in the British reviews are restoration comedy, Ben Jonson, Dickens, Molière and Beckett. Each of these referents in its own way has a bearing on Ostrovsky’s comic skill. The British reviewers have delighted in the contrast Ostrovsky’s comedy provides to ‘gloomy Russian literature’.90 Performances of The Diary of a Scoundrel, The Forest, Family Affair and Wolves and Sheep in their different productions have exemplified his skills (and those of his translators and adaptors). They range from genial situation comedy with a perspective of social satire to re-running familiar comic vehicles such as ‘masters tricked by smarmy servants’91 or the use of a ‘knave to expose a pack of fools’92 (restoration comedy and Jonson and Molière). In this same vein, Ostrovsky’s comedy sharply observes the differences between metropolitan and provincial life. Dickens is frequently invoked to express the more caricaturistic, localised and unexpected edge of Ostrovsky’s satire and, of course, because they wrote at roughly comparable periods. Ostrovsky’s ‘canvas of provincial grotesques’93 is extended to a ‘demonic Dickensian satire on the merchant and landowning classes’.94 Dickens is a convenient, familiar and solid abutment from which to bridge cultural divides. Ackland was praised in 1949 for Diary of a Scoundrel as he had ‘poured something Dickensian into the native vodka without causing it to lose its potent Russian flavour’.95 It is not widely known that as well as his prolific output and his work as actor and director at the Maly theatre in Moscow, at the end of his life Ostrovsky campaigned hard for improved conditions for the Russian theatre and the performers who provided it. The Forest boasts a duo of itinerant actors on a hilarious scrounge for survival, while Artists and Admirers concerns the fate of a young actress in 1870s Russia. For some British critics, not only did The Forest seem to anticipate Chekhov, but also Beckett. The two itinerants were a ‘Beckettian double-act […] stuffed with Hamlet and Lear quotations […] a wonderfully dotty fake-grandeur’,96 while for others Ostrovsky’s concentration on these ‘thespians’ betrayed a narrowness of focus in the worst traditions of luvviedom’.97 Ostrovsky’s interest was, however, serious. Beneath the comic exterior lay the theatrical conditions which forced Negina in Artists

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and Admirers to go against her heart and choose a wealthy stage-door admirer to secure her financial position. Artists and Admirers is a modern play: although it operates within a sensational framework, its choices are difficult and in the end unheroic and depressingly real. Western scholarship in English has now begun fully to explore, principally in the work of Kate Sealey Rahman, the contribution made by Ostrovsky to Russian and British theatre.98 In addition to delight at his difference from the other familiar dramatists, the reviewers of productions of his plays are surprised at his ‘anticipation’ of Chekhov. Chekhov began his creative life as a theatre reviewer and feuilletoniste. His experience and knowledge of Russian drama as well as translated theatre was extensive. More than 60 per cent of the Russian repertoire in Chekhov’s period as a commentator, the 1880s and early 90s was translated. There are many echoes of Ostrovsky in Chekhov’s work. The relationship between their plays, however, is a complex one. Chekhov’s style is threaded through as much with his irony, modernity and subtlety as it is compounded of admiration for Ostrovsky. So to see The Storm as an anticipation of Three Sisters, or The Forest as a pre-echo of The Cherry Orchard does not tell us much about Ostrovsky and probably misreads Chekhov. Nightingale writes of Chekhov’s ‘filial obligation’ to Ostrovsky in the following terms: If Chekhov rejected caricature, so did Ostrovsky. If Chekhov abjured heroes, villains and pat moral judgements, so did Ostrovsky. If Chekhov seemed sometimes to meander to no clear conclusion, so did Ostrovsky. If Chekhov preferred to let life rather than prejudice, sentimentality or the rules of the well-made play write his work – well, so did Ostrovsky.99

As he did with dramatists other than Ostrovsky, Chekhov countered the conventions they employed and the world views they implied. In the process, he created a unique form of theatre which reflected on, and parodied, the existing canon, but equally, by its chosen denials, foreshadowed the future. The dominant and respected position of Chekhov on the British stage has enabled him to be used as validation of the relatively unknown Ostrovsky, as seen in the above quotation from Nightingale’s review. Such a link misrepresents Ostrovsky’s very different approach to genre, especially his serious and original use of melodrama, and only narrows the range of plays the British stage willingly accepts from the Russian repertoire.

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In post-Soviet Russia Ostrovsky continues to be extremely popular. He is safe for different reasons: in times of turbulence he represents a stable voice from the past; moreover, his jibes against wealth and capital seem appropriate for new Russians. One or two British productions and comments have latterly indicated as much. Referring to the ‘jocular new version by Ayckbourn’ of The Forest (1999), one negative reviewer complained Ostrovsky had been turned into ‘museum theatre’ while ‘in Russia they are starving […] in Britain the plays that come out of those pre-revolutionary times are being used as vehicles for mild comic satire’.100 On the other hand, the review of a 2000 production of A Family Affair stated that the ‘rousing finale’ allowed ‘the actors to challenge the audience themselves to defy the sheer greed and economic power of Russia’s repulsive new capitalists’.101 A brief but illuminating comparison between Ostrovsky and Gorky was made in 1999 when The Forest and Gorky’s Vassa (Zheleznova) (1910) inhabited the British theatre concurrently. British handling has skewed Gorky as much as Ostrovsky, but this rare moment of comparison helped locate both writers away from the usual references to Chekhov. While one critic quipped about ‘two famous Russian classics, neither by Chekhov’,102 another noted that here were ‘two farces of families in meltdown’.103 The productions had encouraged perception of varying styles for another reviewer who wrote of Gorky’s ‘ultra-theatrical exuberance’ and Ostrovsky’s ‘dogged naturalism’.104 However, for yet another, unfortunately, this concurrent staging of their plays provided only an ‘opportunity for a fog of worthiness’ and the fulfilment of an ‘academic duty’.105 Towards the end of the twentieth century, a British tradition of Ostrovsky production had been formed. A new production of Ackland’s Diary of a Scoundrel, retitled Too Clever by Half (1988) caused Billington to change his mind: ‘When I last saw Ackland’s adaptation […] in 1985, I suggested that the play lacked greatness because the hero rose too easily and fell too swiftly. […] I was wrong. […] Ostrovsky’s Gloumov is not undone at all’.106 Or critics could refer disparagingly to past productions, such as The Storm having ‘defeated the National and the RSC’,107 referring to 1966 and 1987, respectively. The worries are that the Ostrovsky repertoire is based on such a narrow selection of plays; his work lies always in the shadow of Chekhov; and is clearly more than most, perhaps due to the lack of intelligent scholarship on his work until recently, the prey of the adapting tradition. He has been seen not to travel well:

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Ostrovsky is, no doubt, a great Russian playwright. But it is no use complaining […], that like some other foreign dramatists he is little regarded here. It is not insularity. We have great British authors who go unheeded elsewhere – Shakespeare in France for instance – because their particular communication breaks down under the stress of travel and translation.108

Since 1966, when this remark was made, there is evidence, as we have seen, of a growing relish for Ostrovsky and for different interpretations of his world. More recently, Ostrovsky has been transposed to the twentieth century, but interestingly to twentieth-century Russia. In 2013 two productions of his work were seen. Too Clever by Half resurfaced in Manchester. In this case, the critics felt that the updating to 1960s Moscow had taken ‘the sting from the tail’109 of the play and the production was ‘more comic caper than hard-hitting social critique’.110 Updating a nineteenth-century classic to modern Russia has been very rarely done, if at all. However, it was a Moscow ‘oddly in thrall to decadent western pop culture’.111 This mix seems to have been an attempt at a hybrid approach presumably to mollify any objection to the ‘oddity’ of the situation. Western pop music and western lifestyle were thirsted after in 1960s Moscow but hardly publicly. The two periods, 1870s and 1960s, were linked much more succinctly by the dangers of keeping a personal diary, however private it was intended to be. Arcola’s production (also 2013) of an as yet untried Ostrovsky, Larissa and the Merchants (retitled from Without a Dowry, 1878) was much more successfully updated to post-Soviet Russia and all its ongoing problems of capitalist excess. And, of course, echoing the ­post-2008 antipathy to capitalistic bankers among a British audience. Shrewd choices made the cross-cultural modern relevance intriguing. The ‘terrific’112 gypsy music retained the play’s Russian roots (oddly enough, reminding Michael Billington of Lorca’s Blood Wedding113) while also drawing ‘violent erotically charged movement’114 in the dancing, guaranteed to cross any cultural frontier. The play was given in the Arcola Studio. In the main house was a play by Chekhov, an adaptation of his earliest play Bezotsovshchina (Fatherlessness) as Sons without Fathers. Michael Billington was delighted at the opportunity to see how much Chekhov had absorbed from Ostrovsky.115 The point to be made is that Turgenev and Tolstoy are not Chekhov’s key antecedents. We need more new Ostrovsky to make this relationship the clearer. One critic bravely tried to define it: ‘Larisa

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languishes in genteel poverty in a provincial town […] yearning to get away from it all’.116 Chekhov reflected and deepened much more than that from Ostrovsky: his studies of restless, sensitive souls, for example, trying to make a difference in the Russian provinces (Ivanov, Astrov [Uncle Vanya]); his use of contemporary, idiomatic language; his use of seemingly incongruous comedy; the settings employed to encapsulate how trapped his characters are; and his ironic treatment of Ostrovsky’s melodrama. All these Ostrovskian echoes lifted Chekhov’s plays to new levels. In sum, then, if we examine Ostrovsky against our scale of types of adaptation, his plays function interestingly as a tool to understand pre-twentieth-century Russia. He is rarely fully acculturated to British values and tastes, but is hybridised to serve domestic British needs. He is utilised as a forebear to Chekhov, but at the same time his distinctively provincial Russianness remains exotically beguiling. The hybridisation that is found in productions of his work in Britain, perhaps arises from British lack of understanding of his environment rather than a positive hybridising approach. Only latterly have succinct points of cultural comparison been adequately made.

Turgenev117 Reactions to Turgenev’s play A Month in the Country were included in Section 2 to exemplify the method of this study and to highlight some of the themes and issues that are raised. Here we shall discuss the other play from his repertoire which has been performed in Britain, Fortune’s Fool.118 Adaptations of his prose are discussed in Section 7. It fell to Turgenev to change the social milieu and landscape of theatre in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. Turgenev wrote mostly about the provinces still, but in contrast to both Gogol and Ostrovsky his characters come predominantly from the gentry. They reflect his own social position. Although A Month in the Country was written between 1848 and 1850, it was not published until 1855, and not performed (in a revised version) until the 1870s. Fortune’s Fool (1848) suffered a similar delay, not reaching the Russian stage until 1862, and the very different Russia of the post-Crimean-War reform period. Turgenev had forged his reputation with his novels in the 1850s, discoursing upon the uncertainties and social changes already beginning to happen in Russian society. The heroes of his novels, such as Rudin (1855) and Bazarov

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(Fathers and Sons, 1862) make a radical voice publicly heard for the first time. His plays are not so outspoken. He abandoned drama for prose when he fell foul of the censorship in the post-1848 years. When his plays were finally staged, their comparatively muted radical voice was amplified by his reputation as a novelist, who made critical analyses of contemporary society. It is possible that the same process has happened in Britain. His novels are well known. Audiences and reviewers wish to read into the earlier plays what they know of Turgenev’s sympathies for the radical cause. Turgenev was among the first to choose the Russian country estate as the setting for his plays. Concurrently with A Month in the Country and Fortune’s Fool he was writing his first short stories, Sportsman’s Sketches (1847–1851, published as a collection in 1852) which captures the spirit of the Russian countryside and Turgenev’s evident love of it. As a result, he was among the first of the dramatists to introduce the Russian landscape into the Russian theatre. Ostrovsky’s backdrop in his master play The Storm (1860) was the magnificent Volga river. He also managed to demonstrate the difficult lives of many Russian serfs and peasants, subject to the whims of their gentry masters and mistresses and to poor, rural, economic conditions. In Turgenev’s plays the country estate provided a newly flexible setting enabling an examination of the intermixing of gentry society with servants and labouring peasants. It allowed Turgenev to develop the wit and intimacy of the gentry salon, alongside a keen awareness of the potency of situation comedy to which he added melodramatic streaks. He had lived in France for some time during the 1840s and was a regular attendee at the Paris theatres. So both plays under discussion in this study combine the unique social setting of the extended, multigenerational Russian family, their servants and their visitors, with a skilful deployment of contemporary popular theatrical forms from Europe. The central character of Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool, Kuzovkin, is a ‘nakhlebnik’, translated a little misleadingly as a ‘hanger on’ or ‘parasite’. The ‘nakhlebnik’ was frequently generously accommodated within the expansive gentry household described above. The ‘nakhlebnik’ may have hit bad times, and may or may not be related to the family, but a defining characteristic was their lack of means to support themselves. Such characters often aroused pity, so that the translation ‘parasite’ gives the wrong flavour to this piece. The play deftly weaves the back-story of Kuzovkin into the present tense of the action. He has been engaged in a lawsuit for more than twenty years to retrieve his estate after the death of

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his father. Kuzovkin is the butt of torment from neighbours gathered for a welcome back lunch for the Yeletskys, Olga and Pavel, from Petersburg to their country estate. Kuzovkin, increasingly tormented and drunk, finally confesses that he is the father of Olga. With a mixture of comedy and melodrama, the play traces the effects of this revelation and how society chooses to deal with it. As a move to gag him, Kuzovkin is paid off by Yeletsky and enabled to retrieve his estate. In return he is forced to say that he has lied, but Olga believes he is her father, and there is the suggestion that they will meet again in the future. Fortune’s Fool was written in 1848, a year which brought intensification of censorship in Russia due to the revolutionary disturbances in Europe. The play was banned from performance because of its negative portrayal of the gentry. Kuzovkin is a detailed and sensitive study of misfortune, victimisation, remorse, and intense pride in the daughter he idolises. Fortune’s Fool was almost universally welcomed by the critics in 1996 (Chichester) as a surprisingly affecting piece. The comparisons with Gogol, Ostrovsky and Chekhov were inevitable, but thankfully several critics also argued strongly that the piece should be judged on its own merits, and that it bore little relation to A Month in the Country.119 Themes which pertain to the central character Kuzovkin resonate with other nineteenth-century writers. They include the study of the genteel hanger-on (Chekhov), an interminable lawsuit (Ostrovsky, Gogol), and issues over fatherhood and the idealisation of the dead mother (Chekhov and Ostrovsky). The reviewers grasped at what was special about it: ‘a vision of mid-19th century Russia in ominous disarray’120; ‘the network of exact social distinctions that makes Kuzovkin’s plight so peculiarly painful, so peculiarly Russian’121; ‘rural Russia and there as here in the 1860s women of substance married at their peril’122; ‘a fresh lethal view of a cut-throat Russian high society en route to self-destruction’123; ‘enthralling [a] mixture of satire and pathos […] a beautiful demonstration of Turgenev’s complex skill’.124 There are also views on Russian culture among these review remarks that we have met before: polarised writing styles (‘perplexing mixture of genres’, ‘farce and drama’, ‘burlesque and tragedy’125); the sense of unnecessary opposition as high society destroys itself; a notion of pain at, or against, society as part of the Russian psyche; a society at odds with itself, in disarray; and an alluring identification of Britain and Russia in the mid-nineteenth century. In 2013, Fortune’s Fool ran at the Old Vic in the same adaptation. The production disabused anyone ‘dreaming of living a life of idleness in

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the countryside’126 with Turgenev’s portrayal of ‘the greed, corruption and viciousness of Russian country life’.127 Though they again drew the now standard analogies with Gogol, Ostrovsky and Chekhov, the critics delighted in the ‘scathing satire’128 of this early play by Turgenev. The hanger-on, quipped someone else, displaying a welcome healthy awareness of the overused icons of Russian theatre production in Britain, has ‘been as staple a feature of the Russian country estate as silver birches and samovars’.129 This newly revealed dark side of the Russian country estate, though, caused some anxiety about Turgenev and today’s audience. Calling the production ‘a nigh-unbearable version’ the Financial Times critic wrote of ‘Kuzovkin’s grace under pressure’, ‘there seems to be a worrying authorial, and spectatorial, delight in portraying that pressure to the point of exquisite pain’.130 Again following a comment about Turgenev’s closeness to Chekhov (or should that be reversed?) this modern view of Turgenev’s fundamentally psychological approach is found in another critic: ‘Turgenev has the Russian gift for the tragicomic, the steadfast refusal to simplify the psyche or to polarise good and evil - life is allowed to be a painful muddle’.131 Perhaps most interestingly the critics are now able to distinguish their Turgenev from their Chekhov, but unfortunately in terms of negatives: ‘what the play lacks is the nuanced layering of Chekhov and his adroit management of the narratives of multiple characters’.132 The recurrence of similar responses over a period of time must raise the question whether the play genuinely provokes these reactions, or whether they are stimulated by the search for ‘Russianness’ in plays in translation from Russian. In other words, is there being born a myth or a stereotype of what is ‘peculiarly Russian’, especially in the nineteenth century? For example, Alastair Macaulay also wrote of this production of Fortune’s Fool: The background is that of nine Russian plays out of 10: a household in the provinces into whose stagnant existence the advent of strangers and/or former inhabitants causes a commotion.133

Or do we seek Russian plays which repeat this theme? Proving the presence of such a myth would be extremely hard, given that most reviewers would deny such a myth as it might undermine the originality and veracity of what they write. Nonetheless, as one of only two other plays to be performed in post-war Britain from the Turgenev repertoire, this

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version of Fortune’s Fool achieved the notable feat of being almost universally admired as a play in the 1996 Chichester staging, even though the production had a number of shortcomings. The second production (2013), however, won huge praise: it revealed some of the darker depths of the Russian country estate. Apart from his A Month in the Country, Turgenev wrote a number of other pieces in his early career,134 but none have surfaced in the post-war British repertoire as far as we have been able to trace. However, relatively recent translations by Stephen Mulrine may well change that situation.135

The Late Nineteenth Century: Tolstoy136 The ‘great’137 Russian writer Tolstoy, the reviewers are surprised to learn, also wrote plays.138 These range from a short moral piece, designed to educate the peasants, to full-length pieces for the theatre.139 Two of these longer efforts have reached the British stage in the ­post-war period: The Power of Darkness (1949, 1984, 1997) and The Fruits of Enlightenment (1979). They have only rarely been seen but have attracted attention because of the classic ‘awe-inspiring’140 other works of their author. Banned from performance in 1886, Tolstoy’s searing play The Power of Darkness, about the evils of village life and the power of confession as a redemptive force, has had a chequered history in the Russian theatre. Murder, poisoning, sexual abuse, exploitation, jealousy and finally remorse are rife in the extended peasant family at the heart of this piece. A middle-aged smallholding peasant Piotr has taken a young second wife, Anisia. He has a lively daughter, Akulina, from his first marriage and a daughter from his current one. Anisia is seduced by a young worker on the farm, Nikita. Egged on by Nikita’s mother, Anisia poisons her husband Piotr, marries Nikita and thinks her future is secure. However, Nikita plays the field and seduces Piotr’s older daughter, Akulina, and gets her pregnant. The family plot to marry her off, but she gives birth on her wedding day. Anisia and Nikita resolve the situation by murdering the baby and burying it in the cellar. Nikita is unable to deal with his guilt, and confesses his sin to all the assembled guests, and is arrested. These aspects ensured the play had a difficult path through the censorship of late nineteenth-century Russia. It is a naturalistic exploration of the effect of deprived conditions upon human morality. This aspect is

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surely one implication of its title. The Power of Darkness was premièred by Antoine141 at his Théâtre libre in Paris in 1888 as part of the new wave of challenging drama surging across Europe. Stanislavsky gave it its first thorough, naturalistic production in Russian in the MAT repertoire of 1903. Three productions in Britain of The Power of Darkness have been traced in the post-war period. The first in 1949, in a translation by Peter Glenville at the Lyric Theatre, was condemned by the anonymous Times reviewer for the acting style which ‘lack[ed] the peasant quality’. The virtue of the play was Tolstoy’s ‘refusal to sentimentalise the peasants’, and he had ‘shoulder[ed] the doctrinaire into the background and perceived the dark complexities of human nature unrestrained by civilising influences’. He had ‘discovered that these people though uncivilised were still human and capable of moving us deeply by their instinctive sense of sin, their suffering, their remorse, and their half unconscious struggle to redeem themselves from the enslavement to hateful impulses’. Refreshingly frank, the critic maintained that the actors of the 1940s were too civilised and so ‘were bound to be outside the characters they were playing’, and the leading lady’s accent ‘would become a Kensington drawing room’.142 Here we have an interesting example of a play from another culture exposing an inability for stylistic variety among British actors. The other two productions were both staged in the same translation (by Anthony Clark143) at the Orange Tree in Richmond. This commonality of translation, space and expectation in the knowledge of this particular theatre’s reputation, provides a rare opportunity for a comparison between the two sets of responses. There are references to the first production (1984) indicating that the actors sat among the audience,144 and in the second (1997) to the staging being in-the-round.145 Another critic highlights the shock of the second production in the light of just those expectations: If there is one thing that tends to characterise productions at the Orange Tree, it is a certain cosiness. The theatre has established, conservative patronage and the programme reflects this fact. Great plays with mature, intelligent themes […] Anything remotely provocative has always been confined to the Orange Tree’s original space, The Room, situated above the pub opposite.146 So this forceful production […] comes as something of a shock.147

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Let us see what emerges from a comparison of the two sets of responses which is pertinent to our theme of reception, itself often shifting and hard to identify. The 1984 production caused a stir. It was a ‘dramatic landmark’, ‘its capacity to handle great themes […] dwarfs any other play currently to be seen in London’,148 and it made ‘shattering viewing’149; its assertion of a ‘holy order’150 and ability to show ‘how human nature is governed by economic necessity’151 were noted. It was compared to opera in the power of its ‘climactic sequence, brutally cathartic’,152 when a new born baby is crushed to death. Anthony Clark’s new translation was welcomed as ‘chunky’,153 ‘vigorous, even on the dangerous ground of folk wisdom and rustic saws’154; it was also able to combine the essence of Tolstoy’s vision, ‘the minute (Nikita is appalled by the crunch of the buttons on the baby’s dress as he buries it) and the majestic’.155 By contrast the reviewers of the 1997 production (of course by a different team) brought out the ‘grinding pessimism’ and Tolstoy’s ‘disgusted fascination with the brutish life of the incorrigible plebs’.156 For another reviewer Tolstoy’s ‘didactic Christian intentions [were … ] all too evident’157; and for another, although ‘the cumulative power is tremendous’ Tolstoy’s point was ‘hammered home’ and the production leaves you ‘emotionally bludgeoned and spiritually scourged’.158 Elsewhere we find that the ‘author’s simplistic message overwhelms his playwriting skills’.159 Tolstoy’s skill, seen above as a marriage of the ‘minute’ and the ‘majestic’, and his play as ‘great’, was now regarded by more than one viewer as didactic,160 and showing a ‘humour’ which ‘sits awkwardly’ with his ‘melodramatics’.161 With the same givens of translator, space and audience expectations, such different interpretations indicate the weight of responsibility carried by directors, performers and designers. The Power of Darkness represents a provocative blend of genres. It is written in the style of naturalism since part of its agenda is to demonstrate the effect of negative conditions upon human beings in a deprived environment. None of the harsh details and their outcomes are spared whether of an economic or sexual kind, or the toll of continual daily labour in a peasant smallholding, or the claustrophobic conditions imposed by difficult family relationships involving abuse, jealousy, family ties and the preservation of family wealth. In its engagement with these darker sides of human existence, the play also skirts melodrama and contains an occasional grim and pessimistic humour. Finally, the play in its assertion of a Christian ethic of confession appears to change course

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completely and offers hope of salvation from these devastating conditions. Contemporary naturalist writers, such as Gerhardt Hauptman, and later, Maxim Gorky, offered a solution in urging the working class (rather than the peasant or merchant classes, known for their conservatism) to rise up and improve their social conditions. In their different ways, the majority of these themes are reflected in the response of the reviewers, demonstrating another truism, that no one production will ever encompass all the potentials of a text. Yet another truism is implied: interpretations will change with the social and political conditions of a play’s reception context, let alone the differences brought by new directing and performing teams. This comparison of responses in the reviews over a decade may also be an object lesson in how much tastes can alter. Major historic changes for Britain’s perception of Russia are the arrival of glasnost (1986), the breakup of the USSR (1991) and Russia being in volatile transition. In Britain we had the end of the Conservative era of politics, and the imminence of the 1997 election. Perhaps some change in the sociological and psychological climate had engineered the change of response between the two productions. The reviews were published in a similar number and range of newspapers. In 1984, these were Time Out, City Limits, Spectator, Guardian and Financial Times (5); in 1997, Evening Standard, Independent, Daily Telegraph, Time Out, What’s On, Financial Times and The Times (7). There does not appear to be a factor significant enough to change the balance of opinion. The critics were broadly agreed about the potency of the content, noting a ‘rich complexity’162 and ‘flashes of strength and daring’,163 but differed greatly on the impact of the play. Two reviewers of the earlier production commented on how the performance had missed Tolstoy’s ‘marvellously theatrical sense of irony’,164 and how it ‘muffles the great irony of the text’.165 There was no reference to Tolstoy’s irony in the responses to the second production. One point of cultural comparison is notable: in both sets of responses a parallel was drawn with Macbeth.166 Interestingly, not dissociated from Shakespeare and an implied reference to female power, one reviewer of the earlier production had commented on the six female actresses who were ‘together, formidable, Mother Russia personified’.167 Why Mother Russia should be associated with such ‘formidability’ as murder, poisoning, adultery, conspiracy, jealousy and betrayal is as difficult to untangle as it is questionable. It may indicate a misconstruction of the Russian stereotype; or could an

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inference be being drawn from the British association of this kind of activity with Lady Macbeth, perhaps? It is provocative to acknowledge that in Tolstoy’s play it is the male character who confesses, while it is the women who carry the weight of criminal activity, urging murder and infanticide. The women are left to languish in sin and to survive how they might with the one, working-age, male member of the family having confessed and in prison. In the responses to the second production we find the recurrence of negative stereotypes such as we have noted before: a production that was ‘remorseless’ and ‘going to last as long as a Russian winter’, and incidentally this reviewer now referred to Clark’s translation, among other epithets as ‘grim’168; and there were two references to The Power of Darkness as a ‘morality play’,169 incorrect as far as genre is concerned and directed, I guess, at Tolstoy’s much-disliked didacticism. Another conclusion relates to the perhaps surprising robustness of reviews as reception material. This opportunity for comparison does validate the activity of reviewing. It suggests that, overall, each group of reviewers, reflecting their internal differences, their different target audiences, come to different conclusions: the first production, and its author, was by and large admired (for different reasons), while the second and its author were, by and large, dismissed. And, on the way, despite their recourse to stereotypes, the reviewers pointed to a number of different and valuable observations about both text and author. What does make a crucial difference, and this point may seem too obvious to mention again, is the change in director and performers, not to mention designers. If evidence is required of the roles of these agents in cultural transfer, here it is. But what the reviewers do not achieve is to clarify the relations among director, translator and author in terms of reception. Reviews of the second production of this version of The Power of Darkness generally made positive remarks about the director and negative ones about Tolstoy, while in the reviews of the first the situation was in reverse. Such reversals will continue, until the roles of the director and design team as both agents and moulders of reception in the translation process are fully elucidated and acknowledged. The Power of Darkness has contributed to the debate about the ‘Irishisation’ of the Russian classics, and has raised important issues about the acknowledgement of source texts. John McGahern, a lifelong devotee to Tolstoy’s works, adapted the play for BBC radio in the 1970s, and was asked to utilise Irish English in that version. I have not been

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able to locate reviews of the broadcast, but McGahern continued working on his version and turned it into an Irish play, which was premièred at The Abbey, Dublin in 1991. Though not performed on a British stage, this version deserves our attention.170 It caused great controversy in Ireland, drawing out negative reviews from the critics for its criticism of Irish rural life. Then a well-known British critic’s positive review (Michael Coveney’s, in the Observer) was drafted in and published in the Irish Times171 to deflect the criticism. The ‘Irishisation’ went so far as to exclude Tolstoy almost completely from the whole process. What is the legitimacy of such an approach as far as copyright, integrity or the role of the translator is concerned, let alone McGahern’s as adaptor? I found it difficult to justify McGahern on any of these counts. Having studied the case I came to an unexpected conclusion: in this instance the ‘Irishisation’ of the text succeeded in appropriating the play from British English, but also in fact precipitated its Russianness. Tolstoy’s view of the Russian’s ability to commit sin and his deep need for public confession stood out. These characteristics were also explored in British stage adaptations of Dostoevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment (1864) (see Section 7). Tolstoy’s second play performed in Britain, The Fruits of Enlightenment (1889), does not offer a similar opportunity for comparison as there has only been one production in our period. ‘A curiosity unlikely to be revived again’,172 The Fruits of Enlightenment was staged by NT in 1979. Only one critic commented directly on the ‘forbidding title’,173 but puns in the headlines (showing various editors’ input probably) were to be found in plenty: ‘The bunch is somewhat shrivelled’174 and ‘Strange fruits, but very ripe’175 and ‘“Fruits”: a mixed basket of Tolstoy’.176 One reviewer did note the cynicism of the title as the play was supposedly about the educated elite of Russia.177 However, since the Enlightenment was largely a western import from the century before, Tolstoy’s title also possesses an anti-western cultural and political slant, unnoticed by the British critics. A domestic drama, the play shows a group of gentry types duped by a false séance, staged by some clever servants. The reviews made much of the social clash between peasant and gentry that British eyes saw as the main theme of Tolstoy’s play, and inevitably placed it in the context of the forthcoming revolution.178 The fact that revolution, or at least of the type that came in 1917, was probably the last thing on Tolstoy’s mind in the 1880s plays little part. Although expected in reviews of any historical text, hindsight exerts a particularly

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potent effect on the reception of translated drama. For example, placing Tolstoy’s play in a bracket with Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard (1904) and Gorky’s Enemies (1906) as snapshots of entrenched Russia, and taking a view based on the luxury of historical perspective, Benedict Nightingale commented that … it [The Fruits of Enlightenment] is no less helpful and suggestive a piece of literary evidence for anyone seeking to explain why revolution was inevitable.179

As noted by Francis King, however, the play in fact ‘presents the paradoxical spectacle of parasites living on each other’.180 In this play neither side comes off well: the moral high ground is not occupied by either class. Surprisingly, rather than the visiting peasants from the country (‘malodorous’181 ‘revolting-looking’182) it is the domestic servants of this ‘handsome Moscow mansion’183 who provide the model. Not for their clever trickery of their ‘uppercrust wastrels’184 of masters, but because their ‘nostalgia for the land’ is tangible and makes Tolstoy’s play memorable for its ‘displaced pastoral’.185 And this view echoes Tolstoy’s international reputation as a writer who gives a ‘powerful moral affirmation of the virtues of country life’.186 The symbols of stereotypical Russia are never far away. The set had a ‘cut-out of Moscow’s onion domes’,187 or ‘looked like a rejected design for The Cherry Orchard’.188 Equally, though, the play struck a chord with a contemporary television stereotype of Victorian living, the ­long-running series Upstairs, Downstairs,189 which no doubt eased the production’s acculturation to British sensibilities. It is ‘a kind of Upstairs, Downstairs with samovars!’190 quipped a suburban reviewer comfortingly. The phrase ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ was recycled in some way in many of the reviews. What should we draw from the recurrence of this reference? This comparison with a TV programme is an acculturation device, but one which brings its own measure of estrangement from the Russian original. The reliance on the notion of Victorian England as a measure of late nineteenth-century Russia is misleading, though this standard is often used in relation to other cultures. In many ways the Victorian standard and Tolstoyan Russia could not be more different. Morely-Priestman ascribed this Victorian aspect to Michael Frayn’s version of The Fruits of Enlightenment which ‘is as much an English view of the Russian

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condition in the 1880s as the original was Slav’.191 Ralph Richardson fortuitously brought his inimical style to the aristocratic master of the Russian household, described by Tolstoy as ‘in the English sense a “gentleman”’.192 The process whereby an actor specialising in ‘the English manner of golden eccentricity – benevolent, slightly touched, and disregarding people even in the act of radiating good will at them’193 navigates the transcultural process from the implied ‘English gentleman’ to Russian eyes, to projected traditional Englishness for modern British ones, is a minefield of cultural stereotypes. It is also an exercise in complex, but misleading hybridisation. A passing observation about Europe, however, from one critic, quoted from the play, conveyed an opposite sentiment which is crucial to the theme of transposing a work to a European culture. This comment goes against the anti-European views the original play expressed: “How remote we are from Europe still!” exclaims a rather shadowy professor at the conclusion of a fake séance in a great Moscow House.194

The professor’s wistful longing for Europe was, in Tolstoy’s view, to be condemned. In ‘Note on the Translation’ in his version of 1979, Michael Frayn referred to the play’s defects, and justified his repositioning of the acts to achieve a different climax.195 A negative streak ran through the reviews which took the play to task for its ‘considerable excess of conversation […] satire at the expense of current scientific discovery’ which ‘seemed trenchant in 1889’.196 It presented ‘ponderous social comment’ and ‘dull posturing characters’,197 was a ‘long comedy’198 and felt as ‘intractable as it is witless’.199 These sentiments are perhaps summed up in this view: ‘That the great Russian writer Tolstoy should write a comedy, sounds like an idea suspiciously funny peculiar rather than ha-ha’.200 The anonymous writer then goes on to praise the NT production for animating ‘what could easily have been little more than a curiosity’. However, this sentiment is also an example of that blazé ease with which works of a translated dramatist can be dismissed for not fitting in with his or her migrating cultural image. Rather than being taken as contextual information, the facts that Tolstoy wrote this piece primarily for domestic consumption, and in the process produced eight drafts,201 are held against his play.

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Although none of Tolstoy’s plays have figured since the 1997 production of The Power of Darkness, there have been five productions of Anna Karenina, two of War and Peace (including one at the circus), and two of The Kreutzer Sonata in the years up to 2015. They figure in Section 7 which deals with prose adapted for the stage. Chekhov’s plays reached the Russian public on the widest scale through MAT as did the work of his slightly younger contemporary Maxim Gorky. They both bridge the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, eventually bringing Russian theatre an international reputation. It therefore seems appropriate to give significant space to the reception of these two writers in Britain together in the next section. Their destinies and contributions to British understanding of Russian theatre, however, diverge substantially.

Notes



1. The merchant class in Russia is distinct from its European counterparts. Its strength dates from the expansion of the Russian empire in the mid sixteenth century under Ivan IV (Groznyi, ‘Terrible’). This class was actively promoted as an antidote to the power of the Boyars, whom Ivan effectively undermined. Merchants tended to be Orthodox and included many Old Believers (those who retained the old way of worship after the late seventeenth century reforms). They were inward-looking, anti-western, patriarchal, conservative, and resistant to the western­ ising reforms introduced by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century. The merchant class retained its firm hold on these characteristics until the 1917 revolution, and their antipathy to change ensured increasing refusal to embrace the radicalising politics of mid- to late nineteenth-century Russia. Ostrovsky is both the mouthpiece and critic of merchantdom in nineteenth-century Russia. The merchant class certainly provided models for some of the more flamboyant of Chekhov’s characters: for example, Zinaida Lebedeva, and Marfa Kabakina in Ivanov, or Natasha’s implied family and her rich lover Protopopov in Three Sisters; and Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, a former serf who has adopted all the traits of a modern wealthy turn-of-the-century merchant. 2. The word ‘gentry’ requires disassociation from its British, possibly even English connotations. The word covered a whole range of types, defined by wealth as expressed in land and before the Emancipation (1861) in the number of serfs owned, and by public roles, education and cultural outlooks. The ‘aristocratic’ class owned vast estates and many thousands

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of serfs. Their ancestors would have been rewarded for service to the state by grants of land and with that land came the tied peasants, referred to as the serfs. Members of this higher group had frequently been ennobled for their services since the time of Peter the Great. The majority of the gentry, though, would have town houses and sometimes several estates, and might split their time among their different assets, usually wintering in the main cities where possible. However, you were still considered a member of the gentry if you owned just a few serfs, and lived on a small country estate, perhaps not much better off than your peasants. After the Reforms of 1861, the gentry became more diverse. Its ranks were swelled as educated Russians sought to earn a living by serving the communities of rural Russia, fulfilling professional functions previously the responsibility of the serf owners. For most of the nineteenth century, wealthy members of the gentry travelled, mostly in Europe, and sometimes like Turgenev spent many years living abroad. It was only in the last decades of the nineteenth century that such opportunities became available to the professional classes, such as d ­ octors (Chekhov and his fictional characters (e.g. Dorn in The Seagull)), lawyers and administrators. 3. For a discussion of how Chekhov’s plays influenced British drama and literature contemporary to his arrival in translation on the British stage between 1909 and WW2, see Claire Warden, Migrating Modernist Performance, pp. 105–122. Her key points of reference are George Calderon, Maurice Baring and George Bernard Shaw. 4. Alexander Ostrovsky (1823–1886) began training as a lawyer at Moscow University but left without graduating to become a lawyer’s clerk, serving mostly the Moscow merchant class into which he had been born. He wrote approximately 50 plays between the late 1840s and 70s. These included comedies, histories and tragedies which blended contemporary realism and melodrama in the conventions of his day. He spent the greater part of his professional theatrical life in association with Moscow’s Maly (Little) theatre, the home of drama alongside the Bol’shoi (Large) theatre which staged opera and ballet. The Maly was known affectionately by Muscovites as ‘Ostrovsky’s house’. Ostrovsky’s best known play internationally is The Storm (1860) written on the eve of the reforms of Alexander II (the Emancipation of the serfs came in 1861). 5.  For example, see Roger Baker, London Life, 29 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting); Martin Esslin, ‘Storm in a Teacup’, Plays and Players, March 1967, pp. 14–15.

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6. For example, see Michael Coveney, Financial Times (LTR, 16–29 July 1981, p. 367); Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 29 January 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 97). 7. Milton Shulman, New Standard (LTR, 16–29 July 1981, p. 368). 8.  Kate Sealey Rahmen, The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (2011), pp. 271–273. 9. A. Ostrovsky, A Family Affair, trans. by David Budgen, adapt. by Nick Dear (London: Absolute Press, 1989; republished London: Absolute Classics, 1997). 10. Jim Hiley, City Limits (June 1982) (LTR, 16–30 June 1982, p. 354). Precise dates of reviews not given at this time in LTR. 11. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard (June 1982) (ibid.). 12. Victoria Radin, Observer (June 1982) (ibid., p. 355). 13. Irving Wardle, Times, 28 June 1982 (LTM, press cutting). 14. ‘The Storm’ as ‘Thunder’ in Four Russian Plays (1972), pp. 319–392; ‘The Forest’, in Five Plays of Alexander Ostrovsky, trans. and ed. by Eugene K. Bristow (New York: Pegasus, 1969). 15. Jeremy Brooks and Kitty Hunter Blair, The Forest (1981): no published version of this translation has been located. 16. A. Ostrovsky, The Forest, trans. Vera Liber, adapt. by Alan Ayckbourn (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). 17.  There is some confusion over the translated title of this play by Ostrovsky. Rodney Ackland’s original title in translation was Diary of a Scoundrel (1948, first performed 1949) of Ostrovsky’s Na vsiakogo mudretsa dovolno prostoty (Enough Stupidity for Every Wise Man, 1868). In the 1988 production of Ackland’s version at the Old Vic, the title was changed to Too Clever by Half. 18. John Barber, Daily Telegraph, 28 January 1985 (LTM, press cutting). 19. Irving Wardle, Times, 29 June 1988 (LTM, press cutting). 20. Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 3 July 1988 (LTM press cutting). 21. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 29 June 1988 (LTR, 17–30 June 1988, pp. 868–869). 22. Glasgow Herald, 22 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 23. Stage and screen in London Weekly Diary (1966, no date; NT archive, press cutting). 24. Peter Lewis, Daily Mail, 19 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 25. David Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 24 July 1987 (LTR, 2–15 July 1987, p. 839). 26. Milton Shulman, London Evening Standard, 14 July 1987 (ibid., pp. 839–840). 27. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph, 30 April 1988 (LTR, 22 April–18 May 1988, p. 553).

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28.  Robert Gore-Langton, Express, 6 February 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 98). 29. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 4 May 1988 (LTR, 22 April–18 May 1988, p. 552). 30. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 8 May 1988 (ibid., p. 555). 31. Rod Dungate, Tribune, 13 May 1988 (ibid., p. 552). 32. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian, 30 April 1988 (ibid., p. 554). 33. Dungate, Tribune, 13 May 1988 (ibid., p. 552). 34. Edwardes, Time Out. 35. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian, 30 April 1988 (ibid., p. 554). 36. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 3 May 1988 (ibid., p. 556). 37. John Peter, Sunday Times, 6 October 2002 (TR, 24 September–7 October 2002, p. 1318). 38. Irving Wardle, Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, p. 1530). 39. Michael Billington, Guardian, 19 November 1998 (ibid., pp. 1529–1530). 40. Irving Wardle, Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1530). 41. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 18 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1529). 42. Antony Thorncroft, Financial Times, 19 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1530). 43. Roger Foss, What’s On, 3 February 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 99). 44. Ibid. 45. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 1 February 1999 (ibid., p. 102). 46. David Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 5 February 1999 (ibid., p. 102). 47. Spencer, Daily Telegraph. 48. Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times, 1 February 1999 (ibid., pp. 100–101). 49. Ostrovsky, Four Plays, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (Reading: Oberon Books Limited (Absolute Classics), 1997); Crazy Money (also known as Easy Money (Beshennye den’gi, 1870)); and Innocent as Charged (Bez viny vinovatye, 1884). 50. N. A. Ostrovsky, Plays Two (Contains: The Forest, Artists and Admirers, Wolves and Sheep, Sin and Sorrow) (London: Oberon, 2003). 51. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian, 30 April 1988 (LTR, 22 April–18 May 1988, p. 554). 52. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 29 June 1988 (LTR, 17–30 June 1988, pp. 868–869). 53. Michael Billington, Guardian, 4 March 1988 (LTR, 22 April–18 May 1988, pp. 554–555).

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54. Peter Sherwood, Times Literary Supplement, 15 February 1985 (LTM, cutting). 55. Carole Woddis, Herald, 20 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, p. 1532). 56. Paul Taylor, Independent, 19 November 1998 (ibid.). 57. John Peter, Sunday Times, 22 November 1998 (ibid.). 58. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 19 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1531). 59. Roger Foss, What’s On, 25 November 1998 (ibid.): ‘Darkness of the Russian Soul’ and ‘Darkness of the Russian Psyche’ are also found in connection with Ostrovsky: David Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 24 July 1987 (LTR, 2–15 July 1987, p. 839); Edward Vulliamy, ‘Elements of Fear’, Guardian, 13 July 1987 (LTM, press cutting), respectively. 60. ‘Realm of darkness’ was the metaphoric title chosen by the critic Nikolai Dobroliubov (1836–1861) for his blistering attack on the world of Ostrovsky’s early plays. His essay was published in the radical journal Sovremennik, as ‘Temnoe tsarstvo’ (Realm of darkness) Sovremennik, 7 (St. Petersburg, 1859). English version by J. Fineberg in N. A. Dobroliubov, Selected Philosophical Essays (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), pp. 218–372. 61. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 22 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, p. 1530). Reference to Madame Bovary came in the 1966 version of ‘The Storm’ as well: Times Educational Supplement, 28 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 62. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 19 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, pp. 1530–1531). 63. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 29 June 1988 (LTR, 17–30 June 1988, pp. 868–869). 64. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 29 June 1988 (ibid., pp. 870–871). 65. Christopher Edwards, Spectator, 9 July 1988 (ibid., p. 873). 66. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 4 May 1988 (LTR, 22 April–18 May 1988, p. 552). 67. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 3 May 1988 (LTR, ibid., pp. 555–556). 68. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 3 May 1988 (ibid., p. 556). 69. Sealey Rahmen, The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (2011), pp. 167–169, 172–175, p. 181; pp. 163–166 deal with further examples from ballet and opera which utilise Ostrovsky’s work. 70. Confirmed by Sealey Rahmen, ibid., p. 181. 71. Ronald Hayman, Queen, 10 November 1966 (NT archive, press cutting).

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72. Leoš Janáček, Kát’a Kabanová, compiled by John Tyrrell, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 10, 14. 73. Harold Hobson, Sunday Times, 23 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 74. Peter Lewis, Daily Mail, 19 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 75. Sean French, Observer, 19 July 1987 (LTR, 2–15 July 1987, p. 839). 76. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph, 15 July 1987 (ibid., pp. 840–841). 77. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian, 15 July 1987 (ibid., p. 841). 78. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 18 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, p. 1529). 79. Michael Billington, Guardian, 19 November 1998 (ibid., pp. 1529–1530). 80. Antony Thorncroft, Financial Times, 19 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1530). 81. Clapp, Observer, 22 November 1998 (ibid., 1530). 82. Paul Taylor, Independent, 19 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1532). 83. Irving Wardle, Times, 28 June 1982 (LTM, press cutting). 84. ‘Ostrovsky Drama No More Than a Relic’, Times, 19 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting, unsigned). 85. Roger Foss, What’s On, 25 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, p. 1531). 86. Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday, 22 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1529). 87. Kenneth Hurren, Mail on Sunday, 18 October 1992 (TR, 7–20 October 1992, p. 1220). 88. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian (no day) July 1981 (LTR, 16–29 July 1981, p. 367). 89. Irving Wardle, Sunday Telegraph, 22 November 1998 (TR, 5−18 November 1998, p. 1530). 90. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 19 November 1998 (ibid., p. 1531). 91. John Peter, Sunday Times, 6 October 2002 (TR, 24 September–7 October 2002, p. 1318). 92. Michael Billington, Guardian, 28 January 1985 (LTR, 16–29 January 1985, p. 73). 93. Ronald Bryden, Observer, 23 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 94. Michael Billington, Guardian, 30 January 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 101). 95.  Birmingham Mail, 6 July 1949 (Birmingham Central Library [BCL]. Birmingham Rep archive, press cutting). 96. Michael Billington, Guardian, 30 January 1999 (TR, 1–28 January, 1999, p. 101).

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97. Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday, 7 February 1999 (ibid., p. 98). 98. Kate Sealey Rahmen made a worthy starting point in Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 30 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999); and followed it with her impressive, detailed study of Ostrovsky in Britain, in The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (2011) quoted above. Not all of her data has been incorporated in the database attached to this book, as she includes both student and amateur productions which, needless to say, would be impossible to trace comprehensively across the number of writers in this study. 99. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 14 October 1992 (TR, 7–20 October 1992, p. 1221). 100. Carole Woddis, Herald, 5 February 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 99). 101. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 11 February 2000 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2000, p. 183). 102. Michael Coveney, Daily Mail, 5 February 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 97). 103. Sheridan Morley, Spectator, 6 February 1999 (TR, 12–25 February 1999, p. 257). 104. Michael Billington, Guardian, 30 January 1999 (TR, 1–28 January 1999, p. 101). 105. Sheridan Morley, Spectator, 6 February 1999 (TR, 12–25 February 1999, p. 257). 106. Michael Billington, Guardian 30 June 1988 (LTR, 17–30 June 1988, p. 869). 107. Michael Billington, Guardian, 19 November 1998 (TR, 5–18 November 1998, pp. 1529–1530). 108. David Nathan, ‘A Sense of Sin Doesn’t Travel’, Sun, 19 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting); and also Irish Times, 22 October 1966 (NT archive, press cutting). 109. Clare Brennan, Observer, 21 July 2013 (TR, 2–15 July 2013, p. 671). 110. Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 19 July 2013 (ibid.). 111. Ibid. 112. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 12 May 2013 (TR, 7–20 May 2013, p. 440). 113. Michael Billington, Guardian, 9 May 2013 (ibid.). 114. Sam Marlowe, Times, 9 May 2013 (ibid., p. 441). 115. Billington (ibid., p. 440) 116. Paul Gould, Financial Times, 15 May 2013 (ibid.). 117. Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) was a novelist, short story writer and dramatist. He is celebrated for his play A Month in the Country (1855), but

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wrote shorter pieces in the 1840s and 50s. Only one of these shorter pieces has been seen here, as Fortune’s Fool (1996, 2013) Turgenev came from a wealthy aristocratic background, In his youth he had studied in Berlin which gave him an enduring devotion to Europe. A long term affair with the opera singer Pauline Viardot meant that he spent a great deal of time with or near to her (she was married) in Europe, interspersed with visits to his estate and the capital cities of Russia. As a young man, he mixed with people who held radical ideas in Russia but was regarded by them as something of an outsider, due to his higher social status and wealth. However, that radical leaning is visible in much of his work. 118. The title Fortune’s Fool has also been translated as A Poor Gentleman, and One of the Family. The original Nakhlebnik, was written in 1848, banned from printing in 1849, and published in 1857, and given a first performance in Russia in 1862. There is a translation by Constance Garnett dating from the 1930s, called A Poor Gentleman (see Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev: Three Plays: A Month in the Country, A Provincial Lady, A Poor Gentleman, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Cassell and Co., 1934)). Garnett also translated Provintsialka (A Provincial Lady) in this collection, which has been given one production (1977) in Britain, but attracted little comment. The Constance Garnett translation of A Poor Gentleman was adapted by Mike Poulton for the productions in 1996 and 2013. Garnett’s identity as translator was not prominently displayed in the publicity though Poulton’s name as adaptor was: the translator credit lies buried in a short piece by Poulton in the 2013 programme. 119. Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times, 30 August, 1996 (TR, 26 August–8 September, p. 1132); Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 28 August 1996 (ibid.). 120. de Jongh (ibid.). 121. Ismene Brown, Daily Telegraph, 29 August 1996 (ibid., p. 1133). 122. Jack Tinker, Daily Mail, 30 August 1996 (ibid., p. 1131). 123. de Jongh, Evening Standard. 124. Macaulay, Financial Times. 125. Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 1 September 1996 (ibid., pp. 1133–1134). 126. Robert Gore-Langton, Mail on Sunday, 12 January 2014 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2014, p. 127). 127. Michael Billington, Guardian, 18 December 2013 (TR, 3–31 December 2013, p. 1171). 128. Gore-Langton, Mail on Sunday. 129. Paul Taylor, Independent, 18 December 2013 (TR, 3–31 December 2013, p. 1171).

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130. Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 18 December 2013 (TR, ibid., p. 1172). 131. Kate Kellaway, Observer, 5 January 2014 (TR, 3–31 December 2013, p. 1173). 132. Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 17 December 2013 (TR, ibid., p. 1172). 133. Macaulay, Financial Times (TR, 26 August–8 September 1996, p. 1132). 134.  Turgenev wrote ten plays in all which, apart from A Month in the Country (1855) and Fortune’s Fool (The Parasite [1848, first published 1857]), are mostly of one act: An Imprudence (1843); Moneyless (1846); Breakfast with the Marshal of the Nobility (1849); Conversation on a Highway (1851); A Provincial Lady (1851); A Chain Is as Strong as Its Weakest Link (1851); An Evening in Sorrento (1852); The Bachelor (1849). For an insightful discussion of Turgenev’s drama, see F. F. Seeley, Turgenev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 46–73. 135.  Stephen Mulrine has translated six of these plays in Turgenev: Plays (London: Oberon, 1998): A Month in the Country; Stoney Broke (aka Moneyless); One of the Family (aka The Parasite); The Bachelor; Lunch at His Excellency’s; A Provincial Lady. 136.  Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910) was born into wealthy landed gentry. He served in the Crimean War (1854–1856) and his Sebastopol Stories (1855–1856) written in situ signalled his strengths as a writer. His war experiences led him to the disquisition on the Napoleonic wars in War and Peace (1865–1869) and his high society life underlay Anna Karenina (1875–1877), the best known of his novels in Britain. Other prose works ranged from short stories to novels of smaller dimension than the panoramic scope of these two novels. His plays are among his least known works. They generally attract an audience on the strength of his other writing. 137. (Anon) ‘Animal Crackers and Funny People’, South London Press, 23 March 1979, p. 13 (NT archive, press cutting). 138. Stage adaptations of Tolstoy’s novels are discussed in Section 7. 139. As well as the two plays discussed here, Tolstoy wrote The Living Corpse (1900), a full-length play, focusing on the disappearance of a husband from a loveless marriage by faking his own suicide. The short plays also include a piece against drunkenness, The First Distiller (1886). As far as can be established none of these pieces have been performed here in the post-WW2 period. 140. Felix Barker, ‘Strange Fruits but Very Ripe’, Evening News, 15 March 1979 (NT archive, press cutting).

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141. André Antoine (1858–1943) founder of the Théâtre Libre in Paris in (1887–1894). A members’ theatre, Théâtre Libre was able to escape the censorship and choose its own repertoire. Antoine mounted premières of the ‘new drama’ of his time by such writers, as Ibsen, Strindberg and Hauptmann as well as Tolstoy. This subscription model of ‘free theatre’ was utilised by others including Die Freie Buhne in Berlin (1889– 1894), and MAT (1898–). 142. Times, 29 April 1949, p. 6 (LTM, press cutting). 143. Leo Tolstoy, The Power of Darkness, trans. and adapt. by Anthony Clark (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1989). 144. Giles Gordon, Spectator, 17 March 1984 (LTR, 27 February–11 March 1984, p. 162). 145. Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday, 13 April 1997 (TR, 9–22 April 1997, p. 446). 146.  In his review quoted above, Gordon refers to the ‘tiny Orange Tree pub theatre’ and ‘claustrophobic conditions of the ­pocket-handkerchief-sized space’ which seems to suggest that in 1984 the play was performed in the space that was subsequently reserved for the more shocking material. It would not necessarily, however, have had the reputation as the place to shock in 1984, if it was the only space occupied by the Orange Tree Theatre company run by Sam Walters. So arguably expectation would have been the same. 147. Douglas McPherson, What’s On, 16 April 1997 (TR, 9–22 April 1997, p. 446). 148. Michael Billington, Guardian, 6 March 1984 (LTR, 27 February–11 March 1984, p. 167). 149. Giles Gordon, Spectator, 17 March 1984 (ibid., p. 162). 150. Ibid. 151. Billington, Guardian, 6 March 1984 (ibid., p. 167). 152. Martin Hoyle, Financial Times, 5 March 1984 (ibid.). 153. Gordon, Spectator, 17 March 1984 (ibid., p. 162). 154. Hoyle, Financial Times, 5 March 1984 (ibid., p. 167). 155. Billington, Guardian, 6 March 1984 (ibid.). 156. Nick Curtis, Evening Standard, 15 April 1997 (TR, 9–22 April 1997, p. 445). 157. Paul Taylor, Independent, 14 April 1997 (ibid.). 158. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 14 April 1997 (ibid.). 159. Clare Bayley, Times, 16 April 1997 (ibid., p. 446). 160. Taylor, Independent (ibid., p. 445); Dominic Cavendish, Time Out, 16 April 1997 (ibid., p. 446). 161. McPherson, What’s On (ibid.).

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162. Hoyle, Financial Time, 5 March 1984 (LTR, 27 February–11 March 1984, p. 167). 163. McPherson, What’s On, 16 April 1997 (TR, 9–22 April 1997, p. 446). 164. Hoyle, Financial Times, 5 March 1984 (LTR, 27 February–11 March p. 167). 165. Gordon, Spectator, 17 March 1984 (ibid., p. 162). 166.  Gordon, ibid.; Taylor, Independent, 14 April 1997 (TR, 9–22 April 1997, p. 445); Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 14 April 1997 (ibid.); and Hemming, Financial Times, 23 April 1997 (ibid., p. 446). 167. Gordon, Spectator, 17 March 1984 (LTR, 27 February–11 March 1984, p. 162). 168. Curtis, Evening Standard, 15 April 1997 (TR, 9–22 April 1997, p. 445). 169. Bayley, Times, 16 April 1997 (ibid., p. 446); Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 14 April 1997 (ibid., p. 445). 170. For a full discussion of this version of Tolstoy’s play, see Cynthia Marsh, ‘Bridging Cultures? John McGahern’s The Power of Darkness’, Tolstoi 100 Years On (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, forthcoming, 2021). 171.  Michael Coveney, ‘Mortality and a Sock in the Face’, Observer, 20 October 1991, reprinted in Irish Times on 22 October 1991, p. 20. 172. J. C. Trewin, Birmingham Post, 16 March 1979 (NT archive, The Fruits of Enlightenment, press cutting). I am grateful to the NT which supplied me with all the reviews used in the discussion of the 1979 production. 173. J. C. Trewin, Lady, 29 March 1979 (ibid.). 174. Colin Mason, Where to Go, 5 April 1979 (ibid.). 175. Felix Barker, ‘Strange Fruits, but Very Ripe’, Evening News, 15 March 1979 (ibid.). 176.  John Walker, ‘“Fruits”: A Mixed Basket of Tolstoy’, International Herald Tribune, 23 March 1979 (ibid.). 177. Trewin, Lady (ibid.). 178.  Singles, 9 May 1979 (ibid.). 179. Benedict Nightingale, ‘Men in White Coats’, New Statesman, 23 March 1979 (ibid.). 180. Francis King, ‘For Betters and for Worse’, Sunday Telegraph, 18 March 1979, p. 14 (ibid.). 181. Ibid. 182. Arthur Thirkell, ‘Sir Ralph to the Rescue’, Daily Mirror, 17 March 1979 (ibid.). 183. David Nathan, ‘But It Doesn’t Raise the Spirits’, Jewish Chronicle, 23 March 1979 (ibid.). 184. Nightingale, New Statesman, 23 March 1979 (ibid.). 185. Robert Cushman, ‘Tolstoy at the National’, Observer, 18 March 1979 (ibid.).

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186. John Elsom, ‘Above Stairs’, Listener, 22 March 1979 (ibid.). 187. Anne Morley-Priestman, Stage, 22 March 1979 (ibid.). 188. Walker ‘“Fruits”…’, International Herald Tribune, 23 March 1979. 189. Upstairs, Downstairs was a popular TV series made by London Weekend Television between 1971 and 1975 in 68 episodes. It was created by Jean Marsh and Dame Eileen Atkins, both of stage fame. Set in Edwardian England up to WW1 it fictionalised the contrasting lives of the masters upstairs and the servants below stairs. It was revived (December 2010) and the story taken into the 1930s and the outbreak of WW2. A second series followed in 2012, which was then axed when it failed to keep its audience. 190. Chris Oswick, Evening Echo (Southend-on-Sea), 23 March 1979 (NT archive, The Fruits of Enlightenment, press cutting). 191. Morley-Priestman, Stage. 192. Cushman, Observer. 193. Ibid. 194. Barker, Evening News. 195. Lev Tolstoy, The Fruits of Enlightenment, trans. by Michael Frayn (London: Methuen, 1979), pp. xvii–xviii. 196. B. A. Young, ‘The Fruits of Enlightenment’, Financial Times, 15 March 1979 (NT archive, The Fruits of Enlightenment, press cutting). 197. Thirkell, Daily Mirror. 198. Trewin, Lady. 199. Kenneth Hurren, ‘Russian Menace’, What’s On in London, 23 March 1979 (NT archive, The Fruits of Enlightenment, press cutting). 200. (Anon) ‘Animal Crackers and Funny People’, South London Press, 23 March 1979 (ibid.). 201.  Anthony Seymour, ‘Tolstoy Eight Times Wrong’, Yorkshire Post, 23 March 1979 (ibid.).

Bibliography Dobroliubov, Nikolai, ‘Temnoe tsarstvo’ (Realm of Darkness), Sovremennik, 7 (St. Petersburg, 1859). English version trans. by J. Fineberg in N. A. Dobroliubov, Selected Philosophical Essays (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), pp. 218–372. Friel, Brian, A Month in the Country: After Turgenev (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 1992). Janáček, Leoš, Kát’a Kabanová, compiled by John Tyrell, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Marber, Patrick, Three Days in the Country: After Turgenev (London: Faber and Faber, 2015).

126  C. MARSH Marsh, Cynthia, ‘Bridging Cultures? John McGahern’s The Power of Darkness’, in Tolstoi 100 Years On, Vol. II, ed. by Joe Andrew and Robert Reid (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers (forthcoming, 2021). Ostrovsky, Alexander, Diary of a Scoundrel, adapted by Rodney Ackland (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1948; republished London: Samuel French, 1951) [aka Too Clever by Half (after 1988)]. ———, The Forest in Five Plays of Alexander Ostrovsky, trans. and ed. by Eugene K. Bristow (New York: Pegasus, 1969). ———, A Family Affair, trans. by David Budgen, adapt. by Nick Dear (London: Absolute Press, 1989; republished London: Absolute Classics, 1997). ———, Four Plays, trans. Stephen Mulrine (Reading: Oberon Books Limited (Absolute Classics) 1997). Contains: The Storm; Too Clever by Half; Crazy Money; Innocent as Charged. ———, The Forest, trans. by Vera Liber, adapt. by Alan Ayckbourn (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). ———, Plays Two, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Oberon, 2003, 2016). Contains: The Forest, Artists and Admirers, Wolves and Sheep, Sin and Sorrow. Sealey Rahmen, Kate, Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs 30 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999). ———, The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823–1886) (Lampeter: Mellen, 2011). Seeley, F. F., Turgenev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Tolstoy, Lev, The Fruits of Enlightenment, trans. by Michael Frayn (London: Methuen, 1979). ———, The Power of Darkness, trans. and adapt. by Anthony Clark (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1989). Turgenev, Ivan, Three Plays, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Cassell and Co., London, 1934). Contains: A Month in the Country, A Provincial Lady, A Poor Gentleman. ———, Plays, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Oberon, 1998). Contains: A Month in the Country; Stoney Broke (aka Moneyless); One of the Family (aka The Parasite; or The Poor Gentleman; or Fortune’s Fool); The Bachelor; Lunch at his Excellency’s; A Provincial Lady. Warden, Claire, Migrating Modernist Performance. British Theatrical Travels through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

SECTION 5

Bridging the Centuries: Chekhov and Gorky

There is no doubt that the most popular figure in Russian theatre in Britain is Chekhov. The works most frequently performed are his four mature plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard along with his earlier one-acters The Bear, The Proposal, and plays such as Ivanov. Most of this work dates from the last decade and just before the nineteenth century. The exceptions are his two final plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, and in many ways they already set agendas for the twentieth century. In that respect, Chekhov is genuinely a figure on the threshold of the modern period. Such modernity has not always been appreciated in the styles of Chekhov production in Britain. It is his nineteenth-century image which has dominated theatre and so the reviewers. Unsurprisingly, directors, designers and reviewers have frequently drawn their understanding of Chekhov from other nineteenth-century writers. The comparative figures for Chekhov productions make the case overwhelmingly for his dominance. In the figures quoted from the database in Section 2, we noted 390 productions for Chekhov, while for Gogol, who comes second, the figure is 74. Gorky lies fourth (after Dostoevsky) with 34 productions. Gorky’s plays all date from the beginning of the twentieth century. He had already made a significant reputation in his short stories and novels in the 1880s and 90s. As a social realist he was a child of the late nineteenth century and his plays continued this path. His reputation was sealed for Soviet Russia by his contribution to the formulation of Socialist Realism in the 1930s, in fact postdating most of his creative © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_5

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work. With Gorky, newly returned from exile, at his side in 1932, Stalin sought to control literary and artistic output by politicising creativity. Socialist Realism was put into practice by 1934. Early interest in Gorky’s plays in Britain was eclipsed in the decades from the 1930s onwards because of the mistrust of a politicised culture, the arrival of WW2 and all its preoccupations, and the re-imposition of Party control in Russia subsequently. Production was rekindled in the 1960s as Britain itself began to seek different political models. So while Chekhov and Gorky ushered in the twentieth century, their reception, their functions and their destinies in the British theatre have been substantially different.

Chekhov1: A Discussion of His Influence Chekhov’s British reputation and reception on the British stage has been well explored, at least up until the mid-1980s by Patrick Miles, and on the world stage, including Britain, by Laurence Senelick.2 The existence of this research enabled this current study to explore Russia’s other writers to discover the reasons for their comparative neglect. Consequently, this section on Chekhov addresses these reasons rather than ­re-exploring his reception in Britain. It contemplates how and why Chekhov has affected views on other writers. Chekhov’s theatre is controversial, disliked as much as it is admired, but his reputation surprisingly, perhaps, persists and he continues to occupy a central place in Russian theatre translated into English. It is more than likely that the sustained presence of Chekhov’s plays as a training medium in drama schools may be responsible. However, things have begun to change already. The long period of stagnation in twentieth-century Russia ended with Gorbachev more than three decades ago. Moreover, the transience that is inbuilt in translation invites ever more efforts to update, adapt, reconsider and modernise, not only to fit our own swift-changing scene, but also, perhaps, to capture different, previously unperceived, aspects of Russian culture itself. Russia’s public face is now different, but in many ways as inscrutable as ever. A relatively new and dynamic factor in the last thirty years has been the appearance of companies from the new, post-Soviet Russia bringing their own vibrant forms of theatre. They have shown Britain new opportunities with Chekhov, and have shared productions with British

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directors, designers and performers. For example, recent work of Lev Dodin (The Cherry Orchard [1994], Uncle Vanya [2005]) and his Maly Company from Petersburg, and the partnerships in which Declan Donellan has engaged with Russian performers. Donellan directed Three Sisters for the company Cheek by Jowl. It was performed by Russians in Russian with translated surtitles provided. It played to acclaim in 2007 and 2011. Sam Marlowe wrote in The Times: ‘I cannot imagine a more delicate, luminous and emotionally piercing production of Chekhov’s drama than Cheek by Jowl’s’.3 I wonder if it was the presence of Russian performers which underlay this judgement. It was an insightful production, if rather conservative, but the combination of British director and Russian actors brought out aspects of the play not always seen in British productions. The effect was an impressive example of cultures in collision, as described in Section 2. January 2011 saw the arrival of the Sovremennik Theatre from Moscow, with two of their Chekhov productions, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. In contrast to the work mentioned above, their productions came unmediated by British influence, a throwback to an earlier period when collaboration was almost non-existent. This isolation showed. While praising individual performers, Charles Spencer identified a disappointing lack of ensemble (which had been plentifully evident in the companion piece to the two Chekhovs, an adaptation of Evgeniia Ginzburg’s prose piece Into the Whirlwind).4 They grumbled about the production of Three Sisters ‘in thrall to its overbearing design’5: a central arched bridge dominated the stage, which itself was able to turn like a carousel at moments of emotional intensity and/or confusion. Three Sisters was regarded as ‘creaky and old fashioned’,6 while a culturally revealing flaw in the casting of The Cherry Orchard, left Yasha played by an actor old enough to be the character’s father.7 This casting is surely an outcome of actors clinging on to their roles, and the comment was that this production had been ‘in the repertoire far too long’.8 From these examples it seems that companies and productions, who are not trading on an illustrious past, but are open to other cultures, prepared to collide with their host, or adapt to their needs, gain in strength and influence. Our task in this discussion is to understand Chekhov’s powerful hold on the British theatre’s view of Russia and Russian theatre, and then to compare that reception with British views of Gorky. The sheer number of Chekhov productions makes part of the point, but we should, I think, return to stereotypes. British minds have undoubtedly formed a view of

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Russia from Chekhov’s plays, but it is from the British staging of them, so we have an insistently self-reinforcing image of landed estates, 1890s to turn-of-the-century fashion, trees, gloom, isolation, tea drinking and samovars and endless talk often going nowhere. Many characteristics of this stereotype mould reception of other writers. It is not the complete British stereotype of Russia: there are no onion domes, nor boyar-style fur, nor is it Mother Russia, and there are few peasants in Chekhov’s plays. His world is over-perceived in Britain as a chronicle of a gentrified Russia in decline. However, as presented by Chekhov, the decline applies to rural Russia. The plays explore middle-class loss of faith in their efforts to improve rural backwardness and neglect. Another factor is that the Chekhov visual tradition is so strong that British productions of his plays have tended to be acculturated to the standard British image. Finding anything different in Chekhov has become very difficult. The British are really reluctant to undermine their cherished image of his plays and so their image of Russia. There are, however, stereotypes present on both the British and the Russian side. In my view, there is little doubt that Chekhov toyed with stereotypes of Russian life in his plays, and indeed created his own. In Section 2, comparisons were drawn between Russian seagulls and British views of them as an example of the multiplicity of ways stereotypes do and do not travel. Part of the problem stems from Chekhov himself who knowingly manipulated the potential of this creature to inhabit the imagery of The Seagull. The hero presents the shot seagull to his girlfriend as a symbol. ‘Of what?’ you may ask, as she does. He argues it is a symbol of himself; she battles for it not to become a symbol of herself; and ultimately it is stuffed on the orders of Trigorin, perhaps the villain of the piece, as a stereotype itself. MAT, for which the production was one of the 1898 opening highlights, has created an indelible stereotype of the bird by placing it on its stage curtains (where it still is) and in our day carrying it as part of its digital insignia. What do the British make of this and other stereotypical aspects such as images, objects and props when they view this play in translation? After all, since the seagull, for example, is enshrined in the title of the play, it can hardly be missed. Do audiences just accept that there is an impenetrable aspect to translated theatre which must prevent spectators from reaching fully to the core? And that in The Seagull that impenetrable core must in some way be Russianness? Is it the case that the author’s stereotypes can never be fully appreciated, just as Chekhov

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and his fellow countrymen could not penetrate British ones? Or can the stereotype migrate to a host culture with some, if not all, of its attendant implications? A stereotype is a paradox: at first glance it would appear to be a very efficient form of shorthand, but at the same time one aspect is foregrounded and repeated at the price of the concealment of others.9 For example, if we take up the British view of seagulls we can conveniently forget their grace and beauty as fishers in the sea, the gleaming sharpness of their colouring, and their faithfulness to one location. We also forget the huge range of the species and that it is as much an inland bird as it is part of the British seaside. The samovar has become a stage signifier of Russianness in Britain. Chekhov’s treatment of it in Three Sisters suggests, as with the seagull, that he was toying with objects as powerful signifiers within the stage world. In many ways, he depended on the shorthand characteristics of the stereotype to make multiple meanings within the sparseness of his implied text. His samovar in Three Sisters is presented as a name-day gift to Irina centre stage. A samovar (not necessarily the same one) is also used as a signifier of Natasha’s domestic power in Act 2; she controls it and Anfisa, as her slave server. In these ways, the Russian audience was given a glimpse of the complexity and design which drive every Chekhov play. There are many other examples in his work.10 From the point of view of British consumption, the aspects the British have interpreted as indicative of Russianness in Chekhov’s plays have become for them hallmarks of Russian theatre as a whole. As a result of foregrounding these hallmarks, other aspects of Russian theatre have been denied or greeted with undue surprise. There are six focal areas, it seems to me: language, setting, forms of comedy, class, behaviour and finally, Russianness. Often branded by reviewers as inconsequential, language is a key element in Chekhov’s dramatic arsenal. Deceptively simple, everyday language has a key role in creating the drama of his plays. However, his language is not colloquial and naturalistic only: it is also a stage rhetoric, designed to function within the complex system of other stage languages: the visual, the aural, proxemics and so on. Chekhov’s skills of suggestion in his stage language, in choice of vocabulary to create networks of reference, his use of quotation from a variety of sources, his deliberate use of different styles and registers of speech as well as modes of dramatic address (dialogue, monologue etc.) create a linguistic

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mechanism, hard to replicate and easy to debase. The language is a key source of the power and intensity of the mature plays. Neglect of any of these aspects leads to apparently banal or inconsequential conversation going nowhere and creating the languorous, boring experience that some translations seem to encourage. The reviewers almost all have to work through a translation as well as negotiate the practices of adaptation or version. As a result, Chekhov is rarely given the praise he deserves, while other dramatists are quite wrongly seen as adventurous or original because of language which appears challenging by comparison. So, the artificiality of Griboedov, Pushkin and Lermontov, or the provincial colloquialisms of Gogol and Ostrovsky, the authenticity of the peasant language created by Tolstoy, or Gorky’s street naturalism of the urban deprived are appreciated as matters of individual style and ability. Turgenev’s new domestic language of intimacy, though seen as a precursor to Chekhov’s, receives greater accolade for its originality than do the developments in stage language achieved by Chekhov. Secondly, the Chekhovian setting, or at least the one ascribed to his plays, has become a stereotype of Russianness. Birch trees for some reason are seen as the essential factor of the Russian landscape and regarded as Chekhovian. This is an item from the Rosco Lighting catalogue: it is a gobo called ‘Three Sisters Birch 2’: how engrained is that? (Fig. 5.1). Chekhov makes many references to trees but to a whole range of trees, not just birch trees. Forest, rather than the spindly birch, plays Fig. 5.1  Gobo design, ‘Three Sisters: Birch 2, 76570’ Rosco Theatrical Lighting Catalogue, 2020

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a central symbolic role in his work. The setting for the first Act of The Seagull does not suggest birch trees, as Simov’s 1898 design demonstrated.11 The only tree designated in the garden scene of Act 1 in Uncle Vanya is a poplar. We know that Astrov has studied the forest (Act 2) and he imbues the forest with seductive enchantment when he begs Elena for an assignation there (Act 4). Natasha, Chekhov’s least liked heroine, sets about cutting down the trees (fir trees and a maple) of the Prozorov garden in Three Sisters (Act 4). Ironically, it is domestic and cultivated fruit trees (even if past their best) which dominate The Cherry Orchard. However, careful consultation of the text will indicate they are never seen on stage. In Act 1 the orchard is viewed and described by two characters through a window in the middle of the night. The landscape presented in Act 2 is devoid of trees, with its broken down, wayside shrine, telegraph poles, and view of a distant town, implying a parody of this predominantly gentry setting. In Act 4 we do not see the trees being felled, only hear the axes. Even for Russians, the estate or parkland has become synonymous with Russian gentry life. It derives probably mostly from Turgenev as much from his novels as from his major play. A whole range of trees are important to Chekhov’s rural settings, not just birch trees as the British ‘theatrical mind’ would have it. Thirdly, comic forms. The reviewers write that Russian drama is not funny, or Russian humour is different and does not succeed in negotiating national frontiers. Chekhov’s blend of comedy and tragedy is certainly original, cleverly and finely achieved; and skill is required to perceive and perform it. As a result much of his humour is frequently masked. A myth has grown up, quoted many times in the reviews and consequently also in this study, that Russian theatre is dominated by gloom, longueurs and seriousness. It seems to derive principally from the misinterpretation of Chekhov as a seriously unfunny writer, though at times Chekhov’s humour has refreshingly been found in Britain.12 The Russian climate is often referenced in regard to the Russian psyche: ‘cold’ and ‘winter’ being frequently used in descriptions of productions. There is another pole to the British perception of Russian theatre which is often over neglected because of its difference from Chekhov. It is the passionate and profound darkness of the Russian soul, seen in Gogol, in the novelists, in particular, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and found in the operatic and melodramatic characteristics of some productions referred to in the previous section. Gorky perceived the beauty of the Russian soul in the people he described, but they were rarely able to perceive it in the darkness they inhabited.

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Fourthly, class. It is a commonplace to refer to the ‘gentry’ characteristics of nineteenth-century and even pre-Revolutionary Russian culture. It is often the aspect most espoused by the British. Such preference may be connected to the British nostalgia for a class system where the English gentry appear to have occupied a golden age of wealth, morality and creativity. As a result, we are selective in what we translate and disseminate from the nineteenth century, in particular. Griboedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev and Tolstoy all fit with this demand, and as a result are seen to create accessible discourse. Fonvizin, Gogol, Ostrovsky and Dostoevsky are deemed to draw on different aspects, and are therefore categorised as ‘heavy’ (especially Dostoevsky), inaccessible (Ostrovsky) or brilliantly different (Gogol). Whole strands of cultural type, though, are deselected by the British, in that they are rarely or never translated and so not performed.13 They include Saltykov-Schedrin,14 Sukhovo-Kobylin,15 Pisemskii,16 Potekhin17 and A. K. Tolstoy,18 as well as the comedies of fabulist Krylov at the turn of the century and patriotic plays written at the time of the Napoleonic invasion.19 Where does Chekhov fit here? He is seen as the quintessence of gentry, but this is hardly the case, and is generally a case of misreading by the British. Society had moved on by Chekhov’s time: the estates are in disrepair, more working farms than the grand demesnes described by the Turgenevs and Tolstoys. Chekhov’s leading characters in his plays are educated, rarely wealthy, work for their livings, whether as actresses, writers, doctors, teachers, civil servants, farmers, soldiers, lawyers, housekeepers and so on. They rarely expect deference from their servants and rarely engage with peasants. Their agenda is altogether different, not the enjoyment of a golden age, but a search for social purpose and spiritual survival outside religion. A few are able to travel and are aware of Europe and European progress. The Russian provinces bring not wealth and leisure, but isolation and professional social obligations. In this awareness, Chekhov registered a complete transformation of the gentry. Hence, his plays are wrongly interpreted by the British as setting the standard for gentry lifestyle in the provinces up to the 1917 revolution. Fifthly, this change in the pattern of daily life brings changes in behaviour. Rarely can the Chekhov characters indulge in leisure as previously. They are tired, focused on their professions, money-conscious, hardworking and conscientious, and frequently in despair at the burden they have to carry. The daily grind has become a reality for the

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majority, or quickly will do so due to financial problems. Social mobility is a new factor, with Russian economic growth stimulating new capitalism and industrial wealth. These characters do not engage in melodramatic plots, but the details of daily living. This is a realistic portrayal of changing power bases and consequentially changing relationships at the turn of the century. For example, Chekhov began the exploration of the changing position of women: a number of his young heroines seek new and untried roles. Drawing on the new naturalism, Chekhov’s theatre changed understanding of ‘drama’ irrevocably. To find these plays slow, boring or unexciting is to apply old-fashioned theatrical standards and to miss Chekhov’s exploration of intelligent existence. Finally, it is important to understand that generally these characteristics of Chekhov’s plays, however misguided, are used in some way to define the British understanding of ‘Russianness’ for the ­nineteenth-century. The concepts recycled in the reviews, about difference, about Mother Russia, about the dark Russian soul, about the dissatisfaction with life, are created usually on the basis of their deviation from the Chekhov canon. Our national understanding of ‘Russianness’ in translated nineteenth-century theatre is narrow in the extreme. British understanding of Chekhov’s plays is ripe for revision. This discussion of Chekhov’s plays has brought us chronologically to the threshold of the twentieth century. The aim of the discussion was to show how little he sometimes fits the British stereotype of nineteenth-century ‘Russianness’. Indeed, Chekhov’s well-documented friendship towards his young contemporary Gorky and his encouragement of him to become a dramatist suggests that Chekhov saw Gorky’s potential to bring new themes to the Russian theatre. Some of these themes were already hinted at in his own work, such as new sensitivity towards the social limitations placed on women in Three Sisters and the social unrest exhibited among minor characters (e.g. the vagrant) in The Cherry Orchard. In addition, he sensed a completely new stance for Russian theatre: a different and challenging social milieu, a powerful injection of melodrama, and the assertion that the dispossessed should have as much input into the public debate as other more privileged classes. These new themes are explicit in Gorky’s first major success, The Lower Depths (1902). I have argued elsewhere that Gorky and Chekhov conducted a form of open dialogue in the plays written between 1901 and 1904 and all performed on the MAT stage.20 Additionally, and not

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unlike Chekhov, Gorky became a writer of immense international stature and has been translated into many languages as well as English. So the remainder of this section recounts and analyses British production of Gorky’s major play, The Lower Depths, as well as referencing production of his other plays. It is a narrative of disruption of norms both in the understanding of Gorky and in the significance of attitudes in Britain to a modern politically conscious writer and his reception. It is also a preparation for the discussion in Section 6 of British productions of Russian twentieth century theatre and beyond, contemporary to the Soviet Union and then, the new Russia that followed.

Gorky In the narrative of Russian theatre, Maxim Gorky21 opened the t­ wentieth century. He also bridged the immense changes brought by the 1917 revolution and lived on into Stalin’s Russia. He is recognised as an international writer.22 Many of his novels have been translated into English as well as the majority of his plays. The database indicates there have been 37 productions of his work since 1945, putting Gorky in fourth place after Chekhov, Gogol and Dostoevsky. Two productions (2001, 2011) were of Brecht’s dramatised version of Gorky’s novel Mother (1906) and so their source was German rather than Russian. A third was adapted from the story ‘Makar Chudra’ in 2015. It was technically played in Russian as it was an adaptation by a Russian company of deaf actors, shown at the Edinburgh Festival. The remaining 34 items (including foreign productions) under Gorky in the database are all productions of his plays.

The Lower Depths in Britain The Lower Depths is by far the most staged play by Gorky on the British stage. The second of Gorky’s two debut plays created for MAT. The Lower Depths was written in 1902. The first was Philistines (1901, also premièred in 1902 but earlier in the year). In total, Gorky wrote sixteen published plays, not all of which have been performed in Britain or indeed translated into English. Reference will be made to his other plays where they have had an impact on British theatre. This history of The Lower Depths will also give the reader insight into British reactions to Russian theatre before the 1945–2015 period. It provides indications

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of how some early reactions became reinforced, but equally how reception of foreign theatre changes, subtly but irrevocably, over long periods. Before 1945, there were two productions in English and one in Russian and one in German. The first production in the UK in English took place in London in 1903. The Lower Depths is set in a turn-of-the-century night shelter, or dosshouse, for the homeless of a large city. Largely plotless in the spirit of naturalism, it brought to the Russian theatre a new language of confrontation between stage and audience, and presented scenes of deprivation, including illness, desperate poverty, murder and suicide. However, these tramps, criminals, prostitutes, beggars, down-at-heel former tradesmen, ex-prisoners and the redundant had opinions, ideals and demands previously unheard. They also had a compassion and humanity never explored before in such deprived conditions. Gorky managed to make both social and political points through his play: here was an unidealised, urban Russia, claiming its place in society, not from the comfortable ranks of the gentry and intelligentsia, radical and otherwise, but from the ­flea-ridden pit of society itself. Gorky was performed in Britain before any of Chekhov (The Seagull was first staged in 1909 in Scotland).23 It is an august history and deserves a brief recording here. Although the early productions are well before our post-war period, their reception is important to later reactions. In Britain, there have been eleven productions in English of The Lower Depths, and three foreign language touring ones.24 Just under a year after the Art Theatre première in Moscow, The Lower Depths was given by the Stage Society at the Royal Court Theatre, London in November 1903. It was possibly a charity production to raise funds for the homeless. In response to the comment that this was the new “slice of life approach” Max Beerbohm wrote, adopting a vocabulary at odds with his usual pointed elegance: ‘“The Lower Depths” is no “slice”. It is chunks, hunks, shreds and gobbets, clawed off anyhow, chucked at us anyhow’.25 His attack was on the play’s ‘formlessness’; this play lacked unity and any shred of an idea. He referred to these ‘muzzy maunderings of wastrels’ and that horror was to be had at Madame Tussaud’s, not on the stage. The stage, he preached, following Aristotle, should leave you ‘a wiser and better man’, not ‘disgusted and anxious to change the subject’. These negative views stuck to British assessment of Gorky, for they were echoed in reviews of a revival by a German Company in 1906

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(it mentions the lack of stage conventions)26 and a review of a production in English in 1911 (refers to the chamber of horrors).27 Significantly for our period, these views were quoted in programmes in the 1970s.28 Beerbohm classified Gorky in the ‘foreign’ canon, commenting that he would not be moved to donate to Russian charity on the strength of this play, but was after seeing the far better The Good Hope by the Dutch writer Heijermans.29 This is an interesting comment for our purposes: it indicates that in the era of the first Gorky productions a ‘foreign’ play was still conceived as a window on its source culture. The Lower Depths returned to London in 1928 in a touring production by the Prague group from MAT in exile.30 This production was the first Russian sourced one to be shown here. The Times reviewer commented: ‘these [are] men who laugh because they suffer, and suffer because they must’.31 This blend of tragedy and comedy had already become, and continued to be, a staple of the writing of both reviewers and academics on Chekhov’s plays. A reviewer as early as 1911 called The Cherry Orchard a ‘weeping comedy’.32 Chekhov’s work functions as a filter through which we have come to view the rest of Russian theatre, and probably also the Russian nation. One reviewer of the 1962 production of The Lower Depths would write dismissively: ‘we prefer to see Russia’s longing for a better world through the eyes of Chekhov’.33 Apart from a minor production of one late play in the 1930s,34 Gorky’s work as a whole, let alone The Lower Depths, was absent from the British stage for thirty years. A possible reason was that Gorky was regarded as synonymous with the Stalinist Soviet Union in these years, never mind that two thirds of his plays were written before the 1917 revolution. Scotland, and specifically Glasgow came briefly on the scene in the interim, illustrating the potential conflict when a migrating text begins the processes of hybridisation or acculturation. In 1945, Unity Theatre chose to stage The Lower Depths at the Athenaeum in Glasgow. Then, this production was reprised in 1947 at the Little Theatre in the Pleasance for the very first Edinburgh Festival. ‘Most British productions of Russian plays have a tendency to drag’, wrote one Glasgow reviewer implying the slowness of what he called the ‘English tempo’.35 A lively debate appears to have ensued when the play was seen in Edinburgh, concerning the Scottishness of the production. The work was played in a ‘medley of Scots dialects that renders very well the proletarian spirit’.36 However, perhaps what the reviewer goes on to comment is even more interesting: ‘their starting out thus from

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the known to explore the unknown is justified by heightened realism and native gusto’. There is no doubt that regional accent is a personal and highly sensitive issue in British English theatre. Another reviewer of the Edinburgh revival headed his piece ‘Scotland in Russia’. This reviewer thought the adaptor was right to use Scottish speech, destroying ‘the convention which teaches us to expect English in our theatre’.37 Gorky himself would have been delighted at these punchy reactions. Issues are raised by the visiting translated text which touch not only on the source culture but strike also to the heart of the receiving one. As in Irish re-writings of English versions of Chekhov, the translation and the production become a vehicle for political comment within the host culture. The confrontations implied here are between a gentry theatre and proletarian one, between Scottish regional accents and the dominant English used on stage, and the seizing of their own national spirit by the Scots.38 These issues echo the claims for national attention to social divisions, urged by Gorky in 1902 through the voice of the oppressed in Russia. They also indicate that any cultural import may be subject to the host country’s internal political debates. Two productions in 1958, one on stage and one on the radio (Sunday Night Theatre) returned The Lower Depths and Gorky as a dramatist to British consciousness, but only just.39 The lack of emphasis ‘on nationality or period’40 in the 1958 stage production by the Tavistock Company was noted, suggesting that a process of acculturation was now at work. We might ask ourselves why was there this renewal of attention in the 1950s? Review materials are scant but with hindsight gained from reading reviews of later productions it becomes clear that Gorky was perceived as pertinent to the new angry and naturalistic phase of British theatre instigated, among other trends, by Osborne’s Look Back in Anger of 1956. For example, Unity Theatre, an avowedly left-wing company, staged The Lower Depths in 1961. In their programme they stated: ‘Working class characters are no longer thought of only as comic relief, even in the West End’,41 except that Gorky’s characters hardly complied with a British notion of the ‘working class’. The Russian dosshouse inhabitants are defined more by their lack of ability or desire to find work, and their unwillingness to do it even if they found it. Equally, however, the British Chekhov’s nostalgic Edwardian effeteness had perhaps begun to cloy.42 One critic of a later (1962) production would remark on Gorky’s ‘ferocious anger’ and his ‘angry play’.43 The modern descendent of the original Moscow Art Theatre visited London for the

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first time in 1958. They brought no Gorky with them even though he was a staple of their repertoire, but their Chekhovs reinvigorated British productions of Russian theatre over the next decades.44 Post-Stalinist Russia was beginning to enjoy a ‘thaw’ which, for Soviet Russians, meant less Gorky not more. In the 1960s and 70s Gorky was taken up by one of our national companies, the RSC. In 1962, the RSC put on The Lower Depths; then between 1971 and 1990, they put on seven of Gorky’s plays, the second of which was another Lower Depths (1972).45 While Russians seemed to want less Gorky, the British theatre discovered much of his work for the first time. This reversal of taste should be born in mind when we view that intricate process a play text endures in making a transition from a source to a host culture. The RSC first tackled The Lower Depths in the 1962 production at the Arts Theatre (London). For the first time, Gorky as a dramatist received substantial reaction from the reviewers. The most frequent responses take the form of polarised comparisons: ‘terrible midnight beauty’,46 life is ‘precious’ and ‘wretched’47; ‘maimed masterpiece’,48 ‘enthralling’ ‘misfortunes’,49 ‘absurdly intellectual’,50 ‘splendid if depressing’,51 the ‘underworld saint’,52 Luka’s ‘shifty benediction’.53 On a broader scale, in attempts to characterise the cultural difference Gorky brought to the British stage, references were made to supposed Russian national characteristics: ‘Slavic tapestry of doom’,54 ‘Russian heart-searching’,55 ‘gloom’ (repeated),56 ‘cry of anguish’,57 ‘prevailing darkness of mood’,58 ‘powerful emotional sweep’,59 ‘sombre’,60 and ‘inspissated darkness’(!).61 Comparisons were drawn (rightly or wrongly) between the natural abilities of Russian and English performers: ‘English temperament […] [was] incapable of creating […] portraits of the peasantry of Eastern Europe’62; ‘too gentlemanly […] far too refined’63; and the actors never attained ‘the powerful emotional sweep that a Russian cast would give’.64 Then there were those who recognised that the play’s different cultural roots made attempts at Anglicisation absurd. It was, said one irate letter writer, ‘a Russian play depicting Russian people […] a play which has absolutely nothing English about it’.65 There was, wrote the Financial Times reviewer, ‘extreme difference between their [Russians’] national temperament and ours’, and it was ‘Russian heart-searching as opposed to English realism’.66 The choice was stark: it was ‘either Russia 60 years ago or Britain in 1962, no good dressing in smocks and snow boots along with English regional accents’.67 There was further comment on

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this use of English regional accents, including references to Luka’s ‘curiously strangulated Irish voice’68 or ‘accents which bring only Newcastle – not the vast grasslands of Russia – to mind’.69 Translation also became a butt of comment. The 1962 production was based on a translation by Moura Budberg70 in a version by Derek Marlowe. According to one reviewer, Budberg’s translation had a ‘stilted, unreal, literary quality in open revolt against Gorky’s naturalism’71; for another, it was ‘inadequate’ and needed ‘cutting’72; while for a third, it was ‘limpid’.73 Attitudes had changed in the few years since those 1958 revivals. One reviewer commented on the play as a ‘masterly fugue for voices in distress […] with humour continually breaking through’, while recalling that the 1958 radio production had ‘cast a gloom over the nation’s Sunday night despair’.74 Was it the fact that the RSC, famed for its quality productions of Shakespeare, the jewel of English theatre, had legitimised Gorky by performing his works? He was a writer currently perceived as ‘Soviet’ and therefore, in the Cold War, alien. There are diametrically opposed processes at work in this collection of reactions, indicating the extremes which make stereotypes. On the one hand, there are those who utilised the play to imprint onto the Russian character (the references to doom and gloom) creating and reinforcing existing stereotypes; on the other, there are those who began from stereotypes about Russia and used them to interpret the play. The comments on the translation are the first ones of substance. Despite her status as Gorky’s confidante, Budberg seemed not to have caught the tone, or was it the expected tone? The surprise, and point, is that these layabouts are caught philosophising. Was this a riposte from Gorky to the ineffectual ‘philosophising’ lampooned by Chekhov in Three Sisters (1901) on the same (MAT) stage just a year before? The comments about cutting are important, given there were references to ‘boredom’75 and a ‘long, worthy, dull’ evening.76 In a different context, on the one hand, there were those who relentlessly chose to hybridise the play with a British context, by comparing it favourably with the recent, 1950s vogue for kitchen sink drama, or by remembering the first production and Beerbohm’s negative comments about the new naturalism. On the other, few attempted to view it within the context of Russian drama, though one or two were struck by the intrinsic difference from Chekhov (and Turgenev)77 still resorting to ‘the life of decadent […] gentlefolk’ as their yardstick. Rather than with Gorky’s Russian theatrical counterparts, significant comparisons

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were drawn, for example by Kenneth Tynan, with O’Neill, Becket, Pinter and other writers of plays about social derelicts.78 References were made, however, more frequently than in the writing on Chekhov, to Russian history, including ‘Czarist’ Russia and Stalin. Most of this is defensible in one way or another since these reviewers were writing for a British audience in a medium (newspapers) which has to sell. Tynan was equally incisive in his political remarks. He saw the ‘bourgeois origins’ of this production in the way Klesch was performed as ‘an hysterical madman’ when he ‘wants above all things a chance to practise his craft’ (as a locksmith), while Luka, advocating ‘a glowing humanitarian future without specifying how it is to be achieved becomes a reverend mystic whose slightest burp is law’.79 Aesthetic insight came from those who perceived an awkward juxtaposition in the production between theatricality and reality: ‘the smell of greasepaint comes between us and Gorky’s realism’,80 or ‘a strictly realistic interpretation […] won’t fit’.81 What else beyond indications of stereotype do these 1962 reactions tell us about a play text undergoing transfer into performance in another culture? What is particularly striking about reviews of the 1962 production of The Lower Depths was the general lack of assessment of the director, in comparison to author, performers, translators and adaptors. One quite negative statement in 1962 claimed that director Toby Robertson’s handling was ‘crude and ill-balanced’.82 Tynan commented that the production ‘was a light-weight affair […] almost falsetto […] by comparison with the baritone, barrel-chested performance I saw in Moscow seven years ago’.83 A far-reaching difference in performance convention, or language body, between Russia and Britain is notable here. Another reviewer suggested that the characters were presented with ‘power and delicacy’, balancing them on the knife-edge between being ‘overdrawn’ and ‘wooden’.84 The already quoted statement that ‘the smell of greasepaint comes between us and Gorky’s realism’, suggests that somehow the director and/or the cast had over-egged their theatricality. Equally the statements about regional accents also seem to imply a wrong directorial decision. There is, also not unexpectedly, only one (passing) reference to humour seen by the reviewer who mentioned it as part of the generally positive treatment of the human spirit: ‘the human spirit rises above violence and tragedy, and humour is continually breaking through’.85 One comment, perhaps, caught that complexity of reversal in cultural transfer we have already noted in this image: ‘Any translation of a great original is like looking at the back of a tapestry’.86

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Under a new leadership, the RSC returned to Gorky and to The Lower Depths in the 1970s and 80s. The most noticeable changes in the reactions are that Gorky’s play was regarded as a naturalistic masterpiece, that the play had comedy and that Gorky was optimistic. There was much less of the doom-ridden perception of Russians and Russian culture. The problems of staging Gorky were recognised: with talk of a mismatch between Gorky and the British. Comment focused on Luka in particular, who provided a problem for the foreign director, partly because of Gorky’s changing view of this character, and partly because he was ‘an exotic’ for the British.87 The most pointed comments concerned the complacent, 1970s, middle-class audience, not moved by Gorky’s social message and inclined to dismiss the problems posed by Gorky as belonging to 1900 and another culture. This latter issue represents the most conspicuous sea change in the agenda of the RSC, as it moved towards a politically aware stance. Their seizing upon Gorky had allowed them to express that new awareness. Significantly in 1972, Klesch was treated differently from the 1962 production where he had been ‘almost written out’. He now carried some of the social point of the play since, having sold his tools to pay for his wife’s funeral, he ‘embodies all the “deserving” poor who are nevertheless somehow to blame if they can’t find work’.88 Tynan’s comments about the bourgeois origins of the 1962 production had been taken to heart. The RSC theatre programme, vastly expanded from what had been little more than a cast list in 1962, now carried material on Gorky and his times, and pictures of Gorky with Tolstoy, Stanislavsky and Chekhov, and with Lenin and Stalin (I need hardly add that The Lower Depths dated from before Gorky had met Lenin and before Stalin had been heard of). In addition, there are pictures from MAT productions and the RSC’s own previous productions, and reference to the highly successful 1971 Enemies in particular. There seems to be a twofold aim in these materials: in the first place to make reference to Gorky’s role as a Soviet figurehead, and secondly to emphasise the fact that Gorky was now firmly embedded in the RSC repertoire. In both cases these tactics reinforced a legitimisation not only of Gorky as a dramatist as suggested earlier but also of the RSC itself as a company with a political agenda. It seems that Gorky had traversed an important threshold and entered the canon. A characteristic of this transition is that the work is regarded no longer as simply a reflection of its source culture, but has a role within

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the host culture: it can be hybridised and utilised for domestic purposes. Moreover, this transition changes the type of production which results. Whether it was the effects of the Cold War, or the prominence given to modern, dissident, Russian writers imprisoned in the mid-1960s for speaking out in post-Stalinist Russia, but the references to Gorky’s views had changed. Clearly, a chronological approach to the staging of a text shows how events of national and international significance play their part in cultural perceptions. Gorky was now seen to express ‘the indomitable dignity of humanity even in the midst of ugliness, privation and corruption’.89 John Mortimer wrote of the ‘extraordinary strength’ of the play90; while for another reviewer Gorky was ‘a writer for whom telling the truth was like walking on nails’.91 Yet another wrote that Gorky concentrates on ‘universal human issues’.92 A new line of comment lay in the ‘identification of the Marxist viewpoint in the play’ that the ‘oppressed can only be corrupted by dependence on illusions’.93 And finally, the twentieth-century historical perspective was emphasised and more writers were added to the list of those regarded as under Gorky’s influence. One reviewer claimed it as ‘the first truly modern play’ and commented that ‘the Russians are the greatest wonderers about what life is about’. He added that The Lower Depths was ‘first in a long line of plays which runs through Odets, Saroyan, Sartre, Beckett and Pinter’.94 The RSC had commissioned a new translation. It was done by their current literary manager Jeremy Brooks working from a literal translation (with copious notes) by Kitty Hunter Blair. It was regarded as ‘excellent’,95 as well balanced between the ‘earthy concrete side of the play and its spiritual content’.96 There is again comment in the reviews on the decision to use regional accents for various characters: ‘a welter of English, Scots and Welsh accents and gestures’ and the ‘relentless Anglo-Saxon atmosphere of the production’97; and ‘too much Welsh rhetoric’.98 Reaction to this RSC production caused Martin Esslin, an academic, director and critic, to analyse the 1972 reviews in an article of 1973. He was, he argued, interested in examining the limitations of the reviewer as the arbiter of the success or failure of a production. What he produced was an uncomplimentary review of the reviews, taking writers to task for insufficient research and lack of consistency in their argument. A less obvious agenda, perhaps, though Esslin did admit to attacking those reviewers who disliked Gorky’s play, was to take them to task for their politics. Those who dismissed Gorky were castigated as being too

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s­hort-sighted culturally to welcome a politicised element in theatre. In his view, the criterion for success of a production must be its demonstrable contemporary relevance.99 Could this new demand for relevance be another consequence of the arrival of kitchen sink drama in 1956? Contemporary relevance had previously been seen as a quality of universality, or as in the first 1903 British production of The Lower Depths (if you recall) the desirable effect of a play should be to make the individual ‘a wiser and better man’.100 Esslin was more explicit: ‘theatre can greatly enhance a society’s understanding of itself’. The critic has an important role to play in this process, in ‘understanding the text, the cultural and social background from which it sprang’.101 Reflecting the theatrical preoccupations of the day, here is the first reference, significantly in a scholarly article, in the material on productions of Gorky’s plays, to the necessity for the host culture to penetrate to the underlying strata of the source culture. David Jones directed most of the RSC Gorky productions. He was interviewed for the same journal in which Esslin conducted his analysis, and which also published Brooks’ account of translation issues.102 Jones did not choose Gorky, but took him on and grew and matured with him. He argued how difficult it was for a director to reach the cultural roots of a text, when he must also be dedicated to winkling out the contemporary relevance to Britain of a foreign play from a different historical period. The issue of contemporary relevance within a host society is an important one as it must inevitably produce different responses in different societies and subcultures into the Englishes of which it may be translated. Jones described the preparation undertaken by the RSC actors under his guidance, which included reading a thesis on dosshouses in England, study and discussion of the historical background to Russia in the first years of the century, and improvisation around the strong s­ tory-telling element in the play. On one level, such preparation is entirely to be commended; on another, it provides the source for comments from the reviewers about cultural mismatch and inadequacy of the production to reflect the cultural home of a foreign play. The translated text, Jones also commented, is a liberated text; it allows the director and actors freedom of action. This is a graphic demonstration of the difference in attitude of a director and performers towards a text migrating from a different source culture.103 It may also be a vitally damaging attitude, given that the director is regarded as the chief agent in that process of migration. Jones went on to direct three more plays by Gorky for the RSC.104

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The third and most recent stage of reception of Gorky has come in a clutch of productions since the 1980s stimulated perhaps by Russia re-embracing capitalism in the post-Soviet years. Gorky’s critique of capitalist excess, dating from before the revolution of 1917, suddenly seemed appropriate to British eyes. The key productions for different reasons have been Barbarians (1990), Summerfolk (1999) Vassa Zheleznova (1986, 1990, 1999), Enemies (2006), Philistines (2007) and Children of the Sun (2013). Has The Lower Depths slipped from its celebrated position? There have been four British productions over a long period: The Lower Depths was staged in 1979 at the Manchester Royal Exchange. It was given a well-received adaptation by the playwright Tunde Ikoli for Birmingham Repertory Theatre Studio and tour (1986). Phil Willmott readapted the play for a brave but poorly received production in 2007; and most recently, a new version ‘from Gorky’s play’ surfaced in Edinburgh in 2015 (the Hidden Door Festival). In addition, a Dutch production reached the Edinburgh Festival in 1999.105 In Manchester, the 1979 production so moved the Times critic that he saw Act 4 as a reflective coda rather than propaganda,106 while The Observer disliked the ‘ranting’. This reviewer liked Magarshack’s translation as it was ‘solid and accessible’.107 A reminder that in 1979 we were still mired in the Cold War was that the programme told us that the ‘Russian’ food (gherkins, pickled herring, sausage and bread) had been ‘kindly donated by the Danish Food Centre’ (so much for Stanislavskian authenticity!). The Ikoli 1986 production transferred the action to a seedy bed and breakfast in London’s East End, with a mixed black and white group of benefit-dependent inhabitants.108 Interestingly, this production was the first full scale acculturation of this play so far found on the British stage. In 2007, Phil Willmott may have taken his cue from this beginning. Substantial changes were made to Gorky’s play: for example, in the published text Willmott acknowledges his introduction of ‘bad language’, and gives permission for it to be ‘softened’ if required.109 The play also appears to be conflated with Gorky’s story ‘Creatures that Once were Men’.110 The production of this version in 2007 drew comments about the disjuncture between a very modern script and the evident cultural difference of the setting: ‘any whiff of realism is entirely, disastrously absent from this stage. Blaring mockney accents jar horribly with endless bottles of vodka’.111 This critic also commented on the ‘large and shouty’ style of playing, incongruous with the Finborough’s small stage.

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From comments by the critics, the production seemed to hover both culturally and historically between its Russian origins and finding a place in modern Britain. Despite its closeness to contemporary British street vernacular, another critic wrote that the set ‘is a far cry from the plastic chairs and fluorescent lights of a modern dosshouse’.112 The 2015 Edinburgh production took place in a building known to have been used by the homeless. In the brief mention in The Herald, the critic remarked that while the company took ‘full advantage’ of the ‘decrepit interior’ the production ‘suffered from not being big enough’ despite the ‘evocative’ and ‘rough-hewn’ character of the production.113 The implied playing style of The Lower Depths is open to being both ‘too big’ and ‘too small’ in these two productions. Certainly both productions attempted to grasp at and mould the electrifying naturalism of the 1902 original whether through language or setting. The Rotterdam Theatre’s 1999 version in Dutch deserves a mention. This production reinvented Gorky in Dutch reflecting a modern Russia finding herself anew in religion and capitalism. The dramatic increase in Russian poverty and vagrancy has not escaped even the British press, and many know that the Russian for the Big Issue, Na dne (literally, At or On the Bottom), is borrowed from the Russian title of The Lower Depths, Na dne. The reviewers remarked on the ‘stripped back’ nature of the Dutch adaptation,114 that its effects were ruthlessly harrowing and its characters ‘brutalised’.115 The ending was emotive, bringing forth a semi-religious response: ‘a stage flooded with flickering candles, like lost souls demanding to be found’.116 As well as being culturally very different from the two most recent modern productions in Britain, this version was not acculturated to British needs (it was performed in Dutch by a Dutch company). With hindsight it seems to be infused with the powerfully affecting character of collision. The audience knew they were watching a play from another historic period, another culture, and performed by a third. The performance was emotive, retrospective and the production was responding to the contemporary prominent rise of the Orthodox religion in Russia. But perhaps the most intriguing comment relates to the powerful sense of communication between stage and audience, created by a cast from this third, but close culture: ‘it’s as if the little language difference between English and Dutch finally dissolves in the air between us’.117 The RSC production of Barbarians118 by David Jones in 1990, reinforced the National Theatre’s Summerfolk in 1999, signalled changes in

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the treatment of Gorky’s plays. They are worth mentioning in connection with our exploration of the dominance of Chekhov in British theatre. Changes came to the cultural approach to Gorky. A glance at the theatre programmes confirms that a new lyricism was found in Gorky to match, but also counter, the ever-rising popularity of Chekhov. The 1990 production was Jones’ first attempt at one of Gorky’s so-called ‘intelligentsia’ plays. Gorky’s newly found grotesque was framed by references to the halcyon pre-revolutionary and pre-war era for the educated, professional and entrepreneurial classes (Fig. 5.2). Just under a decade later, the celebrated National Theatre production of Summerfolk119 presented a sub-Chekhovian Gorky120 full of humour as well as an unexpectedly strong resonance with contemporary Russia and her emerging capitalist class of the so-called ‘new’ Russians. It coincided with a return to the characteristics of repertory theatre: Trevor Nunn directed it with the same ensemble in tandem with Troilus and Cressida, a musical version of Voltaire’s Candide, and Bulwer-Lytton’s Money. Summerfolk, a large cast play (as many of Gorky’s plays are), provided unusual multiple opportunities for company work. My suspicion is that the sub-Chekhovian treatment by Nunn also made Gorky’s plays somehow more respectable, and disentangled his work from the left-wing reputation, accorded them since the 1970s RSC productions. Meanwhile, Gorky’s exploration of the female psyche in the play Vassa Zheleznova was given three productions in 1986 (Radio 3), 1990, and 1999.121 The programme for the Almeida 1999 version, though, returned to the revolutionary Gorky: it was a strident composition in black, white and red, with the odd touch of blue, perhaps capturing both the grotesque and the revolutionary. Simply comparing the covers of the various programmes shows how much of a change had taken place. Hard edged revolutionary red, white and black has generally given way to the lyrical and pastoral. There are pictures of deprived and famine struck peasants inside the NT programme for Summerfolk, for example, but they are buried in the generally nostalgic photographs and historical materials which fill the other pages. Interestingly and significantly, where Gorky has been relatively alive and well in British theatre is in at least two of our leading drama schools: the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (for example, eleven productions of Gorky plays in total from 1970 to 1995 among which were five Lower Depths)122 and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (four productions of Gorky’s plays in the new century, but not of Lower Depths).123

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Fig. 5.2  Programme for Gorky’s Summerfolk, NT, 1999

He seems to be regarded as a feisty antidote to the overly familiar charms of Chekhov. In this way, Gorky’s influence is a continuing one and in a place, perhaps, where it still matters most. His presence in drama schools places him firmly in the classical repertoire. Are we in fact seeing a new stage in performance of Gorky in English: the creation of the Gorky canon? His lesser known plays have begun to appear in English: the British director, Katie Mitchell directed the première of The Last Ones in Dublin in 1993124; and in the wake of Nunn’s 1999 success in London with a different treatment of

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Gorky, 2003 saw a well reviewed production at Salisbury Playhouse of Barbarians,125 not seen since David Jones’ production in 1990. New translations into English continue to appear, though conspicuously not of The Lower Depths. As noted above, however, there has been a new adaptation (Phil Willmott). The Jeremy Brooks and Kitty Hunter Blair team have been responsible for the most widely available translations, dating from the 70s RSC phase. But these translations are beginning to show their age. They have been joined in 2000 by a new version of Children of the Sun by Stephen Mulrine, the most prolific of translators of plays from Russian,126 and by Cathy Porter’s welcome translations of five of Gorky’s later plays in 2003.127 In addition, the process has begun whereby well-known dramatists produce their ‘versions’ of Gorky, usually from commissioned translations: (Nick Dear, Summerfolk [1999]128 and Andrew Upton’s Children of the Sun [2013]).129 However much some may see this as a parasitic practice, it nonetheless brings attention to dramatists in danger of dying on the back of outdated translations and pulls in new audiences. So the value of new translations into contemporary English is immense. There are still plays Britain has not seen, mostly from Gorky’s least studied middle period, characterised by his dialogue with religion, with Dostoevsky and his exploration of melodrama as his medium. These plays include The Eccentrics (1910), Counterfeit Coin (1912 [no published translation into English yet located]) and The Old Man (1915). In order to identify a particular impact of Gorky productions, I would like to return for a moment to the model mentioned in Section 2, Patrice Pavis’s hourglass.130 The multilayering in both bowls of the hourglass shows the multiplicity of considerations and the number of practitioners involved. Pavis repeatedly uses the metaphor ‘to flow’ in relation to the sand (standing for the ‘text’) making the transition passing between the two bowls of the hourglass. You may also recall the image, earlier in this section, of the translation as viewing a tapestry from the back.131 In its wake I should like also to emphasise the notion of reversal or distortion. These notions are at odds with the fluidity of Pavis’s model and represent a disruption of his ‘mirror imaging’. There is, as we have suggested, upheaval and distension, slippage and appropriation to the host culture’s concerns. Pavis also refers to ‘filters’ operating in this process. This examination of Gorky’s plays in Britain has led me to identify the following filters, though perhaps ‘shapers’ or ‘control factors’ might be better terms. They are useful points to be aware of when viewing translated plays.

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The first of these we have noted concerns the perception of the ‘foreignness’ of the text: how closely is the translation seen to be tied to the source culture, or how much has it been appropriated to ours. In other words are we looking at an example of collision, hybridisation or acculturation? Secondly, as we argued earlier in this section, account should be taken of the Chekhov factor, which works in different and non-complementary ways, either as the preferred view of Russia or, when attraction to Chekhov sours, as a stimulus to seek other views. Thirdly, there is pursuit of contemporary relevance which initially encourages hybridisation but more often acculturation. And fourthly, there is the influence of political and social events on a national and international scale, which stimulates different interpretations. All the while, we should also remember the ephemeral nature of cultural transfer: impact may only be coexistent with an individual production and then may linger, or not, in the memory of the ordinary spectator. And yet how strong are those reactions when the performance does not live up to the cultural expectations of those engaged in the study and transmission of other cultures. It is important to recall Pavis’s point, mentioned in Section 2, that not only language, but the received gestural traditions are embodied in the text (this is what he terms the notion of the ‘language body’).132 This concept, I suspect, is what underlies those remarks about the inadequacy of the Anglo-Saxon Gorky, and the objection to the lack of emotional (Russian) sweep which were referred to above. Gorky gave British audiences a new ‘language body’, distant from the Edwardian refinement associated with Chekhov. The importance of this new physicality was to become even clearer in the later socialist realist plays which adopted new relationships between stage and audience, specifically visible in their politically conscious gestural playing. It is highly desirable that Russian dramatists other than Chekhov should populate the British stage. If Chekhov continues to dominate our view of Russian theatre in performance, the result will be to distance us further from Russian theatre as a whole and to lose that vitality which the immigration of other cultures brings. I would argue that Gorky has a crucially important role in understanding this vitality as far as Russian theatre is concerned. He represents another side of the Russian theatre, almost exactly contemporary with Chekhov and yet politically and culturally utterly different. A reviewer of Barbarians in Salisbury in 2003, commented:

152  C. MARSH [this] revival gives us a thrilling opportunity to see a major writer’s view of Tsarist Russia that isn’t part of the familiar composite world in which shoot Uncle Vanya’s three sisters seagulls in the orchard.133

In Britain at least, Gorky has brought into question that ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’. Before proceeding to analysis of modern Russian plays, I should like to highlight an irony. Gorky’s growing acceptance in Britain was matched by his growing dismissal in Russia. In the USSR, he became the all-time classic socialist realist writer, though most of his prose and drama were produced before Socialist Realism was formulated.134 As adherence to this cultural and political approach palled in Russia, so did interest in Gorky. A similar attitude prevails in the British staging of twentieth century Russian plays, as political fashions change so interest is lost, as will be shown in the next section on the modern period.

Notes













1. Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). Chekhov’s passage from sketch writer, as a student desperate to earn money to support his family and his studies in medicine, to Russia’s most famous dramatist is a story of extraordinary persistence against early poverty and continuing illness. His mature works came in the last decade of his short life The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1896), Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904). There are several shorter pieces (The Bear [1888], The Proposal [1889], The Anniversary [1891, not performed until 1900] and The Wedding [1900] are the best known) from earlier times as well as his first success Ivanov (1887). Parallel to this success in drama ran his short stories ranging in length from a couple of pages to works which are close to novels. 2. Miles, Chekhov on the British Stage (1993); Senelick, The Chekhov Theatre (1997). 3. Sam Marlowe, Times, 30 April 2007. 4. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 2 February 2011 (TR, 1–28 January 2011, p. 62). 5. Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 26 January 2011 (ibid., p. 61); Paul Taylor, Independent (ibid., p. 62); and Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard (ibid., p. 61). 6. Gardner, Guardian (ibid., p 62). 7. Taylor, Independent (ibid., p. 62). 8. Spencer, Daily Telegraph (ibid., p. 62).

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9. Michael Pickering, Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) provides a helpful study of this complex area which covers a number of disciplines. 10. For more about the samovar: see Marsh, ‘Three Sisters as a Case Study for “Making Foreign Theater or Making Theater Foreign”’, in Chekhov for the Twenty First Century, ed. by Carol Appollonio and Angela Brintlinger (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2012), pp. 269–281. And for maps see Marsh, ‘Vania’s Map’, in When the Elephant Broke Out of the Zoo: A Festschrift for Donald Rayfield, ed. by Andreas Schönle, Olga Makarova, and Jeremy Hicks (Stanford: Stanford Slavic Studies, 2012), pp. 72–86. 11. Simov’s design is included, for example, in I. I. Nekhoroshev, Dekorator Khudozhestvennogo teatra Viktor Andreevich Simov (Moskva: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1984), p. 63. 12. For example, Michael Frayn’s translation and adaptation of Chekhov’s untitled manuscript play Bezottsovshchina (literally, ‘Having No Father’; and also known as Platonov) as Wild Honey (1984) garnered remarks in reviews such as the possibility that Chekhov might have been ‘a master farceur executing pratfalls with knives and revolvers instead of banana skins’ (Irving Wardle, Times, 20 July 1984) when it was staged at the National Theatre with Ian McKellen in the lead role. 13.  For discussion of these writers, see Marsh, ‘Realism in the Russian Theatre, 1850–1882’, A History of Russian Theatre, pp. 146–165. 14.  Mikhail Saltykov-Schedrin (1826–1889) wrote under the pseudonym N. Saltykov, which was then added to his original surname, Schedrin. Best known as a novelist, he wrote a number of dramatic sketches and some plays, of which Pazukhin’s Death (1857) brought posthumous fame and a reputation in Soviet theatre. Most of his plays were banned from performance in his lifetime, because of their outspoken attacks on provincial bureaucracy and gentry. His novel The Golovyev Family (1862) was adapted for the Russian stage as Iudushka (Little Judas, 1880). A new translation/adaptation for the stage has emerged as The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, by Tom Kilroy, inspired by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin (London: Methuen Drama, 2009), with Patrick ­ Miles as translator and consultant. It was staged at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in June 2009. 15.  Aleksandr Sukhovo-Kobylin (1817–1903) is known for a trilogy of plays about the urban bureaucracy which had a chequered career with the Imperial Russian censorship and were then rescued from oblivion in 1920s: Krechinsky’s Wedding (1854); The Case (1861); and Tarelkin’s Death (1867). For translations, see The Trilogy of Alexander SukhovoKobylin, trans. and introduction by Harold. B. Segel (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1969).

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16. Aleksei Pisemskii (1821–1881), author of 15 plays, is best known for A Bitter Fate (1859) written on the eve of the Emancipation (1861). First performed in 1863, as well as being a dark story of peasant life, it is a study of the social relations between gentry and serfs. 17.  Aleksei Potekhin (1829–1908) had a long theatrical career as dramatist, literary adviser, particularly at the Aleksandriiskii Theatre in St. Petersburg. His The People’s Judgement Not God’s (1854) was the first of a series of plays in a naturalist spirit about peasant life. He was a contemporary of Ostrovsky and similarly prolific. 18.  A[leksei] K[onstantinovich] Tolstoi, (1817–1875) is best known for his historical trilogy Death of Ivan the Terrible (1864), Tsar Fedor Ioannovich (1868); Tsar Boris (1870). In 1898 MAT famously opened with the second of these, never fully performed before due to censorship problems. See Cynthia Marsh, ‘Realism in the Russian Theatre 1850– 1882’, in A History of Russian Theatre, ed. by Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky with Andy Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 146–165 (pp. 155–157). 19. For example, Vladislav Ozerov, Dmitrii Donskoi (1807) took Russians back to their 14th c. victory over the Mongols, closing 240 years of occupation. 20. Marsh, ‘Gorky and Chekhov: A Dialogue of Text and Performance’, Slavonic and East European Review, 77, 4 (1999), 1–19. 21. Maxim Gorky (1866–1936) was a well known writer of short stories and novels by the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries and already becoming an international figure on a par with Tolstoy and Chekhov. His early life captured in his autobiography written before WW1, was harsh; he often went hungry, sought work anywhere and wandered Russia. He was involved with radical groups and quickly became an object of police suspicion. His connection with MAT began in 1901 with Philistines, and then Lower Depths (1902). He was often under police surveillance and was imprisoned in 1905. He went into exile in 1906, visiting America and Italy. He and his writing, translated into many languages, attracted the attention of many politically disaffected Russians of the period as well as political radicals in Europe and America. He returned to Russia under the 1913 amnesty (granted to celebrate 300 years of the Romanov dynasty). Disagreements with Lenin, before WW1 over religion and after the 1917 Revolution over politics, led to a period of exile in Central Europe and then Italy in the 1920s. He was enticed back to Russia by Stalin and was designated the ‘father’ of the official Party aesthetic and political theory of Socialist Realism. His writings became central to the new Soviet cultural policy, and the literature and theatre that grew from it.

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22. Cynthia Marsh, Maxim Gorky: Russian Dramatist (Berne and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006); File on Gorky (London: Methuen, 1993). 23.  The Seagull, translated and directed by George Calderon, Glasgow Repertory Theatre, November 1909, see Miles, Chekhov on the British Stage, 1909–1987 (1987), p. 1. Peter Hellyer (British Library) located a likely first production of Chekhov in Russian (1903) for an exhibition at the Library in 2004. The British Library holds a handwritten playscript in Russian for The Proposal (1903) [BL: LCP 1903/15]. Permission was granted for performance according to the Lord Chamberlain’s lists for that year. 24. A very useful database of radio plays has recently come to light. It has 28,000 entries between 1941 and 2015. It is difficult to search as it is categorised according to date and title and not writer. Plays were broadcast in series such as ‘Afternoon Theatre’ and ‘The Monday Play’. So far, I have found seven productions of plays by Gorky, including three Lower Depths, 1973 (2) and 1997. The second of the two in 1973 looks like a repeat as the first was in ‘The Monday Play’, and the second in ‘Afternoon Theatre’ and they are only 6 days apart. See “Radio Plays Date Finder”: www.suttonelms.org.uk (accessed October 2016). 25. Saturday Review, 5 December 1903, republished in Max Beerbohm, Around Theatres (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1953), pp. 302–305. 26.  Times, 17 February 1906, p. 16, quoted in Marsh, File on Gorky (1993), p. 23. 27.  Times, 4 December 1911, p. 6, quoted in Marsh (ibid.). 28.  See programme for the RSC production of Enemies in 1971 (RSC archive, Stratford-upon-Avon). 29. Beerbohm (1953), pp. 303–304. 30. Garrick Theatre, 13 April 1928. Part of tour. 31.  Times, 14 April 1928, p. 8, quoted in Marsh (1993), p. 25. 32. Review in Nation, 3 June 1911, quoted in Stephen le Fleming ‘Coping with the Outlandish: The English Response to Chekhov’s Plays’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Miles (1993), p. 56. 33. Gerard Fay, Guardian, 10 May 1962 (LTM, production file, press cutting). 34.  Egor Bulychev, Otherwise Club, Barn Theatre, Shere, Surrey, 17 August, 1937. There had also been a production of Philistines, as The Bessemenovs, by the Mermaid Society at Terry’s Theatre, London, 23 April 1906 (LTM, production file). 35. ‘Glasgow Unity Theatre: “The Lower Depths”, Glasgow Herald (STA AS 1/4, press cutting). 36. JT, ‘Native Gusto from Unity in Gorki Play’ (STA, ibid.). 37. ‘Scotland in Russia’ (STA ibid.).

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38. Claire Warden points out that it was with this production that ‘Unity’s promotion of distinctly Scottish linguistic structures began […] in a Russian play.’ Warden, Migrating Modernist performance, p. 118. 39.  The Lower Depths, Tavistock Repertory Company, at Canonbury Tower, 24 October 1958; a Radio production for ‘Sunday Night Theatre’, 16 November 1958 (LTM, press cutting). 40. Comment inside the theatre programme (LTM, production file). 41. The Lower Depths, Unity Theatre, London, 9 February 1961 (LTM, press cutting). 42. The effect of the optimistic MAT staging was, noted by one critic, clearly nostalgic for the old British unprovocative Chekhov ‘the old pattern of playing […] treated Chekhov as an objective artist for whom life is just life – infinitely complicated, funny pathetic, matter for bewilderment, for tears laughter and sighs, but not for intellectual, still less for political judgements’, ‘The Cherry Orchard’, Times, 15 December 1961, quoted in Miles (1987) p. 34. 43. MC, ‘The Lower Depths’, Catholic Herald, 18 May 1962 (LTM, production file, press cutting). 44. See Marsh, ‘Chekhov Re-Viewed…’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Miles (1993), pp. 113–125. 45. The seven plays by Gorky staged by RSC were Enemies (1906) 1971; The Lower Depths (1902) 1972; Summerfolk (1904) 1974; The Zykovs (1912–1913) 1976; Children of the Sun (1905) 1979; Philistines (1901), 1986; and Barbarians (1905) 1990. 46. Illustrated London News, 26 May 1962 (RSC archive, production file, press cutting). 47. ‘In Moscow’s Lower Depths’, Glasgow Herald, 12 May 1962 (ibid.). 48. Robin Chapman, Time and Tide, 17 May 1962 (ibid.). 49. Eric Gillett, ‘Gorki Play Beats the Kitchen Sink’, Yorkshire Post, Leeds, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 50. Felix Barker, Evening News, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 51. ‘The Eternal Deep Depression’, Stratford-Upon-Avon Herald, 18 May 1962 (ibid.). 52.  T. C. Worsley, ‘The Lower Depths’, Financial Times, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). Luka was wandering tramp given to philosophising and helping others whenever possible, whether or not requested. 53. Kenneth Tynan, Observer Weekend Review, 13 May 1962 (ibid.). 54. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 55. Worsley, Financial Times, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 56. W. H. W., ‘Humour Breaks Through Even in a Russian Doss House’, Birmingham Mail, 10 May 1962 (ibid.); Roger Gellert, ‘Encircling Gloom’, New Statesman, 18 May 1962 (ibid.).

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57. Robert Muller, ‘Lawson Makes Gorki Live’, Daily Mail, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 58. ‘In Moscow’s Lower Depths’, Glasgow Herald, 12 May 1962 (ibid.). 59. Shulman, Evening Standard. 60. Barker, Evening News. 61. Gellert, New Statesman. 62. Chapman, Time and Tide. 63.  Jewish Chronicle, 18 May 1962 (RSC archive, production file, press cutting). 64. Shulman, Evening Standard. 65. Irving F. Lycett, letter to the editor of Financial Times, 18 May 1962 (ibid.). 66. Worsley, Financial Times. 67.  Tribune, 18 May 1962 (ibid.). 68. Worsley, Financial Times. 69. Chapman, Time and Tide. 70. Moura Budberg (1891–1974) was born into the well-heeled Zakrevsky family. Her father was a diplomat. Her first marriage in 1911 was to Count Benckendorff (died 1918). She then had brief liaisons with Bruce Lockhart, and H. G. Wells, before joining Maxim Gorky’s translating and publishing project (Vsemirnaia literatura [International literature]). She became his common-law wife, living with him in Italy until his final return to Russia in 1932. She remained in Europe only returning to Russia for Gorky’s funeral in 1936. A subsequent ­ short-lived marriage to Baron Budberg accounts for her final surname. She is known for her translations and adaptations of Russian plays, and became a prominent figure in the Russian emigrė community. She was thought to be a double agent, working for the British and Soviet intelligence services in the 1920s and early 30s. 71.  Glasgow Herald, 12 May 1962 (RSC archive, production file, press cutting). 72. Chapman, Time and Tide. 73.  City Press, London, 18 May 1962 (ibid.). 74. W. H. W., Birmingham Mail, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 75. Worsley, Financial Times, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 76. Muller, Daily Mail, 10 May 1962 (ibid.). 77. Worsley, Financial Times. 78. Tynan, Observer Weekend Review, 13 May 1962 (ibid.). 79. Ibid. 80. Muller, Daily Mail. 81. Barker, Evening News. 82. R. B. M., Stage and Television Today, 17 May 1962 (ibid.).

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83. Tynan, Observer Weekend Review. 84. E. Vickery, ‘The Original “Dust-Bin” Drama’, The New Daily, 14 May 1962 (ibid.). 85. W. H. W., Birmingham Mail. 86. Chapman, Time and Tide. 87. Irving Wardle, Times, 30 June 1972 (RSC archive, production file, press cutting). This example of an ‘exotic’ addition, is more distanced, not a stereotype, as in the case of the samovar, for the British. 88. Simon Trussler, Tribune, 14 May 1972 (ibid.). 89. Jason Hillgate, What’s On in London, 6 July 1972 (ibid.). 90. John Mortimer, Observer, 2 July 1972 (ibid.). 91. Gary O’Connor, Financial Times, 30 June 1972 (ibid.). 92. David Gow, Scotsman, 1 July 1972 (ibid.). 93. Trussler, Tribune, 14 May 1972 (ibid.). 94. John Crosby, Plays and Players, August 1972 (Shakespeare Centre Library, Stratford-upon-Avon, press cutting). 95. Calum Johnston, City Press, 13 July 1972 (RSC archive, production file, press cutting). 96. Gary O’Connor, Financial Times, 30 June 1972 (ibid.). 97. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 30 June 1972 (ibid.). 98. Tully Potter, Southend Evening Echo, 4 July 1972 (ibid.). 99.  Martin Esslin, ‘Plumbing the Lower Depths’, Theatre Quarterly, 3 (1973), pp. 6–11. 100. See n. 24: Radio Plays Date Finder. 101. Esslin, Theatre Quarterly, p. 11. 102. David Jones, ‘Directing Gorky: “Enemies” and “Lower Depths” at the Aldwych’, ibid., pp. 12–24. 103. See Marsh, ‘Whose Text Is It Anyway? On Translating and Directing Gorky’s Egor Bulychev’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice (2004), pp. 137–149, where ‘ownership’ of a foreign text in performance is the main theme. 104. As well as directing Enemies (1971) and The Lower Depths (1972), David Jones went on to direct for the RSC Gorky’s Summerfolk (1974), The Zykovs (1976), and Barbarians (1990). Children of the Sun (1979) was directed by Terry Hands, and Philistines (1986) was directed by John Caird. 105.  The Lower Depths: Royal Exchange Manchester, 15 November 1979 (dir: Braham Murray); Birmingham Repertory Studio and Tour, 6 February, 1986 (dir: Roland Rees); and RO Theatre, Rotterdam, 24–27 August, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Festival (dir: Alize Zandwijk), 1999. 106. Irving Wardle, ‘Problems of Form or Content’, Times, 16 November 1979.

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107. Steve Grant, Observer, 25 November 1979. 108. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 16 April 1986. 109. Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths, adapted for performance by Phil Willmott (London: Oberon Books, 2009). No translator is acknowledged. 110. Sam Marlowe, Times, 23 May 2007 (TR, 7–20 May 2007, p. 558) (In TR, p. 558, unfortunately the Times review by Sam Marlowe and the Time Out review by Lucy Powell [see next note] have been substituted one for the other. They are correctly attributed here). 111. Lucy Powell, Time Out, 23 May 2007 (ibid., p. 588). 112. Susan Irvine, Sunday Telegraph, 25 May 2007 (ibid., p. 558). 113. Neil Cooper, ‘The Hidden Door Festival’, Herald, 25 May 2015 (TR, 21 May–3 June 2015, p. 554). 114. Mark Fisher, Herald, 26 August 1999 (TR, 13 August–9 September 1999, p. 1144). 115. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 26 August 1999 (ibid.). 116. Fisher, Herald. 117. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman. 118. RSC at the Barbican, London, 19 July 1990. 119. National Theatre Company, Olivier Theatre, 3 September 1999. 120. This new spirit was caught in the programme cover: an arcadian photograph of two Russians, the writer Leonid Andreyev and his wife Anna, among meadow grasses from a photograph by Andreyev. See Leonid Andreyev: Photographs by a Russian Writer, ed. and intro. by Richard Davies, with a foreword by Olga Andreyev Carlisle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), p. 67, plate 33. The programme itself is in the NT archive (see production file). 121. These were respectively: BBC Radio 3 Russian Season, 11 November 1986 (dir: Matthew Walters); The Gate, 16 November 1990 (dir: Katie Mitchell); and Almeida at the Albery Theatre, 14 January 1990 (dir: Howard Davies). 122. Data gathered by Dorothy Barlow with help from the RADA library. The eleven RADA productions between 1970 and 1995 were Lower Depths (1970, 1974, 1975, 1986, 1989); Summerfolk (1977, 1981); Philistines (1977, 1982); Barbarians (1979); and Vassa Zheleznova (1995). 123.  Peter McAllister of the Central School of Speech and Drama kindly reported (2016) that since 2000 there have been 4 public productions of Gorky’s plays (Summerfolk, 2003; Vassa Zheleznova, 2004; Barbarians, 2006; and Enemies [MA in Classical Acting]) as well as 9 studio projects based on Gorky’s plays with first year students. He has also seen at least three productions at RADA and LAMDA, including

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The Lower Depths. It is difficult to get at these statistics or indeed the productions as they are rarely publicly reviewed. It is significant, however, to be able to point to their existence. It shows that drama students are still exposed to Gorky’s plays as part of their training. 124.  The Last Ones, The Peacock Theatre, Dublin, 3 March 1993 (dir: Katie Mitchell). 125.  The Barbarians, Salisbury playhouse, 9 May 2003 (dir: Joanna Reid). 126.  Children of the Sun, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000). 127.  Gorky Plays: 2 (The Last Ones, Vassa Zheleznova, The Zykovs, Egor Bulychev), trans. by Cathy Porter (London: Methuen, 2003). 128.  Summerfolk, version by Nick Dear from a literal translation by Vera Liber (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). 129.  Children of the Sun, in a version by Andrew Upton from a literal version by Clare Barrett (London: Faber and Faber, 2013). This version was performed at the National Theatre, London, 2013. 130. Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (1992), p. 4. 131. See n. 86 (and n. 48): Chapman, Time and Tide. 132. Pavis (1992), pp. 147–150. 133. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 16 May 2003, p. 25. 134. In fact, one play Vassa Zheleznova (1910) was rewritten by Gorky in 1935 to make it conform with the new demands imposed by Socialist Realism (instituted 1934).

Bibliography Chekhov, Anton, Wild Honey, trans. by Michael Frayn (London: Methuen, 1984) [aka Bezottsovschina; Platonov]. Coelsch-Foisner, Sabine, and Klein Holger, eds., Drama Translation and Theatre Practice (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004). Davies, Richard, ed., Leonid Andreyev: Photographs by a Russian Writer, with a foreword by Olga Andreyev Carlisle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989). Gorky, Maxim, Gorky: Five Plays, trans. by Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks (London and New York: Methuen, 1988). Contains: The Lower Depths, Summerfolk, Children of the Sun, Barbarians, Enemies. ———, Summerfolk, adapt. by Nick Dear, trans. by Vera Liber (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). ———, Children of the Sun, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000). ———, Gorky Plays: 2, trans. by Cathy Porter (London and Methuen, 2003). Contains The Last Ones, Vassa Zheleznova, The Zykovs, Egor Bulychev.

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———, The Lower Depths, adapt. by Phil Willmott [no translator cited] (London: Oberon Books, 2009). ———, Children of the Sun, adapt. by Andrew Upton, trans. by Clare Barrett (London: Faber and Faber, 2013). le Fleming, Stephen, ‘Coping with the Outlandish; The English Response to Chekhov’s Plays’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 54–64. Marsh, Cynthia (compiler), File on Gorky (London and Methuen, 1993). ———, ‘Gorky and Chekhov: A Dialogue of Text and Performance’, Slavonic and East European Review, 77, 4 (1999), 1–19. ———, ‘Realism in the Russian Theatre 1850–1882’, in A History of Russian Theatre, ed. by Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky with Andy Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 146–165. ———, ‘Whose Text Is It Anyway? On Translating and Directing Gorky’s Egor Bulychev’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 137–439. ———, Maxim Gorky: Russian Dramatist (Berne and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006). ———, ‘Three Sisters as a Case Study for “Making Foreign Theater or Making Theater Foreign”’, in Chekhov for the Twenty First Century, ed. by Carol Appollonio and Angela Brintlinger (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2012), pp. 269–281. ———, ‘Vania’s Map’, in When the Elephant Broke Out of the Zoo: A Festschrift for Donald Rayfield, ed. by Andreas Schönle, Olga Makarova, and Jeremy Hicks (Stanford: Stanford Slavic Studies, 2012), pp. 72–86. Miles, Patrick, ed. and trans., Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Nekhoroshev, I. I., Dekorator Khudozhestvennogo teatra Viktor Andreevich Simov (Moskva: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1984). Pavis, Patrice, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (London: Routledge, 1992). Pickering, Michael, Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). ‘Radio Plays Date Finder’. www.suttonelms.org.uk. Salktykov-Schedrin, Mikhail, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, adapt. by Tom Murphy, trans. by Patrick Miles (London: Methuen Drama, 2009). Senelick, Laurence, The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of Plays in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Sukhovo-Kobylin, Alexander, The Trilogy of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin, trans. and intro. by Harold B. Segel (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1969). Warden, Claire, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels Through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

SECTION 6

Confronting Modern Russias: Twentieth- to Twenty-First-Century Russian Theatre in Britain

The context for a ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ in the modern repertoire is very different. Much of the repertoire was new and untried on the British stage. Where we might have looked back with a benign interest to the mid-nineteenth-century Crimean War and its defining effect on British–Russian relations, in the modern period perceptions of the new theatre were inevitably affected in situ by the USSR’s position in contemporary world politics and her domestic stance. The twentieth century was a rollercoaster of political about-turns in Russia, which made any kind of reciprocal interests between British and Soviet Russian theatre almost impossible. The comparative economic prosperity of Russia at the turn of the century was undermined by WW1 and the 1917 revolution. As culture reeled, Russia was then subjected to a fierce civil war in the aftermath of the revolution. The mid-1920s brought comparative freedom as Russia loosened her economic policies in order to regain her equilibrium. She was then to face the draconian centralisation and control policies for a decade of oppression in 1930s. WW2 engaged the Russian people in what they were taught to regard as patriotic sacrifice, but the war actually brought a breath of fresh air to Russian culture. The immediate post-war years, however, returned restriction and persecution as Andrei Zhdanov1 implemented the oppressive literary politics reinstated by Stalin from 1946 on. Stalin died in 1953. The glimpses of freedom offered by the brief thaws of the mid-50s and early 60s soon gave way to the heavy-handed stagnant policies of the Brezhnev era. Internationally, the public © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_6

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posturing on both sides, the so-called East and West, in the decades of the Cold War, enabled just a few points of contact to be made, though they were fiercely criticised from both sides. The West grew accustomed to the dissident movement as many cultural refugees escaped abroad; others ended in the gulag which itself to Western eyes summed up the Soviet Union both politically and culturally. The cataclysmic last two decades of the twentieth-century ushered in by the policies of glasnost witnessed change on an unprecedented scale. The political and economic changes which redrew the map for Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia could hardly have been anticipated. Russian culture in that period was freed up yet again, but at the same time had to find its own economic salvation after years of state subsidy which had been the sweetener of policies of control. Russian theatre companies, in particular, had to restructure and change their repertoire in bids to save their skins. Most significantly, their greatest directors and companies began to travel abroad, generally astounding audiences and reviewers with the technical and performance aspects of their offerings as much as their sheer originality. These two decades also saw a return to the past in an attempt to bridge the 70 years of Soviet power and regain the cultural roots near destroyed after the 1917 revolution. The economic chaos of the first post-glasnost decade (1986–1996) returned many to a level of poverty not experienced since the beginning of the twentieth century. The plays written by its youngest generation at the beginning of the twenty-first century have indicated perhaps that Russia truly had plunged back into another ‘lower depths’. This section on modern Russian theatre in Britain differs in format from preceding topics. We will first examine the rankings from the database for productions of Soviet and more recent plays in our designated period. Then follows a brief account of visiting Russian theatre which treads such an influential path from 1945 to 2015. The reception of writers who have formed the modern canon is then traced in the order of their performance here. The dramatists and their plays are far less ­well-known than the classical canon. There are one or two productions of each play at the most. Furthermore, they are being performed alongside that strong pre-revolutionary canon and are often therefore less visible. As a result, reactions tend to be fewer and more perfunctory, and individually less informative. Analysis of the figures for the modern writers in our survey throws up some interesting results. Leaving aside Chekhov’s late plays (Three

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Sisters [1901]; The Cherry Orchard [1904]), Gorky leads the field, while second place goes to Arbuzov,2 a writer from a very different period and tradition. Since 1945, there have been 36 productions of Gorky’s plays and 23 productions of Arbuzov’s work. These figures represent two broadly similar profiles. There have been 11 (plus 3 foreign) productions of Gorky’s Lower Depths, and a dozen or so more of his other plays. The 23 for Arbuzov are composed of sixteen productions of The Promise (Moi bednyi Marat [My Poor Marat] 1964), and half a dozen or so of three other plays. The main difference between these two writers is one of period. The plays by Gorky produced after 1945 in Britain have mainly been from his pre-revolutionary period, while those by Arbuzov come from the post-WW2 period itself. In Russia, Gorky’s early plays are regarded as setting the stage for Socialist Realism that was to come in the Stalinist 1930s, while Arbuzov edged away from Stalinist inspired controls. He subtly but consistently stretched the limits imposed by the politics of Socialist Realism, while remaining a popular and respected dramatist. From the pre-revolutionary period only Leonid Andreev,3 apart from Gorky and the ubiquitous Chekhov, shows more than a single production, and only Bulgakov4 and Mayakovsky,5 and latterly Erdman6 from the pre-WW2 period have reached British audiences with any success. Second to Arbuzov, but a long way behind, in the post-war period is Vampilov,7 with six productions to his credit of just two plays.8 In the first decade of the new century young writers from post-Soviet Russia have been promoted in Britain, and may eventually outrun their popular forebears.

Visiting Russian Companies 1945–2015 Fundamental influences on the viewing of Soviet theatre have been the visits made by Russian companies bringing their choice of contemporary plays and adapted novels. Sometimes these companies came individually sponsored; sometimes they were invited to participate in festivals of foreign language theatre whose contribution to our knowledge is seminal. Equally, the input from visiting theatre directors has been crucial. They came first as fugitives from an oppressive regime, and then as honoured guests to show their craft. At the end of the century and beyond they came as escapees from degenerating economic conditions in Russia, with the aim of acquiring foreign currency to support the faltering finances of

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their companies at home. Latterly some companies have enjoyed wealthy sponsorship, supported by the Russian expatriate community mostly in London. The significance of visiting companies has been as important to the modern repertoire as to the classical. Visits by MAT between 1958 and 1970 were the first of these. As well as their Chekhov offerings, they unveiled productions of contemporary plays by Rakhmanov9 and Pogodin10 to an almost disbelieving British public. It was only their gilt-edged production and performance standards which brought any warmth from the British critics. Rakhmanov’s Troubled Past (MAT, Aldwych, 1958) encouraged references to ‘dullness […] propaganda’11 and reluctant but polite acknowledgement that a ‘Soviet play should have its place’.12 Less polite were remarks which openly indicated the lack of dramatic qualities of the piece: even the propaganda had no argument and failed to challenge; and the ‘obviousness of its construction deprives the play of any validity which it might have had as an historical record’.13 In 1964 MAT brought Pogodin’s Kremlin Chimes. The comment this time was far more outspoken: a ‘weighty piece of didactic naturalism’ in which ‘the only dramatic conflict consisted in correcting ideological errors’14; ‘social [sic] realism at its nadir’ and the play showed ‘how ghastly the Russian stage became during the Stalin regime’.15 It was dubbed as ‘hagiolatry’ (the play involves an impersonation of Lenin, achieved with photographic precision).16 Then in 1970 MAT brought Pogodin’s Lenin, the Third Pathétique, the final play of his trilogy about Lenin, and was roundly condemned as ‘the most old fashioned and fossilised of bureaucratic institutions’17 and the play was a ‘party piece’ as Michael Billington cryptically noted.18 These productions seemed to confirm all the worst prejudices about contemporary Russian theatre, and the British theatre’s assessment of Soviet drama was at an all-time low. It was to take political change in the USSR for a different contemporary theatre and performing style to percolate to Britain. The first breath of fresh air came in 1987 with the Mayakovsky Theatre of Moscow and their production of Tomorrow Was War, emerging from changes wrought by glasnost. Its reception was coloured by curiosity, sentiment and astonishment at the technique of this ‘energetic young company’.19 The production was brought directly to the NT, and so impact was maximised. It paved the way, and expectations, for further Russian theatre company visits.

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Tomorrow Was War was based on a short story by Boris Vassilev,20 so this production should strictly be treated along with the prose adaptations in Section 7. However, the production sparked a debate on translation. Glasnost encouraged new opportunities for presenting Russian theatre in Britain: Thelma Holt as producer and Vanessa Redgrave as promoter had visited Russia in search of recent plays. Their choice, Tomorrow Was War, had only been premièred in Russia eighteen months before. It signalled a new arena for negotiation of foreign visits for Russian companies avoiding the Party hacks and unimaginative bureaucrats who had previously coloured the import of Soviet theatre. However, unlike the other foreign companies in this festival who had worked without simultaneous translation, Holt handed the task of reading the translation to Redgrave. Many critics were charmed by Redgrave’s solo performance. Others began to question the wisdom of the promoter assuming the voice of the translator by reading the English version of the script. Redgrave’s presence became unduly powerful in the performance: ‘in a theatre of words […] the chair-bound spectator of a foreign-language play […] should be suspicious of the contents (of the translation)’.21 Some felt that Redgrave had been misleading in her transmission of the translated text since many characters sounded ‘justified, gentle and wise’.22 Moreover, the critics also rightly saw that this play was in fact little different from the socialist realist plays the British theatre audience had learnt to distrust before glasnost. It was ‘impossibly sentimental’, ‘still deals crudely in villains and heroes, in black and white’.23 It represented ‘uplifting social [sic] realism’ and mirrored ‘Biggles in the Salvation Army’, quipped another reviewer.24 This new clarity of vision of the British critic should not pass unremarked. Previously they had balked at yet another story-based play in the original language; now they were not only no longer willing to welcome Socialist Realism to be polite to the enemy, but wished to hear a Russian play in the original language. The audiences had begun to judge the cultural difference between performed language and received translation. For the first time, perhaps, Russian theatre was to be treated on an equal footing with offerings from other foreign cultures. The next production by a Russian company of a contemporary play in Russian received a similar reception. Lev Dodin’s Maly Theatre Company of Leningrad25 was invited to the Glasgow Mayfest in 1988 and subsequently to the Riverside Studios in London. They brought their production of Galin’s Stars in the Morning Sky (1982).26 Dodin had

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mounted it in 1987 in Russia in the heat of the new policies and had caused a sensation. In Britain, first and foremost, it was welcomed as a ‘symbol of the new artistic freedoms’.27 Based around the 1980 Moscow Olympics the play follows the harrowing stories of a group of prostitutes cleared off the streets and out of the city in a pre-games clean up. According to the reviewers, the ‘challenging anger’28 and ‘heavy-handed’ symbolism of the text and the ‘blistering energy’29 were matched by a ‘raw smelly realism’30 from this superlatively trained and developed company of performers. It was certainly a great event raising cultural awareness not just of the Russian temperament (critics thought they had known the Slavic soul for decades) but also of the ‘genteel dottiness that characterises so many British productions of Russian plays’31; ‘such theatre ‘would be unlikely to have come out of England today’.32 There was even acknowledgement of the need to avoid a patronising stance: ‘there’s a temptation to react to it with a kind of smug back-patting response as though it were all about the Soviets, under glasnost, acquiring the same freedom as us to write rude plays about nasty subjects like prostitution, alcoholism and sexual violence’.33 Along with the comments on this first Russian acceptance of nudity on stage went a new awareness of the seething anger that had been let loose by Gorbachev’s liberating policies. The fact that this was a new, contemporary play and not an adaptation of a classic novel struck the British critic forcibly. What else were we still waiting to see? In 1989 contemporary writing in Russian appeared again at the London Festival of International Theatre (LIFT).34 This time audiences were introduced to Liudmila Petrushevskaia35 by the Studio Celavek from Moscow, and also to the improvised contemporary performance of the Derevo Company from Leningrad. Writing in the stagnant years of the Brezhnev era, Petrushevskaia had trodden a risky path in Cinzano describing ‘rotting marriages, overcrowded apartments’, ‘prolonged pissups’36 and ‘the emptiness and banality’37 of Russian lives. Cultural difference was recognised: in Moscow this play was seen as ‘a bold, ­startling acknowledgement of personal despair’; in London it intrigued audiences ‘by injecting anarchic comedy into a study of dipso decline’ and proclaimed that ‘Communism has no answer to the problems of everyday despair’.38 Of course, the British critic was writing after the introduction of glasnost, while Petrushevskaia had risked all to write before its acceptance in Russia. Derevo was praised for moving away from the usual Russian formula of humour and pathos, and ‘added intense drama

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into the equation’.39 Recognising the play’s difference from established Soviet theatre, the reviewers resorted to the familiar, and this time it was to Gogol and to Gorky’s The Lower Depths as the distinctive hallmarks of Russian theatre: an ‘updated version of The Lower Depths […] rotting marriages, overcrowded apartments’,40 and ‘a dash of caricature that bespeaks the heirs of Gogol’.41 That same year 1989, Sheffield Crucible along with the City Arts Department mounted a festival of international children’s theatre. The critic of Shchekochikhin’s Lavoushka (The Trap, 1987)42 in Plays and Players was in a cleft stick: while he praised the well-endowed set-up for children’s theatre in the Soviet Union (the visiting theatre was one of six theatres for children in Moscow) he disliked the politics of what the company did. He was also surprised to find the company kitted out in the latest from Marks and Spencer’s.43 A production mounted earlier, in 1985, in Moscow, was brought to London in 1987. Anatoly Vasiliev44 had been invited by Lyubimov to work at the Taganka and his production of Victor Slavkin’s Cerceau (1979)45 was voted the best production of the Moscow 1985–1986 theatre season. Vasiliev went on to found his own company, The School of Dramatic Art, in 1987, and he brought his production of Slavkin’s play to the Riverside in the same year. This visit suggested perhaps that the British stage could now be kept abreast of the latest work from Moscow, but that was not always going to be the case. Cerceau (trans. Hoop-la) concerns an attempt (that fails) to set-up a collective in a dilapidated Russian dacha by a group of intellectuals and professionals disenchanted with their Soviet heritage. In Russia, the play or at least the director and the author were regarded as influenced by the absurd. In Britain Cerceau made a different impression. Occasional reference to modern drama and film-making was made in the reviews, particularly to Bergman, Pinter and Albee in one,46 and to Fellini in another.47 These names hardly invoke the core of the absurd. Much more attention was given to the ‘quite stunningly beautiful production’48 and the ‘inhabited scenic design’49 and the ‘imagist lighting’.50 Undoubtedly, this ‘long, four-hours and 20 minutes’51 production in Russian (with simultaneous translation) threw the critics back on to their visual senses. The beauty they found along with the ‘sheer dash and style’, the ‘passion and physical magnetism’52 of the Russian performers, however, operated as reminders of the idiosyncratic cultural perceptions and different body language and language-body engaged in Russian theatre. Some

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found ‘the symbolism […] obscure’,53 while others saw the implications for modern Russia emerging from a long period of Soviet ideology and stagnation. For example, one wrote that Vasiliev used his ideas ‘to examine the isolation of the individual in the USSR today’.54 And Michael Billington concluded: ‘This unmissable production confirms the sense I had in Moscow four years ago that the stage is still a vital forum for debate about the nature of Soviet society’.55 Although not from contemporary scripted theatre, there is one more production by a Russian performer that should be remarked upon, largely because it has reached such a wide audience, and that is the work of the Russian clown Slava Polunin.56 He brought his c­ ircus-based production to London on several occasions in the 1990s to extensive delight, and it was still touring in 2015. It was recognised as clowning in a distinctly Russian and old-fashioned tradition, and the comments made at the time help to define that tradition. His show lay somewhere between ‘saccharine sentimentality and austere solemnity’, had ­‘quasi-evangelical undercurrents’ which in true Soviet fashion ‘seem to enjoin the congregation to be happy and childlike’.57 It was regarded as ‘manipulative’ and ‘mushy’, ‘sentimental’ and ‘kitschy’.58 It is a moot point whether or not the critics were reading existing stereotypical judgements into a Russian theatrical event. What is interesting is that these remarks were being made of a non-scripted, though none the less planned and meticulously executed, performance (Fig. 6.1). However, one stereotypical response was missing: the fact that this was Russian and engaged a stage-dominating snowstorm. In reviews of the National Theatre’s production of Bulgakov’s Flight, just four weeks or so later, we find references to ‘Slavic snows’59 without too much difficulty. Polunin was, though, also likened to a ‘holy fool’60 which is a clear indication of received suppositions about Russian culture. However, comment was also made that the ‘bizarre, haunting images accumulate’,61 and the production was linked by more than one review to the Russian avant-garde. These were the contrasts between the ‘ferocity and beauty’62 of the performance, and its suggestions of ‘loneliness and fear in the best Russian traditions of existential foreboding’,63 finishing with reference to Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Beckett (more than once) and Artaud.64 After the millennium the Royal Court introduced its audience to the Russian company Theatre Lozhe and its ensemble production Steps to Siberia. It was an opener in 2002 to the work generated from the Royal

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Fig. 6.1  Programme for Slava’s Snow Show, Theatre Royal, Nottingham, 2007

Court’s international programme which had focused on Russia for three years. One reviewer commented that many sensitive questions were left unanswered but issues such as Chechnya and the sacrifices made on both sides were brought to the British public.65 It was followed by Plasticine in English (see below), the work of the young Vasilii Sigarev which riveted the media. Another theatre company has more recently joined those visiting Britain: the Sovremennik (Contemporary) Theatre from Moscow played to considerable acclaim, though not indiscriminate, at the beginning of 2011. As well as two Chekhov plays (mentioned in Section 5), the programme included Yevgenia Ginzburg’s Into the Whirlwind, based

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on Ginzburg’s memoir of her arrest in the Stalinist 30s, her imprisonment and then transfer to a labour camp. Although technically belonging to the adapted Russian prose of Section 7, it is particularly appropriate to discuss it here. The impact was as if a window had been opened on the Soviet twentieth century. One critic wrote that ‘it amounted to a three-hour evocation of incarceration, interrogation, forced confessions and torture’.66 The piece was first staged in 1989, and the company was described as ‘one of the most artistically daring of the Soviet era’.67 While the play offered the expected ‘grim-as-gruel experience’68 of Russian theatre, ‘there is’, commented another critic, ‘no clunking statement-making here’.69 The reviews all refer to the enthusiastic and cheering Russians in the first night audience. The presence of so many expatriate Russians in London is a relatively new phenomenon. The longer it is sustained the more it will affect reception of Russian theatre, and especially change the repertoire. The Sovremennik’s visit was bankrolled by Roman Abramovich, best known as the oligarch-owner of Chelsea Football Club. British audiences are being offered ever more experience of Russian theatre companies and are learning to distinguish different styles of performance, production and theatre history.

Translated Soviet Plays 1945–2015 As suggested at the beginning of this section, British theatre and in particular the British reviewer’s perception of Russian theatrical culture has been coloured by British relations with Russia and by cataclysmic international events involving both societies. Assessment of translated, contemporary theatre in distinction to analysis of the pre-revolutionary heritage is affected in another way: critics of contemporary plays do not enjoy the comfort of hindsight to reach their judgements. So, understandably, writing on modern theatre is often outspoken, sometimes primitive, sometimes misguided and rarely informed by objectivity. If the reader aligns the historical chronology in this study with the tracing of Russian theatre, the choice of the post-WW2 period may appear at first sight to omit the ‘modernist’ writers between Chekhov and the 1940s. Relatively few of them reached Britain in their own times. WW1, the 1917 revolution its chaotic aftermath and the establishment of the Soviet Union were inimical to such theatre travelling far either for political reasons or financial ones. Key works do surface after WW2 and are treated chronologically according to the date of production,

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in the rest of this section and the following one on prose. Such modernist writers include Andreev, Mayakovsky, Kharms and Bulgakov.70 Post-WW2 euphoria quickly subsided when it met the monolithic policies of the Soviet Zhdanov era. For the one and only play in the repertoire by Leonid Leonov (Leonof), The Apple Orchards (1947)71 the MAT was able to cooperate, helping with photographs of the original production and providing recordings of Russian songs and dances, rarities in Britain just after the war. The Soviet government, however, refused permission for a visit to Moscow to meet Leonov. ‘The watchful eye of atrocious Zhdanov’ (as one critic put it much later in 1967)72 determined literary policy even after his death and coloured reception abroad of the very best of material being produced in Russia for the next two decades. For the 1956 production of Iskaev and Galich’s Hold the Line (1948),73 a farce about having to wait when receiving long-distance telephone calls in Russia, one reviewer could comment: ‘It is a novelty to find Russians inviting us to join with them in laughing at themselves’. ‘The serious shortcomings of the script’ were not overcome by this amateur Unity Theatre production, and the play was further let down by the actors ‘working’ the comic conception ‘to death’.74 Already the barriers of isolation and the stereotype of Russia as a place of persecution were proving very effective. At this point, the critics’ worst fears about modern socialist r­ealist plays were confirmed by the arrival of MAT with Rakhmanov’s The Troubled Past in 1958,75 as we saw above. From this point on we find the British critics expressing notions of opposition within Russia herself, latching on to the concepts of ‘anti-Soviet’ and dissident. A British production of Mayakovsky’s The Bedbug in London in 1962, provoked comment from Milton Shulman on the repellent Soviet state the play projects when it moves fifty years into the future.76 Mayakovsky’s satire was directed at Russia in 1929. He pitched the second half of the play into the future to give his ‘anti-Soviet’ barbs a degree of cover. Shulman also picked up on the ambiguity of the piece, penned by Mayakovsky at a moment of political and personal despair when Stalin was tightening his hold on all aspects of Russian life. Yet another critic called it a ‘curious satirical piece’.77 How different is the treatment in post-Soviet Russia and modern Britain: in 2004 Mayakovsky’s play re-emerged as a musical in a ‘dashing adaptation’ by Snoo Wilson performed by secondary school students in a festival of youth theatre at the NT, London. It was no longer a case of ‘reds under

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the bed’.78 Back in 1962, despite claims that it was ‘an anti-Soviet tract’, Shulman had felt that ‘the text itself indicates that it was meant to be a trumpet of praise for the Communist way of life’.79 Reaction to Pogodin’s Kremlin Chimes, brought by MAT in 1964, was fraught with incredulity that these marvellous Russian actors could give their talents to such ‘plodding […] propaganda’80 that was ‘aimed at Mother Russia’s most unsophisticated children’.81 The phrase ‘Mother Russia’ is used in the reviews throughout our period in two distinctly different ways: either as in this instance as a euphemism for a concept the British have now relabelled the ‘nanny state’. Or as a term which retrieves the Russian values, way of life and culture (perhaps connected somehow with the trees, country estates and genteel characters of the ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’?) which have been submerged by the monolith of Soviet power. For example, the use of this phrase in a review of The Love-Girl and the Innocent (1981) by Solzhenitsyn,82 in the context of the forests of Mother Russia housing the corrective labour camps,83 implies an ironic distance between the ancient and traditional and the modern and oppressive. The fact that there have been labour camps in Russia’s vast hinterland and the threat of exile since the seventeenth century is sometimes overlooked. By 1965, one critic at least thought he had understood the reality of censorship when catching a smidgen of criticism in Sofronov’s A Million for a Smile (1959).84 The one review located stated it might be even more didactic in the original, and also perceived the risk the writer took in his mild criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy.85 By the 1960s the USSR had livened up a little with Khrushchev in charge. The inconsistencies reaching the West implied that staggering works such as Solzhenitsyn’s novella about the labour camps A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) were being published while modern art (abstract painting, in particular) was being condemned.86 One of the most sensational cultural events as far as the West was concerned was the defection of the ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev in 1961. This event cast Soviet cultural politics in a dark light: after all the ballet was one of Russia’s most admired and treasured possessions. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 confirmed opinion in the West that Russia was the enemy, and the Cold War was once more holding full sway. Subsequently, aggression was part of Western evaluation of Soviet culture: individuals were frequently valued for the efficacy of their attack on the ­powers-that-be rather than for any intrinsic value in the art they produced.

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The first light on the Soviet theatrical horizon came with the discovery of Arbuzov in the 1960s. He subsequently became the most performed post-war Soviet dramatist in Britain. His plays were quickly translated individually, and later in a collection by Ariadne Nicolaeff,87 a publishing novelty for its time. His popularity began with a production of The Promise at Oxford Playhouse in November 1966 with Judi Dench, Ian McShane and Ian McKellan, in hindsight an extraordinary cast. One critic at least was astonished. After all, the British view of Soviet drama did not encompass a ‘sentimental’ ‘fit of melancholia’, that would rouse the ‘English […] affection for all things Russian’.88 Unusual phrase combinations began to emerge as the critics struggled for more than a decade to place Arbuzov in a Russian context. In 1976, Arbuzov’s Old World was described as ‘gentle Soviet’,89 ‘an old world Soviet comedy’,90 ‘relaxed and sentimental’,91 with its core ‘bitterness of truth’.92 Other critics got over their shock and marked it down as ‘Russian slop’,93 ‘romantic, sentimental, whimsical, patriotic and relentlessly corny’.94 The myth of the tortured Russian soul, now gave way to a ‘Slavic sob story’.95 Arbuzov’s The Promise has been performed at least sixteen times in our period, and there was an ‘Arbuzov season’ at Bristol Old Vic in 1976, which staged and toured (in the South West) three of his plays.96 Interest in Arbuzov was further reflected in this region when Exeter’s Northcott Theatre mounted its own production of Old World in 1978.97 It is noteworthy that Arbuzov has been the sole modern Russian writer in the repertoire of the Northcott (1968–2008) as far as it has been possible to trace. It says a lot about Arbuzov as a writer that he managed to bridge such huge cultural and political divides. There came, however, a new entrant on the British scene, a rediscovery, validated by his historical stance of opposition to early Soviet power, but whose writing displayed a robustness that united him with the m ­ uch-loved classic Russian tradition. Mikhail Bulgakov first reached the British stage in 1979 with The White Guard. The Russian title of the play In the Days of the Turbins (1926) was changed to the name of the novel which Bulgakov had himself adapted for the stage. The critics loved this RSC production at the Aldwych in London. It met all the complex criteria now in use for approving individual pieces of Russian theatre: ‘modern Russian classic’98; it had the complexity of ‘little success in USSR’ but ‘Stalin’s favourite play’ and ‘the black painting of the Whites that Stalin enjoyed’,99 and most poignantly ‘Yeliena […] seems to symbolise Russia itself’ and ‘patriotism is the play’s moral

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absolute’.100 It was classic, there was controversy, a beautiful Russian heroine and a moral challenge. The yardstick for judgement was, unsurprisingly, Chekhov, but this time not without some cause: the ‘author, like Chekhov was a doctor’,101 ‘dramatise(s) the pressure of history through its effects on a family (as Chekhov did)’,102 ‘under Chekhov’s shadow’, and ‘Chekhovian effect in their displays of temperament and emotion’.103 Bulgakov wrote the play in homage to Chekhov. One critic shrewdly understood that the Chekhovian influence in fact undermined the forced surface obsequies to Bolshevik power that many had noticed since, as he put it, ‘the text suggests a wistful and ironic conclusion’.104 It is worth noting here that The White Guard was again staged to great acclaim in 2010 by the NT. The director Howard Davies, known for his successful productions from the Russian repertoire, completed a trilogy of work, which included this Bulgakov, along with Gorky’s Philistines (1901; NT, 2007) and an adaptation of the film by Nikita Mikhalkov, Burnt by the Sun (1994; NT, 2009).105 This time, after admiring particularly the ‘opulent’,106 ‘splendidly atmospheric and ingenious’107 sets (by Bunnie Christie), the critics found incisive differences from Chekhov: while Chekhov’s characters look back with longing to their past, Bulgakov’s family (based on his own) are transfixed by the horror of their future.108

Another critic noted how ‘the intimate opens out into an epic struggle, more like War and Peace’,109 drawing in another classic writer, Tolstoy. This trilogy of plays staged by Davies presented other, non-Chekhovian, but classic theatre, as a barometer of how Russian culture itself had to fight to survive against the Soviet political backdrop. To return to the chronological narrative engaged in this section, in the 1970s the RSC became a focus for quality Russian (as opposed to specifically Soviet) theatre, as we saw with Gorky in Section 5. Their 1979 Bulgakov was followed by Erdman’s The Suicide in the same year at The Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon.110 A hallmark of interest now became ‘never […] staged in the Soviet Union’ though, as the same reviewer continued, ‘this is not in itself a guarantee of excellence’.111 Many devotees of Russian literature and drama at the time were driven by this misleading criterion. Stories, novels and plays were eulogised precisely because they had been banned or smuggled out of the USSR.

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Clearly sacrifice in the name of art can be a laudable trait, but this attitude is also based on an assumption that there was no good art being produced in the politicised conditions of Soviet Russia. Undoubtedly, Soviet theatre was driven by experience alien to our own: throughout most of this period the best of Soviet theatre was struggling against the odds for its own survival. Individuals who stayed in the USSR fought against the conditions from within achieving very small but vital steps towards change. The West was largely ignorant of their efforts. By the time The Love Girl and the Innocent (1969) was staged by the RSC at the Aldwych in 1981 Solzhenitsyn was already a celebrity for his dissidence. He had been persecuted in the Soviet Union for his refusal not to tell the truth of his experiences and was deported in 1974. His courageous stance was applauded world-wide. ‘Solzhenitsyn is a great writer. His play gains from his stature […] So you had better listen’, proclaimed one critic catching an undercurrent of criticism that many stopped short of expressing.112 Set in a Soviet labour camp in the gulag, The Love Girl and the Innocent explores the brutality of the camp regime as a reflection of Soviet Russia itself, and the ways the inmates seek to escape their daily harsh reality by retreating into their inner worlds or by concentrating on the minutiae of survival. There were many references to the massive scale of the play which betrayed this underlying feeling: ‘Tolstoyan amplitude’,113 ‘brutal panorama’,114 and references to it as ‘a novelist’s play’.115 The universally admired set by Ralph Koltai emphasised the power of the spectacle: it contained engines and wagons disgorging new inmates, onstage furnace and construction equipment, and a cast of 60 was deployed, ‘an extraordinary stage picture of tremendous power, quite unforgettable’.116 Some critics saw that it worked on the conscience of the West as a timely reminder to those who ‘wax sentimental about Russians who died in the Second World War to save us’.117 The Soviet Union was still an enemy bent on crushing those who transgressed in the slightest way. For example, you could be in trouble ‘for having once failed to report a conversation overheard in a market or having jokingly animadverted on the Father of the People’.118 What was also being said, but failed perhaps to penetrate this eulogistic reception, was that this was a poor play. While acknowledging what a difference a ‘shot of Solzhenitsyn’ might have made to the ‘chronic harmlessness’ which bedevilled many socialist realist plays,119 the critics also commented that the ‘emphatic propaganda purpose weights the action towards melodrama’120; it was ‘old-fashioned, slow,

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cumbrous’,121 with ‘a curiously broken-backed structure’122; and the play ‘jumps confusingly about from one character to another, and when it finally settles on the two in the title the result is bathos’.123 Nevertheless, the power of the production (as opposed to the play, I think) was generally recognised despite these drawbacks. The critics admitted to being affected, even impressed: ‘the play should be too outof-date to work anymore but does in fact generate a certain power, even become rather impressive’.124 The intense reception of this work appears to have been fuelled not only by the fact that it had not been staged in Russia but also by the British love for the panoramic extent of the Russian novel which drives the visual aspect, the spectacle of this play. It was categorised as that misleading hybrid ‘documentary drama’ but ‘of the highest order’, in which ‘personal relationships are subsumed by the system’.125 As a piece of theatre it is hardly likely to be much revived (only once in 2013), and a production had been made for TV in 1973.126 However powerful it was at the time, its life and impact in the theatre has not been extensive. Other dramatic writing of the Brezhnev era was largely disregarded, until Britain discovered Aleksandr Vampilov and Liudmila Petrushevskaia in the 1980s. Even then, it was their similarity to enduring Chekhov that caught the critics’ attention rather than their own merits as dramatists and contemporary explorers of the Russian scene. Vampilov’s Duck Hunting (1982) and Last Summer in Chulimsk (1984, 1987) both had domestic settings in provincial Russia. Vampilov provoked many comparisons with the master, Chekhov: summed up as ‘unfulfilled longing and forlorn hope […] pursuit of love as a means of escape; the characters hamstrung by their surroundings, and their own inertia […] a gentle charming fresco’.127 The play’s provincial setting continued the line from Chekhov but also presented the unprepossessing urban landscapes with their ‘tacky new tower blocks’128 now associated with Soviet contemporary drama. Nevertheless, the reviewers found recognisable Anglo-Russian territory for Vampilov succeeded in ‘updat[ing] the typical self-centred guilt ridden Slav hero’.129 He was also ‘unpolitical’ and ‘far less funny than intended’,130 and when another reviewer claimed that Last Summer in Chulimsk was like watching ‘a hybrid of Chekhov, Gorky and Turgenev’,131 the British audience could feel secure. While yet another reviewer identified the new clichés to which Soviet drama was now vulnerable: ‘all the ingredients that would appeal to the Soviet theatre-goer: bouts of morose silence, vodka-sodden quarrels and an

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attempted suicide’, he also found the play ‘astonishingly English in its trivial embarrassments and ponderous small-talk’.132 Here was familiar territory, indeed, but was it quite what the ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ implies? The production of Petrushevskaia’s Cinzano in Russian already referred to (Studio Celavek, 1989) was followed by an affecting production of Three Girls in Blue in English at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 1992. Here Chekhovian echoes were author imposed. They had made a gripping subtext for performances in the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. This Chekhovian dialogue might be a potential for making it a favourite with British audiences, but there have been few revivals. Perhaps it is seen as too much of an incautious updating of the ‘master’ text, Three Sisters?

Glasnost and After: 1986–2000 With Gubaryev’s Sarcophagus in 1987,133 written and published within weeks of the Chernobyl catastrophe, came a first insight into the power of glasnost. However, the sensationalism of the policy coloured critical reception of the writer. Castigated for its lack of quality as a play, ‘very ordinary theatre’, ‘would not fill an episode of Casualty’,134 only one or two of the bravest commented on the play’s closeness to the socialist realist drama everyone had been so keen to chastise. Sarcophagus displayed, wrote Victoria Radin, an ‘underlying didactic purpose’ and it ‘encodes an exemplary public morality: Bessmertnyi [immortal, the raisonneur and putative hero] suffered his lethal dose of radiation, because drunk; the peasant woman embodies the dangers of ignorance; the burglar, a criminality’ while Gubaryev ‘omits the fact that the Soviets waited to inform even their own people’, nor does he ‘mention how their local disaster affected the world outside the Soviet bloc’.135 It was Alexander Galin who was to be credited with revealing the true state of an increasingly fragile Soviet Russian society. His Stars in the Morning Sky (seen here in 1988 as interpreted through the powerful theatrics of Lev Dodin and his company) was a true sensation and performed in Russian, as we saw earlier in this section. The break-up of the old, massive Soviet Union in the early 1990s focused attention on Russia proper. On the one hand, links between the new Russia of the 1990s and her pre-Stalinist image of the 1920s were spotted in a very well received but sparsely reviewed revival of Afinogenov’s Distant Point (1935)136 in 1991. The play charts the

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reception given a Red Army general and his entourage when they end up on a remote station on the Trans-Siberian railway. They become a focus for all the local upset and doubts about the changing political situation in post Civil War Russia. ‘The revival […] is given validity through the shadows it casts on current policies of change in the Soviet Union’137 wrote one critic just before the break-up became evident. Another critic wrote with a new warmth: ‘What saves this play from merely being an absorbing piece of Soviet propaganda is the character Malko, led not only by his Party, but by his love of life and all humanity.’138 These are very new reactions to a type of drama thought to be at the heart of Socialist Realism and previously considered inimical to British tastes. On the other hand, as Russia released hidden aspects of her past, production of previously lost writers, such as Erdman and Kharms,139 and movements, such as absurdism which had been stifled at birth in the 1920s and early 30s, became possible in Russia and were welcomed in Britain. The combination of the absurd from Kharms’ stories and the physical inventiveness and spectacle of Théâtre de Complicité, in Out of a House Walked a Man (1994)140 created a new perspective on Russian writing and performance It will be discussed in Section 7 with the other adapted prose. However, Kharms’ truly experimental play from the 1920s, Elizaveta Bam, has not been given a professional performance here, as far as it has been possible to trace. Another link was drawn to the early decades of the twentieth century by the revival of Leonid Andreev’s Katerina, also in 1994. Andreev’s plays enjoyed sporadic showing in the first half of the century in Russia. He was a pre-WW1 modernist writer, whose He Who Gets Slapped (1912) enjoyed some popularity. However, it was regarded as ‘strangl[ing] itself in its own symbolism’141 on its showing (1947) at the opening of the post-WW2 period in Britain and has not been revived since. Katerina, previously produced in London in 1926, reminded British theatre of the scandalous aspects of pre-WWI Russian theatre in the wake of Chekhov and Gorky. Its context of ‘abortion, adultery and depravity scandalised’142 audiences in 1926 London, and more so in 1912 Russia, to the extent that ‘mock trials of the heroine were held as if she were a real person’.143 In the opening scene, the heroine is shot at by her husband; in response, she engages freely in extra marital relationships. The style provoked by the text in the 1994 production was one of ‘melodrama and declamation’ and it was seen as a ‘darkly symbolic evocation’.144 This was an aspect of Russian drama not seen for a

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considerable amount of time, and hard to meld with the prevailing view of Russian theatrical style, except perhaps occasionally in the adaptation of melodramatic writing from novels in the nineteenth century, particularly Dostoevsky. The conclusion might be that this was a desired aspect long missing from the Soviet repertoire performed abroad. But even melodrama was to arrive shortly. The first hints of change came with Alexei Shipenko’s Lavochkin-5 which was staged in English at Glasgow’s Tron Theatre in 1997.145 The unprepossessing title and the fact that it was a regional production meant it escaped the London reviewers. This ‘black Russian drama’146 was also ‘epic in its concentration on decline and degradation’.147 It appeared to be an ‘allegory of political failure’,148 but ‘lack[ed] variety’149 and could be a ‘gruelling experience’.150 It was one of the first voices to emerge in Britain representing the young Russian generation finding new feet after 1986. Initially staged at the Traverse in Edinburgh (1988), Alexander Gelman’s A Man with Connections was staged for a second time in 2000 (Minerva, Chichester [revived, Finborough, 2001]).151 There had also been an earlier première as a radio play, in the 80s. It was a throwback to the toadying necessary to survive in Soviet Russia, but at least this revival showed, along with comparisons to Ayckbourn,152 that it was a ‘timeless study of how we can all become the nerve-wracked addicts of our own oppression and how marriages can founder’.153

The Twenty-First Century Economic and political chaos in 1990s Russia led to a dearth of new contemporary writing. It was only relieved (if that is the word) in the early years of the twenty-first century by the bleak, grotesque and revelatory contributions of the new generation, in the work of the Presnyakov brothers154 and Vasilii Sigarev.155 Encouraged by Royal Court workshops in Moscow and in the distant cities of Novosibirsk and Ekaterinburg, these young dramatists emerged. They wrote of the social decay that surrounded them. They expressed themselves in the new brutal i­dioms which were consolidating themselves in the printed and performed Russian language. The Presnyakov brothers launched themselves with a topical theme: Terrorism in London (2002) and followed it with a Gogol-style grotesque comedy Playing the Victim (2002) at Edinburgh in 2003. The chaos of post-Soviet Russia was seen to inform their ‘absurdist satire’156

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of the ‘manifold contradictions of Russian life’.157 Their task is to disturb and they show ‘a rickety Russia […] beset by anarchy and alienation’.158 On the arrival of Playing the Victim in London at the Royal Court, comparisons were drawn with Joe Orton, and it was a ‘vision of how far the former Soviet Empire has fallen’.159 The British reception of Russian theatre had come full circle: the shock of discovery of the gentle side of Soviet drama was now being replaced by a bleak vision of the aftermath. As if this were not enough, Sigarev outperformed the Presnyakov brothers with his pictures of degradation. With two successful plays Plasticine (2000) and Black Milk (2001), and a coveted Evening Standard award for Most Promising Playwright (2002) already in his pocket, Sigarev became the new enfant terrible of Russian drama in Britain. How much success he has enjoyed in Russia is not fully clear. After the ‘nightmarish’160 study of the ‘underbelly of a post-Soviet town’161 with its ‘alarmingly in yer face’162 brutality of Plasticine, his Black Milk offered no happier picture: Sigarev’s ‘post-communist Russia is riddled with alcoholism, ignorance and callous greed’.163 Black Milk is a window on a remote society that is ‘pitched somewhere between Gogol and Edward Bond’,164 which brings in a new standard of comparison for Russian theatre in Britain. But this play is less impressive dramatically: it ‘keeps grinding to a halt; it never gathers any momentum’ and is ‘interminably long’.165 Once again the content, s­ ensationally shocking as it was, outweighed the quality of the writing as drama. The reason for the intensity of the shock is that the British are still unable to separate this dark, modern Russia from the Russia of tormented souls that has been drawn from the Russian classics and from the dissident material of the Soviet period. That myth of the alienated Russian personality is the one we cling to. The Russians of Sigarev’s plays are too much contaminated by the same social issues and attitudes that we find it difficult to deal with in our own environment. One cynical comment, made about Sigarev’s Ladybird (2004), found a mix of ‘dirty realism with moments of Slavonic sentimentality […] in the tradition of Gogol and Dostoevsky’,166 implying comparison with prose-writers. Another reviewer pointedly remarked that many an English writer who stands no chance at the Royal Court may be better served by posing as an ‘exotic migrant’.167 In other words, this was not outstanding drama as much as a voyeuristic view of Putin’s Russia in freefall. The mission to bring the new drama of Russia to Britain drove the RSC festival of Russian theatre, which began in 2009 and was

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programmed to last 4 years. It was nurtured by Michael Boyd, the then artistic director of the RSC, whose appreciation of the Russian theatrical tradition is well recognised. Commissioning new work from young Russian writers meant that Stratford had the privilege of staging work that had not yet even been seen in Russia, a new departure for the British theatre. The Grain Store by Natalia Vorozhbit168 and The Drunks by the Durnenkov brothers (Mikhail and Vyacheslav)169 received the accolade of full production in 2009, while several other new writers had their works read as part of the festival. The Drunks continued the dark lines of Sigarev and the Presnyakov brothers with a similar sprinkling of the grotesque. Vorozhbit turned her focus on the Soviet domination of the Ukraine and the famines brought about by the collectivisation programme enforced under Stalin in the 1930s. The irony is that neither of these plays, extensively modified in their journey through translation and staging in English, could be shown in Russia or, as Vyacheslav Durnenkov recognised in a public discussion, would have to be readapted for home consumption. That adapting process, his remark reminds us, is a measure of the distance travelled by almost every text in migration. British theatre continues to be enriched in the twenty-first century by a modern Russian presence in other ways. Visits by small companies in collaboration sometimes with similarly small British ones, and an ambitious adaptation from Russian film. The Russian companies Derevo (2009) and Akhe (2009; 2015) have made sporadic appearances bringing their specific brands of improvisation, puppetry, street and circus theatre with them. They are companies which do not depend on script and language in the traditional sense. Derevo and Akhe collaborated with the Glasgow-based group Conflux in 2009, on a performance piece entitled Natura Morte. They drew mixed responses for their promenade performance in which the audience members had to select from a set of closed doors. Opening her review with a warning note, ‘[F]for a sign of what happens when the avant garde stops taking risks, look no further than this collaboration’, Lyn Gardner thought the performance descended into ‘banalities’ by no means repaying the efforts required of the audience.170 On the other hand, Robert Dawson Scott found the ‘hallucinatory nature of the journey […] haunting and often beautiful’.171 For Neil Cooper, the performance provided a darker, but still edgily beautiful experience:

184  C. MARSH a succession of still lives (sic), dark expressionist nightmares and pratfalls galore. Blood red roses, skulls, mirrors, apples and torn-up books are symbolic constants in this beautiful and dangerous fantastic voyage.172

Haunting, beautiful and dangerous are adjectives we have come across in that other non-Chekhovian stream of Russian theatre, in Gogol, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov. These nuances were now seemingly let loose in this performance dependent on physical skills and the use of objects rather than spoken dialogue or narrative. Akhe visited the Edinburgh Festival fringe in 2012 and then early in 2015, participated in ‘Manipulate: Visual Theatre Festival’, in Edinburgh. While in 2015, Joyce McMillan referred to Akhe as ‘legendary’,173 Mark Brown was ecstatic: ‘an extraordinary, moving, witty, dreamlike work […] which travels beautifully through love, rivalry, jealousy and death’, and finally, ‘Akhe are simply one of the greatest companies in world theatre today’.174 It is an irony, of course in the particular context of this book, that this accolade is given to a company that does not depend on verbal translation. What is clearly to the fore, however, is the cultural authenticity of their own body language, devising skills and traditions of ­playing. More of this kind of work can only be beneficial to a comprehensive understanding of the spirit of Russian theatre. Twenty-first-century Russian devised theatre, that is essentially scriptless, has also been represented in the work of the stage designer Dmitry Krymov175 and his Laboratory Theatre from Moscow. Krymov’s piece entitled Opus No 7 was shown at Brighton and the LIFT Festival in London, before going on tour, in 2014. ‘This is designer’s ­ theatre in which the design, naturally enough tells the story’, wrote Laura Barnett.176 Trying to define the genre of piece, Matt Trueman wrote of Krymov’s ‘object-led, non-verbal productions [which] feel like processions of images’. They leave ‘indelible impressions’ and the effect is ‘poignant, unsettling and searing’.177 In two halves, the performance dealt with the holocaust and Stalinist oppression (the example figure was Shostakovich). ‘Yes, occasionally the political comment is too blatant’, declared Dominic Maxwell, but at the same time he thought highly of ‘mixing the merry, the musical and the macabre in the most memorable way’.178 Much comment was allotted to a giant puppet of Mother Russia which was the visual representation of Stalinist oppression of Shostakovich. However, Sarah Hemming’s ‘overwhelming’ and ‘devastating’179 used as descriptors caught the general mood of the

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critics. Hemming’s comment on the discrepancy between the ‘light touch’ of the performers and ‘the raw anger that drives the show’ was echoed by another critic, John Nathan: ‘Krymov deals with two subjects as dark as the Holocaust and Stalinist oppression with such life-enhancing inventiveness’.180 These remarks again catch at that mixture of light and dark, noted above in comments on other devised theatre from Russia. For the contribution made by adaptation from Russian film for the stage, we turn to Peter Flannery. His reworking of Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekovs’ film Burnt by the Sun (1994) was staged at the NT in 2009. It brought to the British stage a modern Russian take on Stalin’s 1930s, so rarely seen. Sadly, perhaps, several critics’ comments were undermined by the ‘Chekhovian’ threads of the production. Not all of them perceived how ‘teasingly’181 Flannery had incorporated references to The Cherry Orchard, only to override them in the brutality of the Stalinist context. The result is that some critics were not able to perceive the piece beyond the established clichés of the British Chekhov imperative. For example, invoking the name of Chekhov, one critic referred to a ‘bourgeois family mourning for their former lives’, and ended by seeing the production as one of ‘these bleak Russian plays’.182 Another reviewer, similarly, almost refused to engage with the play on the grounds of its ‘huge debt to Chekhov’, noting the presence of ‘rows of trees lit with sepia filters—top of the list of Chekhov clichés’.183 While I could not agree more with that observation, this review and others failed to see that the ‘Chekhovian’ was totally overridden in the subject matter. This aspect was thankfully perceived by some. Having understood that the play ‘exploits a Chekhovian milieu’,184 the Evening Standard critic found that ‘we soon adjust our clocks to being in the Stalin era’ and ended the review with the words, ‘Burnt by the Sun brings Russian history into riveting close up’.185 Most of all, history is brought into this fresh focus because the film and its subject matter emanated from the 1990s, when Russia was reviewing her own history through the medium of film. Noticeably, however, some British critics at least were now able to disentangle the clichés of the British Chekhov legacy from Russian use of family settings in depicting the about-turns in ­twentieth-century Russian history. Michael Coveney summed it up: ‘It’s a wonderful panoramic view of a family and its misfortune with an inexorable, gruesome dramatic tread’186: in other words, not specifically Chekhovian at all.

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Apart from the continuing collaborations between Cheek by Jowl and the Chekhov International Festival, mostly of Chekhov and Shakespeare, Russian companies have continued to perform in Russian, importantly bringing material not staged here before. Moreover, Russian wealth had enabled the visit of the Sovremennik, for example, in 2011. It is desirable that such Russian determination of material and sponsorship of productions from Russia should continue. A Russian choice will inevitably and crucially be different from what the British might choose themselves. Natalia Vorozhbit (RSC, 2009) has continued to find her way here. She has struck up a close relationship with the British translator, Sasha Dugdale, whose work and skill have no doubt eased her passage. A new play was performed in 2015 (Take the Rubbish Out Sasha, 2015). Part of a season at Glasgow’s Oran Mor, called A Play, A Pie and A Pint, Vorozhbit’s piece was followed later in the season by a play from Mikhail Durnenkov, The War Hasn’t Started Yet, and newcomer Yuri Klavdiev’s Thoughts Spoken Aloud From Above. A Russian/Ukrainian season such as this does such valuable work, not only in keeping British theatre abreast of latest developments but also bridging what from the outside seem to be insurmountable divides. Vorozhbit’s play, wrote Joyce McMillan, ‘conjures up a post-Soviet world in which economic change has transformed gender relations’. The return of the dead Sasha as a modern ghost, an officer who had been fighting in the Crimea but died of a heart attack, was offered, continued McMillan, ‘as part saviour come to defend the fatherland and part harbinger of something ominous and out of place’.187 Otherwise British productions of modern Russian theatre remain scant. Only a few, Bulgakov, with his Master and Margarita (2012) adapted from his novel, and a rare showing of his play Molière or the League of Hypocrites (2009), Galin and his Stars in the Morning Sky (2012), no doubt inspired by the Olympics being held in London, and Solzhenitsyn, with The Love Girl and the Innocent (2013), continue to appear, if sporadically, in the modern translated repertoire.

British Reception of Modern Russian Theatre: An Overview Reviewers of contemporary Russian theatre have struggled for recognisable contexts in which to locate modern plays and so shape their responses. These attempts have elicited several clichés which recur in the writing and colour reception. Firstly, confusion between social

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realism and Socialist Realism is not uncommon in the British reviews dealing with the Soviet period. Secondly, recourse to the classic canon for a standard of comparison (especially, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Gorky) is frequent. Thirdly, reference to two particular figures, Mother Russia and the ‘holy fool’, have become engrained not always correctly. Fourthly, the power with which differences in language style and language-body, notably different for socialist realist theatre, colour reception. Finally, there is the issue of how much tactics of collision, hybridisation and acculturation themselves adapt in making transitions between politically different cultures. The difference between social realism and Socialist Realism may seem to reside in a hair’s breadth for reviewers here, but for those engaged in Soviet cultural politics this difference was of deadly significance. Reviewers give occasional reference to difficulties faced by the stars of Russian twentieth-century dramatic theatre: the sensational banning of works by Bulgakov, or Solzhenitsyn, for example, or the outlawing of directors such as Yuri Lyubimov. They have rarely appreciated, however, the risks taken by less well-known writers and directors in maintaining a presence on the Soviet stage: writers such as Arbuzov, Vampilov and Petrushevskaia, or directors such as Efros,188 among many others. If it had been a matter of social realism (writing dedicated to showing society as it is with all its faults and injustices), then the sensational aspect would have been, I suspect, much less frequent, but because the Party committed itself to Socialist Realism (demanding an unremitting commitment to Party politics from Soviet writing and performance) the distinction is crucial. There are situations where they can be seen to overlap, but social realism (for example, Dickens, early Gorky) predates Socialist Realism (ideologically committed to representation of the growth towards the socialist utopia and emanating from the USSR in 1934), and no doubt will outlive it. Nor is it necessarily the case that either can subsume the other: they need to be conceived as separate cultural approaches. So there is a touch of the grotesque about this British comment on Pogodin’s Kremlin Chimes in 1964: it ‘show[s] us how ghastly the Russian stage became during the Stalin regime […] Social realism at its nadir’189; and Bulgakov’s ‘refusal’ in his Moliere, ‘to conform to the criteria of social realism’,190 is exactly the opposite to what Bulgakov bravely achieved in writing about what he had experienced, and not what the Party wished him to write. Clearly social realism has now come into its own in the writing of the new generation. In Lavochkin-5, Shipenko first used the language of the post-Soviet streets;

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in Plasticine Sigarev gives ‘an alarming sense of contemporary urban Russia on the verge of anarchy and breakdown’, plunging to a new ‘lower depths of violence’.191 This new streak has continued and, as suggested, surfaced most recently (2009) in the staging of work by the Durnenkov brothers. This last reviewer’s implied reference to Gorky’s The Lower Depths brings us to the second issue, namely, reference to the classical canon. However, it is still Chekhov’s name and style which provides the more frequent yardstick, in the different senses of that word. He is the measure of a line of influence in widely differing types of writing, throughout British engagement with Russian contemporary theatre. This line encourages ‘the perception of life as a tragi-comedy’ (Leonov)192; ‘themes of provincial aspirations, timid loves, blighted hopes’ (Vampilov)193; ‘wistful Chekhovian romancing’ (Vampilov)194; ‘reminiscent of Chekhov – their lyrical beauty, their elegiac mood’ (Galin)195 and the ‘ghost of Chekhov is alive and well’ (Petrushevskaia).196 Chekhov is a yardstick in another sense in that he is the cherished mean against which all Russian theatre is measured. Being different or falling short of the Chekhovian imprint is regarded as failure by a not inconsiderable number of commentators. However, this comparison does cause irritation, expressed by one critic in the 1980s who wrote of his discouragement by ‘the tendency of so many Russian playwrights to seem like Chekhov to a British audience’.197 If we ‘unpack’ this statement, we find the reviewer was complaining of the lack of laughter at the Vampilov play he was watching. His remark suggests that he subscribed to the British myth of Chekhov as laughterless. Chekhov is felt everywhere, and it is tempting to see the productions of his plays as the source of a theatrically imagined Russia. However, we have still the adaptations of stories and novels to consider in Section 7, and there Chekhov plays a lesser part. The RSC’s work on Gorky’s plays from their Lower Depths onwards introduced Gorky as a new standard of comparison, and particularly in post-Soviet work. But the comparison is most frequently to Gorky’s masterpiece rather than to the Gorky style of writing: ‘new’ or ‘up-dated Lower Depths’198 has become a norm of comparison, and ‘Gorkyesque realism’199 in its wake, meaning not the political realism of the majority of his later works, but that of the world of derelicts of his ‘lower depths’. Although Gorky was instrumental to the definition of Socialist Realism in 1934, and some earlier works were written to a socialist agenda, they lie very much within the category of social realism.

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As Russia has thrown off her socialist realist garb since the mid-1980s, recourse to a different writing tradition has become frequent, particularly noticeable among the misfits and their themes of degradation in most recent years. And here the absurdist elements of both Gogol and Dostoevsky are fed into the comparisons: ‘a heady mix of death and emotion in the tradition of Gogol and Dostoevsky’ (Ladybird),200 though this is eschewed by another reviewer in favour of the equally polarised ‘Samuel Beckett of the Urals’.201 Other remarks in this vein include ‘a Gogolian style adds needless oddity to an already bizarre text’ (Playing the Victim)202 and references to a ‘dark Dostoevskian study’ (Black Milk)203 echo through this writing. Reference has become elastic to the extent that reviewers can mix their metaphors and their sources and know they will still be understood. So a reviewer of Black Milk, uncertain of his Russian theatre history, could write of characters who ‘appear looking like cowed, lost souls from Gogol’s lower depths’!!204 There are also flickers of reference to Turgenev, though never to Turgenev alone, he is usually aligned with Dostoevsky or with the soul-searching of Chekhov. This allusion must be on the strength of the novels or their dramatisations rather than only on the gentler tenor of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Should we therefore not counter the ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ with this dark and torturous streak? My reservation is that this darkness appears to derive more closely from the prose writing than from Russian theatre itself. But maybe that difference of source is not a problem. Might not attraction to this darker side account in part for the British inclination to adapt Russian novels and stories into plays for performance? Only one British critic attempts to draw comparisons with other contemporary Russian plays in any depth. Writing in response to Solzhenitsyn’s Love Girl and the Innocent Benedict Nightingale indicated a closer knowledge of Soviet writing than many of his colleagues: Several write with greater grace than Solzhenitsyn, and shape their plots better. Occasionally they are mildly ‘controversial’, meaning they show intra-party wrangles about (for instance) ecology and the right use of natural resources, as in Arbuzov’s Evening Light or Salynsky’s Maria.205 They are capable of attacking short-sighted bureaucrats and moribund oldsters-in-office, and also, as in Roshchin’s Valentine and Valentina206 or Rozov’s From Night to Noon,207 of eschewing the overtly social for personal relationships […] a theatre which if no longer positively mendacious […] continues to suffer from one of the worst diseases known to art, that of chronic harmlessness.208

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Even if ultimately negative, at least his assessment is based on some familiarity with the contemporary scene, and especially given that, as far as I have been able to trace, these plays have mostly not been performed in Britain. The third point recalls stereotypes. Mother Russia or the Motherland is met with on several occasions. It seems to have been particularly drawn upon in reviewing the contemporary material. In my view this may be due to the British or Western perception that the experiment in politics we now call the Soviet era in many ways occluded what we wished in Britain to recognise as the ‘true’ Russia. Perhaps masking may arise because so much of the contemporary writing (including the adaptation of contemporary novels) has paraded a suffering modern Russia before us. This Mother Russia inhabits a different extreme from Chekhov. The worst of socialist realist writing to British eyes was aimed at ‘Mother Russia’s unsophisticated children’209 Perhaps unfairly, this thought was used by one reviewer in 1964 of Pogodin’s Kremlin Chimes to suggest the transparency of Soviet propaganda and the gullibility of the Soviet target audience. Solzhenitsyn’s Love Girl and the Innocent takes place in the labour camps which were sheltered, wrote one critic in 1981, by ‘the forests of Mother Russia’,210 almost as if she had colluded in their existence by sheltering them from discovery. The production of Bulgakov’s Flight (1998) caused one reviewer to comment on characters who were ‘drawn back to Mother Russia regardless of the horrors they might find’,211 suggesting that attraction to this mother led only to further suffering, as if she were not being strictly straight with her children. Sigarev’s work ‘mines Putin’s Russia for despair and disappointment’212 according to one critic, while another quotes a character who wants ‘to scream so My Boundless Motherland will hear’.213 So whether Lenin’s or Stalin’s Russia (Bulgakov), Brezhnev’s (Solzhenitsyn), or Putin’s Russia (Sigarev), there is always another, Mother Russia, almost as if in a parallel universe, which suffers and survives. For British commentators it encompasses almost everything falling outside the ideal Chekhovian Russian world, while for Russian writers it is a reality which no longer hears them in their sorrow. Most recently, Mother Russia has been claimed by some Russians to stand ominously for the Soviet and (by implication) the Russian, state. In 2014, Krymov’s Russian Laboratory Theatre, through puppetry, mime and circus skills, brought a frighteningly destructive Mother Russia to London. In the second half of Opus 7, which focussed on the fate of the composer Shostakovich:

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a puppet of Mother Russia several storeys high, with shawl and bun, and bosoms as big as barrage balloons […] swans across the stage […] pointing expressionlessly to photographs of artists […] disposed of by the USSR but here finely remembered.214

And, commented another reviewer, ‘Krymov leaves us in no doubt […] that it’s Shostakovich who is the real puppet’ while ‘the long arm of the state [and the Mother Russia puppet] hovers over him’.215 The ‘holy fool’ fulfils a similar one-sided, almost sentimental, role for us in Britain. It operates as a counterpoint to Chekhov’s Russia. This concept enters the review discourse on contemporary plays at the point of glasnost in the mid to late 1980s. The raisonneur, Bessmertnyi in Gubaryev’s Sarcophagus wrings it many times from the British critics. Either the word went around the tight circle of the reviewers (who presumably read each other’s offerings), or they were genuine in their recognition of this type. Bessmertnyi is terminally ill with cancer before the Chernobyl catastrophe. He has become an expert on his own condition which he regards with a jester-like self-deprecation. The British commentators seem to wish to catch his willing acceptance of his death and his ability to make jokes in the face of it as he sacrifices himself in the name of science. The original ‘holy fools’, however, hardly merited such a description. In pre-twentieth-century Russia, the holy fools were often mentally ill but thought to have some kind of mystic communication with God, or they willingly adopted the garb of the wandering holy man, perhaps sometimes feigning the ability to be in touch with God. Such a person was a means of survival, since they were supported by the alms of the pious. Or, like Gorky’s Luka (The Lower Depths) they may have been fugitives from the police, or members of banned religious sects. The term also surfaced, perhaps surprisingly, in British reviews of Slava Polunin, the Russian clown, having ‘a benign presence of a holy fool’ and even comparing this image to ‘the great clown tradition of appearing isolated in a bewildering, hostile world’.216 The fourth point concerns language and language-body (Pavis). There are two distinct types of cultural exchange here: one in the native language and one in translation. Productions in Russian of modern plays have clustered: firstly the MAT visits from the late 50s, and then an explosion of contacts and visits from the mid-80s with the arrival of glasnost and all that followed it, and then the new wave of recent years. As far as translated Russian twentieth-century theatre is concerned,

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the early part of the post-WW2 period struggled with the new type of play shaped by the cultural policy of Socialist Realism, then being translated for the first time. It was thought to be an ideological difference causing the difficulties, in the increasingly polarised world situation. However, it is clear that when the Russians visited Britain, their actual performing style, perceived as propagandised, was difficult to take. As soon as the international pressure was released in the 1980s, there was universal admiration for the techniques and sheer physicality of the Russian performers. Surely the tradition could not have changed that much? I think what we are talking about here is a different language-body (in Pavis’s words) being in evidence: the years, especially from early 1930s and the birth of Socialist Realism until the early 50s (the death of Stalin in 1953) a different domestic language-body was both created and demanded in visual culture, including performance. A glance at any history of Soviet art quickly confirms this point. The body language is heroic, echoing the sculpture of the ­Graeco-Roman eras. There are changes to the style in the Stalinist period, say between the 1930s and the 1950s, mostly engineered by the war, but the socialist realist language-body image became embedded in the international imagination. It is caught in the monumental architecture, sculpture, painting and mosaics of certain stations of the Moscow metro (particularly Maiakovskaia (1938), or Komsomolskaia (1952)) and in the use of painting as an adjunct to propaganda, and then in an increasingly hagiolatry style of statuary towards Lenin and Stalin as the great leaders. This language-body reached a particular climax in the giant figures of the Worker and the Collective Farm Worker (Rabochii i kolkhoznitsa, 1935–1936)217 sculpted by Vera Mukhina. This couple with their outstretched, grandiose and triumphant gestures grasping the iconic tools of their trades, the hammer and the sickle, has guarded the entrance to the Exhibition of Economic Achievement in Moscow since 1939. The desire is to dominate and fill the available space or frame addressed by the spectating imagination. It took the dissident movement, which gained international notice from the early 1960s onwards, to undermine this language-body, or at the very least to change the expectation of it in Soviet plays. As a result, there was surprise when in the 1956 production of Iskaev and Galich’s Hold the Line the British audience discovered the ability for the Russians to laugh at themselves, a situation demanding a different language-body altogether from the expected one. The contemporary

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plays by Pogodin and Rakhmanov brought by MAT in 1958 were received with distaste, the performance body adulatory of Lenin as well as the language-body required for his impersonation in Pogodin’s plays must have been very hard to swallow. Similarly, Rakhmanov’s reflections in his 1937 play must have been somewhat shocking as understanding of the true nature of Stalinist Russia of the 1930s grew. So when the critics found a similar style attributed to Chekhov they were appalled. The reception of a Soviet farce in English illustrates the point further. Kataev’s Sign Here Please!218 reached the home of British farce, the Whitehall Theatre in 1967, via another stronghold, Paris, and a French translation. The critics were led to ‘doubt whether much of the original remains’,219 and to quip that ‘the piece is about as Russian in atmosphere as Shepherds Bush’.220 A serious point was being missed: it is possible that the original language-body had in the process of its cultural transition through France been excised. Furthermore, did the British theatre have any idea what life in contemporary Soviet Russia was like in the 1960s? The most significant point made in the reviews was the surprise that the author (then 70) had lived and written quietly through several regimes and achieved considerable popularity. What was not realised, however, was that such a quiet life was the one experienced, and sometimes tactically chosen, by large sections of the Soviet public. Finally, hybridising or acculturating a modern foreign text for a British audience means resorting to a range of different devices. For example, widely different, often completely incongruous with the Russian source, regional and local accents are drawn in, from ‘pure Hoxton’ to ‘Blackpool’221 or a Russian girl in Sofronov’s A Million for a Smile (1965) played as a ‘Roedean ingénue’.222 One production of Vampilov’s Last Summer in Chulimsk was in English delivered in ‘stage ­Anglo-Russian accents’ from which ‘this production never recovers’.223 The results were mixed: ‘some [actors] appeared utterly unEnglish’, others ‘may look a thorough Russian […] but were not going to import foreign accents into their nice little Anglo-Saxon performances’.224 British performers appear frequently unwilling to appear too foreign: the desire to Anglicise is a powerful imperative. It seems frequently to be a consequence of a tradition of drama school curricula which pride themselves on regional accent training of the voice but entirely neglect the cultural implications for the body. This is the thrust, I think, of the following comment made about one of the early experiences of the new post-glasnost Russian theatre. Dodin’s production in Russian of Galin’s

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Stars in the Morning Sky projected a new view of Russian performance style in not providing ‘the quaint genteel dottiness’ expected of Russian plays.225 The overtly coarse style found in this production was not only a comment on the new realism of Russian prostitutes being on stage but also a comment on a style of playing that the British can only very rarely emulate in translated Russian productions. Much more recently a critic referred to the ‘visceral staging’226 of Into the Whirlwind in Russian (2011), which is I think an attempt to express the different emotional body projected by the Russians in performance. Another comment, this time on the production in English of Black Milk (2003) gets closer to the heart of this issue as one of cultural collision: ‘the Russians have always been less nervous about writing of the life of the soul than we buttoned-up Brits’.227 When simultaneous translation is provided, the distance between source and host culture is at its most ironic. One commentator wrote the following of Dodin’s production in Russian of Galin’s Stars in the Morning Sky: ‘the calm monotonous tones of the English translator are often ludicrously at odds with the impassioned Russian dialogue on stage’.228 Even the more modern surtitles can promote collision: they act as a constant reminder of the strangeness of what is being seen. Spelling mistakes, abbreviated text from known sources (Shakespeare for example), whether or not the text synchronised with the spoken speech, and the speed of transition across the screen, all make the device prominent rather than absorbed. Sometimes the two cultures can ‘creatively collide’229 as in the NT production of Bulgakov’s Flight (1998) almost universally seen to be affecting and powerful, and almost impenetrably Russian. It was ‘embedded too deep in Russian experience, Russian humour, Russian idiom’.230 However, that power was attributable in one review to a ‘bracing experimentalism’ in which ‘a drama dealing with Russia on the verge of disintegration’ is matched by an ‘Anglicised turn of embittered humour’.231 This reviewer continued that the translator and adaptor ‘had smoothed away a distinctly Slavic tone […] and the evening’s prime comic delight revels in a camp villainy of an Anglo-Saxon kind’232; or even more technically, but tellingly, a ‘Groucho-Marxist critique of Bolshevik triumphalism’.233 Even though the play ‘is alien to the British experience: it is about the tenacity of the refugee-spirit and in the end about the Russian longing for home’.234 This production bridged the cultural difference, by allowing intimate aspects of the two cultures to rub against one

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another, to collide in our terminology, and not submerge aspects of the one within the other as in the case of hybridisation, or lose touch with the source culture at the extreme of acculturation (Fig. 6.2). The programme cover caught that intimacy, depicting this ordinary bloke, marked by newsprint or 1920s Soviet propaganda(?), doggedly taking to his heels. The red and black colours emphasise the Soviet frame in which Bulgakov had to write his play, nevertheless riskily drawing on his experience with the White Army in the Civil War. Flight

Fig. 6.2  Programme for Bulgakov’s Flight, NT, 1998

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(written, 1927) was banned from performance, and not found until after Bulgakov’s death. One important inference that may be drawn from this discussion is that where there is a distinct political difference between cultures then the need for hybridisation or acculturation is regarded as much more pressing. On the other hand, the British have identified with what has been seen as the heart-breaking fate of Russian theatre in the twentieth century and up to the present day. So the eventual NT production of Erdman’s The Mandate (1924), spanning the New Year 2004–2005, drew comments that we know too much about Russia’s difficult experience to be able to laugh ‘full-throatedly’235 at this 1920s comedy about the nascent Soviet bureaucracy. Our enjoyment is inevitably sullied by knowledge of the fates of the writer and of the first director, Meyerhold. Erdman spent the 1930s in Siberian exile, and Meyerhold was executed in 1940. This double-edged presence in British reactions to modern Russian theatre has been difficult to overcome. The enormity of difference between British and Soviet culture provoked comments of disbelief in the Soviet period. They changed to sympathy and horror in the final two decades between 1945 and 2015. These differences between the Russian physical theatre style and ­language-body and their British equivalents can be seen with equal if not more clarity in the visiting productions adapted from Russian prose works. The act of adaptation, by virtue of frequent omissions or contractions from the original novel or short story, allows freedoms of expression not always available within scripted play production. This type of visiting Russian theatre has chimed well with the established British tradition of adapting Russian novels and stories for the stage. Adaptation is a means of plumbing this source of Russian culture so beloved by the British. However, in the next section it becomes clear that adaptation of Russian prose for the stage has presented hazards as well as opportunities.

Notes

1. Andrei Zhdanov(1896–1948) joined the Bolshevik Party in 1915 eventually becoming a close ally of Stalin. Along with other senior figures, including Maxim Gorky, he shaped the policy of Socialist Realism. He chaired the Supreme Soviet from 1939 to 1947. In 1946 he adopted a policy of cultural repression of freedoms which arose in WW2. He then

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became notorious for his persecution of cultural figures, for example, Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova in the late 40s. 2. Alexei Arbuzov (1908–1986) became an actor in Leningrad in 1928, joined an agit prop troupe and began writing plays. Eventually, he works complying with Socialist Realism, carefully observing its rules but seeking to stretch the boundaries. Tanya (1938) was his first big success. Later, in My Poor Marat (Moi bednyi Marat, 1964) covering 1942– 1959, in tune with the post-Stalin thaw, he took a more elastic approach to political demands. He wrote for young people, for example, Irkutsk Story (Irkutskaia istoriia, 1959). Towards the end of his life he addressed social issues such as family breakdown in Cruel Games (Zhestokie igry, 1978). My Poor Marat, translated and performed in the UK as The Promise (1964), brought him international fame. Only a small number of his plays have been seen in the UK. There are five translated plays in Selected Plays of Alexei Arbuzov, trans. by Ariadne Nicolaeff (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982), but the 2 vols. edition of ‘Selected Plays’ by Arbuzov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1981) includes 22 separate pieces. 3. Leonid Andreev (1871–1919) a journalist who made his name as a short story writer. After 1905, he became a playwright: the best known works are Life of Man (Zhizn’ cheloveka, 1906) staged at MAT (1907) by Stanislavsky and by Meyerhold in Petersburg (1907), and He Who Gets Slapped (Tot, kto poluchaet poshchechinu, 1915). Known for his daring (his radical writing on sex, for example) Andreev was a leading modernist voice before WW1. The 1917 revolution was a great disappointment to him. Outspokenly anti-Bolshevik, he moved to Finland in 1917. He carried on writing prose and drama, but died prematurely in 1919. 4. Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) grew up in Kiev; trained as a doctor, and volunteered for the medical corps in WWI. He was caught up in the revolutionary aftermath in Kiev and in the Civil War, but on the anti-Bolshevik side, with the White Army. He moved to Moscow where he wrote a novel and several plays, some of which, Flight and Black Snow, have been staged in the UK. His best known play, In the Days of the Turbins (V dni Turbinykh) 1926) was based on his novel The White Guard (Belaia Gvardiia, serialised from 1924). Stalin liked the play and supported Bulgakov by seeing the MAT production more than a dozen times in the mid 20s. Bulgakov, however, remained a suspect figure, because of his ‘mistake’ in the Civil War. He fell foul of the censorship in the 1930s and was prevented from working in the theatre or leaving the USSR. He began his Master and Margarita as a private view of Russian life under Stalin. Bulgakov died in 1940, an isolated and ostracised figure. Master and Margarita was not published until the 1960s

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when it immediately caught international attention. It has been staged several times in Britain (for discussion, see Section 7). 5. Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) trained at art school before WW1. His anti-establishment position was expressed in his artistic activities, especially in the Futurist manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste (Poshchechina obshchestvennomu vkusu, 1912). Expelled from art school, he worked as a draughtsman in WWI in Petrograd. A new voice in poetry in the war, he became the mouthpiece of revolution after 1917. He worked as a poet, artist (civil war posters) and playwright: a parody mystery play was a platform for revolutionary ideology (Misteriia Bouffe, 1918). In the 20s he was a political activist. His best known plays The Bedbug (Klop, 1929) and Bathhouse (Bania, 1930), express increasing disillusion at the loss of revolutionary idealism in Russia. Due to despair and perhaps failures in love, he committed suicide in 1930. 6.  Nikolai Erdman (1900–1970) poet, became a theatrical satirist after the Revolution. His two plays, The Mandate (Mandat, 1924), and The Suicide (Samoubiistvo, 1928) initially brought fame in Meyerhold’s productions, and then trouble when the second play was banned. Erdman became a screenwriter (Volga-Volga brought him the Stalin prize in 1941), then moved into children’s films. He returned to the theatre after 1964, when Lyubimov invited him to work at the Moscow Taganka theatre. The Suicide was not staged until the 1990s in Russia: an ordinary man bent on doing away with himself is besieged by campaigners to make his death a gesture of support for their cause. The Mandate satirises the political bureaucracy of the early 1920s for which a Party card is the only means to success and social acceptance. 7. Alexander Vampilov (1937–1972) was born in Irkutsk, Siberia. He transferred to Moscow to study, but he never lost his early reputation as a writer about regional Russia. His dramatic techniques echoed strategies from the 1920s, by which he struck a (submerged) satirical note in his work. His best known plays (among half a dozen) were Duckhunting (Okhota za utinok, 1970) and Last Summer in Chulimsk (Proshloe leto v Chulimske, 1972). He died prematurely, killed in a boating accident at the age of 35. 8. All the 6 productions (of just 2 plays) by Vampilov located in Britain were between 1982 and 1991. His work was clearly the modern Soviet flavour of the decade. The two plays produced were the ones in n. 7. 9. Leonid Rakhmanov (1908–1988) wrote stories, plays, film scripts and essays. He studied in Leningrad and published stories about student life. Then after a trip to the north of Russia his adventures fed into his stories. He wrote a film script, The Baltic Deputy (Deputat Baltiki, 1936),

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and a play Troubled Past (Bespokoinaia starost’, 1937). His best known play, it was performed in more than 450 theatres in the USSR and was staged by MAT in 1956. 10.  Nikolai Pogodin (real surname Stukalov, 1900–1962) a journalist in 1920s on the newspaper Pravda. Always striving to please the Party, Pogodin wrote Kremlin Chimes (Kremlevskie kuranty, 1942) as part of a trilogy devoted to Lenin, for which he received the Lenin prize in 1959. He wrote more than 20 plays, several film scripts and many articles on theatre. 11. W. A. Darlington, ‘Propaganda Acted with Spirit’, Daily Telegraph, 22 May 1958 (LTM, press cutting). 12.  Vera Lindsay, ‘Moscow Art Company Make the Most of “Troubled Past”’, Manchester Guardian, 23 May 1958 (LTM, press cutting). 13. Ibid. 14. Anon, ‘Boisterously Solemn Russian Play’, Times, 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting). 15. B. A. Young, ‘Kremlin Chimes’, Financial Times, 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting). 16. Milton Shulman, ‘This Saintly Lenin Should Have Stayed in Moscow’, Evening Standard, 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting). 17. Martin Esslin, ‘Moscow Art Theatre’, Plays and Players, 1 June 1970, p. 78. 18.  Michael Billington, ‘Party Piece’, Times, 2 June 1970 (LTM, press cutting). 19. Jack Tinker, Daily Mail, 29 October 1987 (LTR, 22 October–4 November 1987, p. 1392). 20. Boris Vassilev (also, Vasiliev, 1924–2013): an army officer in WW2, subsequently a writer, drawing on his war experiences. His best seller was The Dawns Are Quiet (A zori zdes’ tikhie, 1969). Tomorrow There Was War (Zavtra byl voina, 1984) explored women’s heroism in the war, treated rather sentimentally. His works were turned into films, notably Do Not Shoot the White Swans (Ne streliaite v belykh lebedei, 1980). In later years he turned to historical fiction, perhaps as a result of his disillusionment with glasnost. 21. Victoria Radin, New Statesman, 13 November 1987 (LTR, 22 October–4 November 1987, p. 1395). 22. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 1 November 1987 (ibid., pp. 1393–1394). 23. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph, 30 October 1987 (ibid., p. 1393). 24. Milton Shulman, London Evening Standard, 29 October 1987 (ibid., p. 1394). See discussion of the differences between ‘social’ and ‘Socialist’ realism near the end of this section.

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25. Lev Dodin (1944–): much admired and decorated Russian theatre director with an international reputation. Trained in theatre in Leningrad, and began his career at The Theatre for the Young Spectator (Teatr Iunogo Zritelia (TIuZ)), Leningrad, in 1973, while also teaching directing studies. He joined the Maly Dramatic Theatre, Leningrad in 1974, becoming a theatre director (1983) and then its overall leader from 2002. He has a string of famous productions to his credit. His first major success was with Galin’s play, Stars in the Morning Sky (1988). He draws on an international repertoire as well as innovative and provocative productions of Russian classics. For a full account of his methods see Maria Shevstova, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre (London: Routledge, 2004). 26. Alexander Galin (1947–) began in puppet theatre, then trained as a theatre director. He has written more than twenty plays. A first big success was Retro (1981). He works as a film and theatre director, and has adapted his own work for the screen. 27. Mary Brennan, Glasgow Herald, 10 May 1988 (LTR, 6–19 May 1988, p. 636). 28. Ibid. 29. Sarah Hemming, Independent, 12 May 1988 (ibid., pp. 636–637). 30. Vera Lustig, City Limits, 19 May 1988 (ibid., p. 636). 31. Ibid. 32. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 15 May 1988 (ibid., pp. 641–642). 33. Joyce McMillan, Guardian, 11 May 1988 (ibid., pp. 642–643). 34. LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) was established in 1981 to bring the best of foreign theatre in its source languages to British audiences in London. See: www.liftfest.org.uk. 35.  Liudmila Petrushevskaia (b.1938, Moscow) trained as a journalist at Moscow University, becoming a TV editor in 1970s. Her poetry and plays date from her student years, and she published her first short stories in the early 70s. Her play Uroki muzyki (Music Lessons, 1973, published 1983) was staged by an amateur group in Moscow in the 70s, but her work was banned for showing the tough sides of Soviet family life. Her plays were not published until the 1980s but she continued to write ‘for the desk drawer’ as the Russians put it. A theatre group performed her Cinzano in L’vov, which with other plays was later staged in Moscow (Taganka, Sovremennik, MAT). Little of her work was published until two collections in 2007, Kvartira Kolumbiny (Columbina’s Apartment) and Moskovskii khor (Moscow Chorus). See Three Girls in Blue (Ttri devushki v golubom), trans. by Liane Aukin and Michael Glenny, in New Soviet Plays, intro. by Michael Glenny (London: Nick

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Hern Books, 1989); and Cinzano in Eleven Plays, trans. and intro. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Nick Hern Books, 1991). 36. Michael Billington, Guardian, 12 July 1989 (LTR, 16–29 July 1989, p. 960). 37. Robert Bucknor, Tribune, 14 July 1989 (ibid.). 38. Billington, Guardian. 39. John Connor, City Limits, 13 July 1989 (ibid., p. 961). 40. Billington, Guardian. 41. Martin Hoyle, Financial Times, 13 July 1989 (ibid., p. 960). 42. After much searching I have concluded that Shchekochikhin, the dramatist, is the same man who became the high profile investigative journalist and political figure Yuri Shchekochikhin in post-Soviet Russia. He died of an unspecified disease in 2003. No mention is made of the play (full title Lavoushka 46:2 [Trap Number 46, size 2]) in his obituary (Guardian, 9 July 2003) nor in items on Russian websites devote to him. I make the connection from a website entry on the director of the play at the Moscow Central Children’s Theatre Aleksey Borodin, http://persona.rin.ru/eng/view/f/0/35567/borodin-aleksey [accessed August 2011] which refers to the play being by the journalist Yuri Schekochikhin. I shall be happy to be corrected on this if incorrect. For more information on this writer and activist-journalist, see http:// www.people.su/127165 [accessed 18 May 2017]. 43. David Willcocks, ‘Lavoushka’, Plays and Players, September 1989, p. 40. 44.  Anatoly Alexandrovich Vasiliev (1942–) carved a career as a theatre director in Russia in several Moscow theatres, but principally the Taganka, as a protégé of Lyubimov. In 1987, he founded the School of Dramatic Art. Vasiliev tours with actors from the School, is well known as a director. He works and teaches in France. 45. Victor Slavkin (1935–) studied at the Moscow Railway Institute, and began writing plays in the early 60s. He is best known for two plays directed by Anatoly Vasiliev (see above): Vzroslaia doch’ molodogo cheloveka (The Grown-up Daughter of a Young Man, 1979), and Cerceau (also 1979, but not staged until 1985), trans. by T. Hagemeijer (1987). He expressed an early interest in the French Absurd movement, especially Ionesco and Beckett. Others place him in the Chekhov tradition; and he has collaborated on a collection of plays with Liudmila Petrushevskaia. Slavkin also developed a career in film and TV. 46. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 26 July 1987 (LTR, 30 July–12 August 1987, London International Festival of Theatre [LIFT] [32 pp. supplement in between pp. 950–983 but numbered pp. 1–32], p. 14). 47. Victoria Radin, New Statesman, 7 August 1987 (ibid., p. 13). 48. Ibid.

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49. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 20 July 1987 (ibid., p. 15). 50. Giles Gordon, London Daily News, 20 July 1987 (ibid., p. 14). 51. Michael Billington, Guardian, 21 July 1987 (ibid., p. 13). 52. Anthony Loach, Daily Telegraph, 22 July 1987 (ibid., p. 15). 53. Ibid. 54. Gordon, London Daily News. 55. Billington, Guardian. 56.  Viacheslav (‘Slava’) Polunin (1950–) Mime artist with an interest in street theatre. With his company Litsedei, he created a series of successful mime shows in Leningrad, and was well known for his TV performances. He brought his work to Europe in the 1990s to earn money to keep his mime and clown training enterprises and company in Russia afloat. He still regularly performs his Snow Show internationally. 57. Patrick Marmion, Evening Standard, 15 December 1997 (TR, 3–31 December 1997, p. 1609). 58. Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 19 December 1997 (ibid., pp. 1609–1610). 59. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 15 February 1998 (TR, 12–25 February 1998, p. 169). 60. Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 19 December 1997 (TR, 3–31 December 1997, pp. 1609–1610). The ‘holy fool’ was primarily a social figure of pre-revolutionary Russia and was outlawed along with religion in the Soviet period. See end of this section for further discussion. 61. Hemming, Financial Times. 62. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 15 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1610). 63. Patrick Marmion, Evening Standard, 15 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1609). 64. Palash Davé, What’s On, 31 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1610); Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 21 December 1997 (ibid.); Bruce Dessau, Express, 22 December 1997 (ibid., p. 1609). 65. Michael Billington, Guardian, 8 March 2002 (TR, February–11 March 2002, p. 288). 66. Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph, 24 January 2011 (TR, 1–28 January 2011, p. 59). 67.  Richard Godwin, ‘The Russians Are Coming’, Evening Standard, 7 January 2011, p. 42. 68. Cavendish, Daily Telegraph. 69. Dominic Maxwell, Times, 24 January 2011 (TR, 1–28 January 2011, p. 59). 70. See Claire Warden, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels Through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) for a close study of the Russian modernist period as reflected in Britain.

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71. A. Williamson and C. Landstone, The Bristol Old Vic—The First Ten Years (London: J Garnet Miller, c.1957), p. 61. Leonid Leonov (1899– 1994) was born into an intellectual family (his father was a newspaper editor). After the 1917 revolution, he fought in the Civil War. He became a novelist and dramatist in 1920s. He won the Stalin prize, for his play Invasion (Nashestvie) in 1943, which he donated to the war effort. The Apple Orchards is a translation of his Polovchanskie sady (The Orchards of Polovchansk, 1938). 72. Frank Marcus, ‘Ménage à trois—Russian Style’ (review of Arbuzov’s The Promise), Plays and Players, March 1967, p. 21. 73.  Konstantin Iskaev [Also Iskayev] (1907–1977) studied shipbuilding, then turned to film in 1935 and received two Stalin prizes. Alexander Galich (surname pseudonym for Ginzburg) (1918–1977) poet and dramatist, wrote half a dozen plays and a number of screenplays. The two writers worked together on Hold the Line (Vas vyzyvaet taimer, 1948), published in the journal Ogonek in 1948. In 1970 Galich collaborated again with Iskaev, turning their play into a film with the same title. In 1969, Galich’s poems was published by Posev (both a press and a journal) regarded by the government as anti-Soviet. Galich was expelled from the Writers’ Union and the Film Workers’ Union in the early 70s. He fled Russia in 1974, eventually reaching Paris where he died in 1977. 74. Anon, Times, 18 August 1956 (LTM, press cutting). This amateur production has been included because it is a unique appearance of this play and it did produce the one professional review, quoted here. 75.  The Troubled Past is set in Petrograd 1917. The focus is on students and their tutors who are fearful of what revolution might bring. They are set an example by one of their professors, Pozhelaev, who fully accepts the Bolshevik agenda, and converts sailors of the Baltic fleet to the cause. This 1937 play was designed to stir the hearts of audiences in line with Socialist Realism, and to praise the heroism of the Bolshevik seizure of power. 76. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 15 February 1962 (LTM, press cutting). 77. Anon, Illustrated London News, 3 March 1962 (LTM, press cutting). 78. Kate Kellaway, Observer, 18 July 2004 (TR, 1–14 July 2004, p. 921). 79. Shulman, Evening Standard, 15 February 1962. 80. Milton Shulman, ‘This Saintly Lenin Should Have Stayed in Moscow’, Evening Standard, 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting). 81. Felix Barker, ‘Kremlin Chimes Off Key’, Evening News (London), 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting).

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82. Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) wrote, novels, stories and this one play. Best known as a Soviet dissident writer, who brought international attention on to Russia’s vast prison system, the gulag. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, but was prevented from going to Sweden to receive it. He was forced into exile for his views in 1973, living for several years in the USA. He returned to Russia in 1994 after the demise of the USSR. 83. Douglas Orgill, ‘Mother Russia’s Tragedy’, Daily Express, 9 September 1981 (LTM, press cutting). 84. Anatolii Sofronov (1911–1990). Poet, lyricist, journalist and dramatist, his comedies were very popular in the 50s and 60s; he also wrote several political and ideological plays under Socialist Realism. He worked for Izvestiia during the war and served as secretary to the Writers’ Union, 1948–1953. 85. LTM, file on the Tavistock Repertory company at the Tower Theatre, unidentified newspaper cutting of a review, 8 March 1965. 86. Solzhenitsyn’s story was published in Novyi mir, November 1962. One month later, Khrushchev roundly condemned modern abstract art at an exhibition in Moscow. 87.  Selected Plays of Alexei Arbuzov, trans. by Ariadne Nicolaeff (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982). 88. Marcus, ‘Ménage à trois—Russian Style’, Plays and Players, March 1967, p. 21. 89. John Barber, ‘Gentle Soviet Play Delicately Perceived’, Daily Telegraph, 13 October 1976 (LTM, press cutting). 90. Felix Barker, ‘An Old World Soviet Comedy’, Evening News (London), 13 October 1976 (LTM, press cutting). 91. Colin Chambers, ‘Arbuzov in Relaxed and Sentimental Mood’, Morning Star, 14 October 1976 (LTM, press cutting). 92. Barber, Daily Telegraph, 13 October 1976. 93. B. A. Young, ‘Old World’, Financial Times, 13 October 1976 (LTM, press cutting). 94. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 13 October 1976 (LTM, press cutting). 95. Ibid. 96. These were Evening Light (Vechernii svet, 1973); Once Upon a Time (Skazki starogo Arbata, 1970) and The Promise. 97.  Northcott Theatre, Exeter, 5–29 April 1978 (archive is held in Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Exeter). 98. John Barber, ‘Modern Classic an Enchanting Find’, Daily Telegraph, 30 May 1979 (LTM, press cutting).

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99. B. A. Young, ‘The White Guard’, Financial Times, 31 May 1979 (LTM, press cutting). 100. Robert Cushman, ‘Red and White Blues’, Observer, 1 June 1979 (LTM, press cutting). 101. Barber, Daily Telegraph, 30 May 1979. 102. Cushman, Observer, 1 June 1979. 103. Ian Stewart, ‘A Dark Corner of Ruritania’, Country Life, 21 June 1979 (LTM, press cutting). 104.  Peter Jenkins, ‘Lost Causes’, Spectator, 23 June 1979 (LTM, press cutting). 105. Howard Davies went on to direct Gorky’s Children of the Sun (1905) in 2013, adding further to this impressive body of work. Sadly, Davies died in 2016 at the age of 71 after a much respected theatre directing career. 106. Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, 24 March 2010 (TR, 12–25 March 2010, p. 297). 107. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 24 March 2010 (ibid.). 108. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 28 March 2010 (ibid., p. 299). 109. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 28 March 2010 (ibid.). 110. Nikolai Erdman, The Suicide, trans. by Peter Tegel (New York and London: Samuel French Inc., 1979). 111. Barrie Parkin, ‘Political Potato Nearer Warm Than Red Hot’, Stratford Herald, 22 June 1979 (LTM, press cutting). 112. Mark Amory, Spectator, September 1981 (LTR, 27 August–9 September 1981, p. 453). 113.  Irving Wardle, ‘Tolstoyan Amplitude in Solzhenitsyn’, Times, 10 September 1981 (LTM, press cutting). 114. Michael Billington, Guardian, 9 September 1981 (LTR, 27 August–9 September 1981, p. 452). 115. Wardle, Times. 116. Douglas Orgill, ‘Mother Russia’s Tragedy’, Daily Express, 9 September 1981 (LTR, 27 August–9 September 1981, pp. 453–454). 117. Don Hatwell, ‘Love in the Gulag’, Bristol Evening Post, 9 September 1981 (LTM, press cutting). 118. Benedict Nightingale, New Statesman (LTR, 27 August–9 September 1981, p. 450). 119. Ibid., p. 451. 120. John Barber, ‘Solzhenitsyn’s Russia’, Daily Telegraph, 9 September 1981 (ibid., pp. 452–453). 121. Francis King, Sunday Telegraph, 13 September 1981 (ibid., p. 452). 122. Sheridan Morley, Punch, September 1981 (ibid., p. 451). 123. Robert Cushman, ‘In Stalin’s Labour Camp’, Observer, 13 September 1981 (ibid., p. 453).

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124. Amory, Spectator (ibid., p. 453). 125. Billington, Guardian (ibid., p. 452). 126. BBC, ‘Play of the Month’, 16 September 1973. 127. Mick Martin, Guardian, 16 October 1987 (LTR, 5–18 November 1987, p. 1455). 128. Victoria Radin, ‘Duck Hunting’, Observer (LTR, 30 June–14 July 1982, p. 371). 129. John Barber, ‘Duck Hunting’, Daily Telegraph (ibid., p. 373). 130. Ibid. 131.  Nicholas de Jongh, ‘Last Summer in Chulimsk’, Guardian, 14 November 1987 (LTR, 5–18 November 1987, p. 1456). 132. Christopher Hudson, ‘Duck Hunting’, Standard (LTR, 30 June–14 July 1982, p. 373). 133.  Vladimir Gubaryev (1938–) shot to international fame with his play Sarcophagus (Sarkofag, 1986) about the Chernobyl catastrophe. From the 1960s he was a journalist on Pravda writing on scientific topics and a creative writer. He was sent to report on the catastrophe in 1986. Since 1966 he had also been part of a collective of writers under the pseudonym Pavel Bagriak, writing science fiction and fantasy. After the success of his play, Gubaryev continued to write and present TV programmes on popular science but has not written any more plays (as far as can be established). 134. Alex Renton, Independent, 21 October 1987 (LTR, 5–18 November 1987, pp. 1455–1456). 135. Victoria Radin, New Statesman, 1 May 1987 (LTR, 26 March–22 April 1987, p. 472). 136. Alexander Afinogenov, Distant Point (trans. by Cathy Porter, 1991) was written in 1935 just after the declaration of Socialist Realism. Afinogenov (1904–1941), the son of a railway worker, became a writer. He joined the Party in 1922, becoming a leading member of RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), later suppressed in favour of the Union of Writers. He became an object of criticism from 1936 and his plays were banned. He found shelter in the writers’ colony at Peredelkino and was befriended by Boris Pasternak. He continued writing and was readmitted to the Party in 1938. He worked for the Literary Section of the Sovinformbureau, and died during a bomb explosion in Moscow, during WW2. 137. Helen Rose, Time Out, 12 June 1991 (TR, 4–17 June 1991, p. 703). 138. Jo Graham, What’s On, 12 June 1991 (ibid.). 139.  Daniil Kharms (real name Iuvachev; 1905–1942) poet, dramatist and story writer. His pseudonym was apparently a play on the French word ‘charme’ and the English word ‘harm’. He was on the fringe of

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­ ost-Futurist poetic groups in 1920s Leningrad, and joined the avantp garde group ‘The Association of Real Art’ (Ob’edinenie real’nogo iskusstva, OBERIU) in 1928. His absurdist play Elizaveta Bam was performed under their auspices in 1928. He was arrested along with other members of the group in 1931, and sent into exile in Kursk. He was eventually allowed back into Leningrad but had only a few stories for children published. Arrested in 1941 for anti-war and defeatist talk, he died in prison in 1942 during the siege of Leningrad. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956, but his work, although (or because) published abroad was not publicly available in Russia until 1989 (post-glasnost). 140.  Adapted from Kharms stories for children Iz doma vyshel chelovek s dubinkoi i meshkom (Out of a House came a Man with a Truncheon and a Bag, 1937). 141.  W. A. Darlington, ‘Russian Play Revived; Obscure Symbolism’, Unidentified newspaper review, dated 17 June 1947 (LTM, Duchess Theatre file, press cutting). 142. Simon Evans, What’s On, 14 September 1994 (TR, 13 August–9 September 1994, p. 1084). 143. Jeremy Kingston, Times, 13 September 1994 (ibid.). 144. Evans, What’s On. 145. Aleksey Shipenko (b.1967–) began his creative life as a rock musician, before turning to plays: Lavochkin-5, was premièred in Moscow by Anatoly Vasiliev in 1988. After 2000, he has added film scripts to his repertoire. 146. Mark Fisher, Glasgow Herald, 8 May 1997 (TR, 23 April–6 May 1997, p. 571). 147. Joseph Farrell, Scotsman, 8 May 1997 (ibid.). 148. Ibid. 149. Fisher, Glasgow Herald. 150. Farrell, Scotsman. 151. Aleksandr (Isaakovich) Gelman, born 1933 in what is now Moldova. He was interned as a Jew by occupying German forces in WW2. He had a naval career (1954–1960) followed by a spell as a journalist. He began writing film scripts, receiving a state prize in 1976. His prize-winning script was adapted for the stage as Night Shift (Nochnaia smena, 1971) in 1978. He created other plays including Alone Among Many (Naedine so svemi, 1981 (retitled into English A Man with Connections [trans. and adapt. by Stephen Mulrine, 1988])) working with Oleg Efremov at MAT. This play was banned in Russia due to its subject matter: an industry manager engages in financial fraud over supplies only to cause an accident to his own son, who loses both his hands. In the late 80s,

208  C. MARSH Gelman entered politics and was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. A protege of Gorbachev, he remained in politics, giving up playwriting. 152. Rachel Halliburton, Evening Standard, 12 January 2001 (TR, 1–28 January 2001, p. 40). 153. Paul Taylor, Independent, 15 January 2001 (ibid., p. 41). 154.  The Presnyakov Brothers have co-written more than a dozen plays. They were born in Ekaterinburg, Oleg in 1969 and Vladimir in 1974. Both are graduates of the Urals State University (UrGU) where they founded a theatre in 1998. Their play Playing the Victim (Izobrazhaia zhertvu, 2002) was premièred at the Edinburgh Festival in 2003 as a ­ co-production between the Royal Court who had fostered their work and the company ‘Told by an Idiot’. In 2008 their play Konek– Gorbunok (The Little Hunchbacked Horse, based on a story by Piotr Ershov) was premiered at MAT and won major awards. 155. Vasilii Sigarev (1977–). Studied drama at Ekaterinburg Theatre Institute in the Urals. He has written more than 18 plays and received a number of awards. His early plays, Plasticine (Plastilin), Black Milk (Chernoe moloko) and Ladybird (Bozh’ia korovka), all created between 2000 and 2003, have been seen in London. More recently Sigarev has turned film maker: Spinning Top (Volchok, 2009). 156. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 17 August 2003 (TR, 27 August–9 September 2003, Edinburgh Supplement, p. 1111). 157. Michael Billington, Guardian, 15 August 2003 (ibid.). 158.  Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 14 August 2003 (ibid., pp. 1111–1112). 159. Aleks Sierz, Tribune, 12 September 2003 (ibid., p. 1184), writing on the production after it transferred to the Royal Court, London on 2 September 2003. 160. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 22 March 2002 (TR, 12–25 March 2002, p. 343). 161. John Peter, Sunday Times, 31 March 2002 (ibid., p. 346). 162. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 24 March 2002 (ibid., p. 343). 163. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 9 February 2003 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2003, p. 125). 164. Carole Woddis, Herald, 8 February 2003 (ibid., p. 128). 165. Toby Young, Spectator, 15 February 2003 (ibid., p. 129). 166. Aleks Sierz, What’s On, 17 March 2004 (TR, 26 February–10 March 2004, p. 300). 167. Lloyd Evans, Spectator, 20 March 2004 (ibid.).

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168.  Natal’ia Vorozhbit, b.1975 Kiev, received her higher education in Moscow. She has at least six plays and four films (2008–2011) to her credit. Of the plays, What do you want, a Ukrainian god? (Chto ty khochesh’ ukrainskii bog? 2004), I join in (Prisoediniaius’, 2005) were seen at the Royal Court and Tristram Bates theatres in London, respectively. Her contribution to the 2009 RSC festival, The Granary (Zernokhranilishche), dates from 2008. Counted among the wave of new dramatists, her most recent plays staged in Britain include Maidan (2014) and Bad Roads (2017), both at the Royal Court theatre. 169. The Durnenkov Brothers, Vyacheslav (b.1973) and Mikhail (b.1978), were born in the provinces. Mikhail now lives in Moscow and Vyacheslav in Tol’iatti (on the River Volga, to the South East of Moscow). They have written plays together and separately, Vyacheslav more than 20 and Mikhail more than 15, finding staging opportunities through festivals, and receiving some awards. They published a collection Kulturnyi sloi (Cultural Level) in 2005. In the same year, Poslednii den’ leta (The Last Day of Summer) was premièred at MAT. They attended a seminar for foreign dramatists in London, and P’ianye (The Drunks) was picked for performance at the RSC Festival in Stratford in 2009. 170. Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 13 November 2009 (TR, 5–18 November 2009, p. 1240). 171. Robert Dawson Scott, Times, 13 November 2009 (ibid.). 172. Neil Cooper, Herald, 12 November 2009 (ibid.). 173. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 7 February 2015 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2015, p. 134). 174. Mark Brown, Sunday Herald, 1 February 2015 (ibid., p. 132). 175.  Dmitry Krymov (1954–). Studied at the MAT School-Studio, graduating in 1974. He became a designer working notably with Anatolii Efros (see below) at the Malaia Bronnaia in the 1970s and 80s. He left designing in the 1990s to become a visual artist. He is the founder of the Dmitry Krymov Laboratory Theatre, Moscow. Krymov has been awarded many prizes, and the productions forged at the Laboratory have toured internationally (www.krymov.org). 176. Laura Bennett, Time Out London, 5 June 2014 (TR, 4–17 June 2014, p. 572). 177. Matt Trueman, Daily Telegraph, 6 May 2014 (ibid., p. 603). Both the Brighton (May) and LIFT (June, London) performances were reviewed in the same issue of TR. 178. Dominic Maxwell, Times, 6 May 2014 (ibid., p. 604). 179. Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 6 June 2014 (ibid., p. 572). 180. John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 16 May 2014 (ibid., p. 604).

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181. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2009 (TR, 26 February–11 March 2009, p. 220). 182. Claire Allfree, Metro (London), 5 March 2009 (ibid., p. 222). 183. Matt Wolf, International Herald Tribune, 14 March 2009 (ibid., p. 224); see also Tim Walker, Sunday Telegraph, 8 March 2009 (ibid., p. 222). 184. Italics are mine. 185.  Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 4 March 2009 (TR, 26 February–11 March 2009, p. 221). 186. Michael Coveney, Independent, 5 March 2009 (ibid.). 187. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 30 March 2015 (TR, 12–25 March 2015, p. 289). 188.  Anatolii Efros (1925–1987; real name, Natan Isaevich Efros) began to study drama in WW2. He trained in Moscow at State Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS), graduating as a theatre director in 1950. He worked at the Children’s Theatre in Riazan’ 1954–1963, then the Moscow Lenin Komsomol Theatre, and in 1967 at the Theatre on the Malaia Bronnaia. His repertoire caused disagreements with the Ministry of Culture. Then when Lyubimov went into exile, he replaced him at the Taganka in 1984, where he directed a famous Cherry Orchard. Lyubimov’s and Efros’ styles of theatre differed greatly, and Efros had difficulties with the company and with the changing situation in Russia at that time. Efros died, most agreed prematurely, of a heart attack in 1987. 189. B. A. Young, ‘Kremlin Chimes’, Financial Times, 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting). 190. Milton Shulman, Standard (TR, 27 August–9 September 1983, p. 715). 191.  Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 21 March 2002 (TR, 12–25 March 2002, p. 344). 192. Anonymous reviewer of Leonov’s The Apple Orchards (1948), Times, quoted in A. Williamson and C. Landstone, The Bristol Old Vic—The First Ten Years, p. 62. 193. Martin Hoyle, ‘Last Summer in Chulimsk’, Financial Times, 15 October 1987 (LTR, 5–18 November 1987, p. 1455). 194.  Nicholas de Jongh, ‘Last Summer in Chulimsk’, Guardian, 14 November 1987 (ibid., p. 1456). 195. Joyce McMillan, ‘Stars in the Morning Sky’, Guardian, 11 May 1988 (LTR, 16–19 May 1988, pp. 642–643). 196.  Neil Smith, ‘Smirnova’s Birthday/Cinzano’, What’s On, 18 August 1993 (TR, 30 July–26 August 1993, p. 906). 197. Paul Allen, ‘Last Summer in Chulimsk’, New Statesman, 20 April 1984 (LTR, 9–22 April 1984, p. 320).

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198. For example, Michael Coveney, ‘Stars in the Morning Sky’, Financial Times, 11 May 1988 (LTR, 6–19 May 1988, p. 641); Michael Billington, ‘Cinzano’, Guardian, 12 July 1989 (LTR, 16–29 July 1989, p. 960); Charles Spencer, ‘Ladybird’, Daily Telegraph, 10 March 2004 (TR, 26 February–10 March 2004, p. 297). 199.  Michael Billington, ‘Ladybird’, Guardian, 9 March 2004 (TR, 26 February–10 March 2004, p. 297). 200. Aleks Sierz, ‘Ladybird’, What’s On, 17 March 2004 (ibid., p. 300). 201. Spencer, Daily Telegraph. 202. Michael Billington, ‘Playing the Victim’, Guardian, 15 August 2003 (TR, 27 August–9 September 2003, Edinburgh Supplement, p. 1111). 203. Michael Billington, ‘Black Milk’, Guardian, 5 February 2003 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2003, p. 126), though at this point in the review he is referring to Sigarev’s Plasticine. 204. Nicholas de Jongh, ‘Black Milk’, Evening Standard, 5 February 2003 (ibid., p. 127). 205.  Afanasy Salynsky (1920–1993) born in Smolensk, he was a factory worker, then journalist. In WW2 he served in the army as a frontline journalist and joined the Party. After the war, he wrote his play Brat’ia (Brothers, 1951), and then took up the study of literature. He became a member of the Union of Writers and served in its administration for a number of years. The play for which he is best known is Mar’ia (1969). He then completed two stints as editor of the journal Teatr (Theatre) 1972–1982, and 1987–1993. His voice came from the heart of the Soviet writing and theatrical establishment. He monitored the substantial changes to theatrical culture after the arrival of glasnost. During his career Salynsky wrote half a dozen plays and a similar number of screenplays. 206.  Mikhail Roshchin (1933–2010; real name Gibel’man) was born in Sevastopol, but educated in Moscow after WW2. He attended evening classes to study literature, and then became a journalist working on several titles, including Novyi mir (New World). He began writing plays in the early 60s, but was not published until the 80s. The play Valentin i Valentina (1971) made him famous and was staged by three major theatres in Moscow in the 70s including MAT (directed by Efremov). His play was about the difficulties for young people sharing cramped flats with the older generations in their families. Roshchin wrote plays, screenplays and stories. 207. Viktor Rozov (1913–2004), a textile factory worker in Kostroma, who became involved in amateur dramatics. He trained as an actor from 1934 in Moscow, joining the Teatr Revoliutsii (Theatre of Revolution). Seriously wounded in WW2, he was transferred to work in an Agit

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brigade (propaganda brigade). After the war he worked in a children’s theatre in Alma Aty (Kazakhstan), then in Moscow at the Central House of Railway Culture theatre as an actor and director. He is best known for his play Vechno zhivye (Life Eternal, 1943) which became the film The Cranes are Flying (Letiat zhuravli, 1957). In all, he wrote more than 20 plays and half a dozen screenplays. 208. Benedict Nightingale, New Statesman (LTR, 27 August–9 September 1981, pp. 450–451). 209. Felix Barker, ‘Kremlin Chimes Off Key’, Evening News, 2 June 1964 (LTM, press cutting). 210. Douglas Orgill, ‘Mother Russia’s Tragedy’, Daily Express, 9 September 1981 (LTM, press cutting). 211. Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday, 22 February 1998 (TR, 12–25 February 1998, p. 167). 212. Kate Stratton, Time Out London, 17 March 2004 (TR, 26 February–10 March 2004, p. 300). 213. Kate Bassett, ‘Black Milk’, Independent on Sunday, 9 February 2003 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2003, p. 125). 214. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 8 June 2014 (TR, 4–17 June 2014, p. 572). 215. Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 5 June 2014 (ibid.). 216. Sarah Hemming, ‘Slava’s Snowshow’, Financial Times, 19 December 1997 (TR, 3–31 December 1997, p. 1609). 217. Vera Mukhina (1889–1953) a leading Soviet sculptor. Born in Riga, she studied in Moscow at art school, then abroad in Paris and Italy, returning to Russia on the outbreak of WW1. She worked with Aleksandra Ekster (avant garde painter) at Aleksander Tairov’s Chamber (Kamernyi) Theatre in Moscow during WW1. In the 20s she taught at the Higher Artistic Technical Workshop (Vkhutemas). In 1937 she produced her most famous piece, ‘The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman’. She created many official monuments. Mukhina was awarded the Stalin Prize several times in the 1940s. Her 1937 statue was restored in 2010 and still stands in Moscow. 218. Valentin Petrovich Kataev (1897–1986) Soviet novelist, dramatist and screen writer. Editor of Yunost’ (Youth) from 1956, a magazine, glossy by Soviet standards, aimed at younger generations. 219. Anon review, Lady, 24 August 1967 (LTM, press cutting). 220. Anon review, Illustrated London News, 12 August 1967 (LTM, press cutting). 221. Stephen Williams, ‘Helpmann—Clown Who Gets Slapped’, Unidentified review dated 17 June 1947 (LTM, Duchess Theatre File, press cutting). 222. Anon, ‘A Light Comedy from Russia’, Unidentified newspaper review, dated 8 March 1965 (LTM, Canonbury Tower File, press cutting).

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223. Martin Hoyle, Financial Times, 15 October 1987 (LTR, 5–18 November 1987, p. 1455). 224. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian, 14 November 1987 (ibid., p. 1456). 225. Vera Lustig, City Limits, 19 May 1988 (LTR, 6–19 May 1988, p. 636). 226. Paul Taylor, Independent, 25 January 2011 (TR, 1–28 January 2011, p. 60). 227.  Charles Spencer, Review of Black Milk, Daily Telegraph, 7 February 2003 (TR, 29 January–11 February 2003, p. 126). 228. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 20 May 1988 (LTR, 6–19 May 1988, p. 642). 229. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 18 February 1998 (TR, 12–25 February 1998, p. 171). 230. John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 15 February 1998 (ibid., pp. 169–170). 231. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 13 February 1998 (ibid., p. 168). 232. Ibid. 233. Aleks Sierz, Tribune, 27 February 1998 (ibid., pp. 168–169). 234. Michael Billington, Guardian, 14 February 1998 (ibid., pp. 171–172). 235. Michael Billington, Guardian, 27 October 2004 (TR, 21 October–3 November 2004, p. 1401).

Bibliography Arbuzov, Alexei, Selected Works (Izbrannoe), 2 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1981). ———, Selected Plays of Alexei Arbuzov, trans. by Ariadne Nicolaeff (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982). Bulgakov, Mikhail, Six Plays, trans. by Michael Glenny, with an introduction by Lesley Milne (London: Methuen, 1991). Contains: The White Guard, Madame Zoyka, Flight, Molière, Adam and Eve and The Last Days, trans. by William Powell and Michael Earley. ———, Black Snow, adapt. by Brian Wright and K. Dewhirst from Bulgakov’s novel (trans. by Patrick Miles) (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1991). Durnenkov, Mikhail, and Vyacheslav Durnenkov, The Drunks, trans. by Nina Raine [e-book: Dramaonline] (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Erdman, Nikolai, The Suicide, trans. by Peter Tegel (New York and London: Samuel French Inc., 1979). Galin, Alexander, ‘Stars in the Morning Sky’, in Five New Plays from the Soviet Union, trans. and ed. by Michael Glenny (London: Nick Hern, 1989). Gubaryev, Vladimir, Sarcophagus, trans. by Michael Glenny (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1987). Mayakovsky, Vladimir, The Bedbug (First Published by Meridian Books in 1960) in The Golden Age of Soviet Theatre (London: Penguin Books, [1966] 1981).

214  C. MARSH Petrushevskaia, Liudmila, Three Girls in Blue, trans. by Liane Aukin and Michael Glenny, in New Soviet Plays, intro. by Michael Glenny (London: Nick Hern Books, 1989). ———, Cinzano: Eleven Plays, trans. and intro. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Nick Hern Books, 1991). Presnyakov, Oleg, and Vladimir Presnyakov (Brothers and Co-authors), Playing the Victim, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2003). Sigarev, Vassily, Plasticine, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2002). ———, Black Milk, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2003). ———, Ladybird, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2004). Shevstova, Maria, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre (London: Routledge, 2004). Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, The Love-Girl and the Innocent, trans. by Nicholas Bethel and David Burg (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971). Vampilov, Alexander, Duck Hunting: Last Summer in Chulimsk, trans. by Patrick Miles (Nottingham: Bramcote, 1994). Vorozhbit, Natalia, The Khomenko Family Chronicles, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Oberon Books, 2007). ———, The Grain Store, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2009). Warden, Claire, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels Through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Williamson, A., and C. Landstone, The Bristol Old Vic—The First Ten Years (London: J. Garnet Miller, c.1957).

SECTION 7

Staging Russian Prose

A surprising factor to emerge from the database of Russian theatre in post-war Britain is the number of productions relating to Russian prose works. They comprise nearly a quarter of the total number of productions excluding Chekhov. However, the number of authors treated in this way is small and they are largely nineteenth century. In descending order of occurrence, the most significant are: Dostoevsky (44), Tolstoy (27), Gogol (23), Bulgakov (11), Goncharov (2), and Turgenev (2), and there are some with just one production each. Dostoevsky is the runaway leader of the pack, while Turgenev, surprisingly given his popularity in English translation, provides only two productions of the same adaptation of one novel (Fathers and Sons [1862]). In contrast Goncharov’s one well-known novel, Oblomov (1859), has seduced the adaptors on two occasions. The number of adaptations of Russian prose is boosted by the offerings of visiting Russian companies among whom adaptation of novels has been a flourishing industry. Beginning with Stanislavsky’s original 1932 staging of Bulgakov’s adaptation of Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842) (seen here in 1964), we find the work of directors such as Tovstonogov (Dostoevsky), Lyubimov (Dostoevsky), Dodin (Abramov and Dostoevsky) and Rozovsky (Tolstoy). Overall for Russian and British productions, both novels and short stories provide the subject matter for adaptation: for example, there are frequent stagings of Gogol’s short stories. There is also Pushkin’s ‘novel in verse’ Evgenii Onegin (1830) which was discussed in Section 3 with the early nineteenth-century plays. The sheer variety of material available in the adaptations confirms the © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_7

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rich contribution the Russian novel and short story have provided for the British stage. The reach even stretches beyond the spoken genres to dance, mime and music, particularly in the case of Gogol. At the same time, it is informative to consider who or what is missing. For example, British theatre has hardly broached the issue of Soviet and post-Soviet prose. Since 1945 there has been a British adaptation into English of one novel by Leonid Leonov; one by the ­twentieth-century Russian émigré writer P. D. Ouspensky1; and of stories by Daniil Kharms,2 and a satiric late Soviet story by Viktor Erofeev, Life with an Idiot.3 We owe our acquaintance with Fedor Abramov’s Brothers and Sisters4 to Lev Dodin and that was in Russian in the perestroika years. There has been one adaptation of a dissident Soviet novel (Sasha Sokolov’s School for Fools5) and that again was brought to Britain by a Russian company in Russian. Even those internationally acclaimed novelists who achieved world recognition in the teeth of Soviet opposition have fared little better: Pasternak does not figure, as far as can be established, despite the global success of the film, Dr Zhivago.6 The reason may well be that the phenomenal success of this film defeats the creative imagination for transposition to the stage, or that the spatial expanse of the novel itself is too great for the framework of the stage. Nor have attempts been made to assault the giant novels of other ­twentieth-century notable prose-writers such as Sholokhov or Solzhenitsyn.7 Among the writers who are both novelists and dramatists such as Bulgakov, the two prose works first staged were Heart of a Dog (1925; adapted 1986; 1988) and Theatrical Novel (unfinished, published posthumously, 1965; adapted as Black Snow, 1986). His most discussed novel, The Master and Margarita (begun in 1928) was not tackled in Britain until two versions in 2004, and another since then in 2012.8 While London has seen an adaptation from Kharms’ short stories in Théâtre de Complicité’s Out of the House Came a Man (1994), his key dramatic work, the absurdist Elizaveta Bam, remains unperformed.9 The nineteenth-century novel is definitely preferred, but even here there are glaring omissions such as Lermontov and Saltykov-Schedrin.10 Turgenev11 wrote five well-known novels never staged here, and Tolstoy wrote much more prose than the two novels and one novella which figure most frequently on the British stage, War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Kreutzer Sonata.12 Moreover, far more attention is paid to these dramatisations of Tolstoy’s novels than to productions of his plays. In

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its choice of dramatisations of Russian prose, British taste focuses on the past, is narrow and prefers the period immediately preceding its favourite dramatist, Chekhov, that is to say, the work of Dostoevsky.

The Skills and Pitfalls of Adaptation Adaptations from Dostoevsky provoke some of the most ­ interesting comment. Writing in the programme for his version of The Idiot at the National Theatre in 1970, Simon Gray described how he had been blocked by ‘impenetrably Russian obscurities of religious reference’ but that he had felt ‘weirdly at home with the novel’. He went on: […] the world of The Idiot had (for me) in its texture a varied Englishness – no, not quite and so chauvinistically that. Rather a distorting but robustly animating focus which, in my Englishness, I found irresistibly familiar.13

Of course, he was reading his Dostoevsky in English translation, and then adapting that for the stage. It is all too easy to forget this fact. The language of the translated novel already carries within it an embedded Englishness, or high level of domestic inscription, which is then intensified when the novel is adapted for the British stage. An interesting point to consider is whether such intensification coming from the genre change alters the approach from hybridisation to acculturation. Much, I think, depends on the individual adaptation and director. Another approach is to see translation of the novel as a means to appreciate the essence of a writer. This statement is taken from an article by A. N. Nikoliukin which by and large discussed translation of novels as a process of loss: To a certain extent it is possible to argue that a foreign translation allows us to see Dostoevsky in a state of ‘undress’, i.e. divested of his stylistic and linguistic reality. This in turn allows us to sense what exactly it is that constitutes a Dostoevsky novel in its original harmonious entirety, when the artistic idea is wrapped in a real, historic verbal fabric.14

There are important truths in this statement, which readily transfer to the process of adaptation of novel into play. On the one hand there are immense gains to be had in understanding the originary author; on the other, the extra level of authorship imposed by a translator is often ignored.

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It should also be noted that the authorial voice in this quotation is a Russian, himself being rendered in translation, and looking at his native author being translated into other languages. From another perspective, Christopher Hampton acknowledged the sense of liberation offered when, as a dramatist, he worked on an adaptation of Laclos’, Les liaisons dangereuses. In a public discussion on translation at NT in the early 90s, he stated: […] if you were attempting an adaptation of, let’s say Tom Jones, you would feel that you had to respect the language of Fielding, and watch your Ps and Qs. But to adapt a novel from a foreign language into another form was a very, very liberating experience.15

There is a significant distinction to draw between plays and prose in respect of the use made of them in English. The currency of English is a valuable one politically. The adaptation of English translations of plays into other variants or dialects of English can inscribe a new level of political meaning when they are performed in the host culture. The ‘Irishisation’ of Chekhov and others was a case in point. Does such practice also happen with the novel? Or is it the case that the process of adapting the novel into stage form can make the novel more susceptible to this kind of political inscription from the host culture? In other words is the state of ‘undress’ referred to by the Russian critic above, a point of vulnerability for insertion of British domestic concerns or English individual perceptions, as Simon Gray’s statement about The Idiot noted earlier. Brian Friel’s solution is to adopt the tactic of the ‘play after the novel’, as will be seen in the discussion of his ‘play after’ Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons below. It is to be noted that Friel retains Turgenev’s original title, hoping, no doubt, to benefit from its familiarity. In the same theatre programme for The Idiot in 1970, Donald Rayfield (a well-known scholar of Russian literature) made a claim for cultural transcendence, beguiling in its seductive power, but still one which should perhaps be regarded as subject to the filters of cultural transfer: His (Dostoevsky’s) view of man is fundamentally different from the pragmatic, utilitarian view that then prevailed in Russia as elsewhere. To the Idiot happiness is found not in following ‘enlightened self-interest’ but in remaining free, if only to destroy oneself. That view of man is so forceful that it obliterates the specific Russianness of the characters.16

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Rayfield’s final remark reaches towards what used to be called the ‘universal’ which was an expression for the international relevance of a writer. It was sometimes a means to avoid discussion of the intrinsic otherness of a piece of creative writing. However, the question remains can, or indeed should, ‘Russianness’ in all sincerity be entirely transcended? These points and remarks attest to the importance of visiting companies. They familiarise the British with their Russian national identity and behaviour and acquaint British audiences with Russian theatrical culture itself. There is a wide range of opinion among those who have commented on adaptations of Russian prose for the stage. Adaptation studies, however, have focused most on media other than the stage, particularly film and TV. Where stage adaptation is ephemeral and often difficult to trace, TV and film productions remain physically accessible. For stage adaptations it is possible, however, to generalise from the statements of adaptors, translators, critics and scholars, for material beyond the script itself. No one approach in adaptation is regarded here as better than another. My aim is to encourage awareness of the process itself and of the implicit strengths and pitfalls; to show which strategies have garnered the most enthusiasm from the critics; and to demonstrate the range of possible approaches. Adaptors and their critics take up a whole series of positions. These range from the adaptation attempting to be utterly faithful to its source to a completely free theatricalisation. Obvious pitfalls on both sides include the issue of fidelity itself and the failure to recognise transition between genres, between languages and between cultures. The focus of comments tends to rest on much more obvious aspects such as transition of period, of locale or of a loss of closeness to the original source. Success rests in the recognition of individual strengths both in the source text and the target performance; and, indeed, in the recognition that the target is a performance with its specific, implicit laws and not a direct recreation of the prose form. Furthermore, in dealing with stage adaptations, we are examining a process which subjects the originary prose text to transposition arguably extra to that experienced by a play. A play is already in ­dramatic form. Making a novel stageable necessitates a degree of rewriting of the source text which removes it even further from its original form. This process readily contributes to its nature as a collision, hybridisation or acculturation. It also seems to be the case that those who adapt novels for the stage utilise a readily available English translation

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(often without acknowledgement). They are less likely to be language translators and sometimes as a result are unfortunately less aware of the source culture than they might be. An American critic, Jonathan Saville, writing on Lev Dodin’s Maly Theatre of St. Petersburg adaptation of Abramov’s Brothers and Sisters articulated a genre problem. He argued that narrative structure is intrinsic to the form of the novel. In his view, movement of narrative is permitted to be slow in its acclimatisation of the reader to the context. There is a complicity between reader and form in expectation and in the very ‘act of reading silently and alone’ for this slowness. However, ‘theatre is radically different’; there is ‘strong forward movement’, the ‘development of plots motivated by conflicting wills, atmosphere as background rather than as foreground, a severe economy in the avoidance of repetition’. The result is that Dodin’s production of Brothers and Sisters: ‘obeys its own laws which are those of the novel’. Saville described it as having ‘an immense, unwieldy heaviness’, and stated that this ‘two-part, four-act behemoth’ is nothing but ‘painfully exhausting’.17 Indeed, many of the critics writing on this production both in America and Britain emphasised its length, necessitating dutiful presence in the theatre on two separate occasions. However overwhelmed they might have been by the vitality in the theatre practice of Dodin’s company, the production was something of a chore. This genre issue, however, is ignored at the adaptor’s peril. Various negative comments on the performance of adaptations suggest that lack of attention to the transposition of genre is a root problem. Statements from critics relating to various productions include ‘unfitted for any medium but the novel’; ‘aesthetic pleasure as reader […] impossible’18; ‘mugging of Tolstoy’s novel’19; and ‘musings on the nature of history are inappropriate to the stage, a confined place of action whereas they are entirely suitable to the silent spaciousness of the page’.20 This last comment referred to War and Peace. Another review of the same production gave access to a different approach by remarking that ‘the more successful the adaptation the less obtrusive […] memories (of the novel) should be’.21 Many critics bewail this lack of faithfulness to the source text. While some damn with faint praise: the ‘impulse to adapt […] is laudable’ but ‘it can seldom approach further than the suburbs into Dostoievsky’s vast teeming labyrinth of a novel work’.22 Others are balder in their comment: ‘I have a suspicion that this is a novel that will not adapt’23; or ‘[w]hat is the point […] hardly more than a précis’.24

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However, as always with critics, we have an opposing point of view, which sees the act of ‘précis’ as essential, as an ordering device on the ‘sprawling’ nature of the novel genre, and crucial to its transformation into another genre: it is best to pursue ‘economy’25; and find ‘a shorthand way to suggest the sweep of the plot’.26 In fact, what is being preferred here and what has seemed to be the hallmark of the most successful stage adaptations is a fearless transposition into the conditions of the new genre. As Claire Armistead deceptively simply put it in her review of an adaptation of Anna Karenina, ‘[t]he aim is not to report the novel but to recreate it as a piece of theatre’.27 Apart from the comment above that the reading of Russian novels takes place in English, issues of translation for the stage have already been discussed a number of times in this study. In the case of the novel, adaptors seem mostly not to know Russian. Those who translate plays and do know Russian rarely engage in translation of prose for the stage. The explanation appears to lie in the extra level of effort involved. The adaptor would first have to translate a whole novel (mostly much longer than plays) and then engage in the work of adaptation. Translation issues are pertinent in unfortunately negative ways when the adaptor, through the fault of the absent translator, may easily grasp the wrong end of the stick, or use a translation already well past its sell-by date. So the process of prose adaptation for the stage takes place at a point further from the source text than for a translated play. Such distancing may be why Rodney Ackland’s version of Crime and Punishment, welcomed in the 1940s as a tragedy that did not move its audience, then in the 50s as a melodrama that did,28 was by implication blamed for an unsuccessful revival in 1998. It was referred to as Dostoevsky’s ‘ponderous classic’, and the company ‘was undone by the rampant misery of the text’.29 It was a script ‘big on raw unwieldy chunks of emotion, and full of laughable melodrama’.30 Behind these remarks lies the argument for regular retranslation, clearly not only of plays but also of novels for stage adaptation. Each translation responds to the needs and demands of its time. A hasty or lazy choice can be disastrous to reception. Transfer between cultures is as equally a crucial issue for prose as it is for plays. It affects reception in many different ways as we have explored in this study. Firstly, on the level of political cultural exchange: The Times’ drama critic was eloquent about his discomfort when faced with Tovstonogov’s production of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot in Russian in 1966. It reflects the constraints imposed by the politics of the Cold War which

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we may be in danger of forgetting, when dealing with predominantly nineteenth-century prose works: Where cultural exchange is concerned […] Everyone is for it in theory, and its benefits have been expounded [so] often […] But in practice […], it can mean sitting through second-rate shows in languages one does not understand. […] The critic […] is lucky to be seeing foreign companies at all: and adverse notices will make them reluctant to return; in any case, as guests they are entitled to courtesy. This kind of pressure applies most acutely in the case of companies from communist countries who may interpret aesthetic criticism as a political rebuff. […] At this point cultural exchange bids farewell to drama and drama criticism, and becomes merely a pawn in the diplomatic chess tournament.31

While it is necessary to remember that these lines were written in the Cold War, cultural transfer has other implications. References to the Anglo-Saxon, reserved language-body as opposed to ‘Russians doing odd things with sweeping gestures’32 are common as are references to the inability of British companies to engage successfully in ensemble work, usually highly praised in the work of visiting Russian companies. Lyubimov directed Crime and Punishment (1983) with a British cast. Michael Billington was amazed at the revelatory ‘full-blooded style of playing […] totally un-English’. The production was also, he saw, ‘totally alien to the English tradition’ offering not a linear plod through the book but ‘isolat[ing] crucial themes’.33

New Directions The situation is changing to judge from reception of two more recent adaptations from 2005: Anna Karenina34 and Crime and Punishment.35 A survey of the reviewers’ reactions shows perhaps that the genre is coming of age in new ways. John Clifford’s adaptation of Anna Karenina was generally admired. It was a ‘real play’ engaged the company in ensemble work and ‘much doubling’,36 (which sometimes, though, led to confusion). Mark Brown gave a useful précis of Clifford’s skills: He treats the whole process of adapting as a dramaturgical challenge, and, indeed, a theatrical game. There are explicatory introductions, narrative monologues and the plethora of other anti-theatrical monologues which

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we have come to associate with the genre. Nevertheless when, early in this production, the dour Levin’s explanatory speech to the audience is interrupted by Anna’s brother Oblonsky, the conventions of the stage adaptation are pleasingly and humorously broken.37

In other words, a contract is set-up with the audience acknowledging the genre transposition: this new honesty is a laudable sign of progress in prose adaptation. In this production, work by the directing and design team (principally Muriel Romanes, Francis O’Connor, Chris Davey) was also seen as particularly successful in providing insights into the novel as well as vistas of Russia. You may not be surprised to find, however, that the ‘birch forest shimmering coldly in the moonlight’38 was widely liked, showing the ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ is as much alive and kicking in prose adaptation as in drama. There was still comment on the use of Scottish accents (‘McBlonsky’!) for this Edinburgh production.39 Underground (2005), Dreamthinkspeak’s version of Crime and Punishment, was a piece of site-specific theatre which treated the novel in quite a different way. The programme cover announced a new modern take on Crime and Punishment (Fig. 7.1). Not only was it performed ‘in a series of musty basements […] once part of a slaughterhouse’ appropriately for the central murder by axe,40 but the programme cover image, newly modern and eye catching for Dostoevsky, had been clearly photographed in a tunnel on the London underground, providing an introductory level of word and setting interplay. The installation ‘exploded’41 the novel: characters perform simultaneously in various recreated scenes, and the audience armed with a set of notes or crib sheet are free to visit the various internal settings at will. There is no connected dialogue, various languages are used (the critics note German, French, Russian and English) and it is claimed ‘there is no need to know the story’.42 The installation was: a marvellous atmospheric evocation of Dostoyevsky’s underground world of fear, intimidation and poverty in which prostitution touches you by the hem and the lure of the vodka-soaked alcoholic Marmeladov, is very real.43

One critic was annoyed by the audience let in every five minutes who formed themselves into ‘whispering herds’, and by the lack of opportunity for acting, so brief were the exchanges between characters.44 But overall, the feeling was ‘just brilliant’45 and certainty that the spectator

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Fig. 7.1  Programme for Dreamthinkspeak, Underground, 2005

would enjoy the experience speckles the reviews.46 This approach seems to be an opportunity to lead theatre-goers to the novel which was not lost, for as one reviewer put it: ‘The emotion is the thing and Sharps [Tristan Sharps, the director] and team have done the Russian master proud’.47 The experience gave a rich taste of the dramatic potential of

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the novel and the fraught social context in which Dostoevsky founded his work. It adds, I think, a new dimension to adaptation of prose for the stage.48 There are a number of productions adapted from prose, despite the multiplicity of concerns and comments outlined above, which have been praised by a majority of the critics. I shall refer particularly to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1966) (directed by Tovstonogov, an early example of a whole string of foreign language, principally Russian, adaptations); Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov (1981, adapted by Richard Crane); Tolstoy’s Strider (National Theatre, 1984, adapted by Mark Rozovsky); Shared Experience’s Anna Karenina 1992 (revived, 1998); Crime and Punishment in Dalston (2001, written and directed by David Farr, Arcola); and Gogol’s story The Overcoat (Canstage, 2004, BITE Festival London). Among these examples are several different types of production and adaptation: those in a foreign language by a visiting company; foreign inspired or directed but in English; minimalist productions by small companies; the use of other genres such as mime and dance; and the play ‘after’ the novel. Taking each of these categories in turn demonstrates the richness of prose adaptation. By examining which aspects each offers, and by mentioning other productions in these categories I will be able to ascertain whether there is any discernible common pattern. This choice also signals that my aim in this section is to cover a range of the writers and novels most staged in Britain, rather than follow a ‘linear, plodding course’ through all examples!

Adaptations by Russian Companies and/or Directors Adaptation from the novel seems to be a speciality of the most travelled and popular Russian directors. According to the views of Lev Dodin, the issues of quality and audience impact are high on the Russian directors’ agenda. He has declared that he prefers to rely upon the novel (in this case Abramov’s Brothers and Sisters) as a source of performance because the narrative aspect demands audiences keep on their toes when plays have become short and untaxing. He has also insisted on the importance of the link between a ‘living’ theatre and a ‘living literature’.49 There are, however, other issues at stake here: freedom for the director; the opportunity to engage in theatricality, unconstrained by a dramatic text with its own implied mise en scène; opportunities for innovative ensemble work;

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and not least, if not in Dodin’s chosen novel, familiarity with the work among foreign audiences who read more Russian novels than they see Russian plays. Many of these criteria determined Stanislavsky’s choice of Mikhail Bulgakov’s adaptation of Gogol’s Dead Souls in 1934. It was this same production that MAT brought to London in 1964 (World Theatre Season at the Aldwych). The adaptation and production hardly moved from the novel form. Using a characteristic term for categorising novels, Bernard Levin called the show ‘picaresque’,50 whose very repetitive essence matched the MAT style for the individually brilliant ‘turns’ (rather than true ensemble) identified by Harold Hobson.51 When these comments are matched to the ‘absolute naturalness even in the most caricatured scenes’,52 it is understandable why the critics found the style of production old-fashioned but mesmeric. This really was a representation of Gogol’s novel and one not entirely recast into theatrical form. It utilised the visual and grotesque characteristics of Gogol’s caricature, which match stage opportunities well, and they called out the best from a Stanislavskian approach to the performance of character. Such techniques also enabled the company to evade the more constricting elements of Socialist Realism. Though apparently problematised by being performed in Russian, these productions have often sent shockwaves of excitement through the critics and the theatrical establishment. They were impressed by the sheer power and force of the dramatisations and electric style of performance to as great an extent, if not more so, as the plays that were performed. These visiting performances, it must also be added, point up the ease with which we slide into a British (or is it English?) way of owning and defining Russian culture, focusing particularly on the n ­ ineteenth-century Russian novel as its heart. And we are surprised when we see a ­home-grown Russian version. There is a multiplicity of factors why the British have this tendency which will be clarified to some extent in what follows. What is most in need of exploration, however, is the extent to which this choice also shapes attitudes to the rest of Russian culture and to Russian theatre, in particular. In Georgii Tovstonogov’s The Idiot Russian actors ‘perform[ed] as a group—a faculty curiously lacking among British actors’.53 This was the first adaptation to show the ‘précis’ method and the value of ‘bring[ing] order’ to a ‘rambling Russian plot’54 which is consistently demonstrated in the larger nineteenth-century novels and especially in Dostoevsky’s. However, for another critic it was still ‘not a shapely play’,55 while the

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‘structure of the adaptation’ ensured success for another reviewer.56 The use of a moving stage which slid forward and which was set ‘with a series of tableaux […] for some of the great scenes of the novel’57 ensured slick continuity and a strong sense of the theatrical, again echoing the work of Meyerhold. There were references ‘to acting on a grand scale’,58 which was able to capture ‘the mysterious aura of personality so elaborately evoked in the book and so easily missed on the stage’.59 There were ‘emotional scenes full out, with an almost Victorian gusto’60 and it ‘hover[ed] on the melodramatic’.61 Although not a native Russian product, a production of Crime and Punishment by the Polish Popular Theatre, also in 1966, gave voice to a similar sense of freedom. There was reference to a ‘great canvas’ and the ‘free’ character of the production,62 though this enterprise was also felt to be cinematic and so had failed on the stage.63 Some of these characteristics became de rigueur, as other Russian directors penetrated to the West and began to display the panoply of Russian stage skills at their and their performers’ command. It said much for Russian training methods, for the prevailing repertoire and company policies. The long tradition stemming from Stanislavsky, though disputed and moulded by several hands, along with a repertoire which sustained productions over long periods and provided adequate rehearsal time, and a policy of permanent employment for theatre personnel, might have been dismissible as stultifying and repressive of initiative. However, in a proportion of Russian companies, innovation and sheer skill were clearly alive and well. What was perhaps not so well realised was that the choice of a novel as source text indicated the more independent director’s impatience with Soviet drama, with censorship and with bureaucracy. These attitudes have become clearer as the individual stories of these Soviet directors have been told in the post-Soviet period.64 In Yurii Lyubimov’s Crime and Punishment, in English in 1983, the action was ‘split up […] reordered’ and ‘knowledge of the book was taken for granted’. Adapted by Lyubimov himself, this was essentially a ‘director’s production [that was] overwhelming’.65 It was played with ‘startling theatrical boldness’66 and provided ‘stage images of fiery integrity’. However, it ‘questioned our own methods’ and suggested the return of the ‘dictatorial director in place of the coaxers’.67 By Lyubimov’s production of Dostoevsky’s The Possessed in 1985, critics remarked upon ‘a catatonic staging of a theatre of frenzy’,68 a ‘hectic jagged quality’, and a ‘wonderful plastic theatricality’.69 Not all of these characteristics emerged from a directorial design but pointed

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to significant differences between Russian and British English ‘language-body’ and between actor training methods in the two cultures. One critic put it directly: The performers are all British […] and therefore happier with verbal complexity than with the physical sort demanded of them here. You can’t transform one set of national habits and acting traditions into another in a few weeks of rehearsal.70

There have been two incidences where attempts have been made to cross this cultural divide. For a British production of The Idiot in 1991 at the Manchester Royal Exchange, a Russian performer was cast as Nastasia Filippovna. One comment based itself in analysis of the difference in the Russian character rather than difference in body language or language-body: Casting Valentina Yakunina in this role is inspired not simply because she is Russian, but because the difference of her movement and her accents mark the exoticism of a character who, at the very moment when she is translated by Myshkin’s pitying love out of darkness, can at once embrace it again.71

However obvious it may appear, it seems important also to emphasise that the performers are embodying fictional characters here, whose relationship to ‘real’ people is the stuff of much literary debate. Other problems arose from the lack of ability in this actress to find variety of tone in English. The second incidence relates to the work of an Anglo-Russian theatrical troupe called Chaika. Their production of Dostoevsky’s White Nights (1994) was regarded as promising, but the heroine ‘struggles continually with her accent’72 and ‘often leaves the audience floundering’.73 But potentially, given this company could devote themselves to differences in cultural style (and improve their diction), such an enterprise may come closer to conveying the essential cultural difference of a Russian source text while yet making it intelligible to an ­English-speaking audience. A more recent adaptation of Russian prose to reach the British Stage was Sasha Sokolov’s School for Fools in 2002 (performed by the Formal’nyi Theatre of St. Petersburg as part of the BITE:02 Season). This intriguing adaptation worked on the premise that the central

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figure was schizophrenic, and one critic went so far as to note that ‘madness in this instance is preferable to the grim realities of 1950s Soviet life, offering an escape into the unfettered creativity and freedom of the imagination’.74 The unrecognised point is that escape into the imagination was a normal and frequent occupation for the Soviet sane of mind. In an attempt to infuse the production with schizophrenic experience the adaptation ‘scorned sequential narrative, sense of place and sometimes verbal coherence’.75 Another critic summed up what in fact most adaptors and directors had perceived as the value of a classic source text: Classic texts are used more as springboards for [his] poetic impressions of life and, in a Post-Modern touch, the professional make-believe of theatre itself.76

Far from being a post-modern touch this inclination for ‘professional make-believe’ has been crucial to much of the powerful Russian directorial work of prose adaptation Britain has seen. From these comments on Russian inspired and directed productions, a conscious transposition of the prose source into a truly theatrical genre which impresses by its visual and physical qualities appears to achieve the greatest effect. Strong theatrical treatment supplies the power of the source genre often lamented as missing from adaptations. In the best received examples it seems to compensate for or even recreate the most striking aspects of the novel in a different form. It seems accepted that adaptation can only ever be partial, or it becomes a scene-by-scene plod through a narrative. When denied its function to captivate the sole reader narrative is unable to engage a live, collective audience, bent on seeing and hearing rather than reading. Here lie the reasons, in the view of the critics, why streamlined British productions of prose works have been the best received by audiences. They represent a collaboration between minimalist, inventive staging and, for Britain, unusual ensemble work, and the essentially reductive (in the best sense of the word) process of transforming a novel into a play.

British Adaptations To give an idea of the changing strategies of prose adaptation a s­ election of shows, more praised than dismissed, will now be discussed. These productions include a Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky) of 1981; Strider.

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The Story of a Horse of 1984, and an Anna Karenina from the 1990s; War and Peace (2011): all by Tolstoy; and a selection of short stories, by Erofeev (2001) and Kharms (1994); a version of Gogol’s The Overcoat (2004); and two stagings of the same Pushkin short story The Queen of Spades (2002, 2003). The first two (1981 and 1984) have several things in common: they are both the work of small companies. The need to find the means for presenting such vast projects with relatively few and diminishing resources in the last four or five decades has led to stripped back productions and to accentuation of the theatrical through the application of individual agendas for innovation and experiment. The ventures mounted by the larger companies, notably the NT or the RSC have attempted to measure and match the source novel, leaving themselves open to accusations of two different kinds: either they omit favourite aspects of the novel or their productions become heavy and unwieldy.

Novels The 1981 adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov by Richard Crane began life in the Brighton Theatre Company. It was first shown at the Edinburgh Festival and then had a run at the Fortune Theatre in London. These showings attest to its enthusiastic reception. This version reduced the novel largely to the four brothers. The four actors, however, played all the other parts, doubling as and when necessary, and each of them played the father, adding intense oedipal frissons. They also made each character far more multifaceted than is the case when only one actor inhabits a role. With virtually no change of costume and a minimalist set, the action was played out on and around a huge crucifix. The whole enterprise reduced the novel to twelve encounters and made no attempt to ‘plod through the action in realistic detail’. Overall it was ‘a powerful impression of Dostoevsky’s masterpiece’,77 ‘an ingenious miniature’78 and a ‘brilliant distillation’.79 What appears to have happened is that the transfer of genre was recognised by adaptor and by performers, and the enterprise sought a true theatrical experience to which the stripped back approach (‘impression’, ‘miniature’ and ‘distillation’) was an essential part. There were the familiar remarks, such as ‘it lacks the circumstantial background of Dostoevsky’s story’.80 This latter comment was ­self-evidently true, but circumstantial detail is precisely what the theatre does badly. According to one reviewer a price also paid ‘may be the Orthodox Russian soul which Dostoevsky tried so hard to rescue’, but

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added in the adaptation’s defence, ‘the godly arguments are the novel’s weakest’.81 Of course, such an economic version leaves less room for comparison with the original, and as a result less ensuing criticism about lack of accuracy. What is also evidently true is that the stage was left clear for powerful physical and visual impressions, the things the stage does best of all, and which are not always encouraged even by the best of scripted plays. The production of Strider at NT was inspired by the Leningrad adaptation by Mark Rozovsky,82 a well-known Soviet director, based on Tolstoy’s story about a horse.83 The critics praised the wholesale transposition into theatrical form and Peter Tegel’s translation: Strider is exhilarating, lucid and wise. Most remarkably of all, it achieves lucidity and wisdom through wholly theatrical artifice.84

Although he prefers plays, Michael Billington felt the adaptation caught the duality of the Tolstoyan hero as well as the structural parallels of the story between the ‘sottish wreck’ of the noble owner and the ‘broken down nag’ Strider becomes. He also pointed up the moral that at least the horse ‘has served some function and left a trace of his existence’, and on the way had gloried in ‘white plumes’ when drawing his master’s carriage.85 Rozovsky’s (rather than Tolstoy’s) ‘tendentious[ness]’86 lay in the coincidence between Soviet attitudes to class and ‘Tostoy’s fable-parable of class-system injustices’ chimed another critic.87 And we also, not unexpectedly, find further reference to ‘aristocratic repression of Czarist Russia’.88 It should not be forgotten that Russia was still mired in Brezhnevian stagnancy in 1984 (a literarily apocryphal year in itself) even if, with hindsight, we might wish to see it as the threshold to Gorbachev and glasnost. The critics’ reviews remind us they articulate contemporary attitudes as well as recycling long held views. Among others, Milton Shulman wrote of Rozovsky’s work: ‘in Russia it was to be expected he (the horse) would turn out to be a Marxist horse with anti-Capitalist feelings about possessions and class’.89 However, signs of change were visible if only we could have perceived them at the time. The production was also infused with the spirit of Lyubimov through the performance of its central actor Michael Pennington.90 Lyubimov’s departure from the tendentious Soviet style was expressed in his practice of working on and exporting the classics of the past to find creative freedom. Pennington had worked with

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Lyubimov as Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1983), and as a result his style of performance had changed. The vivid physical style being introduced by the Russian directors was henceforth to become almost de rigueur for adapted Russian productions. No authorial voice dictated stage conventions, new freedoms were being found and old traditions being freshly explored. So adaptations of prose works not only played a politically liberating role in Russia, but highlighted the potential for directorial and actorly freedom in Britain. Another much-praised production was mounted on a larger scale by Shared Experience. Their version of Anna Karenina was first played in 1992, revived by another company in 1995, and then revived by Shared Experience itself in 1998. Helen Edmundson’s adaptation responded both to her own impression of the book which focused on Anna and to that of the director Nancy Meckler who was caught up in the Levin story. As Edmundson commented in her authorial note to the published version: ‘Without Levin, Anna Karenina is a love story, extraordinary and dark, but essentially a love story. With Levin it becomes something great’.91 Her solution was not to attempt to encompass the whole book, but to introduce Levin as a stage character but without directly portraying his story and for Anna and Levin (who never meet in the fiction) to inhabit the stage simultaneously. Not only is direct collaboration between adaptor and director important to a successful adaptation, but so too is daring and a recognition of the storey-telling values of the stage as different from the novel. Too often the process is seen as one of cramming a novel into the frame of the stage, rather than recreating it, as Shared Experience did, in response to the very different conditions of the stage. The critics welcomed this adaptation finding that the stage had its own methods to recreate the narrative counterpointing of the novel, also reflected in the counterpointing of the two creators of the stage production Edmundson and Meckler. Edmundson ‘understands the inner life of fiction, the way the novel works and unfolds its meaning’92 and ‘captures the full emotional range of the book, with its intersecting arcs of despair and hope’.93 The ‘hectic dream-like quality’94 of the production caught in Meckler’s ‘brilliant direction’, through a ‘thrilling use of movement half way between mime and ballet is an integral part of the work’.95 The production was ‘symbolically accurate as well as theatrically compelling’96 as Anna, for example, became the mare that Vronsky, her lover, rides to its death in the horserace. The ‘concentrated language of the

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stage’97 expected to be an unfertile ground for such a grand novel in fact utilises its own ‘graphic voice’98 exploring the scarcely verbalised nuances of the novel. The ‘Meckler/Edmundson balancing act’99 was a stunning ‘creative […] use[d] […] advisedly’100 partnership. The 1995 revival at Watford, however, was not well received. This relative failure indicates another part of the pattern. Devised work around a script is desperately hard to replicate. Where Edmundson had confronted her adaptation ‘head on by celebrating the differences between page and stage’,101 the Watford revival ‘fell back on standard melodramatic flourishes’,102 using the Shared Experience adaptation as a straightforward script. Perhaps the most engaging and exciting adaptation recently of War and Peace was undertaken by the Giffords Circus company, which was touring the countryside and visited the Hay Festival in 2011 (where I saw it). Visually colourful, athletic, imaginative, not scrupulous about following the novel form, it appealed hugely to children and adults alike. ‘Tolstoy purists may grumble at the telescoping […]. Never mind: there’s real storytelling here’, enthused the Times critic. As a performance event, it was full of ‘delight’, with 13 scenes, 11 circus acts, dance, songs and music with a Russian twist, and including trapeze artists jugglers, clowns, horses, free flying live birds, from hawks (aristocratic pleasures) to doves (harbingers of peace), and a farmyard goose (the Rostov estate).103 The costumes were a riot of folksy colour mixed with historical Russian authenticity, reflected in a magnificent programme designed, very successfully, to appeal to children and adults alike (Fig. 7.2). Starting from this cover, the programme, was an object lesson in how to attract a new audience for serious literature. One contribution in the programme pointed to the history of circus presentations of melodrama and tableaux in indoor arena settings in the nineteenth century, including such monumental scenes as the Battle of Trafalgar and the burning of Moscow.104 It was set among drawings, colourful photographs of rehearsals, circus acts and animals directly appealing to the younger members of the audience. The Giffords Circus’ display of skills in combining such disparate art forms was quite breathtaking. At the end of the show, observed the same Times critic, ‘small children were quiet, understanding dimly that they had been through a story, as well as a show. Brilliant!’. What an enjoyable, inventive and memorable way to bring high Russian culture to grass roots level.

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Fig. 7.2  Programme for Giffords Circus, War and Peace, 2011

Short Stories Throughout the post-WW2 period, Western adaptors have turned regularly to Gogol’s prose, not to his novel Dead Souls, but to his short stories. The best received among them has been one of the most recent, a physical theatre and dance version in 2004 of The Overcoat, presented by the Canadian Stage Company, the production company of which is Canstage (an acronym which charms the ear for its national and assertive functions). This version contains both models and lessons for would-be adaptors. Perhaps the viability of this type of adaptation was presaged by Marcel Marceau, whose mime version of this story has featured twice in his repertoire, in the early 50s and in his 1995 revival, and not least in the version choreographed for Rudolf Nureyev in 1990. The Marceau version was not well received in Britain, eliciting the comment that those ignorant of Gogol’s story would have been hard put to guess the truth.105 It was perhaps more of a vehicle than a sincere adaptation, for it ‘came complete with screeching winds, bowed

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black figures, surreal dances involving vast, bear-like garments’.106 The Overcoat of 1990 allowed Nureyev to find a role in tune with his maturing genius, and in the end both the star and the event ended by eclipsing Gogol’s story; ‘Akaky’s ghost should triumph not the vanity of the dancer and designer’.107 Other Gogol stories which have been regularly adapted include Diary of a Madman. This story becomes a vehicle for ­one-person shows, displaying a form of hybridisation. It is usually transparent to the critics that Gogol is eclipsed in favour of this or that actor’s need to display their talents, perhaps regarding them as more important than Gogol’s strange world. A version by Richard Harris and Lindsay Anderson (1963) at the Royal Court Theatre, drew mixed comment, including a remark which was pointedly eloquent about the ease with which a prose adaptation can be self-defeating: ‘to have read Gogol’s short story on which the play is based would have given me as much pleasure and taken up less time’.108 There is a lesson here for would-be adaptors. Review comment centres on the power or otherwise of the individual performance. For example, the reviews of Nicol Williams’ performance in Diary of a Madman (1967, Duchess Theatre, London) rarely mention the text, and the fact that it is an adaptation of a short story seems to have been entirely forgotten.109 As one reviewer of the Canstage version of The Overcoat indicated,110 Matthew Bourne, the modern choreographer credited with finding new directions for traditional ballet, has undoubtedly had a great impact on expectations of adaptation in the dance and theatre world, solidly breaking down traditional frames, and enlivening material in the process. Canstage matched Gogol’s short story to Shostakovich’s music, and using minimal props proved that ‘narrative does not necessarily need words’.111 The issue of the difference between the function of words in the novel and in the theatre script is crucial here. A novel is words on a page used to fire the imagination of the reader. In a scripted performance, words (and they carry many different functions including dialogue, emotional colouring, stage directions, for example) are a starting point for the creative skills of a whole host of intermediaries between an author (and in this case translator/adaptor) and collective reception by an audience. Canstage employed a variety of physical theatre styles including dance and cinematic techniques. One comment was that ‘the production was unclassifiable’.112 Another reviewer was more precise: ‘The Overcoat stands where the territories of theatre, traditional mime and dance meet’.

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However, a note of warning was also sounded: ‘It’s an immense and ravishing spectacle, and consequently radically at odds with the spirit of the original story’.113 We have reached the other and equally excessive end of the spectrum of possible adaptation where the new form devised to express the original story, succeeds only in counterpointing rather than representing it and seizing the stage for its own purposes. In these respects, the production seems to have gone well beyond hybridisation and into acculturation. In the event, though, it provided an exciting theatrical experience.114 The short story Life with an Idiot by Viktor Erofeev, mentioned earlier, elicited comparison with Gogol and two other writers sometimes bracketed with Gogol, Shwartz and Kafka. The reference was to ‘terror, pity of a kind, and black visionary laughter’.115 However, the significance of this story as a piece of Soviet satire of 1980 was lost in the adaptation in 2001, perhaps indicating how quickly understanding of the Soviet era has waned. The story had been adapted more as a vehicle for frenetic acting than for itself, and its set had been made representative of an imagined, post-Soviet, minimalist, contemporary Russia.116 Reactions to the adaptations of Kharms’ stories by Théâtre de Complicité in 1994–1995 as well as articulating similar responses in remarks about the distinctiveness of their virtuoso style, drew out the references to Stalin’s oppressive Russia in plenty. This nightmarish absurd vision of life was linked to ‘that locked ward, the Soviet Union’,117 and to the ‘Soviet horrors that surrounded him [Kharms]’.118 Billington felt that Complicité’s work, damned and lauded in roughly equal proportions, on the Kharms fragmentary pieces had failed ‘to provide any great reflection on the role of the artist in an oppressive society’.119 Another critic, Nathan, made the observant point that ‘surrealism […] was possibly the only art to flourish under Stalin’.120 Other writers develop the theme of the absurdity of Russian life in general where corpses do get stolen, especially on trains.121 Or old women are found dead, their reference points for the latter being Pushkin (Queen of Spades) and Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) in the Russian tradition, Kafka in a central European one, and Edward Lear in the British. Some of Kharms’ ‘stories’ are just a few lines: which were seen as ‘insubstantial, almost infantile work’122; or appreciated as ‘snapshots of a mind trapped in a non-existent head’.123 Were the critics thrown by the blow to their expectations? Like Théâtre de Complicité, they were challenged to ‘find[…] a coherent structure in the fragments and prose miniatures’.124

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Could these unusual pieces really capture the horrors of the Russian situation? The conclusions ranged from avowals that this production was a case of ‘style at the expense of dramatic text and content’,125 to Billington’s view that ‘the show remains an elliptical spectacle’. He also baldly wondered if Kharms’ ‘spare’ work was done a disservice by being so ‘expansively theatricalised’.126 What does emerge here are the dangers of applying the received British thinking about Russia, Soviet or otherwise, to a writer as genuinely wild and absurd127 as Kharms. He would-be a one-off in any society. The rule seems to be that if a Soviet work was written before 1953 it must reflect Stalinist horrors. More fruit of that ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ again? There is something bigger and deeper perhaps to be found in Kharms, which reflects those earlier darker streaks we noted in relation to writers such as Bulgakov, Erdman, Ginsburg, Solzhenitsyn, Galin and Sigarev in the previous section. In their turn they drew their origins from nineteenth century writers such as Gogol or Dostoevsky, or writers rarely or never seen in Britain such as Sukhovo-Kobylin and Saltykov-Shchedrin, mentioned earlier for their absence. They do not fit the Chekhovian model. In relation to Kharms, one critic referred to the ‘guilt of the guiltless man’,128 still reflecting the injustice of an arbitrary regime but also reaching towards the human condition, while another, perhaps more truly, located the fragmentary stories in ‘the relentless dementia of daily Soviet life’.129 As with a number of the other adaptations from prose we have examined, the prosaic rather than dramatic form of the Kharms stories gave the adapting and devising team and performers much freedom to explore their own skills. The safest way out the critics found was to designate Out of a House Walked a Man, the ‘alternative’ Christmas outing, a most unusual accolade for Russian theatre. As a coda, this discussion of the adaptation of short stories draws in Pushkin, whose work overall features rarely on our stage. However, two recent adaptations in the new century of his Queen of Spades in Scotland seem to point to surprising facts: criticism of works by Pushkin is devoid of reference to Russia and there is little concern with translation. This may be because the story of Queen of Spades is well-known from the Tchaikovsky opera, and already occupies the place of a ‘classic’. John Clifford’s first adaptation (from a translation by Angela Landon) in fact drew in Tchaikovsky and his opera. It was staged at Pitlochry in 2002; the second was by John Pope also from the translation by Angela Landon, at Citizens Circle, Glasgow (2003). Moreover, a point was

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made which reinforces an important characteristic of adaptation: one reviewer commented on the immense difference between the two adaptations though from the same translation.130 While Clifford updated his version to Bolshevik Petrograd in 1917, the other by Pope remained in nineteenth-century Petersburg, but neither of these settings drew any comment about intercultural transposition. The costumes were admired: ‘sets and costumes were gorgeous’131 at Pitlochry, while there was ‘tremendous Gothic melodrama and rustling black silk’132 and ‘grotesquely apparelled drive’133 in Glasgow. There was little more on which to draw for our theme, except for the Times reviewer at Pitlochry, who stretched a point in commenting: ‘To a certain extent the play is about how ordinary life continues in the middle of extraordinary circumstances; Clifford is inviting us to see our society and social order as vulnerable as that of Russia was in 1917’.134 It is as if the ‘classic’ status deflects any reflective intercultural response.

Plays ‘After’ Novels The category of plays ‘after’ novels’ is relatively recent. It brings yet another facet to the stage adaptation of prose. There are three examples which have enjoyed some success but which are quite different from one another. The first brought a famous playwright, Brian Friel, to adapt Turgenev’s novel, Fathers and Sons for the stage, which he subtitled ‘a play[…] after the novel’.135 He produced effectively another play for his own oeuvre rather than a stage adaptation of the novel. His versions of Chekhov’s plays are well-known and participate in that ambivalent enterprise of famous-name adaptation: it is never quite clear whether this is a Friel play or a Chekhov or Turgenev play while the translator who did all the groundwork remains almost invisible. Critics commented that Friel brought his Irishness to bear on his version of Fathers and Sons,136 suggested by his explicit subtitle. He was widely taken to task for his omissions from the original text, particularly the death of the hero Bazarov, but at the same time praised for the play’s dialogue with Chekhov. Or should that read those aspects of the novel (and indeed Turgenev’s other novels) which prefigure the Russia Chekhov explored, according to the British ‘theatrical mind’? Comments on the Friel production threw up many references to Chekhov: ‘Chekhov with its head cut off’137; ‘a pre-Chekhovian household’ and a Chekhovian search’138; or ‘a Chekhov pastiche’139; ‘predating Chekhov’140; while Bazarov was ‘a negativist

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forbear of Chekhov’s Trofimov’141; and even ‘ersatz Chekhov with the volume turned up high’.142 It is almost as if the critics were searching in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons for a sub-Chekhovian play to add to a repertoire, already dominated by Chekhov, but in which plays by Chekhov are frustratingly limited as there are only four or five of them on any scale. The comments also pandered to a prevailing stereotype of Russian theatre, perhaps never so clearly precipitated as in the following: The women longing for love, the incompetent landowner, the indolent uncle, the serf-like servants trying to rise above their class, the endless talk about crushed hopes, frustrated expectations, duels and suicides are the typical and predictable ingredients of the Slavic Theatre we have come to know.143

This statement points to raw truths: has the predilection for Chekhov’s playwriting stamped itself on the perception of all Russian theatre? Or indeed, is the trawling of the Russian novel little more than a search for the British imagined version of Russia? Were they searching for a means to reinforce the Chekhov the British had extracted and endlessly played? In many ways that Chekhov is a fictional and narrative one, and thus close to the Russia the British found in her novels. The hardest aspects to understand about Chekhov for the British have been precisely those elements which make his plays into plays and differentiate them from his prose. It is perhaps worth remembering at this point that the notion of a play ‘after’ another source (whether play or novel) has since become an industry of its own. It engages the creative imagination rather than taking a text as a model. Friel has produced his own triptych of ‘plays after’, based on Chekhov’s stories and plays: for example, Afterplay which brings together Sonia from Uncle Vanya and Andrei from Three Sisters, historically some twenty or more years after their first incarnation.144 The other two plays in this triptych are based on the story The Lady with the Little Dog and the one-act play, The Bear. The second ‘after’ play to be discussed here was a runaway comic success. It provides an example of a play based on a novel which indulged in satire and the comedic skills of the director and performers rather than resting heavily on the original novel. The production was the NT’s Black Snow (1991, translated by Misha Glenny; adapted by Brian Wright and K. Dewhirst) recommended at the time as having some of the funniest

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scenes in London145 and the comic treat of the year.146 It was based on a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, Theatrical Novel (unfinished, published posthumously in 1965) which traced Bulgakov’s involvement with MAT at the time they were attempting to stage his play, Molière, in the early 1930s. The novel was a merciless satire of Stanislavsky and his dictatorial approach as director. The production’s attraction for the theatrical establishment lay in the exposure of the vacuity of acting theory, and led to comments such as ‘episodes […] are funnier on the stage than on the page’.147 Underneath lurks a far more serious theme than simply ‘revenge through fiction’148 which this production was hardly able to capture from the novel. One commentator was explicit about ‘the play’s attack on artistic repression and that it was not aesthetic quibbles but fear of the labour camp that kept Molière in rehearsal for four years’.149 So sometimes adaptation can neglect the serious aspects of a source in pursuit of pure theatrical entertainment, undergoing a process of genre acculturation. However, many people were enticed to look at Bulgakov’s other works because of this theatrical success. As an adaptation, the production was criticised for sticking too closely to its source150 and for reflecting the unfinished nature of the novel, thus leaving the audience with an anticlimax.151 It seems important always to produce a shaped and theatrically sound entity, however faulty the original. In this case the adaptation had relied on the theatrical content to make it effective. Similar treatment was given to the adaptation of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita at Chichester in 2004. During this year there had been a ‘cluster’ of productions related to this novel: as well as Chichester there were productions at the Lyric Hammersmith (National Youth Theatre) and at Greenwich (Lefthanded Theatre Company). In the Chichester version, the novel-within-the-novel structure was transformed into a ‘politically dangerous play-within-a-play’152 by Edward Kemp (no translator acknowledged) overcoming the view that this ‘iconic novel is impervious to dramatisation’.153 The production was helped along by some magnificent stage effects, noted by many of the reviewers, which captured the magical realism of the novel. Importantly, the production also left the spectator in no doubt of the ‘grim truth behind […] the novel: what it was like to be a writer under Stalin’, and indeed, ‘the cultural bureaucracy and Stanislavsky dominated arts establishment’.154 Perhaps the surprise here is the acknowledgement of the other, cultural, enemies within Russia in the 30s and 40s. The National Youth Theatre

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version (adapted by David Rudkin, no translator cited) was roundly condemned for updating the context to modern day Britain, thus losing the allure of Russia herself. Removing the Stalinist context, it was felt, diluted the impact of the work, however much energy the young actors brought to the show.155 The third version at Greenwich (adapted by Blanche McIntyre) was less widely reviewed but pleased those two critics who did write about its attempt ‘to recreate the chilly world of Stalin’s Russia’,156 and that it was ‘a lesson in how the state crushes creativity’.157 Master and Margarita subsequently emerged in a stunning version created by Théâtre de Complicité in 2012, with their ‘abiding interest in Russian culture’.158 Several critics wrote about it in the light of the three 2004 productions, suggesting, perhaps, that the cluster effect had ensured that Bulgakov’s novel stayed in the public memory. The Chichester production was particularly remembered because of the contribution of Edward Kemp as adaptor. This time he worked with Simon McBurney of Complicité.159 The review writing this time focussed on the ‘cutting edge use of projection technology’160 on the one hand, but on the other noted how Bulgakov had created a satire of Stalin’s Russia that ‘swung between realism and delirious fantasy’, being both ‘absorbing and wonderfully nuts’. This critic also commented on the ‘violence and anarchy’ of the production, marked by ‘great swathes of the sinister and poetic’.161 This darkly satiric side may have been emphasised by Complicité’s treatment, especially as there was a model act of doubling at the centre by the actor playing both the Master and Woland, the incarnation of the devil. The Guardian critic found the whole experience ‘restless’ deriving from a sense that ‘we can never be sure what we are viewing’.162 Such unease is arguably fundamental to Bulgakov’s novel. Here was a writer, commented the Sunday Times critic, whose swinging to the extremes (‘phantasmagoric wackiness, myth and religion, surrealism and absurd humour’) was a response to the ‘real horror and madness of Stalin’s socialist nightmare’.163 The identification of these markers of Bulgakov’s world and their re-delivery through the work of Complicité evoked that other Russia we have increasingly found in this study. It is a Russia previously encapsulated in the satirical streak of Russian creative writing, in Gogol, Dostoevsky and others. Where Bulgakov may have begun with an echoing nostalgia for Chekhov in The White Guard (as we noted in Section 6) he has, as have all the productions in 2004 and 2012, completely discarded it here. The

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latent power of this other Russia is open to further excavation, thanks to the Complicité adventurousness with modern staging techniques and superlative interpretive skills. What is the effect of such ‘clusters’ of adaptations? There appears to be a difference from similar clusters of play productions. It arises from the much greater control afforded the team adapting a novel than is usual with a play. On the one hand, a cluster exposes the fact that a range of theatre professionals have plumbed Bulgakov’s novel to suit their own theatre styles and purposes as much as wishing to explore the depths of the novel itself. On the other hand, a cluster also exposes the narrowness of the reviewing function. A key factor is that the reviewers remain largely the same, and the reviews are peppered with repetitions of their existing views about Bulgakov. Their search for new things to say becomes evident, and reviews of the later productions must inevitably be coloured by comparison to what they had already seen. Such clusters seem also to play a significant, if negative, role in the formation of the canon of Russian theatre on the stage as there has been a gap in interest in Bulgakov’s work, with only three productions since 2004 (two plays: Moliere in 2009, The White Guard in 2010, and the one Master and Margarita, in 2012, discussed above). To return to our category of the ‘after’ play, the third one which was well received, and may add to the recipe for successful adaptation, was also relatively recent. It returns us to Dostoevsky but the Russian context has almost disappeared. David Farr’s Crime and Punishment in Dalston (2002) was called a ‘free stage adaptation’164 by one commentator, and a ‘thoroughly modern mugging’165 by another. Farr made ‘a classic moral tale relevant to its surroundings’,166 providing his audience with a ‘riveting reworking’ and ‘[t]his is Crime and Punishment with attitude, street-cred and wisdom’.167 Farr worked with young performers in his local community, producing a stage version that was performed by local actors and spoke directly to its local audience, the stage power of which allowed it to ‘grip[s] at those moments where the narrative gets a bit loose’,168 thus drawing clear distinctions between the purposes of the novel and the stage. Was it too local, too community-based to be widely received? Not according to one critic who, joining in the general praise, commented: ‘This is real theatre, poor but purposeful, rooted in its community but speaking to everyone’.169

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Prose Adaptation on the Stage: Some Conclusions Russian prose has made a considerable space for itself in the British repertoire. What are the characteristics needed for successful adaptation? There is no simple rationale for the British love for this specific cultural form. In the nineteenth century, the novel supplied a landscape, a sense of space and distance made exotic by British experience of the Russian political bear and its imperial aims in Europe. In the novel with its gentle domestic and estate settings, the British may have found a means of taming this bear at least in their imaginations. In the twentieth century, far from taming the bear, the British privileged those who refused to be cowed by Soviet intimidation, and sympathised with those who suffered in silence. A problem was that the stage found itself unable to replicate the landscapes (that is perhaps now the domain of film and TV). What the stage did successfully was to engage with the caricature of Gogol, catch the thriller-like tension of Dostoevsky, and then experiment with ways to capture the vast casts and canvases of Tolstoy within its own frame. It is in this cutting down to stage size, in the filleting of the circumstantial detail essential to the novel form and in recognition of the difference in values of the stage that prose adaptation has been successful. There are a number of other indications in the preceding discussion about the nature of successful adaptation from a prose source. The reception given to dance versions and physical theatre in their requirement to downgrade the power of verbal text as the dominant force, and so complete the transposition into the theatrical genre, lies at one end of the spectrum. We might call it ‘hybridisation through genre’. Another approach which is occasionally seen is to adapt a text for your own didactic purposes. As Michael Billington remarked, adopting a didactic approach is far to be preferred to a purposeless adaptation.170 This is not so different from all those one-person shows which use the text as little more than a vehicle for the performer’s own skills. Adaptations which have made their didactic mark include Piscator’s War and Peace (1942) or Brecht’s version of Gorky’s Mother (1931) which have both been seen in Britain.171 However, what happens in these examples is that the famous original adaptors and their didactic purposes tend to swamp the Russian source, acculturating them, firstly to the adaptors’ host German culture and in these cases individual specific agendas. Then production in different host cultures forces them even further from their roots. Such

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versions exhibit complex acculturation in our range of approaches to transferring Russian sources to the British stage. Overall, Russian theatre in the British repertoire 1945–2015 has offered a double-edged experience: it was an opportunity for a vicarious exploration of a culture from which British audiences were largely cut off by the Cold War, or it engaged audiences in a powerful nostalgia for a Russian cultural myth which had been lost. As a contribution from the prose adaptation wing, Tolstoy’s Strider straddled both these needs with a script translated from a contemporary adaptation by a respected Soviet director (Rozovsky), but from a desirably, nineteenth-century classic Russian writer Tolstoy, and infused by a new spirit from the ‘dissident’ director Lyubimov.172 Adaptation of Soviet prose has been a vehicle for Russian companies touring here to show us their startling command of technique and physicality. A very positive outcome has also been that adaptations of Russian prose, like classic Russian plays, enabled hard pressed East European companies to visit and find audiences in Britain in difficult times. Russian culture operates as a common currency over a very wide area. However, in stark comparison to works from the nineteenth century, Soviet prose has hardly had an explorative treatment from British translators, adaptors or directors, perhaps with the recent honourable exception of Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (Zhizn’ i sud’ba, 1960) adapted for radio.173 This novel, though, is highly critical of Russia in WW2 and so responds to the dissident agenda here. When Soviet national prose does figure, it seems to draw a host of repetitive cliché, even in respect of such a wildly different writer as Kharms. On one level, in its time it was extremely hard to either hybridise or acculturate Soviet prose production: it was seen as alien, driven by an inimical and unacceptable system, reinforced as negative by the prejudice of the Cold War. Would collision have been a better option? Productions which showed the source material more in its own context might have helped British audiences to understand the daily reality of Soviet existence, rather than raising the shadows of Stalinist terror. The ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ seems to prefer the much more lyrical approach, generated in pre-revolutionary creative writing. Soviet material sullies the mental landscape. Modern Russian writing has been well received in so far as it is dissident, or can demonstrate its links to the nineteenth-century canon, or has a sure comic touch, or that dark streak that is so compelling.

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Notes











1. The twentieth century novels, translated and adapted for the stage by British hands are Leonid Leonov’s Polovchanskie sady (1939) trans. and adapt. by Harold Bowen as The Apple Orchard, Bristol Old Vic, April 1948; and P. D. Ouspensky, The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (London: Stourton, 1947, published in English; republished by Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1983), adapt. by Carlos de Nero, Charles Taylor, and J. A. Baron, and performed at New End Theatre, May 1984. Neither production excited much comment. In addition, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (1960) (Zhizn’ i sud’ba), trans. and intro. Robert Chandler (London: Vintage, 2006) was adapted for BBC Radio 4 by Mike Warner and Jonathan Myerson, and broadcast in 2011 and 2019. Grossman’s novel was smuggled abroad and was first translated and published in 1985, and subsequently published in Russia in 1988. 2. Daniil Kharms (1905–1942), see Section 6, n. 139. 3. Viktor Erofeev (1947–). Prose writer and literary critic. Though first written in 1980, this story was rewritten by the author as the libretto for an opera (1992) by the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke (1934– 1998). It was adapted for the Gate Theatre in 2001 by the director Ben Harrison and his company (see TR, 8–21 October 2001, pp. 1355–1357). 4. Fyodor Abramov (1920–1983). His first novel Brat’ia i sestry (Brothers and Sisters, 1958) was adapted by Lev Dodin and performed in Russia 1988, and in the UK in Russian by Dodin’s company in 1989, 1991, and 1994. 5.  Sasha Sokolov (b.1943, Canada). His childhood was spent in Soviet Russia. His first novel School for Fools (1976) was smuggled out and published in the West. Sokolov emigrated at the same time. School for Fools was adapted for the stage in 2002. 6. Boris Pasternak (1890–1960). His best-known novel Dr Zhivago was published in the West in 1957. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 but under considerable Soviet pressure, he declined it. The novel was made into an international film in 1965, directed by David Lean. 7.  Both Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–1984) and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) received the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1965 and 1970, respectively) but they hardly figure on the stage in Britain. Sholokhov’s key works are his novel Tikhii Don (And Quiet Flows the Don, 1940) and other novels and short stories about the Don Cossacks. For Solzhenitsyn, see Section 6, n. 82.

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8. See Section  6, n. 4. The Master and Margarita, adapt. by Edward Kemp (translator not cited), Chichester Festival Theatre, 2004; and by David Rudkin for the National Youth Theatre in 2004. In March 2012, Théâtre de Complicité presented Simon McBurney’s adaptation of Master and Margarita at the Barbican and it was reprised in the following December through to January 2013. 9. Kharms, Elizaveta Bam, 1928, premiered in Leningrad. 10.  Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841): his novel A Hero of Our Time (1837–1841) has not been adapted as far as can be traced for the British stage. Mikhail Saltykov Schedrin (1826–1889), see Section 5, n. 14. 11.  Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883) is best known in Britain for his novels rather than his one play (A Month in the Country), and principally for Fathers and Sons (1862; adapt. by Brian Friel, 1987; 2 productions; 1987, 2014). The other five novels are Rudin (1856); A Nest of Gentlefolk (1859); On the Eve (1860); Smoke (1867); and Virgin Soil (1877). Also see Section 4, nn. 115 and 116. 12. Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910) is among the most prolific of the Russian novelists, and among the best loved in Britain. War and Peace (1869; 6 productions) and Anna Karenina (1877; 8 productions) have been relatively popular on the British stage. His novella The Kreutzer Sonata [1889] surprisingly, perhaps, has been given 7 productions in our period, and most recently in London, at The Gate, 2009 and 2013. Other novels include The Cossacks (1860); Resurrection (1899); and the long short stories, The Death of Ivan Il’ich (1886), none of which have been adapted for the professional stage in Britain. Also see Section 4, n. 137. 13.  Simon Gray, ‘Adapting The Idiot’, NT Programme for The Idiot, London, 1970. 14.  A. N. Nikoliukin, ‘Dostoevskii in Constance Garnett’s Translation’, in Dostoevskii and Britain, ed. by W. J. Leatherbarrow (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 207–226 (p. 217). 15.  Platform papers. 1. Translation [Ranjit Bolt, Michael Frayn, Christopher Hampton, Steven Pimlott, Jeremy Sams, Timberlake Wertenbaker] (London: NT, 1992), p. 11. 16.  Donald Rayfield, ‘The Background of The Idiot’s Russia’, NT programme for The Idiot, London, 1970. 17. Jonathan Saville, ‘Old Struggle and New Life’ (The Reader, 2 November 1989, passim). I would like to acknowledge the debt I owe to Dr. Martin Dewhirst (University of Glasgow) who on his retirement gave me his extensive archive relating to Russian touring theatre in which he had been involved for a number of years.

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18. Both these comments refer to Crime and Punishment. See Illustrated London News, 30 January 1954; W. A. Darlington, ‘Dostoevsky at the Arts: Enthusiastic Gloom’, Daily Telegraph, 14 January 1954 (LTM, press cuttings). 19.  Kreutzer Sonata (1961): Philip Hope Wallace, ‘Kreutzer Sonata’, Guardian, 12 July 1961 (LTM, press cutting). 20.  War and Peace (1996): Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 30 June 1996 (TR, 17–30 June 1996, p. 809). 21. John Gross, Sunday Telegraph, 30 June 1996 (ibid., p. 810). 22.  The Idiot (1970): National Theatre, Punch, 22 July 1970 (NT, press cutting). 23.  Crime and Punishment (1966): Anthony Seymour, ‘Protest by Poles’, Yorkshire Post, 30 April 1966 (LTM, press cutting, World Theatre Season). 24. War and Peace (1996): Michael Billington, Guardian, 26 June 1996 (TR, 17–30 June 1996, p. 809). 25.  Brothers Karamazov (1981): Christopher Hudson, Standard, 10 November 1981 (LTR, 5–18 November 1981, p. 599). 26.  Anna Karenina (1998): Patrick Marmion, Evening Standard, 22 September 1998 (TR, 10–23 September 1998, p. 1211). 27. Claire Armistead, Guardian, 16 March 1992 (TR, 26 February–10 March 1992, p. 293). 28. Harold Hobson, ‘A Success’, Sunday Times, 17 January 1954 (LTM, press cutting). 29. Maddy Costa, Time Out, 16 September 1998 (TR, 27 August–9 September 1998, p. 1150). 30. James Christopher, Times, 3 September 1998 (ibid., p. 1151). 31. ‘World Theatre Season’s Lasting Rewards’, Times, 6 May 1966 (LTM, press cutting). 32.  Irving Wardle, ‘Emphasis Lost. National: The Idiot,’ Times, 16 July 1970 (NT, press cutting). 33. Michael Billington, ‘Crime and Punishment’, Guardian, 9 September 1983 (Martin Dewhirst Archive). 34.  Anna Karenina, adapt. by John Clifford (1991) performed at Edinburgh Royal Lyceum, 2005. 35. Underground, new piece by Dreamthinkspeak, from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (no translator cited), performed at the Old Abattoir, Clerkenwell, London, 2005. 36. Robert Dawson Scott, Times, 25 March 2005 (TR, 12–25 March 2005, p. 393). 37. Mark Brown, Sunday Herald, 27 March 2005 (ibid., p. 394). 38. Lynne Walker, Independent, 30 March 2005 (ibid.).

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39. Ibid. 40. Susannah Clapp, Observer, 16 October 2005 (TR, 8–21 October 2005, p. 1358). 41. Jonathan Gibbs, Time Out London, 19 October 2005 (ibid., p. 1361). 42. Susan Irvine, Sunday Telegraph, 16 October 2005 (ibid., p. 1358). 43. Carole Woddis, Herald, 20 October 2005 (ibid., p. 1361). 44. Gibbs, Time Out London. 45. Woddis, Herald. 46. Helen Chappell, What’s On, 19 October 2005; Gibbs, Time Out London; and Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, 21 October 2005 (ibid., pp. 1358, 1361). 47. Mountford, Evening Standard. 48. For comparison with a detailed account of another (2007–2008) site specific production (not of a Russian play), see Frances Babbage, ‘Heavy Bodies, Fragile Texts: Stage Adaptation and the Problem of Presence’, in Adaptation in Contemporary Culture, ed. by Rachel Carroll (London and New York: Continuum, 2009), pp. 11–22. 49.  Anatoly Smelyansky, ‘Pekashino Diary: “Brothers and Sisters”, Stage Diptych at the Leningrad Maly Drama Theatre’, Soviet Theatre, 1 (1987), 3−5. 50. Bernard Levin, ‘Thanks to Moscow at last I can say this is picaresque’, Daily Mail, 27 May 1964 (LTM, press cuttings for Dead Souls). 51.  ‘Everybody has the same cue’, Sunday Times, 31 May 1964 (LTM, ibid.). 52. Levin, Daily Mail. 53. Herbert Kretzmer, ‘Superb … This Answer to a Great Challenge’, Daily Express, 10 May 1966 (LTM, press cuttings for The Idiot). 54. N. C., ‘Deeply Moving’, Birmingham Mail, 10 May 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 55. Times, 10 May 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 56. Kretzmer, Daily Express. 57. Peter Lewis, ‘A Strange, Strange Evening with The Idiot’, Daily Mail, 10 May 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 58. D. H., ‘Acting on a Grand Scale’, Bristol Evening Post, 10 May 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 59. Philip Hope Wallace, ‘The Idiot at the Aldwych’, Guardian, 10 May 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 60. W. A. Darlington, ‘Gorki Actor Superb in “The Idiot” Lead’, Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 61. Hope Wallace, Guardian. 62. Peter Lewis, ‘How Can You Put a MIND on Stage’, Daily Mail, 29 April 1966 (LTM press cuttings for Crime and Punishment).

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63. B. A. Young, ‘Crime and Punishment’, Financial Times, 29 April 1966 (LTM, ibid.). 64.  See, for example: Birgit Beumers, Yuri Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre 1964–1994 (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997); Laurence Senelick, The Chekhov Theatre (1997); Anatoly Smeliansky, The Russian Theatre After Stalin, trans. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Ros Dixon, ‘From Iconoclast to Traditionalist: A Study of Anataolii Efros’s Productions of Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002); and Maria Shevstova, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance (London: Routledge, 2004). 65. Irving Wardle, Times, 9 September 1983 (Martin Dewhirst Archive). 66. Michael Billington, Guardian, 9 September 1983 (ibid.). 67. John Barber, Daily Telegraph, 19 September 1983 (ibid.). 68. Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, 22 March 1985 (LTR, 13–26 March 1985, p. 252). 69. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 22 March 1985 (ibid., p. 254). 70. Benedict Nightingale, New Statesman, 29 March 1985 (ibid.). 71. Jeffrey Wainwright, Independent, 20 April 1991 (TR, 9–22 April 1991, p. 482). There is an interesting use of the word ‘translated’ in this review. It likens the power of Nastasia Philipovna’s character transformation by Myshkin to the equally powerful act of translation between languages and cultures. 72. Louise Stafford Charles, What’s On, 1 June 1994 (TR, 21 May–3 June 1994, p. 652). 73. Joseph Mills, Jewish Chronicle, 3 June 1994 (ibid.). 74. Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 15 November 2002 (TR, 5–18 November 2002, p. 1512). 75. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 13 November 2002 (ibid.). 76. Donald Hutera, Times, 14 November 2002 (ibid., pp. 1512–1513). 77. John Barber, Daily Telegraph, 10 November 1981 (LTR, 5–18 November 1981, p. 598). 78. Nicholas de Jongh, Guardian, 10 November 1981 (ibid., p. 597). 79. Sheridan Morley, Punch, November 1981 (ibid., p. 599). 80. Christopher Hudson, Evening Standard, 10 November 1981 (ibid.). 81. Rosalind Carne, Financial Times, 10 November 1981 (ibid., p. 597). 82. Leningrad Gorky Theatre, 1975. Mark Rozovsky (b.1937–). Theatre director one time at the theatre Studio, U Nikitskikh Vorot (Nikitsky Gates Theatre) in Moscow. His adaptation of Tolstoy’s story was staged in Leningrad by Tovstonogov. Rozovsky courted controversy by staging previously banned plays such as Sergei Tretiakov’s I Want a Baby (1930) in 1989.

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83. L. N. Tolstoy, ‘Kholstomer’ (Strider) ([1863] 1886), trans. by Louise and Aylmer Maude in Leo Tolstoy, Nine Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). 84. Michael Ratcliffe, Observer, 29 January 1984 (LTR, 1–30 January 1984, p. 43). 85. Michael Billington, Guardian, 27 January 1984 (ibid., p. 42). 86. Francis King, Sunday Telegraph, 29 January 1984 (ibid., p. 44). 87. Kenneth Hurren, Mail on Sunday, 29 January 1984 (ibid., p. 45). 88. Sheridan Morley, Punch, 8 February 1984 (ibid., p. 42). 89. Milton Shulman, Standard, 27 January 1984 (ibid., p. 46). 90. This point was recalled in several reviews of the production: Ratcliffe, The Observer (ibid., p. 43); Michael Coveney Financial Times, 27 January 1984 (ibid., p. 44); Rosalind Carne, New Statesman, 3 February 1984 (ibid., p. 45); and Ned Chaillet, Wall Street Journal, 19 February 1984 (ibid.). 91. Helen Edmundson, ‘Introduction to: Lev Tolstoy’, in Anna Karenina (adapt. by Helen Edmundson) (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994), p. v. 92. John Peter, Sunday Times, 15 March 1992 (TR, 26 February–10 March 1992, p. 290). 93. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 18 March 1992 (ibid., p. 289). 94. Ibid. 95. Peter, Sunday Times. 96. Claire Armistead, Guardian, 16 March 1992 (ibid., p. 293). 97. Peter, Sunday Times. 98. Graham Hassell, What’s On, 18 March 1992 (ibid., p. 290). 99. James Christopher, Time Out, 18 March 1992 (ibid.). 100. Peter, Sunday Times. 101. Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 14 October 1995 (TR, 8–21 October 1995, p. 1461). 102. Neil Smith, What’s On, 18 October 1995 (ibid., pp. 1461–1462). 103. Libby Purves, Times, 29 June 2011 (TR, 18 June–1 July 2011, p. 730). Review of the performance on Tackley Village Green. 104. David Hibley, in programme for ‘Giffords War and Peace at the Circus’, 2011, p. 13. And there are drawings of clowns, colourful rehearsal shots of acrobats, dancers, horses and birds throughout. 105. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 24 January 1995 (TR, 29 January–11 February 1995, p. 152). 106. Ibid. 107. Jann Parry, ‘Bespoke Fantasy Is a Poor Fit’, Observer, 2 September 1990 (LTM, press cutting). 108. W. A. Darlington, Daily Telegraph, 8 March 1963 (LTM, press cutting).

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109.  There are 9 reviews at the LTM, for Diary of a Madman, Duchess Theatre, March 1967. 110. Jenny Gilbert, Independent on Sunday, 25 January 2004 (TR, 1–28 January 2004, p. 103). 111. Jann Parry, Observer, 25 January 2004 (TR, ibid., p. 103). 112. Ibid. 113. Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 9 February 2004 (ibid., p. 104). 114. As I write (autumn of 2016), Gogol’s story The Nose, the opera, music by Shostakovich, is currently the season highlight at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. 115. John Peter, Sunday Times, 28 October 2001 (TR, 8–21 October 2001, p. 1355). 116. Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 19 October 2001 (ibid., p. 1355); Rhoda Koenig, Independent, 18 October 2001 (ibid., p. 1356). 117. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 3 December 1994 (TR, 19 November–2 December 1994, p. 1496). 118. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 7 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1498). 119. Michael Billington, Guardian, 3 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1497). 120. David Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 9 December 1994 (ibid.). 121. Nightingale, Times. 122. Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 5 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1497). 123. John Peter, Sunday Times, 11 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1495). 124. Billington, Guardian. 125. Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard, 2 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1498). 126. Billington, Guardian. 127. Ibid. 128. Clive Hirschhorn, Sunday Express, 4 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1497). 129. John Peter, Sunday Times, 11 December 1994 (ibid., p. 1495). 130. Neil Cooper, Herald, 27 October 2003 (TR, 22 October–4 November 2003, p. 1495). 131. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 17 July 2002 (TR, 30 July–12 August 2002, p. 1076). 132. Joyce McMillan, Scotsman, 24 October 2003 (TR, 22 October–4 November 2003, p. 1495). 133. Cooper, Herald. 134. Robert Dawson Scott, Times, 13 July 2002 (TR, 30 July–12 August 2002, p. 1076). 135. Fathers and Sons. A play by Brian Friel after the novel by Ivan Turgenev (no trans. cited) (National Theatre, 1987) (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). 136. For example, Michael Billington, Guardian, 11 July 1987 (LTR, 2–25 July 1987, p. 827).

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137. Kenneth Hurren, Mail on Sunday, 12 July 1987 (ibid., p. 826). 138. Sheridan Morley, Punch, 22 July 1987 (ibid., pp. 827–828). 139. Milton Shulman, London Evening Standard, 10 July 1987 (ibid., p. 828). 140. Jack Tinker, Daily Mail, 10 July 1987 (ibid., p. 829). 141. Michael Coveney, Financial Times, 10 July 1987 (ibid., p. 830). 142. Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph, 11 July 1987 (ibid., p. 831). 143. Shulman, London Evening Standard. 144. Brian Friel, ‘AfterPlay’, in Three Plays After (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 2002). 145. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 26 April 1991 (TR, 23 April–6 May 1991, p. 516). 146. Sheridan Morley, Herald Tribune, 8 May 1991 (ibid., p. 514). 147. Paul Taylor, Independent, 29 April 1991 (ibid., p. 516). 148. Ibid. 149. Irving Wardle, Independent on Sunday, 28 April 1991 (ibid., pp. 514–515). 150. Sheridan Morley, Herald Tribune, 8 May 1991 (ibid., p. 514). 151. Michael Billington, Guardian, 27 April 1991 (ibid., p. 515). 152. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 8 August 2004 (TR, 29 July–25 August 2004, p. 1057). 153. Antony Thorncroft, Financial Times, 6 August 2004 (ibid.). 154. Robert Hewison, Sunday Times, 8 August 2004 (ibid., p. 1058). 155. See Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, 26 August 2004 (ibid., p. 1050); Michael Billington, Guardian, 25 August 2004 (ibid.). 156. Jane Edwardes, Time Out London, 14 July 2004 (TR, 1–14 July 2004, p. 895). 157. Helen Chappell, What’s On, 14 July 2004 (ibid.). 158. Paul Taylor, Independent, 26 March 2012 (TR, 11–24 March 2012, p. 295). 159. Michael Billington, Guardian, 23 March 2012 (ibid., p. 293); Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 23 March 2012 (ibid.); and Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, 23 March 2012 (ibid., p. 292). 160. John Nathan, Jewish Chronicle, 30 March 2012 (ibid., p. 295). 161. Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, 22 March 2012 (ibid., p. 292). 162. Michael Billington, Guardian, 23 March 2012 (ibid., p. 293). 163. Christopher Hart, Sunday Times, 25 March 2012 (ibid., p. 294). 164. Kate Bassett, Independent on Sunday, 13 January 2002 (TR, 1–28 January 2002, p. 16). 165. Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 9 January 2002 (ibid., p. 19). 166. Jane Edwardes, Time Out, 16 January 2002 (ibid., pp. 16, 19). 167. Paul Taylor, Independent, 7 July 2002 (ibid., p. 19). 168. Benedict Nightingale, Times, 7 January 2002 (ibid., pp. 19–20). 169. John Peter, Sunday Times, 20 January 2002 (ibid., p. 20).

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170. Michael Billington, Guardian, 27 June 1996 (TR, 17–30 June 1996, p. 809), review of Shared Experience’s War and Peace. 171. War and Peace as adapted by Irwin Piscator, and translated by R. D. MacDonald was staged in 1962 at Bristol Old Vic, and the London Old Vic, and in 1963 by the Cardiff Welsh Theatre Company; Brecht’s version of Gorky’s Mother, translated by Steve Gooch, was staged at NT, 1986; and translated by Steve Trafford, at Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) in 2001. 172. Lyubimov is also known in Britain for his two productions Gaudeamus and Claustophobia which toured here in the 1990s. These were devised performances in response to post-Soviet Russia. Marked by Lyubimov’s energetic and creative style they astonished audiences with the extraordinary range of skills (athletic, dance, musical) of the performers. 173. See n. 1.

Bibliography Babbage, Frances, ‘Heavy Bodies, Fragile Texts: Stage Adaptation and the Problem of Presence’, in Adaptation and Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities, ed. by Rachel Carroll (London and New York: Continuum, 2009), pp. 11–22. Beumers, Birgit, Yuri Lyubimov at the Taganka theatre 1964–1994 (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997). Bulgakov, Mikhail, Master and Margarita, trans. Michael Glenny (London: Collins and Harvill, 1974). Dixon, Ros, ‘From Iconoclast to Traditionalist: A Study of Anatolii Efros’ Productions of Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002). Friel, Brian, ‘Afterplay’, in Three Plays After (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 2002). Gorky, Maxim, The Mother, adapt. by Berthold Brecht, trans. by Steve Gooch (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978). Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate, trans. by Robert Chandler (London: Vintage, 2006). Nikoliukin, A. N., ‘Dostoevskii in Constance Garnett’s Translation’, in Dostoevskii and Britain, ed. by W. J. Leatherbarrow (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 207–226. Ouspensky, P. D., The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (London: Stourton, 1947; republished by London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983). Pasternak, Boris, Dr Zhivago, trans. by Max Hayward and Manya Harari (London: William Collins and Son Ltd., 1958).

254  C. MARSH Platform Papers. 1. Translation [Ranjit Bolt, Michael Frayn, Christopher Hampton, Steven Pimlott, Jeremy Sams, Timberlake Wertenbaker] (London: Royal National Theatre, 1992). Senelick, Laurence, The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of Plays in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Shevstova, Maria, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre (London: Routledge, 2004). Smeliansky, Anatoly, The Russian Theatre After Stalin, trans. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Sokolov, Sasha, School for Fools (Ann Arbor: Ardis Books, 1977). Tolstoy, Lev, ‘Kholstomer’ [Strider] ([1863] 1886), trans. by Louise and Aylmer Maude in Leo Tolstoy, Nine Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). ———, War and Peace, adapt. by Erwin Piscator (and others) [Krieg und Frieden], trans. and adapt. by Robert David McDonald (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1963). ———, Anna Karenina, adapt. by Helen Edmundson (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994). ———, War and Peace, adapt. by Helen Edmundson (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994). ———, The Kreutzer Sonata, adapt. by Nancy Hughes (London: Oberon Modern Plays, 2009). Turgenev, Ivan, Fathers and Sons. A play by Brian Friel after the novel by Turgenev (London: Faber and Faber, 1987).

SECTION 8

Epilogue: A “Russia of the Theatrical Mind”?

In Section 2 (‘Setting the Scene’), it was suggested that productions could be categorised as examples of collision, hybridisation and acculturation. I distilled these categories from my own reading in translation theory and adaptation studies, from translating plays, and from directing, watching and teaching them. As individual productions were discussed in the ensuing sections so these categories have stretched and eased in order to accommodate the richness that Russian theatre brings to Britain. Translated theatre stands at the heart of this project. There is no doubt, though, about the importance of foreign language companies visiting from the source culture and bringing their classics with them. These visits clarify understanding of the thresholds that separate the three categories above. The Cold War dominated at least half the decades of the post-WW2 period. The consequent lack of familiarity not only with contemporary Russia, but with modern Russians themselves encouraged extensive reference among British practitioners, theatre audiences and critics to notions of the source culture already entrenched in British minds. It seems we may have created a ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’, in Clapp’s memorable phrase, from recycling this tradition. It has also been bolstered by our unceasing desire for adaptation from Russian novels and short stories. Therefore, reintroduction to the Russian source tradition, on the few occasions when it could happen, to the Russian language-body, to the style and physical mastery of its performers, has been crucial. Such visits, for example, as those by MAT in the late 50s and early 60s, have initiated © The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_8

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different directions in British production of Russian plays and enabled fresh understanding of the language-body of the source dramatic texts. Without care, the imperative of those entrenched perceptions can quickly reassert itself. Of course, perception of Russian theatre has been almost entirely based on performances in the British host culture and on the target language being English. There is much to be said about English as the vehicle language. Reference has been made to many Englishes: to English as a translated language, for example. So the question was raised whether we should adopt, somewhat after Jatinder Verma, the term ‘Tringlish’ to indicate English translated from another language. Then there is the complex relationship between ‘British’ as a concept and the narrowness of ‘English’ as the named language of communication. They are frequently confused. Accent, both local and national (cockney and Irish, for example) has been a point of frequent discussion. It is a distinctive feature of the British theatre, in comparison to other cultures. In modern times, the general view prevails that it is all but imperative to express social difference by use of non-standard English. The extension of this practice is one of the key developments of performance in English in the post-WW2 period. For a British production, accent implies social difference rather than local colour, and so politicisation is often a consequence. Retranslation of the canonical texts is essential to enable them to retain their freshness. Translation almost always engages rewriting and adaptation of some kind. The presence of ‘adaptation’ facilitates the acculturation to political aims that this study has observed. Training in drama translation and adaptation studies for those following the ever-popular Masters programmes in translation studies would not come amiss. Similarly, modern students of drama rarely have much opportunity for foreign language learning. They could, though, be given the skills to develop awareness of foreign behaviours, of the characteristics of translated theatre and of the role of translated theatre in the transmission of other cultures. This crossover between translation studies and adaptation studies, in that both are focused on adaptation strategies, needs more exploration. After all, what is a ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’ but a culturally translated vision adapted to stage conditions, with all the active roles assigned to creative practitioners and audiences that adaptation studies identify.

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Pavis and Perteghella indicated the complexity of intercultural transfer in theatre in the models they provided. Perteghella was right to indicate that other complex disciplines are inevitably drawn in: anthropology, history or politics, for example. This present analysis has shown that the range of shaping factors, which affect the canon and styles of performance, is far wider perhaps than we have even begun to suspect. Those practitioners involved in the kind of cultural transfer that comes from translated theatre draw deeply on many existing patterns and branches of knowledge from their own experience. In some ways this point is so obvious as not to have been worth stating. However, it may be wise to ensure that, in their positions at the very heart of production and reception, practitioners and audiences are aware of these embedded characteristics of translated foreign theatre. I began this study querying stereotypical productions of Chekhov’s plays, particularly in setting and costume. Section 5 (‘Bridging the Centuries’), opened with a discussion of stereotypes in productions of Chekhov, which included broader concepts such as language, comedy, class and ‘Russianness’. Further stereotypes such as Mother Russia, holy fool, and Stalin’s Russia, usually not applicable to Chekhov, have emerged from other writers. A couple of examples also showed that some of these concepts are not limited to Britain. This international currency is an important and legitimising point for the stereotype itself. The very shorthand of the stereotype makes it an excellent vehicle of communication, matching the requirements for instant, visual and aural communication on which the stage relies. However, stereotypes themselves need constant re-evaluation to ensure they retain their power and significance. Surprisingly, perhaps, the overall richness of adaptation from Russian prose may provide a way forward. Just as in recent years such adaptation has become self-aware in terms of genre, so we might hope that translated foreign theatre might adopt a similar awareness. In his Seagull, Chekhov may well have been pointing in exactly this direction when he turned his wild, lakeland gull into a symbol, and then into a stuffed version of itself. Perhaps the British theatre needs to reconfigure, but not stuff, some of its notions of Russia as well. In the reflections about reception of Chekhov in comparison to other Russian writers at the start of Section 5, the question was raised whether there is an impenetrable core to a translated play which audiences expect not to reach. The consequence would-be that this core may be disregarded; and that such disregard is seen as an encouragement towards a

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freer, more cavalier, treatment of the play text than might otherwise be the case. The overall conclusion may be, rather depressingly, that cultures can never fully communicate with each other. Moreover, when the ephemerality of theatrical production and reception is taken into account, such communication as there may be is seen to be sporadic and as tenuous as a passing breeze. It can also be argued, however, that the canon has operated to prevent this transience as the British theatre has built its own repertoire, with its own traditions, of Russian plays in translation.1 This repertoire, though, remains skeletal. This survey has shown there are many missing or rarely performed writers, and works are chosen to reinforce the familiar rather than explore the unknown. Nevertheless, that canon of preferred translated theatre has provided a means of communication even in the darkest political times, such as the Cold War, when there was precious little dialogue anywhere. Awareness is the key: awareness of the difficulties and limitations of translated theatre as much as the gifts and gains. A willingness to explore the source culture as much as contribute to the British one is required. It might be achieved by a reorientation of focus: to concentrate not just on the outfacing processes reaching towards the host culture of the Pavis model but also on the incoming ones, or the distance the foreign play text with all its attendant significance has travelled to reach a host stage. Does this study contribute to understanding of Chekhov’s dominant role? The British preference for Chekhov is self-evident from the number of productions in the database relative to those of other writers. It is also clear from discussion of reviews that Chekhov is the most frequent yardstick in writing on Russian theatre in Britain. If the little information there is from the drama school productions is added (and that does not include run-of-the-mill teaching exercises) then Chekhov holds a unique position. Stanislavsky may be partly responsible for this dominance as his approach to acting is probably the most frequently taught in the drama schools albeit alongside other practitioners, such as Brecht, Meyerhold, or the American derivation from Stanislavsky known as the Method. It is likely therefore that Chekhov will continue to hold sway with graduating drama students entering the profession. Of course, not all directors are trained actors, but still Chekhov is probably what they practise upon if they have undergone a drama school directorial training. Is all this sufficient to explain Chekhov’s continuing popularity? His international dimension is powerful, suggesting his plays appeal to multiple cultures. His name is often paired with Shakespeare to capture his

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global impact. It is not a question of his prose pulling in the audience as is the case for a Tolstoy or a Turgenev since relatively few of Chekhov’s short stories have been adapted. We know that Chekhov himself felt that the British appeared not to be interested in his work2 and it took several years for his plays to become accepted into the repertoire here.3 One explanation may lie in the characteristics of Chekhov’s plays and their productions. Chekhov’s plays are not guaranteed to pull in full houses: they have the reputation in Britain of being depressing, the characters failing to make anything of themselves or their lives. However, there are few of them: four or five (if Ivanov is included) major plays and only three or four of the shorter pieces and farces are regularly performed. The narrowness of the choice ensures regular repetition which makes the works very familiar. The British tradition has for the most part left the plays firmly at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries in costume and setting. A costume can still be characterised at least for women as ‘Chekhovian’: high-necked, lace-decorated or plain, long sleeved blouse, long skirt and a belt-cinched waist, long hair left loose for the ingénue, and swept up for the more mature or married woman. The men wear clothes which match Chekhov’s own, as rightly or wrongly, the plays are seen as inseparable from their author. Such a view though is ironic, since of all writers Chekhov seemed determined to excise evidence exactly what his personal views were. The constant visual quoting in modern theatre programmes of the early productions by Stanislavsky for the Moscow Art Theatre has established an imperative for British production.4 There is even a recurrent, instantly recognisable head image of Chekhov himself, involving pince-nez or spectacles, a straw hat, white collar and black tie. And ­ there is usually a birch tree not far away. The marketing of Chekhov’s plays uses these images endlessly, recycling the entrenched stereotypes. Few productions update the plays. The same is true, but perhaps slightly less so, of Ibsen. Possibly the naturalist imperative was so strong, the language-body of the text so potent, that the plays seem inseparable ­ from their received image and their historical context. This ‘Chekhovian Russia’ bleeds into British productions of other Russian plays. Trees, it was noted, are a widely used symbol of ‘Russianness’. A production of a Russian play, Chekhov or otherwise, without a birch tree, or for that matter a samovar would still be a revelation. We know that experimentation in the form of updating and modernisation is happening in Russia where they are of course operating with

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the late nineteenth-century language of the texts. In translation, the language tends to be fresh and modern but rarely turns out to be overly colloquial or offensive. Several examples from recent years in Britain have experimented well with modern costume to match the modern language.5 Let us develop this variety further. Social class plays its part in Chekhov’s persistent reputation. His characters are mild-mannered, educated for the most part. They belong to sections of society he would have mixed with himself, exploiting the social mobility of the professional doctor and/or well-known writer, and members of the increasingly impoverished genteel sector. There are also merciless portraits of gossipy, unthinking provincials, with a sprinkling of vividly drawn servants of different ranks and function. The ‘professional’, the genteel, characters attract precisely those British ‘middle class’ people who for the majority of the twentieth century have patronised British theatre. We British have been misled, Chekhov’s Russian characters cannot be explained by our ‘middle-classness’. The Russian characters express many self-doubts, fears and disappointments, unique to their time and culture. If theatre is viewed as a means whereby the audience itself lives out these doubts and fears, then an old-fashioned sense of identification is often paramount. The frequent sidelining of the residual strangeness of these Russians, their impenetrable core, allows this empathy to be comfortably experienced. If theatre is regarded as spectacle, then there is sufficient of the exotic in setting, in behaviour, in the strange forms of Chekhovian comedy, even in the playing out of the body emotions of tragedy on an everyday level, still to be a powerful draw. On the other hand, however, despite their rootedness in Russian culture, Chekhov’s plays have the knack of drawing on the givens and unknowns of the human condition to have what is termed ‘universal appeal’. It is not difficult to link these timeless themes to contemporary issues in order to update and modernise the texts. Somehow, too, the playing out of the narratives within the habits and contexts of the late nineteenth century is a means for accentuating their timelessness. Equally, though, not everyone wishes to face these kinds of fearsome topics too much so Chekhov’s plays make their own natural enemies. But, finally, and perhaps most importantly, and again quintessential to his period style, Chekhov as author refuses to project an easily identifiable point of view. He has taken a step, even several steps, back from his characters’ world and presented its problems, not solutions.6

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Where better to seek an illuminating comment on the enigma of Chekhov’s power than in Russian writing itself? Although not directly about his theatre, the following passage is, nevertheless an appropriate and powerful statement for this particular survey. The author, Vasily Grossman, is becoming better known in Britain after the adaptation of his novel Life and Fate as a radio play. In his novel Grossman pinpointed the Russians’ misunderstanding of Chekhov. One character Madyarov, breaking a number of political taboos in a discussion stimulated by the relative freedoms of WW2, says: Chekhov brought Russia into our consciousness in all its vastness – with people of every estate, every class, every age… more than that! It was as a democrat that he presented all these people – as a Russian democrat. He said – and no one had said this before, not even Tolstoy – that first and foremost we are all of us human beings. Do you understand human beings!7

You might be forgiven for finding echoes of Gorky’s Lower Depths in these lines. In Gorky’s 1902 play, Satin made a similar claim about the grandeur of the individual but his overtones were political: Mankind - there’s the truth! What is a human being? It’s not you, or me, or them … No! It’s you and me, and them, and the old man, and Napoleon and Mahomet… all of us together!8

Nearly 60 years later Grossman’s character is reclaiming this idea from Soviet rhetoric which in its turn had appropriated it from Gorky. The acts of retrieval and removal of the Bolshevik-sympathetic politics from this concept, lay bare the overwhelming humanism of Chekhov’s outlook. How many British productions have been able successfully to capture that? Chekhov’s plays also draw upon, and in my view satirise, the popular forms of theatre of his day, especially melodrama and tragedy, deliciously turning them into an idiosyncratic mix of comedy and despair. This satiric viewpoint also emphasises Chekhov’s crucial ability to step back and achieve his powerful overview. The plays are high risk to perform, despite their popularity, as any one of these characteristics can dominate and unbalance, when the plays’ intricate mechanisms are not fully played out. Nevertheless, the reward for performers is immense. Created to

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exemplify an ethos of ensemble playing, as an expression of their central structural ‘democracy’ maybe their humanity too, the plays offer challenging opportunities to actors even in the smallest parts, while the major parts enjoy immense support from such an integrated structure. What is missing from British Chekhov production that can be found in other areas of Russian drama? In the nineteenth century the writers unperformed here in Britain explored the Russian provincial bureaucracy and provincial life itself. British preference for the gentry, too often seen as ‘aristocratic’, has made these aspects of non-Chekhov plays difficult to penetrate. These less performed but nonetheless present writers such as Ostrovsky focused on the people apart from the gentry who lived in the provinces, the merchants, their ordinary wives and daughters, and peasant families of the post-Crimean War reform period. Peasant life was also explored by Tolstoy, while Dostoevsky’s sustained examination of the Orthodox spirit, including its dark side, is central to Russian culture. Moreover, his novels after Crime and Punishment take place in the provinces and deal not with the gentry of a Pushkin, Turgenev or early Tolstoy, but with tradesmen, clerics, budding revolutionaries and peasants. Chekhov is reticent about most of these aspects of Russia in his plays, less so in his stories. His characters may live and more importantly work in the provinces but their hearts and minds are elsewhere, either yearning for the intellectual and cultural life of the capital cities, or for escape in travel abroad. As a result of these absences or emphases, whole swathes of Russian life are frequently missing from our British versions of Russian theatre. When we discover that alien provincial spirit lurking in Gogol, or in the vivid characters created by Dostoevsky, or in Gorky’s capitalists, audiences and critics are taken aback at such crude and unattractive vigour. Finding this dark streak in Russian literary and theatrical culture is a potent counterpoint to the ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’. A symptom of this unawareness is that the British stage took on Soviet drama largely unprepared. British attitudes have consigned the alien spirit of Soviet culture to the horrors of Stalin’s Russia, not realising that concepts such as the absurd, excessive bureaucracy and the doctrinaire were born and flourished in the Russian nineteenth century. Socialist Realism is regarded as illiberal and politically alien, but its popular ethos, its excessive embracing of central control, its didacticism and its unreality, are born of long term Russian experience. It is the polar opposite of the liberal, intellectual and ironic spirit embraced by Chekhov but none the less Russian for all that.

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As already mentioned in Section 6, Michael Boyd’s RSC based Festival of Russian Theatre began in 2009. He examined ways of embracing new Russian drama, from commissioning new plays, some of which went forward to performance, some of which were given readings. When rehearsing the plays chosen for performance, the company worked directly with playwright and translator, developing and adapting the script already written in Russian for a British audience. This step was a luxurious one to take but represents a conscious attempt both to engage with the source culture and to adapt the work to the understanding of a British audience. In an edition of the South Bank Show,9 the background to the development of one of these scripts, Natalia Vorozhbit’s The Grain Store,10 was explored. Boyd pointed out that part of the process had been to learn from Russian theatre practice, particularly by allowing a lengthy rehearsal period and by incorporating voice and movement sessions as an everyday routine into their work. Vorozhbit spoke of the difficulty for the British of entering into the Ukrainian mentality, and she identified that the key factor lay in the RSC actors not speaking the source language of the play. She was providing a clear confirmation of the importance of Pavis’s language-body. Boyd made an interesting response: agreeing with her, he commented that actors and the creative teams must bring themselves to the Ukrainian mentality and to the language, and not allow the English language to divorce them from it. Obviously not every company has the resources to devote to such activities, but there is a point this study has revealed being confirmed here: it is important to keep the creative team’s face turned towards the source culture, and not exclusively turned towards their British audience. Translated theatre has to be Janus-faced if it is to bring cultural translation as well as linguistic access. So this production set out to be in the terms used here, a measured acculturation, with an addition of conscious hybridisation, and the collisions, where they occur, are salutary reminders of the cultural complexity a translated play brings. So, from the plays staged in Britain, have we created a ‘Russia of the theatrical mind’? There is sufficient evidence taken from reviews and descriptions of productions to suggest that we have. We just need to be aware of it.

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Notes













1. Kobbets Muller’s term ‘culture text’ embraces, I think, such a development, Kobetts Miller (2017), p. 58. 2.  Letter to Olga Vasilieva, 1900, quoted by Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2000), p. 513. To a query from Vasilieva as to which English journal she should send her translation of his work into English, Chekhov replied: ‘I am of so little interest to the British public that I don’t care in the least’. 3.  Patrick Miles recorded that Chekhov was not performed in English translation until 1909 (Patrick Miles and Stuart Young, ‘A Selective Chronology of British Professional Productions of Chekhov’s Plays 1909–1991’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (1993), pp. 237–250 (p. 238). The generally accepted view is that he did not become popular in English translation until the 1920s though there is evidence that George Bernard Shaw tried to persuade MAT to tour to England but WW1 intervened, see A. Bartoshevich, ‘The “Inevitability” of Chekhov: Anglo-Russian Theatrical Contacts in the 1910s’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, pp. 20–28 (p. 20). 4. Claire Warden notes the early deference towards Stanislavsky’s productions of Chekhov’s plays in the first decades of the twentieth century (Migrating Modernist Performance, p. 110). This connection between Chekhov and the Stanislavsky productions of his plays has been enduring but also, I would argue, excessively limiting. 5. For example, the Lyric Hammersmith and Filter’s production of Three Sisters (2010); Nuffield, Southampton and Headlong’s The Seagull (2013); and Chichester, 2015 (transferred to NT, 2016) production ‘Young Chekhov’ (three early plays: Platonov, Ivanov, and The Seagull). The costume in this last Seagull was subtly modernised beyond its historic time of the 1890s. 6.  A recent book by Serge Gregory, Antosha and Levitasha: The Shared Lives of Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015), draws a compelling contrast between Chekhov’s distance from his writing and the self-immolation of Levitan in his painting. 7. Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (1960), trans. by Robert Chandler (Vintage Books: London, 2006), Part 1, Chapter 64, p. 267. 8. Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths (1902), Act 4. Translation my own. 9. Broadcast on ITV 1, 28 December 2009, 10.45 p.m. The fact that it was the final edition of this long running series, hosted by Melvin Bragg, suggests the perceived importance of translated Russian theatre in Britain. 10. See Section 6, p. 118, and n. 168.

8  EPILOGUE: A “RUSSIA OF THE THEATRICAL MIND”? 

265

Bibliography Bartoshevich, A., ‘The “Inevitability” of Chekhov: Anglo-Russian Theatrical Contacts in the 1910s’, in Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 20–28. Gorky, Maxim, The Lower Depths (1902), for a translation, see Gorky, Five Plays, trans. by Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks (London and New York: Methuen, 1988). Contains The Lower Depths, Summerfolk, Children of the Sun, Barbarians, Enemies. Gregory, Serge, Antosha and Levitasha: The Shared Lives of Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015). Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate, trans. by Robert Chandler (London: Vintage, 2006). Kobetts Miller, Renata, ‘Nineteenth Century Theatrical Adaptations of Novels: The Paradox of Ephemerality’, in The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. by Thomas Leitch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 53–70. Miles, Patrick with Stuart Young, ‘A Selective Chronology of British Professional Productions of Chekhov’s Plays 1901–1991’, in Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 237–250. Rayfield, Donald, Anton Chekhov: A Life (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997, 2000). Vorozhbit, Natalia, The Grain Store, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2009). Warden, Claire, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Appendices

Russian Authors and Devisers in List of Productions Note on transliteration: where there is a spelling already in use in English, or where modern writers have adopted particular spellings in publicity or on their websites these have been retained. Authors Abramov, Fyodor Afinogenov, Alexander Andreev, Leonid (Andreyev also used) Arbuzov, Alexei Aryupin, Dmitry & Soltan, Marshella Babel, Isaac Bely, Andrei Bogaev, Oleg Bulgakov, Mikhail Chekhov, Anton Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dudarev, Alexei Durnenkov Brothers (Mikhail & Vyacheslav)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7

267

268  Appendices

Erdman, Nikolai Fonvizin, Denis Friel, Brian Galin, Alexander Gelman, Alexander Ginzburg, Eugenia Gogol, Nikolai Goncharov, Ivan Gorky, Maxim Griboedov (also Griboyedov), Alexander Gubaryev, Vladimir Iskaev, K.F. & Galich, A.A. Isaev, Maxim & Semchenko, Pavel Kadyri, Abdullah Kataev, Valentin Kharms, Daniil Klavdiev, Yuri Kolyada, Nikolai Krymov, Dimitry Kuchkina, Olga Leonov (also Leonof), Leonid Lermontov, Mikhail Mayakovsky, Vladimir Mikhalkov, Nikita & Ibragimbekov, Rustam (film makers) Ostrovsky, Alexander Ouspensky, Pyotr Petrushevskaia (also Petrushevskaya), Liudmila Pogodin, Nikolai Polunin, Slava Presnyakov Brothers (Oleg and Vladimir) Pryazhko, Pavel Pushkin, Alexander Rakhmanov, Leonid Razumovskaya, Liudmila Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail Schwartz, Yevgeny Shatrov, Mikhail Shipenko, Alexei Shschekochikin (also Shchekochikin), Yuri

Appendices

  269

Sigarev, Vasily Slavkin, Viktor Sofronov, Anatoly Sokolov, Sasha Solzhenitsyn, Alexander Tolstoy, Leo Trifonov, Yuri Tsvetaeva, Marina Turgenev, Ivan Vampilov, Alexander Vassiliev, Boris Vorozhbit, Natalia Yerofeev (also Erofeev), Venedikt Companies [for devised performances; credited in author column of Appendix where no individual author/creator cited]. Akhe Company Derevo/Akhe/Conflux (troupes) Tbilisi Marionettes Teatr Licedei Abbreviations of Sources Used in List of Productions General pg: programme. ph: photo. po: poster. r: review. Books

Barker: Barker, Kathleen, The Theatre Royal Bristol, 1766–1966 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1974). Cullen: Cullen, Allen, The Stirrings in Sheffield on a Saturday Night (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974). Miles: Miles, Patrick, Chekhov on the British Stage, 1909–1987 (Cambridge, England: Sam & Sam, 1987). Miles with Stuart Young: Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

270  Appendices Sealey Rahmen: Sealey Rahmen, Kate, The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823–1886) (Lampeter: Mellen, 2011). Trewin, W & JC: The Arts Theatre, London, 1927–1981 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1986). Williamson & Landstone: Williamson, A., and C. Landstone, The Bristol Old Vic—The First Ten Years (London: J. Garnet Miller, c.1957).

Periodicals

BTYB: The British Theatre Year Book, ed. David Lemmon (London: Christopher Helm, 1989–). LS: The London Stage: A Calendar of Plays and Players, ed. by J. P. Wearing (formerly, London and Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press 1991, 1993; then Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield (2014)). LTR: London Theatre Record 1981–1990 (Middlesex, England: I. Herbert). Then became: TR: Theatre Record 1991–2015 (Isleworth, Middlesex: I. Herbert) [1991–2010 indexes now available on disc from publishers, Theatre Record Ltd. (www. theatrerecord.com)]. P&P: Plays and Players (London: Hansom Books, 1953–1997). SYB: The ‘Stage’ Year Book (London, 1908–1969) (annual off-shoot of ‘The Stage’ weekly newspaper). TW: [The] Theatre World Illustrated, Stage Review London (London, 1925–1965).

Archives

BCL: Birmingham City Library, Local Theatre Collection (libraryofbirmingham. com/collections). BTC: University of Bristol Theatre Collection (www.bristol.ac.uk/ theatrecollection). Billy Rose: Billy Rose Collection of Theatre Materials, New York Public Library. CFT: Chichester Festival Theatre On-Line Archive 1962– (www.cft.org.uk/ passiton). LTM: London Theatre Museum Collection, Originally in Covent Garden, Central London. Now near Olympia (London) and known as ‘The V and A Theatre and Performance Archive’ (www.vam.ac.uk). Northcott: Exeter Northcott Theatre Archive, now in the Holdings of the University of Exeter (www.exeter.ac.uk/heritage-collections). Nottsarchives: Nottinghamshire County Archives. Holds the Nottingham Playhouse Archive (www.nawcat.nottinghamshire.gov.uk).

Appendices

  271

RSC: The Royal Shakespeare Company. Their Archive is held at The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-Upon-Avon (www.shakespeare.org.uk/ explore-shakespeare/collections). SFPALM: San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum. SheffTA: Sheffield Theatres Archive. When Dorothy Barlow consulted the archive some fifteen years ago, she recalls it was located somewhat informally at the Crucible Theatre. It was the result of work by a dedicated volunteer. See website for up-to-date information, see (www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk). STA: Scottish Theatre Archive, held in the University of Glasgow Special Collections (www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollectionsa-z/scottishtheatrearchive/). Theatricalia: https://theatricalia.com/; on-line archive of productions.

Venues

BAC: Battersea Arts Centre, London.

Ostrovsky

Ostrovsky

Gorky

Gogol

The Seagull

Chekhov

Wolves and Sheep; Larissa (The Girl Without a Dowry); It’s a Family Affair Even a Wise Man Stumbles

t. David Magarshack

John Fernald

a. Guy McCrone

The Government Inspector The Lower Depths

Greta Douglas

Robert McCaulay Mitchell

Eric Capon

John Burrell

John Moody

Director

a. Guy McCrone

t. Constance Garnett

Translator(t)/ Adaptor (a)

The Government Inspector

Uncle Vanya

Play

Author

Year 1945 Theatre

Helen Biggar

Nadia Benois

Kathleen Ankers

16 Jan 13 Nov

15 May

Date

Chanticleer Theatre Club, London, Greta Douglas Company Unity Theatre Cardiff

Glasgow Unity Theatre

12 May

12 Apr

Glasgow Citizens 13 Mar (final performance at Atheneum) Arts, London 31 May

John Moody Birmingham Gwen Carlier Repertory Tanya New Old Vic Moiseiwitsch

Designer

List of Productions 1945–2015

Sealey Rahmen, 149, 271

LTM: pg

W & JC Trewin, 90 STA, press cuttings

STA

LS, 45.3, 6r cited

BCL

Reference materials

Unity Theatre Group

Reprised at first Edinburgh Festival, 1947 (see below)

Paul Scofield as Treplev Cast: Sybil Thorndike, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson

Notes

272  Appendices

The Seagull Brothers Karamazov Crime & Punishment

Chekhov Dostoevsky

Gorky

The Lower Depths

He Who Gets Slapped Three Sisters

Andreev

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 1947

Play

Author

Year 1946

t. a. Robert McCaulay Mitchell

t. Judith Guthrie t. J.P. Davis Robert McCaulay Mitchell

Tyrone Guthrie John Fernald

Director

Theatre

Paul Sheriff

Guy Sheppard Gurschner

Designer

18 Aug

20 May

17 June

Date

Bristol Old Vic Lyric Hammersmith Wimbledon New Globe

Theatre

Liverpool Playhouse Helen Biggar Little Theatre in the Pleasance, Edinburgh

Paul Mayo

Fanny Taylor Duchess

Designer

Anthony Quayle

a. Rodney Ackland

Translator/ Adaptor

Hugh Hunt Peter Brook

Director

a. Alec Guinness

Translator (t)/ Adaptor (a)

STA: pg

LS: 47.167, 5r cited

Cast: Alec Guinness

Notes

1st production Glasgow 1945; revived at 1st Edinburgh Festival, 1947, new cast

Cast: Robert Helpmann

Notes

BTC: pg LS: 46.91, 6r cited LS: 46:117, 6r cited

Reference materials

Reference materials

18 June 26 June 9 Sep

30 Apr 27 May

Date

Appendices

  273

Turgenev

Leonov

Gogol

Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

Hugh Hunt

t. Constance Garnett t/a. D.J. Campbell

A Month in the Country

a. Harold Hugh Hunt Bowen a. E. Williams Hugh Hunt

Lucie Mannheim

John Burrell

Lucie Mannheim

t. Constance Garnett

The Bear [Double bill with Gogol’s Marriage] The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

The Government Inspector Marriage [Double bill with Chekhov’s The Bear] (see above) The Apple Orchards

Peter Powell

John Casson

Frank Shelley

John Fernald

Director

t. George Calderon

t. J.P. Davis

Translator/ Adaptor

The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard

The Seagull The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 1948

Alan Barlow

Alan Barlow

Fanny Taylor

Tanya Moiseiwitsch Topolski

Fanny Taylor

Fanny Taylor

Molly Macewen

Paul Mayo

Designer

Bristol Old Vic

Bristol Old Vic

Arts

28 Sep

13 Apr

14 Oct

3 Feb

8 Nov 25 Nov

Sheffield Playhouse New [Old Vic Co.] New [Old Vic Co.]

14 Oct

9 Sep

Barker, p. 228, n.33

r, LS

r, LS

Miles, 33 r, LS

W & JC Trewin, 93; Miles, 29 W & JC Trewin, 93

Miles, 33 Miles, 33; SYB, 1949 STA

19 Apr 31 May 7 June

LS: 48.96, 4r cited

Reference materials

6 Apr 1 June

Date

Arts

Liverpool Repertory; St. James’ Theatre, London Colchester Repertory Oxford Playhouse [Oxford Repertory] Glasgow Citizens at the Royal Princess’s Theatre, Glasgow Arts [Great Newport Theatre production]

Theatre

Cast: Edith Evans

Cast: Jean Anderson, Marius Goring

British Repertory Festival

Notes

274  Appendices

Turgenev

Tolstoy

Ostrovsky

Three Sisters

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

A Month in the Country

The Power of Darkness A Month in the Country

The Diary of a Scoundrel

Paul Shelving

Fanny Taylor

Roy Rich

Paul Sheriff

Ambassador Studios [based on TV production] Paul Shelving

Roger Ramsdell

Alec Terrill

Designer

Michael Langham

Michael Langham Irene Hentschel

Laurence Green

Morris Fishman Laurence Olivier

Director

Arts

Birmingham Repertory Lyric Hammersmith St. James’s Birmingham Repertory

Princes

Tavistock Repertory New [Old Vic Co.]

Theatre

t. Peter Peter Georges Lyric Glenville Glenville Wakhevich t. Elisaveta Fen Geoffrey Bert Linton, Sheffield a. Emlyn Ost Charles Angus Playhouse Williams t. Constance Michel Saint Tanya New Theatre Garnett Denis Moiseiwitsch [Old Vic Co.]

t. Polya Kasherman a. Rodney Ackland a. Rodney Ackland

t. George Calderon

The Seagull

The Diary of a Scoundrel

t. Julius West

The Proposal

The Proposal t. Constance [with Antigone Garnett by J. Anouilh] The Bear t. Constance Garnett

Play

Author

Year 1949

BTC: pg; Cast: LTM: New Theatre file: pg, Michael r; LS, 49.302, 7r cited; Redgrave SYB, 1950; TW, Jan 1950

30 Nov

Notes

Sheffield Crucible Theatre Cast: Paul Eddington archives: pg

Sealey Rahmen, 143, 147, 272; TW: Dec 1949 LS: 49.88, 5r cited

Sealey Rahmen, 143, 147, 272

LS, 49.248, 9r cited

BCL: pg, ph

LS, 49.75, 1r cited

LTM: Tavistock Repertory File LS, 49.24, 6r cited

Reference materials

13 June

28 Apr

20 Oct

5 July

4 Oct 16 Nov

6 Sep

4 Apr

10 Feb

8 Jan

Date

Appendices

  275

Tolstoy

The Bear

Chekhov

The Kreutzer Sonata

The Wedding [with “Electra” by Sophocles] Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1951

The Proposal

Chekhov

Ivanov

Play

Author

Year 1950

Peter Ashmore

t. Constance Garnett a. Peter Ashmore Mary Britneva Eugene Ilyin & Charlotte Frances Denis Carey

George Devine

Robert Kerr

Director

John Fernald

Joan Littlewood

Director

t. Constance Garnett

Translator/ Adaptor

t. J.P. Davis

Translator/ Adaptor

Hutchinson Scott

Anthony Holland

Motley

Designer

Robert E. Brown

Designer

Bristol Old Vic

Opera House, Manchester & Aldwych

Torch Theatre Club, at the Athenaeum, Glasgow Old Vic

Theatre

Arts

Adelphi [Theatre Workshop]

Theatre

24 Apr

16 Apr 3 May

13 Mar

2–3 Mar

Date

20 Apr

26 Feb*

Date

Notes

LTM: pg (Bristol Old Vic theatre file); Williamson & Landstone, pp. 93–94

LS: 51.38, 5r cited; BTC: ph; SYB, 1952 LS: 51.82, 7r cited; SYB, 1952; TW, July 1951

STA

Reference materials

Opening production for Festival of Britain Cast: John Neville, Donald Pleasance

Notes

1 perf. jointly LS: 50.35, 1r cited; see with “The 1953, 30 Mar, Theatre Flying Royal Stratford East Doctor” by Moliere LS: 50.65, 6r cited; Cast: Michael LTM: pg, ph, r (Arts Hordern Theatre file); SYB, 1951; TW, June 1950; W & JC Trewin, 35, 94; Miles, 30.

Reference materials

276  Appendices

Play

The Seagull

The Proposal [with “Colour Guard” by George Stiles]

Chekhov

Chekhov

A Month in the Country

Author

Year 1953

Turgenev

Three Sisters

Play

Uncle Vanya

Author

Chekhov

Year 1952

Theatre Workshop

Translator/ Adaptor

t. Elisaveta Fen a. Emlyn Williams

Director

Joan Littlewood

Peter Potter

Designer

Gerald Williamson

John Wilson

Theatre Royal, Stratford East

Glasgow Citizens Theatre Co. at Royal Princess’s Theatre Glasgow

30 Mar

1 Mar

Date

28 Oct

20 Oct

Colchester Repertory Birmingham Repertory

Date 27 Mar

Theatre Arts

Theatre

Finlay James

Ronald Brown

Designer

Douglas Seale

John Fernald

Director

Translator/Adaptor

t. J.P. Davis

Reference materials

LS: 53.54, 1r cited; LTM: pg. rev. (Theatre Royal file)

STA

Reference materials

Notes

Cast: Richard Pasco

Cast: Cyril Luckham

Sunday evening performance for Citizens’ Theatre Society members See also: 26 Feb 1950, Adelphi Theatre, same cast

Notes

BCL: m/r 132: pg, ph; SYB, 1953

LS: 52.61, 6r cited; SYB, 1953; W & JC Trewin, 45, 95 Miles, 33

Appendices

  277

Gogol

Author

Year 1953

The Inspector General

The Overcoat

The Cherry Orchard The Government Inspector

Uncle Vanya

a. Wolf Mankovitz, as The Bespoke Overcoat John Anderson

Theatre Workshop t. David Magarshack t/a. D.J. Campbell

Canonbury Tower [Tavistock Repertory]

Vincent Pearmain

Liverpool Playhouse [Liverpool Repertory]

23 July

Hippodrome, Golders Green Theatre Royal, Stratford East Bristol Old Vic

LS: 53.235, 1r cited BTC: pg; SYB, 1954 P & P, Dec

LS: 53.67, 7r cited; SYB, 1954; W & JC Trewin, 51, 96 Miles, 33

Reference materials

16 Oct

LTM: pg, r (Canonbury Tower file)

25 June W & JC Trewin, 51, 96

12 May

29 Sep

29 Sep

23 Apr

Date

Arts

Theatre

Arts

Clive Whatham Costumes: Felix Topolski

P. Robertson

Disley Jones

Designer

Alec Clunes

Willard Stoker

Joan Littlewood John Moody

John Fernald

t. J.P. Davis

The Seagull

The Seagull

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Cast: Alfie Bass

Notes

278  Appendices

S Mikula

V. Gretch P. Pavlov

V. Gretch P. Pavlov

The Marriage of Balzaminov [extracts]

The Forest [extracts]

Ostrovsky Poverty Is No Crime [extracts] V. Gretch P. Pavlov

John Wilson

Michael Langham

Theatre Royal, Stratford East

Theatre

Twentieth Century Theatre London

Twentieth Century Theatre London

Glasgow Citizens Theatre Company at Royal Princess’s Theatre, Glasgow Twentieth Century Theatre London

Harry Greene Theatre Royal, Stratford East

a. Rodney Ackland

The Overcoat [with “The Long Shift” by Gerry Raffles & Joan Littlewood] Ostrovsky The Diary of Scoundrel

Joan Littlewood

Bernard Rice

Designer

Theatre Workshop

Director Joan Littlewood

The Government Inspector

Gogol

Translator/ Adaptor

t. John Evans

Play

Author

Year 1953

Dec

10 Nov

c. 1953

10 Nov

Date Notes

SYB, 1955/56; Benefit performance by Sealey Rahmen, P. Pavlov. V. 275 Gretch P. Pavlov In Russian Sealey Rahmen, Benefit performance by 166, 273 P. Pavlov. In Russian Sealey Rahmen, Benefit performance by 166, 175 P. Pavlov. In Russian

STA; Sealey Rahmen, 163, 272

LS: 53.305, 2r cited; LTM: 1r (Theatre Royal file) LTM: pg (Theatre Royal file)

Reference materials

Appendices

  279

a. John Gielguid

Uncle Vanya

The Cherry Orchard The Marriage of Balzaminov

Chekhov

Ostrovsky

t. Constance Garnett

Play

Translator/ Adaptor

a. Gaston Baty

Author

Year 1955

Crime & Punishment

John Harrison Raissa Raytch

John Moody

Director

John Fernald

Douglas Seale

t. Josephine Nicoll

Uncle Vanya

Dostoevsky

John Gielgud

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff a. John Gielgud

The Cherry Orchard

Director

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1954

S. Mikula

Nicholas Georgiadis

Designer

Ronald Brown

Finlay James

Richard Lake

Designer

Nottingham Playhouse London Russia Arts Group

Bristol Old Vic

Theatre

Arts

Birmingham Repertory

Lyric Hammersmith

Theatre

9 Dec

No date

8 Nov

Date

13 Jan

2 Nov

21 May

Date

SYB, 1956 Williamson & Landstone pp. 164–165 Nottsarchives, DDNP2/2/1/49 SYB, 1956

Reference materials

Notes

Presented in Russian by Twentieth Century Theatre

Notes

LS: 54.133, 9r cited; P&P: July; BTC: pg; SYB, 1955 BCL: m/r141, pg, ph, pr; SYB, 1955 LS: 54.6, 8r cited; SYB, 1955; W & JC Trewin, 53, 96

Reference materials

280  Appendices

The Seagull

Crime & Punishment White Nights

Hold the Line

Chekhov

Dostoevsky

K.F. Isaev & A.A. Galich

Three Sisters

Revue by the Moscow State Variety Theatre

Chekhov

Misc.

No professional drama productions located

Author

Play

He Who Gets Slapped

Andreev

Year 1957

Play

Author

Year 1956

Translator/ Adaptor

t. Ruth Kisch

a. Richard Duschinsky

t. David Magarshack

t. Gregory Zilboorg

Translator/ Adaptor

Director

Designer

Joe MacColum

Richard Duschinsky Hana Pravda

Michael Macowan

Robin LodgeMorgan

Director

22 July

24 May

Notes

STA

Confirmed by Miles with Young Chronology for Chekhov (to 1991) Nothing else has emerged STA

Act 3 presented as a diploma performance

The 2 productions below; first by a drama school, the second a circus

Notes

LTM: Unity Theatre file: pg; SYB, 1957

SYB, 1957

*A Season LS: 56.159, 8r; of Classical BTC: po, pg, r (Saville Plays Theatre file); SYB, 1957

SYB, 1957

Reference materials

Reference materials

17 Aug

11 Nov

23 Apr

Date

Studio Theatre Club, Fitzroy Square Unity, London

Athenaeum Theatre, Glasgow/ The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Kings Theatre, Glasgow

Theatre

Date

Tower Theatre 16 Mar [Tavistock Repertory] Opera House, 17 July Manchester Saville* 2 Aug

Theatre

John Piper Richmond

Motley

Frank Stanton

Designer

Appendices

  281

He Who Gets Slapped

Three Sisters

A Tragedian in Spite of Himself *The Cherry Orchard

*Three Sisters

Andreev

Chekhov

(After) Chekhov

Chekhov

Rakhamanov

Mayakovsky

Gorky

*The Troubled Past

The Lower Depths The Bed Bug

The Lower Depths

The Cherry Orchard

*Uncle Vanya

Distant Point

Afinogenov

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 1958

t. Charles Marowitz

t. Elisaveta Fen a. John Geilgud

t. Hubert Griffith

Translator/ Adaptor

N.M. Gorchakov

Charles Marowitz

Peter Duguid

Yosif M. Rayevski after production of Nemirovitch Dantchenko M.M. Kedrov

Dmitri Makaroff Patrick Crossley (Asst. Producer) Victor Y. Stanitsyn

Neil Curnow/Richard Westwell W. Blunden

Director

Sadlers Wells [Moscow Art Theatre, MAT]

Toynbee Theatre

Nottingham Playhouse

Toynbee Theatre Club

Dundee Rep

Theatre

L.N. Silitch

David Jones, Dorothy Marshall

V.V. Popov

20 May

16 May

15 May

9 Apr

3 Mar

28 Feb

19 May

Date

BBC Radio, ‘Sunday Night Theatre’ Soviet Cultural Relations, Kennington Square Sadlers Wells [MAT]

21 May

16 Dec

16 Nov

27 Oct Citizens Glasgow tour to Gateway, Edinburgh, Perth 3 Nov 10 Nov Theatre, Dundee Rep 17 Nov Tavistock Repertory Co. at 24 Oct the Canonbury Tower

Sadlers Wells [MAT]

V.V. Dimitriev Sadlers Wells [MAT]

L.N. Silitch

Wendy North

Designer

LS: 58.118, r cited; SYB, 1959

LTM, press cutting

LTM, press cutting

LS: 58.116, r cited; SYB, 1959 STA

LTM: Toynbee Theatre file: pg TW, p. 45, Feb 1958 Miles, p.33; Nottsarchives, ph, DDNP2/2/8/566/1-4 Tower Theatre file: Company Souvenir Brochure LS: 58.111, r cited; BTC: pg; P&P: June 1958; SYB, 1959; LTM: Sadlers Wells/MAT file: pg, r, [All plays] LS: 58.112, r cited; SYB, 1959

STA

Reference materials

Method Workshop

Unclear whether this is the same production as below

As above

As above TW-June 1958

*60th anniversary & 1st perf in Russian by MAT in UK

Curtain raiser

Contemporary Soviet play

Notes

282  Appendices

Squaring the Circle

Kataev

Adrian Rendle

Val May

Director

Disley Jones

Paul Mayo

John Fernald

George Devine & John Blatchley

t. J.P. Davis

t. Dimtri Makaroff

t. Elisaveta Fen Geoffrey Ost

The Seagull

Platonov

The Seagull

Alwyn Longford

Richard Negri

Diana Dewes

t. Elisaveta Fen Leila Blake

Bernard Hepton

The Cherry Orchard The Proposal

Chekhov

t. D. Iliffe

Play

Designer

Mark King

Designer

Author

Director

a. Basil Ashmore Derek Martinus

t/v. Basil Ashmore

Translator/ Adaptor

Translator/ Adaptor

Don Juan (Platonov) The Wedding

Chekhov

Year 1960

Play

Author

Year 1959

Date

13 Dec

22 May

6 Apr

Date

Sheffield Playhouse

Royal Court

Lyceum, Edinburgh Old Vic

24 Oct

13 Oct

22 Aug 1 Sep

Birmingham 10 May Repertory Lyric 28 July Hammersmith

Theatre

Pembroke, Croydon

Nottingham Playhouse Tower Theatre

Theatre

TW, Oct 1960; SYB, 1961; BTC: pg, ph, R (Old Vic file) P&P, Dec 1960; SYB, 1961; BTC: pg. R (Theatre file) Cullen

SYB, 1961; BTC: pg

BCL: pg, ph, r

Reference materials

LTM: (Tavistock Repertory file)

SYB, 1960

1st English production

Notes

English Stage Company Cast: Rex Harrison Sheffield Repertory Company Cast: Patrick Stewart

Double bill: “Miss Julie” by Strindberg Cast: Tom Courtenay

Notes

Reference materials

Appendices

  283

Tolstoy

Gorky

The Seagull

Chekhov

t. J.P. Davis

Translator/ Adaptor

The Kreutzer Sonata

t. Aylmer Maude a. Roderick Lovell & Hannah Watt

The Lower Depths t. Henry Burke

The Seagull

a. John McGrath The Wood Demon a. Morris Fishman Harmfulness of a. Basil Tobacco Ashmore The Cherry t. Elisaveta Fen Orchard a. John Gielgud

Play

Author

Year 1961 Designer

Louis Lentin

Levcho Zdravchev

Michel SaintDenis

Morris Fishman

Anthony Page

Louis Lentin

Trevor J. Neals

Farrah

Edward Furby

Frederick Farley Richard Marks

Director

Arts

Dundee Repertory Crescent, Birmingham Pembroke Croydon Royal Shakespeare Co. Aldwych BBC TV Unity

Liverpool Playhouse

Theatre

10 July

9 Feb

5 Dec 14 Dec 13 Apr 1962

16 Oct

31 July

18 Apr

Date

Cast: Peggy Ashcroft John Gielgud Judi Dench

Liverpool Repertory Company

Notes

Director: SYB, 1962; Bulgarian LTM: pg (Unity State Theatre Theatre file) Direct from SYB, 1962; Paris Festival TW, Aug 1961; 1961 LTM: pg, rev (Arts Theatre Originally produced file); at Dublin W & JC Trewin, Festival 1960 101

SYB, 1962; P&P, Jan 1962; RSC: pg, r

BCL, r

STA: pg, r

Reference materials

284  Appendices

The Idiot

The Government Inspector The Lower Depths

The Bed Bug

War & Peace

Dostoevsky

Gogol

Mayakovsky

Tolstoy

Gorky

The Seagull

a. Alfred Neumann Erwin Piscator Guntram Prufer; t. from German, Robert David Macdonald

t. Moura Budberg a. Derek Marlowe t. Dimitri Makaroff

t. Kyra Dietz & Alan Brown

a. Jose Ruben

Hutchinson Scott

Christopher Morley

John Crockett

Arts RSC/New Arts Theatre Club

Belgrade Coventry

Lyric Hammersmith

Hampstead Theatre Club

Giles Fletcher David Mermaid [pseudonym Myerscoughfor Bernard Jones Miles] Val May Graham Barlow Bristol Theatre Royal; Old Vic London; Phoenix

Toby Robertson

James Grout

John Crockett

Chichester Festival

Theatre 16 July

Date

Opening presentation [Theatre West Production] Ikon Theatre Co.

Cast: Michael Redgrave/Sybil Thorndike/ Fay Compton/ Joan Plowright/ Laurence Olivier

Notes

LTM: pg (Mermaid Theatre file)

First production in UK

W & JC Trewin, Cast: Wilfred Lawson 66, 102

SYB, 1963; TW, April 1962; BTC: pg SYB, 1963

SYB, 1963

STA: r, pg

SYB, 1963; TW, Aug 1962; P&P, Sep 1962; BTC: pg

Reference materials

Bristol Old Vic Co. 6 Feb SYB, 1963; 14 TW, July 1962; Cast: Paul Eddington June LTM: pg (Bristol 27 Old Vic June Theatre file); Barker, 223

14 Feb

9 May

29 Oct

5 Mar

16 Dec

Michael Knight Glasgow Citizens 5 Nov

Sean Kenny

Designer

James Roose- John Gunter Evans

Ann Stutfield

t. Constance Garnett t. David Magarshack

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

Laurence Olivier

t. Constance Garnett

Uncle Vanya

Director

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1962

Appendices

  285

Squaring the Circle House of Cards (Diary of a Scoundrel) War & Peace

A Month in the Country

Kataev Ostrovsky

Turgenev

Tolstoy

Diary of a Madman

Gogol

t. Elizaveta Fen

Uncle Vanya

Alfred Neumann; Erwin Piscator; Guntram Prufer t. [from German] Robert D. MacDonald a. Emlyn Williams

a. Richard Harris & Lindsey Anderson

Andre van Gyseghem

Warren Jenkin

Vida Hope

Lindsey Anderson

Julius Gellner

William Davis

t. Constance Garnett

Uncle Vanya

Play by Albert Camus e.t. Justin O’Brien

Laurence Olivier

Elisaveta Fen

Three Sisters

The Possessed

Fulton Mackay

t. J.P. Davis

Three Sisters

Dostoevsky

Michel Saint-Denis Geoffrey Ost

Director

t. Constance Garnett

On the High Road

Chekhov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1963

Geoffrey Scott

Peter Rice

David Myerscough Jones Voytek

Rosemary Jaynes

Sean Kenny

Sheffield Rep. Co. R. Montgomery

Farrah

Designer

Nottingham Playhouse

New Cardiff

Liverpool Playhouse Players Theatre, London

Royal Court

Dundee Repertory Theatre Mermaid

Chichester NT at The Old Vic

Old Vic

Studio Production Conference Hall Sheffield Playhouse

Theatre

4 June

12 Nov

15 Jan

7 Mar

23 Oct

11 Mar

1 July 19 Nov

19 May

6 Nov

15 Oct

Date

Nottsarchives, DDNP2/2/1196, ph, 2/2/8/365/1-9

SYB, 1964

SYB, 1964; BTC: pg, r (Royal Court theatre file) P&P Jan Sealey Rahmen, 169, 272

SYB, 1964; TW, Dec 1963

STA: r, pg

SYB, 1964; TW, Aug 1963

TW, July 1963; BTC: pg, ph

Sheffield TA: pg, rev

Reference materials

Welsh Theatre Co.

English Stage Co.

Final Sunday night production at Old Vic Chichester production 16/07/62; some change of cast, Miles, 35

Notes

286  Appendices

Dead Souls

Son of Oblomov

The Ardent Heart

Kremlin Chimes

Gogol

Goncharov

Ostrovsky

Nikolai Pogodin

Jack Witikka Anton Hatzinestoros

t. David Magarshack “Lonely People”

Chekhov

Frank Hauser V.Y. Staninsin

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

Three Sisters The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

The Seagull Harmfulness of Tobacco/ The Bear/ Swansong/The Proposal The Seagull

Frank Hauser Tony Richardson

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Ann Jellicoe

The 12th Hour The Seagull

Play by Riccardo Aragno; a. Michael White Extracts

v. Mikhail Bulgakov

a. G. Calderon

V.I. NemirovichDanchenko & L.M. Leonidov; M.O. Knebel; I.M. Rayevsky; V.P. Markov

Frank Dunlop

K.S. Stanislavsky

John Harrison

James Roose-Evans

Arbuzov Chekhov

t. Judith Guthrie

He Who Gets Slapped

Director

Andreev

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1964

V.V. Dmitriyev

Patrick Robertson

V.A. Simov

S. Glannister

Daphne Dare Roderick Lack

Alix Stone L.M. Silitch

Michael Clarke Jocelyn Herbert

Jimmie Caffrey

Designer 16 Nov

Date SYB, 1965; LMT: Hampstead theatre file: pg

Reference materials

Lyric Hammersmith Comedy Aldwych, RSC Moscow Art Theatre Aldwych-RSC; Moscow Art Theatre

Birmingham Repertory Aldwych, RSC Moscow Art theatre

1 June

31 May

6 Oct 3 Dec

26 May

20 Oct

SYB, 1965; TW, July 1964; BTC:pg; RSC: r

BCL: m/r137 : pg, ph SYB, 1965; TW, July 1964; BTC: pg; RSC: pg, r SYB, 1965; P&P, Feb 1965; BTC: pg Sealey Rahmen, 166, 271

Oxford Playhouse 12 May New Oxford 2 March SYB, 1965; Queen’s 12 March TW, Apr 1964; P&P, May BTC: pg Oxford Playhouse 22 April SYB, 1965 Aldwych-RSC 29 May SYB, 1965 Moscow Art TW, July 1964 BTC: pg Pitlochry Festival 16 June SYB, 1965 Hampstead 31 Aug SYB, 1965 Theatre Club P&P, Oct 1964

Hampstead Theatre Club

Theatre

World Theatre Season; in Russian, simultaneous trans. World Theatre Season; in Russian, simultaneous trans.

World Theatre Season; in Russian, simultaneous trans.

European Drama Productions

World Theatre Season; in Russian, simultaneous trans.

Cast: Peggy Ashcroft; Vanessa Redgrave

Notes

Appendices

  287

Anatoli Sofronov Turgenev

Gorky

Gogol

Dostoevsky

Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

Clive Perry

Dundee Repertory Sheffield Playhouse Aldwych

Nottingham Playhouse

Theatre

30 Apr

2 Feb

10 Nov

10 Nov

30 Aug 30 Sep

12 May

27 Apr

15 Mar

10 Mar

Date

Yvonne Arnaud Guildford Cambridge Theatre

2 June 23 Sep

Canonbury Tower 5 Mar

Unity NW1

Rouben Ter- Yvonne Arnaud Arutunian Guildford Phoenix Graham Bristol Old Vic Barlow Geoffrey Phoenix Leicester Scott Martin Lees Mermaid

Will Steven Armstrong

Peter Gray

Designer

t. Frederick Julius Gellner King a. Robert Gillner Yegor Bulichov Lothario Singer Helena Stevens John [Russian Wallbank advisor] A Million for t. Cynthia Pugh John Tydeman N. Fenner a Smile A Month in a. Emlyn Michael Alix Stone the Country Williams Redgrave

The Cherry Orchard Uncle’s Dream The Marriage Brokers

a. Lester Cole

t. Ariadne John Gielgud Nicolaeff a. John Gielgud a. John Gielgud C. Denys

Three Sisters

Ivanov

Wilfred Harrison Lee Strasberg

Donald Sartain

Denis Carey

Director

t. Ronald Hingley a. Randall Jarrell

t. Elisaveta Fen

Translator/ Adaptor

Uncle Vanya

The Bear

Play

Author

Year 1965

SYB, 1966; P&P, Mar 1965; LTM: Mermaid Theatre file: pg SYB, 1966; LTM : Unity Theatre file: pg, r LTM: Canonbury Theatre file: pg SYB, 1966; TW, July 1965; P&P Aug 1965; LTM: Cambridge Theatre file: pg; BTC: pg

SYB, 1966

SYB, 1966; BTC: pg

SYB, 1966

P&P, Mar; Nottsarchives, ph: DDNP 2/2/8/99/1-20 STA

Reference materials

Tavistock Repertory Co. Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Michael Redgrave. Opening production

Western Premiere

Cast: Richard Eyre

Actors’ Studio, New York World Theatre Season

Miles, 37

Notes

288  Appendices

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

Ostrovsky

Gogol

Dostoevsky

The Proposal

Chekhov

The Government Inspector The Storm

The Idiot

The Bear Crime & Punishment

Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard The Proposal

The Proposal

The Seagull

Play

The Promise

Author

Arbuzov

Year 1966

t. Edward O. Marshall, v. Jeremy Brooks a. D. Lessing John Dexter

Peter Hall

John Bury Elizabeth Duffield Josef Svoboda

Margarita Likhnitzkaya

G.A. Tovstonogov

Tony Carruthers

Alan Tagg

Maurice Rubens Rita Taylor

Krzyaztof Pankiewicz

Andrew Downie

t. Tyrone Guthrie & Leonid Kipnis

Designer Alix Stone

Brian McGrellis A. Hanuszkiewicz

Lindsey Anderson Terry Hands

t. Elisaveta Fen

a. Zygmunt Hubner & Adam Hanuszkiewicz a. G.A. Tovstonogov

Geoffrey Ost

t. Elisaveta Fen

Ronald Magill

Frank Hauser

Translator/Adaptor Director

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

Theatre

NT @Old Vic

Arts Aldwych-RSC Polish Popular Theatre Aldwych-RSC Leningrad GorkiTheatre Aldwych-RSC

Chichester Festival Theatre RSC Theatrego round Tour W. Midlands Canonbury Tower

Oxford Playhouse [Fortune Theatre, London] Bristol Old Vic Little Theatre Victoria Theatre, Stoke on Trent Phoenix, Leicester Nottingham Playhouse Pitlochry Festival

Date

18 Oct

19 Jan

9 May

14 Nov 28 Apr

4 Nov

28 Sep–8 Nov

19 July

31 May

25 May

3 May

27 Apr

29 Nov [17 Jan 1967*] 19 Apr

Reference materials

SYB, 1967; P&P Mar 1966; RSC/LTM: pg, pr, rev SYB, 1967; Sealey Rahmen, 187, 201, 202, 204, 209, 219, 225, 240, 242, 252, 276

RSC & BTC: pg, r

SYB, 1967 RSC: pg, r

SYB, 1967

SYB, 1967; P&P Sep 1966 RSC: pg, po

SYB, 1967

Miles, 37

SYB, 1967; P&P Mar 1967

Notes

Cast: Paul Scofield

World Theatre Season; in Russian

Tavistock Repertory Co. Lunchtime production In Polish

Cast: Celia Johnson; Tom Courtney

Miles, 38

Cast: Ian McKellen; Judi Dench

Appendices

  289

It Happened in Irkutsk Beware of the Dog

Arbuzov

The Cherry Orchard

Diary of a Madman

Chekhov

Gogol

Three Sisters

Three Sisters

The Promise

Arbuzov

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 1967

a. Vernon Morris

t. Richard Cottrell

t. Rose Prokofieva t. from French Yvonne Mitchell a. from Chekhov stories, Gabriel Arout t. Richard Cottrell a. Edward Bond t. Moura Budberg

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

Translator/Adaptor

Vernon Morris

R. Cottrell

William Gaskill Laurence Olivier

Colin George Noel Willman

Frank Hauser

Director

4 July

18 Apr

15 Feb 7 June

6 June

17 Jan

Date

Little Theatre Club WC2

23 Jan

Arts Cambridge; 25 July Royal Lyceum 28 Aug Edinburgh; 5 Oct Queen’s

NT @Old Vic

Josef Svoboda

Hutchinson Scott

Royal Court

Sheffield Playhouse Nottingham Playhouse; St. Martin’s Theatre

Fortune Theatre, London*

Theatre

Farrah

Jose Pradera

Edward Furby

Alix Stone

Designer

SYB, 1968; P&P, Nov 1967; BTC: pg

SYB, 1968; BTC: pg, po SYB, 1968; P&P, Sep 1967

BTC: pg

SYB, 1968

SYB, 1968; P&P, Oct 1967;

English Stage Co Cast: Derek Jacobi; Joan Plowright Prospect production from the Edinburgh Festival Lunchtime presentation by Theatrescope

Cast: John Neville; English premiere

Oxford Playhouse production* [See 29 Nov 1966]

Referencematerials Notes

290  Appendices

Tolstoy

Kataev

Author

Year 1967

t. Marty Feldman; a. Mark G. Sauvajon & T. Dalmat t. Robert D. MacDonald; a. Alfred Neumann/ Erwin Piscator/ Guntram Prufer Anthony Sharp

Christopher Denys Anthony Page

t. Edward Marsh; a. Jeremy Brooks Play by Walter Eysselinck

The Government Inspector Diary of a Madman

I Want to See Musov or Sign Here Please War & Peace

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Theatre

Anthony Holland

Pavilion Bournemouth Whitehall Bristol Old Vic Little Theatre

Michael Bristol Old Vic Swindlehurst Little Theatre Ken Calder Duchess

Designer

6 June

13 Mar [postponed from 7 Mar] 29 May 3 Aug

21 Feb

Date

BTC: pg

SYB, 1968;

SYB, 1968; LTM: Duchess Theatre file: r

Cast: Nicol Williamson

Referencematerials Notes

Appendices

  291

Ostrovsky

t. Elisaveta Fen

The Seagull

The Seagull

a. Rodney Ackland

Play by Jack Holton Dell based on story t. Elisaveta Fen

The Duel

Diary of a Scoundrel

t. Ronald Hingley

The Proposal

Jonathan Miller David Jones

Theatre

Peter Rice

Ted Parker

Hutchinson Scott

Patrick Robertson

Theatre Royal Brighton; Duke of York’s Bristol Old Vic Nottingham Playhouse Liverpool Playhouse

Arts

Nottingham Playhouse

Liverpool Playhouse David Cockayne Birmingham Repertory Theatre Richard Northcott Montgomery Theatre, Exeter

Designer

Antony Tuckey Robin Archer

CarylJenner &Matyelok Gibbs Norman Marshall

Raymond Ingram

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

Confession at Night

Chekhov

Malcolm Griffiths

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

The Promise

The Promise

Alan Vaughn Williams Derrick Goodwin

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

The Promise

Director

Arbuzov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1968

5 Mar

27 Nov

1 May

18 Mar 16 Apr

22 Feb

19 June

4 June

30 May

25 May

Date

P&P, Dec 1968; Miles (2), 244 Liverpool Playhouse, Theatre List; Sealey Rahmen, 197, 272

BTC: pg LTM: Duke of York’s Theatre file: pg BTC: pg

NottsArchives, DDNP2/2/1/62, ph DDNP2/2/8/119/119; po, slides DDNP2/2/24/1-35 LTM: Arts Theatre file: pg

Northcott: pg

pg: BCL

Reference materials

Triple bill

South West Tour until 18 July

Notes

292  Appendices

Gogol

Gogol

Chekhov

Reflections or Diary of a Madman

Peter Prowse

Sidney Jarvis

Robin Phillips Michael Simpson

a. Peter Prowse

Josef Svoboda

Three Sisters

Lighting: Christopher Bazeley

David Cockayne

Daphne Dare

Otomar Krejca

Edward Furby

Designer

t. Karel Kraus & Josef Topol The Seagull t. Elisaveta Fen The Government t. Anthony Inspector Bosworth*

Director Colin George Robin Phillips

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

t. David Magarshack new t. David Magarshack

Play

Author

Year 1969

22 Apr

11 Nov

Arts

25 Nov

28 Apr

5 Mar 10 Mar–12 Apr Including 2 further weeks at Exeter (18–29 Mar)

12 Feb

Date

Birmingham Repertory Theatre

Thorndike Leatherhead

Northcott Theatre, Exeter (Northcott theatre Co.) Tour to New Theatre, Cardiff; Strode Theatre, Street, Queens Hall, Barnstaple, Pavilion Theatre Weymouth, Rosehill Theatre, Whitehaven, Cumberland Aldwyc-RSC Czech Theatre

Sheffield Playhouse

Theatre

BCL m/r126: pg, ph; LTM: pg (Birmingham Repertory Theatre file) P&P Jan 1970

P&P Jan 1970

P&P May 1969; RSC: pg, po

Northcott Theatre Collection: Show file

SheffTA

Reference materials

Pageant Entertainments

Cast: Gwen Watford *Unpublished London school production

World Theatre Season

Margaret Tyzack as Ranevskaya, Tony Church as Lopakhin

Notes

Appendices

  293

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

t. and a. Hayward and Shukman

Lenin-the Third Pathetique The Dragon

Pogodin

Yevgeny (Eugene) Schwartz

t. Zdenek Mahler

The Government Inspector

Gogol

t. Ronald Hingley

a. Simon Gray

The Seagull

The Proposal

The Seagull

Three Sisters

The Bear

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Nina Froud a. Christopher Hampton t. Richard Cottrell a. Edward Bond

Translator/ Adaptor

Dostoevsky The Idiot

Chekhov

The Promise

Arbuzov

Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1970

A. McPherson

Lubos Hruza

Josef Svoboda

Peter Rice

Chichester Festival Theatre Arts theatre, Cambridge NT @Old Vic

16 Mar

Ashcroft theatre, Croydon Birmingham Repertory Theatre Aldwych-RSC Moscow Art Theatre

4 July

1 June

22 Apr

15 July

21 July

8 July

25 May

7 Apr

11 Mar

24 Feb

7 Oct

Date

Bristol Old Vic

Aldwych-RSC: Cinoherni TheatreClub of Prague M.N. Kedrov L.B. Baturin Aldwych-RSC Moscow Art Theatre Jack Emery Saul Radomsky Northcott Theatre, and Lavagna Exeter

Anthony Quayle Jan Kacer

John Clements

Sheffield Playhouse

Theatre

Deirdre Clancy Royal Court

Elaine Garrard

Designer

Michael David Simpson Cockayne B.N. Livanov E.G. Stenberg

John David

Frank Hatherley Anthony Page

Director

English Stage Co. Cast: Paul Scofield

Notes

Northcott, Show file, pg

P&P, July 1970 P&P, June 1970; RSC: pg, r; BTC: pg P&P June 1970

Miles, 39

Simultaneous translation read by Stephen Jolly

Simultaneous translation World Theatre Season

Cast: Derek Jacobi

BCL: m/r140: pg, ph Simultaneous P&P, July translation read 1970; by Stephen Jolly BTC: pg P&P, Sep 1970

Miles, 40

P&P Apr 1970; BTC: pg

Reference materials

294  Appendices

Enemies

Diary of a Scoiundrel

Gorky

Ostrovsky

Three Sisters Swan Song

Three Sisters Cherry Orchard

Three Sisters

t. Kitty Hunter Blair a. Jeremy Brooks David Phethean

David Jones

Giles Havergal

t. Ariadne Frank Hauser Nicolaeff t. Richard Jane Howell Cottrell a. Edward Bond

Timothy O’Brien

Young Vic Theatre, Bristol

Aldwych-RSC

22 July

P&P, Sept. 1971; LTM: Aldwych, RSC Theatre file: pg, r Sealey Rahmen, 181, 272

STA: po; r; pg

Miles, 40 Miles, 40

11 Oct 11 Oct 15 Oct 9 Nov

Miles, 40

5 Oct

Ashcroft, Croydon Arts, Cambridge Ashcroft, Croydon Maria Bjornson Glasgow Citizens Crucible Sheffield [Opening]

Northcott, Show file; pg

29 Sep

P&P, Oct

P&P, Apr

P&P, Apr

Reference materials

Northcott Theatre, Exeter

Hayden Griffin

13 Apr

12 Apr

Date

Oxford Playhouse 28 Sep

Aldwych-RSC

Otomar Krejca

Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

Aldwych-RSC

Theatre

Otomar Krejca

Designer

Ivanov

Director

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1971

Cast: Ian McKellen, Miles, 38

Prague Theatre Club Prague Theatre Club Cast: Phyllis Calvert

Notes

Appendices

  295

Flight

Mikhail Bulgakov Chekhov

The Possessed

The Lower Depths

Dostoevsky

Gorky

Ivanov (as A Crisis of Conscience)

The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya

Play

Author

Year 1972

Val May

Alex Day

Designer

t. Kitty HunterBlair a. Jeremy Brooks David Jones

a. Albert Camus Andrzej Wajda & a. Andrzej Wajda t. Joanna Royce

Timothy O’Brien

Andrzej Wajda

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff Toby Robertson & Kenneth a. Toby Robertson Kenny McBain Rowell

t. Michael Glenny

Translator/Adaptor Director

RSC- Aldwych, Tour

Aldwych-RSC

22 Sep

Phoenix, Leicester Tower, Canonbury New Theatre, Cardiff

29 June

29 May

21 Nov

22 Sep

29 Mar

Date

Bristol Old Vic

Theatre

Notes

Prospect Theatre Company tour BTC/RSC: pg; Kracow Th. Co., P&P, July 1972 World Theatre Season RSC: pg, r; P&P, Aug 1972 Miles, 39

Miles, 40

British BTC; pg Première P&P, July 1972 Miles, 40

Reference materials

296  Appendices

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

Chekhov

Dostoevsky

The White Raven

The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya The Possessed

Gorky

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

The Cherry Orchard The Wood Demon

The Cherry Orchard The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 1973

t. Moira Budberg

t. A Camus

t. Ronald Hingley

Val May

t. Constance Garnett J.P. Davis

Andrzej Wajda Stuart Burge

Stephen Mac Donald

J. Stewart

Richard Eyre

David Giles

Peter C. Jackson Michael Blakemore Jonathan Miller

Robin Phillips

Director

t. Ronald Hingley

t. Ronald Hingley t. Elisaveta Fen

t. Elisaveta Fen

Translator/ Adaptor

Andrzej Wajda Patrick Robertson

D. HarveyJones Sheila Ruskin

John Elvery

Kenneth Mellor

Patrick Robertson

Alan Tagg

Roger Butlin

Designer

Nottingham Playhouse

Dundee Repertory Theatre Oxford Playhouse Aldwych-RSC

Sheffield Crucible

Nottingham Playhouse

Old Vic, National Theatre Chichester Festival Theatre Manchester Library Theatre Edinburgh Festival, and tour: Nottingham Playhouse Bristol Old Vic

Derby Playhouse

Greenwich

Theatre

14 Feb

11 Dec 21 May

28 Nov

27 Nov

24 Oct

3 Oct

21 Aug

5 June

23 May

24 May

12 Apr

25 Jan

Date

Nottsarchives, DDNP2/2/1/305, ph, 2/2/8/619/1

STA

Nottsarchives, DDNP2/2/1/290, ph, 2/2/8/567/1

BTC: pg

P&P, July

P&P, July

P&P Mar

Reference materials

Miles, 40

Cast: Peter O’Toole Miles, 40

Cast: Ian McKellen

Cast: Irene Worth, Robert Stephens Miles, 40

Cast: Gwen Watford, Mia Farrow

Notes

Appendices

  297

The Seagull

Chekhov

t. Richard Cottrell a. Edward Bond t. David Magarshack

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Elisaveta Fen

Translator/ Adaptor

Summerfolk

A Month in the Country

Turgenev

Uncle Vanya

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

t. Kitty HunterBlair & Jeremy Brooks

t. Mike Nichols, Albert Todd The Government t. a. Christopher Inspector English, Gordon McDougall The Government Inspector

The Seagull

Gorky

Gogol

Chekhov

The Promise

Arbuzov

Uncle Vanya The Cherry Orchard Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1974 Designer

Toby Robertson

David Jones

Richard Eyre

Nicol Williamson

Geoffrey Reeve

Jan Sargant

Jonathan Miller

Timothy O’Brien & Tazeena Firth Robin Archer

Debbie Sharp

Stephanie Howard Bernard Culshaw

Patrick Robertson

Hywel Bennett Bill Beech

Director

Chichester Festival Theatre

Aldwych-RSC

Nottingham Playhouse

Oxford PlayhouseCompany

12 Feb 26 Feb

Connaught, Worthing Northampton Repertory Comapany University Theatre, Tyneside Theatre Co. Northcott Theatre, Exeter Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, Theatr y Werin Aberystwyth RSC-TOP

30 July

27 Aug

13 Mar

31 Jan

17 Dec

2 Sep 16 Sep 30 Sep

9 May

31 Jan

9 Jan

Date

Greenwich

Sheffield Crucible

Theatre

BTC: pg P&P Sep

Nottsarchives: ph, slides, DDNP2/2/1/115; 2/2/8/203/1;2/2/2/ 36/1-173 RSC: pg P&P Oct

P&P Mar 1975 RSC: pg, r

Miles, 39; Northcott, showfile. r.

Miles, 40 Miles, 40

P&P Mar

SheffTA

Reference materials

Prospect Theatre Co. Cast: Dorothy Tutin/Derek Jacobi, Timothy West. Transferred to Albery in 1975

British Premiere

Collaboration with the Welsh (National Opera and) Drama Co.

Chichester Festival Co. Cast: Irene Worth, Robert Stephens [See 1973]

Notes

298  Appendices

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

A Month in the Country

Director

Stephen MacDonald

Stephen MacDonald & Mark Piper

Toby Robertson

Robert David MacDonald Ron Baker

t. Galina von Lindsay Meck & Lindsay Anderson Anderson

t. Ronald Hingley David Phethean

Translator/ Adaptor

The Government t. Robert David Inspector MacDonald Turgenev A Month in the Country A Month in the t. Ariadne Country Nicolaeff

Gogol

Three Sisters

Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard On the Harmfulness of Tobacco The Cherry Orchard The Seagull Three Sisters The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 1975

Key Theatre, Peterborough Redgrave Theatre, Farnham Malvern Festival Theatre

Theatre

Geoffrey Scott

Philip Prowse Brenda Beasley Robin Archer

Alan Tagg

Miles, 40 Miles, 42

26 Feb 26 Feb

Royal Lyceum Edinburgh

Crescent, Birmingham Albery

26 Nov

10 Dec

20 Nov

11 Oct

Cast: Joan Plowright, Helen Mirren

Notes

Prospect P&P, Nov Theatre Co. 1975; [See 1974] P&P, Feb 1976 LTM: pg Also Tour Revised 13/4/1976

LTM: pg

Miles, 40

11 Nov

Harlow Playhouse and tour Theeatr y Werin, Aberystwyth Glasgow Citizens

10 Jan

Miles, 39 Miles, 40 BTC: pg; P&P, Jan. 1976 Miles, 40

13 Aug 15 Oct 28 Oct

23 Apr

Miles, 40

Reference materials

23 Jan

Date

Harrogate Theatre Swan, Worcester Lyric

John Elvery Bristol Old Vic

Designer

Appendices

  299

Chekhov

Uncle Vanya

The Jubilee Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya

t. Elisaveta Fen

Jonathan Miller

John Dove

Richard Cottrell David Horlock Don Hawkins

t. a. Nicolaeff

Evening Light Once Upon a Time The Promise

Chekhov

Terry Hands

t. a. Nicolaeff

Old World

Director

Arbuzov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1976 Theatre

Patrick Robertson

David Fisher

Birmingham Rep., Studio Bradford Playhouse Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford and tour Cambridge, Theatre, London Watermill Theatre, Bognor

Theatr y Werin, Aberystwyth Leeds Playhouse

RSC–RST Aldwych John McMurray Bristol Old Vic Fiona Mathers John Elvery

Ralph Koltai

Designer

Miles, 42 P&P, Aug

Miles, 41

7 Apr 20 Apr 23 June

3 Aug

24 Mar

BTC Cast: Janet Suzman

Miles, 42

22 Jan 19 Feb

Notes

RSC: pg/rev British Premiere English P&P, May Premiere, Arbuzov Season Cast: Daniel Massey; Michael Hordern; Felicity Kendal Miles, 42

Reference materials

22 Mar 7 Oct 23 Mar

Date

300  Appendices

Dream of a Ridiculous Man The Zykovs

Three Sisters

Timothy O’Brien & Tazeena Firth Philip Prowse

Marie Gaffney [Costume]

Robert David MacDonald William Gaunt Stuart M. Stanley

David Jones

a. Pip Simmons Pip Simmons & Chris Jordan

David Jones

a. t. Jeremy Brooks & Kitty Hunter-Blair

Ivanov

William Dudley

Mark Woolgar Joe Vanek

t. Mark Woolgar

The Seagull

Designer

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

t. Jeremy Brooks & Kitty Hunter-Blair Mikhail Maskerade t. Robert David Lermontov (Maskarad) MacDonald Turgenev A Month in the a. Emlyn Country Williams

Gorky

Dostoevsky

Author

Year 1976

10 Sep 21 Sep

Thorndike, Leatherhead

28 Apr

Glasgow Citizens

RSC–Aldwych

6 Dec

Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham Sheffield Crucible Studio 15 Nov

2 Sep

11 Aug

Date

RSC–Aldwych

Duke of York’s

Theatre

Notes

P&P, Nov; STA: r LTM: pg

P&P, July RSC: pg, r

SheffTA: pg, rev

P&P, Oct; LTM Theatre file

Derby Playhouse production Cast: Alan Bates Cast: John P&P, Sep/ Wood Nov 1976; RSC: r. Miles, 42

Reference materials

Appendices

  301

Turgenev

Turgenev

Ostrovsky

Gorky

Gogol

Swan Song

Chekhov

a. Peter Stein & Botho Straus

t. Ronald Hingley a. Michael Pennington t. Boris Isarov

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Helen Rappaport a. Trevor Griffiths

Translator/ Adaptor

The Diary of a a. Stephen Scoundrel MacDonald *A Poor t. Constance Gentleman Garnett a. Stephen MacDonald *A Provincial Constance Lady Garnett

The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya The Cherry Orchard A Diary of a Madman The Government Inspector Summerfolk

The Seagull

The Cherry Orchard

Uncle Vanya Uncle Vanya

Play

Author

Year 1977

Mark Piper

Stephen MacDonald Stephen MacDonald

Peter Stein

Oleg Tabakov

Stephen MacDonald

Michael Elliott Richard Eyre

Director

Sue Smith [Costumes]

Sue Smith [Costumes]

Sue Smith

Karl-Ernst Herrmann

Roger Glossop

Colin Winslow

John Gunter

Clare Jeffery

Designer

Lyceum Little Theatre Edinburgh

NT, Lyttelton Company: Schaubuhne am Halleschen Ufer Royal Lyceum Edinburgh Lyceum Little Theatre Edinburgh

Haymarket Theatre, Leicester Mercury Theatre Colchester Harrogate Theatre Lyceum, Edinburgh Company RSC-Newcastle Gulbenkian Studio Sheffield Crucible

Civic Theatre, Chesterfield Redgrave, Farnham Royal Exchange Manchester Nottingham Playhouse

Theatre

Miles, 41 STA

3 Aug 26 Oct

2 Feb

2 Feb

28 Sep

3 Mar

5 Oct

STA

STA

STA

P&P, May

SheffTA: pg, r

Miles, 42

20 Apr

7 Apr

Miles, 41

6 Apr

P&P, May; Nottsarchives, DDNP/2/2/1/50, ph. DDNP 2/2/8/100/1

Miles, 41 P&P, Feb/Apr

26 Jan 17 Feb 10 Mar

Miles, 42

Reference materials

24 Jan

Date

*see above

*Double bill, by Royal Lyceum Company

GB-USSR Association exchange Visiting production, in German

Notes

302  Appendices

Old World

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

*The Bear

Arbuzov

Chekhov

Chekhov

The Seagull

Ivanov

On the Harmfulness of Tobacco The Cherry Orchard Three Sisters

Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1978

Trevor Nunn

Toby Robertson Richard Cottrell

t. Richard Cottrell

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Richard Cottrell

Stuart Burge

Peter Hall

t. Michael Frayn

a. N.F. Simpson

Richard Digby Day Peter Gill

Director

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff a. Peter Gill

Translator/ Adaptor

14 Feb

12 Jan

5 Apr

Date

Theatr y Werin, Aberystwyth RSC and Tour

7 Aug

20 June

Royal Court 21 Feb (Theatre Upstairs) Neptune Theatre, 8 Mar Liverpool MacRobert Centre, 22 Mar Stirling

NT, Olivier

Northcott Theatre, Exeter Riverside Studios

Theatre

Robin Archer Old Vic–Prospect 14 Aug Theatre Company John Bristol Old Vic 30 Aug McMurray

John Napier

Pipp Bradshaw

Hugh Durrant William Dudley John Bury

Designer Cast: Phyllis Calvert, Geoffrey Toone Cast: Judy Parfitt

Notes

RSC: pg, r, and tour 1979 P&P, Aug/ Oct P&P, Nov

Miles, 42

Miles, 42

P&P, April

Cast: Derek Jacobi

Cast: Albert Finney; Ralph Richardson; Dorothy Tutin; Robert Stephens; Ben Kingsley *Double bill with The LTM: pg, r Kreutzer Sonata (Royal Court Cast: David Suchet theatre file) Miles, 42

Northcott: pg (show file) P&P, March

Reference materials

Appendices

  303

Last Summer in Chulimsk

Alexander Vampilov

Turgenev

Tolstoy

Crime & Punishment *Iniquity adapted from The Kreutzer Sonata A Month in the Country

a. P. Thompson

a. Peter Farago

Dmitry Krymov

Geoffrey Scott

J. Russell Workshop Brown & P. Thompson

Anatoli Efros

Michael Elliott Peter Farago

NT: Cottesloe

Royal Exchange Manchester Royal Court Theatre Upstairs [& Birmingham Rep. Studio] Royal Lyceum Edinburgh

Philip Prowse Philip Prowse Glasgow Citizens

t. Robert D. MacDonald a. Philip Prowse a. Paul Bailey

Theatre

The Seagull

Designer

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Dostoevsky

Author

Year 1978

3 April

22 Aug

2 Jan

6 Apr

10 Nov

Date

BCL: pg, po, ph

P&P, Apr

P&P, Jan 1979; STA

Reference materials

Moscow Drama Company (Edinburgh Festival)

Double bill with Chekhov’s The Bear Cast: David Suchet

Notes

304  Appendices

The Seagull

Chekhov

Chekhov

The White Guard

Bulgakov

t. Michael Frayn a. Pam Gems Nancy Meckler

Casper Wrede

Richard Negri Alison Chitty

David William

Uncle Vanya

The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya

Rodney Ford

Peter James

Christopher Morley

Designer

Three Sisters

Adrian Harris

Barry Kyle

Director

John Napier

a. Janet Dunbar t. Richard Cottrell

t. Michael Glenny

Translator/ Adaptor

Trevor Nunn

An Evening of Chekhov Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 1979

Liverpool Playhouse Royal Exchange Manchester Hampstead

Victoria, Stoke on Trent Scarborough Theatre in the Round Queens, Hornchurch Orange Tree, Richmond RSC,TOP and tour [see 1980] Sheffield Crucible

RSC- Aldwych

Theatre

Miles, 42

31 May

22 Nov

1 Nov

31 Oct

29 Sep 26 Sep

22 June

LTM: pg (Hampstead theatre file); P&P, Dec 1979; P&P, Feb 1980

P&P, Jan 1980

RSC; Miles, 41 SheffTA: pg, r

Miles, 41

2 May

4 Jan

RSC: pg, r; P&P, July 1979 & May 1980 Miles, 41

Cast: Ian Holm; Nigel Hawthorne; Alison Steadman; Maurice Denham

Miles, 42

Based on short stories

Cast: Patrick Stewart

Reference materials Notes

23 May

Date

Appendices

  305

Turgenev

Tolstoy

Fruits of Enlightenment A Month in the Country

The Lower Depths

Children of the Sun

Written & performed by Richard Crane

The Nose & The Overcoat (inspired by)

Gorky

t. Edward O. Marsh. a. Jeremy Brooks

The Government Inspector

Gogol

a. Jeremy Brooks & t. Kitty Hunter-Blair t. David Magarshack t. Michael Frayn t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

t. Peter Tegel

The Suicide

Nikolai Erdman

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1979

Laurie Dennett John Bury

Braham Murray Christopher Morahan John Dove John McMurray

Chris Dyer

Faynia Williams

Robin Archer

Kit Surrey

Designer

Terry Hands

Toby Robertson & Christopher Selbie Faynia Williams

Ron Daniels

Director

Bristol Old Vic

Royal Exchange Manchester NT-Olivier

Royal Court (Theatre Upstairs) [Malborough Theatre, Brighton, 1978] RSC-Aldwych

The Other Place, Stratford-onAvon and tour Old Vic

Theatre

18 Apr

8 Mar

15 Nov

9 Oct

3 Sep

13 June

Date

LTM: pg, r (Bristol Old Vic theatre file)

P&P, Apr

P&P, Jan 1980

RSC: pg, r

LTM: r (London production) (Royal court Theatre file)

LTM: pg, r (Old Vic theatre file); P&P, Oct & Nov

RSC: production file

Cast: Ralph Richardson

Cast: Ian Richardson; Barbara Jefford

Cast: Roger Rees as Podsekalnikov

Reference materials Notes

306  Appendices

Turgenev

The Seagull

Chekhov

new a. Trevor Griffiths

a. Vilma Hollingbery & Patrick Lau t. Richard Cottrell

Translator/ Adaptor

The Cherry Orchard A Month in the a. Ariadne Country Nicolaeff

Uncle Vanya

The Cherry Orchard

Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1980

Ian Mullins

Richard Digby Day

John Napier

Trevor Nunn

Date

Gardner Centre, 5 Feb Uni of Sussex

Theatre

Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford Tower Theatre Canonbury Bim Hopewell & Liverpool Zofia Billewicz Playhouse

23 Oct

30 Nov

21 Oct

RSC–Newcastle; 17 Mar Warehouse, 2 Apr London Helen Wilkinson Northcott 15 May Theatre, Exeter

Joe Vanek

Designer

Patrick Lau

Director

Revival of 1979 production

Cast: Barbara Jefford

Notes

Miles, 42

Cast: Dulcie Gray Miles, 42; and Michael Northcott: pg Denison as (Showfile) Ranevskaya and Gaev. Miles, 42

RSC: r

P&P, Mar

Reference materials

Appendices

  307

The Love t. Kitty Girl & the Hunter-Blair Innocent a. Jeremy Brooks A Month in the t. Isaiah Berlin Country

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Turgenev

The Forest

Ostrovsky

a. Jeremy Brooks & t. Kitty Hunter-Blair

Brothers Karamazov

Dostoevsky

The Seagull

Three Sisters

Richard Crane

Peter Gill

Clifford Williams

Adrian Noble

Richard Johnson

a. Neil Simon (from short stories) t. David Patrick Magarshack Garland revised Philp Roth a. Mike Alfreds & t. Mike Alfreds Lilia Sokolova

The Good Doctor The Cherry Orchard

The Seagull

Max StaffordClark

a. Lomas Kilroy

The Seagull

Director Sam Walters

Translator/Adaptor

t. Elisaveta Fen

Play

Uncle Vanya

Author

Chekhov

Year 1981

Alison Chitty

Ralph Koltai

Richard Johnson & Faynia Williams Bob Crowley

Maria Bjornson

Gemma Jackson

Designer

Theatre

Date

1 May

20 Apr

8 Apr

6 Feb

NT-Olivier

RSC-Aldwych

RSC,TOP; Warehouse, London [Aldwych]

19 Feb

8 Sep

22 Apr July 7 [12 Feb 1982]

Thorndike 6 Oct Theatre, Leatherhead Shiva Theatre, 29 Oct Cornwall Brighton Festival; 9 Nov Edinburgh Festival

Sheffield Crucible 12 Sep Studio

Arts Theatre, Cambridge Chichester

Orange Tree, Richmond Royal Court

Reference materials

LTM: pg, r (Olivier theatre file); LTR, 1981, 78

LTR, 366; RSC: pg, r Sealey Rahmen, 201, 210, 224, 241, 243, 273 RSC: pg, r LTR, 449

LTR, 59, 139; P&P, Jan 1982

Miles, 42

Miles, 42

Miles, 42

LTR, 162, 542

LTR, 62

Fortune Theatre Co.

Shared Experience Theatre Company

Copy of text in LTM theatre file Actors Company;

Notes

308  Appendices

A Gentle Spirit

Mystery Bouffe

Artists & Admirers

Duck Hunting

Mayakovsky

Ostrovsky

Vampilov

t. Alma H. Law

t. Hanif Kureishi & David Leveaux

Lou Stein

David Leveaux

t. Barrie Keefe developed by Jules Croiset a. Guy Daniels Michael Boyd

Michael Bogdanov

a. Pam Gems

Uncle Vanya

Dostoevsky

Christopher Fettes

Mike Alfreds

t. John Murrell

Chekhov

t. Mike Alfreds

Bill Alexander

Michael Batz

The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

t. Dusty Hughes

Director

t. Michael Batz

Moliere

Bulgakov

Translator/Adaptor

On the Great Road Uncle Vanya

Play

Author

Year 1982

Pascale & Pip

Ken Hall

Gordon Kind

Lou Steenbergen

John Bury

Daphne Dare

Anna Jebens

Nadine Baylis

Ralph Koltai

Designer

Gate at the Latchmere

Sheffield Crucible Riverside

NT, Lyttelton Shaw

Theatre Royal Haymarket

Old Half Moon

RSC-TOP [and tour into 1983] Roundhouse

Theatre

5 July

25 June

May

4 May

18 May

5 Aug

25 Jan

9 Aug

5 Aug

Date

P&P, Aug; LTR, 353; Sealey Rahmen, 207, 209, 248, 271 LTR, 371, 388

SheffTA

LTR, 426; LTM: pg, r (Theatre Royal file) P&P, July; LTR, 258 LTR, 236

LTR, 29

P&P, Oct; LTR, 435

RSC: r.

Reference materials

Oxford Playhouse Co. Yorick Players Cast: Donald Sinden

Notes

Appendices

  309

Uncle Vanya

Three Sisters

Chekhov

Chekhov

Alexander Vampilov

Gogol

t. Michael Frayn

Translator/ Adaptor

Tim Goodchild Kenneth Mellor

Lindsay Anderson

Designer

Peter Farago

Director

Last Summer in Chulimsk

a. Yuri Yuri Lyubimov David Borovsky Lyubimov & Yuri Kariakin t. Nicholas Rzhevsky The Government a. Gerard Braham Murray Johanna Bryant Inspector McLarnon t. Michael Poole

Dostoevsky Crime & Punishment

The Cherry Orchard

Play

Author

Year 1983

Birmingham Alexandra

Royal Exchange Manchester

Swan Theatre Worcester Birmingham Rep. Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford; toured to Croydon; Bath; Brighton and Theatre Royal Haymarket; Lyric Hammersmith

Theatre

21 May

23 June

7 Sep

8 June 18 Oct

30 May

20 Apr

Date

P&P July; LTM: pg, r (Royal Exchange theatre file) P&P, Apr

LTR, 708, 830; P&P, Nov

LTR, 898, 969; P&P, Sep/ Oct/Dec

BCL

P&P, April

Reference materials

Taganka Theatre Company Moscow; in Russian

Notes

310  Appendices

The Power of Darkness Last Summer in t. Paul Chulimsk Thompson

Tolstoy

Vampilov

Strider

Tolstoy

Carlos del Nero & C. Taylor Devised by Michael Pennington a. Mark Rozovsky t. P. Tegel t. Anthony Clark Bill Pryde

Sam Walters

Michael Bogdanov

Michael Pennington

J.A. Baron

John Ginman

Mike Alfreds

a. Mike Alfreds

a. John Ginman

Mike Alfreds

Christopher Morahan Andy Hinds

Nancy Meckler

Philip Prowse

Director

t. Boris Isarov a. Mike Alfreds

t. E.O. Marsh a. Jeremy Brooks

t. Michael Frayn

[Pennington]

The Government Inspector Oblomov

The Government Inspector Marriage

Wild Honey

t. Robert David Macdonald

Translator/ Adaptor

Strange Life of Ivan Osokin Anton Chekhov

Ouspensky

Goncharev

Gogol

The Seagull

Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard

Play

Author

Year 1984

NT, Cottesloe

NT, Cottesloe

New End

Gate, W11

Lyric Hammersmith

Lyric Hammersmith

Bristol Old Vic

Haymarket Theatre, Leicester NT, Lyttelton

Greenwich

Theatre

Caroline Dallas, Orange Tree Ian Sinclair Geoffrey Scott Birmingham Rep. Studio

C. Dyer

Alison Chitty

Paul Dart

Paul Dart

John Elvery

John Gunter

Philip Prowse

Designer

12 Apr

2 Mar

26 Jan

5 July

30 May

14 May

14 Mar

13 Mar

14 Mar

19 July

25 May

26 Apr

Date

LTR, 162, 167 BCL: pg, ph

LTR, 42; P&P, Mar

LTR, 584; P&P, July

LTR, 414, 470; P&P, May LTR, 460

LTR, 206

LTR, 614, 684 P&P, July & Sep LTM: pg, r (Bristol Old Vic theatre file) LTR, 206; P&P, May

LTR, 347/417 P&P July Miles, 67

Pleiades Productions

Shared Experience Company Shared Experience Company

Cast: Ian McKellen

Reference materials Notes

Appendices

  311

Dostoevsky Yuri Lyubimov

Mike Alfreds

a. Mike Alfreds & t. Lilia Sokolova a. R. Crane t. & a. Irina Kirilova

The Cherry Orchard

The Possessed

Ellis Jones

a. Pam Gems

Michael Joyce

Ian Marshall and Andrew Jay-Shield

Uncle Vanya

Smoking is Bad for You, The Proposal, An Unwilling Martyr; The Bear The Seagull

Charles Sturridge

Tania Alexander & Charles Sturridge

The Seagull

Chekhov

N. Mahon Caspar Wrede

I. Kirilova Michael Frayn

The Promise Three Sisters

Director

Arbuzov Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1985

Stafanos Lazaridis

Alexander McPherson Paul Dart

Eileen Diss

Di Seymour

Designer

Oct

26 Apr

20 Jan 11 Apr

Date

Almeida

21 Mar

Lyric Players 9 Oct Theatre Belfast Redgrave, 22 Oct Farnham NT, Cottesloe 10 Dec [and tour 1986]

Latchmere Manchester Royal Exchange Lyric Hammersmith, and tour to Bath, Birmingham Oxford, and Queen's London Barbican Plymouth

Theatre

LTR, 1225; P&P, Feb 1986 LTR, 252, 315; P&P, May

Miles, 55

Miles, 68

Miles, 67

LTR, 394, 746, 80; BTC: pg

LTR, 54 Miles, 52

Reference materials

British Premiere, Co-production with Theatre de l’Europe (Paris); Piccolo Teatro di Milano; Channel 4. In English

Cast: Ian McKellen

Notes

312  Appendices

Vassa

Gorky

Ostrovsky

The Diary of a Scoundrel

Enemies

The Government Inspector The Philistines

Gogol

Gorky

Play

Author

Year 1985

a. Rodney Ackland

t. Tania Alexander a. Helena Kaut-Howson

t. Dusty Hughes

a. A. Mitchell

Translator/ Adaptor

Peter Rowe

Richard Steele, NW3

Debbie Smith Orange Tree, Richmond

Paul Brown

Ann Pennington

RSC, TOP

NT-Olivier

Theatre

Greenwich

Tom Cairns

John Gunter

Designer

Helena Douglas Kaut-Howson Heap

John Caird

Richard Eyre

Director

25 Jan

23 Nov

11 Nov

4 Apr

31 Jan

Date

LTR, 73, 132; Sealey Rahmen, 207, 208, 272

LTR, 97; P&P, Feb & Mar LTR, 319; RSC: r. LTR, 1143, 1200; P&P, Jan 1986 LTR, 261

Reference materials

In association with New International Theatre

Cast: Janet Suzman

Notes

Appendices

  313

Three Sisters

Chekhov

Gorky [Bertolt Brecht] Schwartz

Chekhov Gorky

The Promise

Arbuzov

Steve Gooch James Macdonald

a. James Macdonald

The Dragon

Matthew Walters

t. Tim Suter and Tania Alexander

Vassa Zheleznova

a. Bertolt Brecht

Roland Rees

a. Tunde Ikoli

The Lower Depths

The Mother

Patrick Mason John Caird

t. Dusty Hughes

The Seagull Philistines

Vanessa Clegg

Tanya McAllin

Tom Cairns

George Roman Sean Cavanagh

t. David Magarshack

Su Bentinck

Paul Unwin

Uncle Vanya

Paul Dart

Designer

Mike Alfreds

Director

John Harrison a. Thomas Kilroy Les Walters

a. Nicholas Mahon a. Mike Alfreds & t. Nikita Stavisky t. Richard Cottrell

Translator/ Adaptor

Wild Honey The Seagull

Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1986

Bridge Lane

Radio 3 production for ‘Russian Season’ NT, London

Leeds Playhouse Liverpool Playhouse Northcott Theatre, Exeter; toured to Theatre Royal, Plymouth Palace, Watford RSC, Barbican Pit Birmingham RepStudio Tour

Bristol Old Vic

Bloomsbury Theatre

Latchmere

Theatre

1 July

11 Dec

6 Feb Mar– May 1986 11 Nov

10 Nov 29 Jan

15 Oct 4 Nov

28 Apr 30 Apr

19 Feb

1 Apr

20 Jan

Date

LTR, 687

LTR, 1370

Miles, 68 LTR, 93; P&P, Mar P&P,Mar; BCL: pg, ph

Northcott: pg, po (Show file)

Miles, 68

BTC: pg

LTR, 321; P&P, May

LTR, 54

Reference materials

Transfer of RSC, TOP 1985 production Foco Novo Theatre Co. & Touring Co. (Founded 1972)

Presented by ‘One Word’ Shared Experience

Notes

314  Appendices

The Promise

The Proposal

Arbuzov

Chekhov

The Government Inspector

Sarcophagus

The Storm

Gogol

Vladimir Gubaryev

Ostrovsky

The Bear

Uncle Vanya

Three Sisters

Three Sisters

Three Sisters

Play

Author

Year 1987

t. Stephen Lowe

t. Michael Glenny

t. Michael Frayn t. C. Hampton

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff t. Elisaveta Fen a. Edward Bond t. Richard Cottrell t. Michael Frayn

Translator/ Adaptor

Nick Hamm

Jude Kelly

J. Church

Tom Cairns

Peter Farago

Elijah Moshinsky

Ian Wooldridge

Nick Mahon

Director

Birmingham Rep.

Greenwich Albery

Royal Lyceum Edinburgh

RSC-Barbican Pit

Salisbury Playhouse

Theatre

Fotini Dimou

Michael Minas

RSC, Barbican Pit Mermaid RSC, Barbican Pit

Sheffield Crucible Studio S. Fieldhouse Sheffield Crucible Studio Theatre Royal Norwich

Tim Goodchild Tom Cairns

John Bury

Lindsay Pugh Colin MacNeil

Designer

P&P, Apr; STA

RSC: pg

P&P, Mar 1987

Reference materials

13 July

16 Apr 12 Oct

19 June 27 Feb

TR, 467, 1303; P&P, July; RSC: pg, rev LTR, 839; P&P, Oct; RSC: r; Sealey Rahmen, 209, 219, 276

P&P, Feb

SheffTA: pg, r

18 Mar LTR, 340, 680; 3 June P&P, Mar & May; LTM: pg, r (Greenwich Albery theatre file) 30 May BCL: pg; TR, 697 4 June SheffTA: pg, r

20 Feb

16 Feb

1 Apr

Date

At Maddermarket Theatre British Premiere

Cast: Francesca Annis

Notes

Appendices

  315

Tomorrow Was War

Boris Vassiliev

A Month in the Country

Last Summer in Chulimsk

Bill Pryde

t. Patrick Miles

Fathers & Sons

Turgenev

Vampilov

Michael Rudman

a. Brian Friel

Height of Passion

Marina Tsvetaeva

t. Paul Thompson

a. R.D. MacDonald

Anna Karenina

Tolstoy

A.A. Goncharov

Bill Pryde

Francesca Hamilton

Philip Prowse

Anatolii Vasiliev

Cerceau

Director

Viktor Slavkin

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1987

E.F. Kachalaeva

Poppy Mitchell

Poppy Mitchell

Carl Toms

Philip Prowse

Designer

NT, Lyttelton

Nuffield Southampton

Richmond

NT, Lyttelton

Tabard

Glasgow Citizens

Riverside

Theatre LTR, 13

Reference materials

28 Oct

5 Oct

LTR, 1392

P&P, Dec

23 Nov LTR, 1516

P&P, Jan & Apr; STA 11 Nov LTR, 1446; LTM: Tabard theatre file 9 July LTR, 826; P&P, Sep; BTYB

14 Feb

18 July

Date

Poem cycles Labyrinth Productions Cast: Ralph Fiennes; Barbara Jefford; Richard Pasco; Alec McCowen Cambridge Theatre Company Cambridge Theatre Companytouring production Mayakovsky Theatre Co. Moscow

Anatolii Vasiliev and Co., in Russian. LIFT Festival

Notes

316  Appendices

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

Chekhov

Chekhov

Heart of a Dog

Bulgakov

a. Michael Frayn

t. Elisaveta Fen

The Sneeze

The Proposal

Ronald Eyre

John Barton

t. Helen Rappaport

Three Sisters

Vaudeville

Sheffield Crucible Bristol Old Vic

Half Moon, Cambridge

Theatre

Mark Thompson

RSC, TOP

Aldwych

Michael Holt Stephen Joseph, Scarborough Timothy RSC Barbican O’Brien

Tanya McCallin

Michael Blakemore

Alan Ayckbourn

Simon Vincenza Sally Crabb

Kate O’Farrell

Designer

Clare Venables Paul Unwin

Jenny Culank Claudette Bryanston Cross

Director

Frank Dunai

t. Sarah Schechter a. Richard Fredman, Richard Spaul t. Ronald Hingley t. Helen Rappaport a. Trevor Griffiths t. Michael Frayn

Translator/ Adaptor

The Parasol

Uncle Vanya

Play

Author

Year 1988

28 Nov

21 Sep

4 Aug

6 July

RSC: r

LTR, 1061; P&P, Oct; RSC: pg, r; BTC: pg LTR, 1359; P&P, Nov & Dec

BTYB 1989

LTR, 698; P&P, July; BTC: pg

BTC: pg

17 Mar

24 May

SheffTA

LTR, 1561

Collection of short plays Cast: Cheryl Campbell; Timothy West Revival from 1987 (RSC-TOP)

Cast: Brian Cox

Cast: Rachel Kempson; Michael Gambon; Jonathan Pryce; Imelda Staunton

Cambridge Youth Theatre

Reference materials Notes

4 Mar

7 Nov

Date

Appendices

  317

Mrs. Vershinin

After Chekhov After Chekhov

Peter Thomson Declan Donnellan

Richard Joneys

a. Mike Boyd

Nick Dear

a. Rodney Ackland

The Nose

A Family Affair

Too Clever by Half

Ostrovsky

Don Taylor

v. Edward O. Marsh & Jeremy Brooks

The Government Inspector

Lev Dodin

Gogol

Michael Glenny

Designer

Richard Hudson

Nick Ormerod

David Cockayne & Alan Watkins

Alexei PoraiKoshitz

Mike Bradwell Geraldine Pilgrim Nicolas Kent Poppy Mitchell

Director

Stars in the Morning Sky

Play by Helen Cooper a. Mustapha Matura

Translator/ Adaptor

Alexander Galin

Three Sisters (Trinidad Sisters)

Play

Author

Year 1988

Old Vic

Donmar

King’s Head

H.M. Theatre, Aberdeen, UK Tour

LTR, 636; LTM: pg, r (theatre file) LTM: pg, r (theatre file)

LTR, 173; P&P, April

LTR, 1450

Cast: Alex Jennings; Russian adviser: Tania Alexander

Lunchtime presentation Cheek by Jowl Company

Compass Theatre Company

Potemkin Productions World Premiere; Set 1939–1944; Tricycle Theatre Productions Maly Theatre Co. Leningrad

Reference materials Notes

LTR, 552; P&P, July; Sealey Rahmen, 211, 214, 215, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 239, 274 28 June LTR, 868; P&P, Aug; Sealey Rahmen, 154, 211, 213, 215, 216, 220, 224, 239, 273

27 Apr

19 Sep

14 Mar

18 May

9 Feb

Donmar Warehouse and UK tour Riverside

17 Oct

Date

Riverside

Theatre

318  Appendices

Dostoevsky

After Chekhov

The Idiot

a. John Ginman

Devised by Vanessa Redgrave

Mark Thompson

Contact Theatre Manchester

Lyric Hammersmith

Aldwych

6 Apr

7 Mar

1989

12 Oct

14 Sep

14 Sep

13 July

Old Vic

NT-Lyttelton

10 Apr

9 Mar

Date

Strand

Dundee Rep

Theatre

Anthony Ward Royal Exchange Manchester Paul Aldwych and Farnsworth tour: Bristol Old Vic

Monika Nisbet Mark Thompson

Designer

Vanessa Redgrave & David Hargreaves John Ian McNeil Ginman

a. Michael Frayn Ronald Eyre

The Cherry Orchard

The Parasol

The Sneeze: Plays and Stories by Anton Chekhov Chekhov’s Women

Robert Robertson Elijah Moshinsky Tomas Ascher

Director

O.N. Yeffremov a. Frank Dunai Tim Luscombe t. Michael Frayn Sam Mendes

a. Ya Levental

t. Ronald Hingley t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

Translator/ Adaptor

Uncle Vanya

Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard Ivanov

Chekhov

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 1989

LTR, 430

LTR, 276; BTYB, 1990; BTC: pg

LTR, 1448; P&P, Dec 1989 & Jan 1990 Programme

LTR, 1252; P&P, Nov LTR, 1280

LTR, 441; BTYB, 1990 LTR, 966

STA

Reference materials

Cast: Rowan Atkinson

Cast: Judi Dench; Ronald Pickup

Katona Jozsef Theatre, Budapest Moscow Art Theatre

Notes

Appendices

  319

Threshold

The Suicide

The Infant

Alexei Dudarev

Erdman

Denis Fonvizin

Gogol

Translation: brief descriptive synopses of each scene

The Government Inspector

t. Stephen Mulrine

t. A. de Vreeze a. Michael MacKenzie a. Andrew McKinnon

The Government Inspector

Director

Gabor Zsambeki

Robert Robertson

Sam Walters

Katie Mitchell Jenny Killick

t. Nina Froud Valery a. Derek Mahon Raevsky t. Peter Tegel Matthew Warchus t. Joshua Giles Croft Cooper

Translator/ Adaptor

We the Undersigned

Stars in the Morning Sky Alexander Gelman A Man with Connections

Galin

Play

Author

Year 1989

RSC at Almeida

Gate

Bloomsbury

Lyric, Belfast

Theatre

Neil Murray

Tom Piper

Old Vic

Dundee Rep

Orange Tree, Richmond

Dermot Hayes Royal Court

Boris Gerlovan James Merifield Camilla Bates

Designer

11 July

17 Aug

17 Nov

10 Jan

22 Oct

3 Jan

18 Sep

7 Apr

Date

Originally Edinburgh Fringe: Traverse Theatre 4/8/1988

National Youth Theatre of GB Presented by Four Corners & Gate Theatre Co.

Notes

Scots version LTM: r (Dundee Rep theatre file); BTYB LTR, 964 Katona Josef Theatre, Budapest; in Hungarian

LTR, 89

LTR, 30

Theatricalia

LTR, 8; BTYB

LTR, 1257

LTR, 430

Reference materials

320  Appendices

Summerfolk

Cinzano

Gorky

Liudmila Petrushevskaya

Turgenev

Yuri Shschekochikin

Mikhail Shatrov

t. Lore Bruner & Tilda Swinton

a. Botho Strauss Peter Stein t. Michael Robinson

Translator/ Adaptor

A Month in the a. John Country Harrison

Peace of Brest Litovsk Lavoushka

Alexander Pushkin Mozart & Salieri

Play

Author

Year 1989

Manfred Karge

Valery Firsov

Paul Farnsworth

Designer

7 Apr

10 July

19 May

Date

4 May

Lyric 16 Feb Hammersmith Sheffield Crucible 20 July

Almeida

Almeida

Chichester Festival Studio

Theatre

A.V. Borodin Benedikton A.A. Nekrasova John Simon Higlett Leeds Playhouse Harrison

Manfred Karge

Roman Kozak

Sam Mendes

Director

LTR, 596

P&P, Sep

LTR, 201

LTR, 421

LTR, 960

LTR, 655; BTYB

Reference materials

Moscow Central Children’s Theatre

In Russian by Studio Celavek, Moscow With theatres in Berlin & Vienna

Notes

Appendices

  321

The Sneeze

Uncle Vanya

a. Michael Frayn

Bob Crowley

Adrian Noble

Three Sisters

Russ Barson

Stephen MacDonald

a. Stephen MacDonald a. Frank McGuinness t. Rose Cullen

Uncle Vanya

Michael Spencer

Andrew Manley

Liz Fjelle

Neil Chapman

William Dudley

a. David Mamet

The Anniversary

Chekhov

G. Ratallack

Roger Michell

Eduard Kochergin

Designer

Uncle Vanya

Ivan Vasilevich

Bulgakov

a. Christopher Hampton, t. Michael Glenny, Harold Shukman t. Lucy Daniels

Lev Dodin

Director

Anthony Clark

Marya

Babel

Translator/Adaptor

t. Michael Frayn

Brothers and Sisters

Abramov

The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 1990

2 Apr 21 May 28 May 13 Sep Winchester Theatre Royal; Cambridge Arts; Wolverhampton Grand; Salisbury Playhouse Taunton Brewhouse and Epsom Playhouse Salisbury Playhouse

10 May 31 May 12 June

28 Mar 19 July

13 March

22 Feb

15 Feb

7 Feb

19 July

29 March

26 July

Date

Gate, Dublin Royal Court

Gateway, Chester

Harrogate

Battersea Arts Centre Northcott Theatre Studio, Exeter Birmingham Rep.

The Old ViC

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Theatre

P&P, May

P&P June & July; TR, 970, 1656; BTC: pg P&P, Apr

TR, 268; P&P Mar TR, 404

TR, 270

Northcott; script

TR, 966

pg

LTR, 986

Referencematerials

Cusack family

Presented with Endless Theatre Ltd.

In Russian, Maly Drama Theatre, Leningrad Russian Consultants: Tania Alexander, Orlando Figes

Notes

322  Appendices

a. J. Verma a. Trevor Griffiths from film by Aleksandr Adabashyan & Nikita Mikhalkov a. Patrick Dineen

The Proposal Piano [based on Platonov]

Gogol M. Rubelcava

Beni Montresor

J. Verma

Choreographer: Flemming Flindt; conductor Dwight Oltman, members of Scottish Philharmonic Orchestra

a. J. Verma

Additional orchestration after Shostakovich, Irwin Kostal;

The Government Inspector The Government Inspector The Overcoat

The Overcoat (ballet) Music :Shostakovich

Patrick Dineen

Ann Hubbard A. Martin Davis

Gorgi Meskhishvili

Robert Sturua

Murali Menon Howard Davies

Tim Reed

Paul Unwin

a. Christopher Hampton t. Nina Froud a. Nikolas Simmonds t. Helen Molchanoff

Uncle Vanya

Three Sisters

Johan Engels

Terry Hands

t. Michael Frayn

The Seagull

Designer

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Dostoevsky The Double

After Chekhov

Author

Year 1990

20 Mar

Library Theatre, 1 May Manchester Hawthorne, 26 July Crawley Edinburgh Festival 28 Aug

19 April

13 Dec 8 Aug

11 Dec

8 Nov

31 Oct

Date

Liverpool Playhouse Studio BAC

King’s Head NT, Cottesloe

Queen’s

Bristol Old Vic

RSC-Swan

Theatre

r. all 2/9/9: Sunday Telegraph; Oberver; Sunday Times

P&P, July

P&P, May

TR, 397

TR, 1656; P&P, Dec 1990, Jan & Feb 1991 TR, 1681 TR, 1041

RSC: pg, r; P&P, Mar 1991; TR, 1548 P&P, Dec 1990 & Jan 1991

Referencematerials

Rudolf Nureyev with Cleveland San Jose Ballet

Tara Arts Group

Cast: Redgrave family

Cast: Timothy West

Notes

Appendices

  323

Trifonov

Ostrovsky

Exchange

A Family Affair

A Family Affair

a. and t. Michael Frayn

a. Nick Dear

Vassa Zheleznova t. Cathy Porter Barbarians a. Jeremy Brooks & t. Kitty Hunter-Blair

Gorky

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1990

Patrick Sandford

Robert J. Carson

Katie Mitchell David Jones

Director

Tanya McCallin

Marjoke Henrichs

P. Ruthven Hall Tazeena Firth

Designer

Contact Theatre, Manchester Vaudeville Theatre, London, co production with Nuffield Theatre, Southampton

Royal Lyceum Edinburgh

Gate RSC, Barbican

Theatre

19 February Performed, 16 Nov 1989

1 June

16 Nov 31 July

Date

P&P, June 1990; STA; Sealey Rahmen, 215, 274 Sealey Rahmen, 214, 274 Vaudeville website; TR, 256

TR, 1542 RSC: pg, r; P&P, Oct

Referencematerials

Cast: Martin Jarvis

British Première Cast: Barbara Jefford; Peter Egan

Notes

324  Appendices

Distant Point

Black Snow

Afinogenev

Bulgakov

Chekhov

Brothers & Sisters

Fyodor Abramov

The Seagull

The Cherry Orchard

The Seagull

Black Snow

Play

Author

Year 1991

Paul Tomlinson

Lev Dodin

Director

t. Susan Hamnet a. Jeremy Brooks a. Mike Alfreds Sean Cavanagh

Paul Dart

Mike Alfreds

Johan Engels

Theatre Clwyd, Mold; Theatre Royal Bath Lilian BaylisSadlers Wells

RSC Newcastle RSC Barbican

Old Orange Tree

Clare Stent

Annie Smart

Greenwich Studio NT, Cottesloe

Lyric Hammersmith

Theatre

Andrew Hunt

Designer

Toby Robertson

t. M. Glenny William Gaskill a. Brian Wright & K. Dewhurst t. M. Glenny Peter Leslie a. Brian Wild Wright & K. Dewhirst t. Michael Frayn Terry Hands

t. C. Porter

a. Lev Dodin

Translator/ Adaptor

23 Apr

13 May

25 Feb 11 July

15 May

25 Apr

4 June

18 July

Date

TR, 501

TR, 482; P&P, July

TR, 838; P&P, Mar & July

TR, 587

TR, 513; P&P, June

TR, 703

TR, 909

Oxford Stage Co. Touring Production

Transfer of 1990 production in Swan Theatre Theatre Clwyd Co.

One Man Show

Maly Drama Theatre, Leningrad, in Russian; LIFT 91

Reference materials Notes

Appendices

  325

The Idiot

Dostoevsky

a. Gerard McLarnon

t. Helen Rappaport a. Trevor Griffiths

The Cherry Orchard

Gregory Hersov

Peter Shepherd

Harris/ Fieldhouse Johan Engels

Kathy Strachan

t. Michael Frayn J. MacDonald

The Seagull

The Suicide

David Knapman Lucy Weller

t. Michael Frayn H. MacDonald

Pip Broughton

Lis Evans

Kenny Miller

t. Michael Frayn Rob Swain

Peter Egan & Kenneth Branagh

a. Pam Gems

Uncle Vanya

Designer

The Cherry Orchard Three Sisters

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Erdman

Chekhov

Author

Year 1991

Sheffield Crucible Royal Exchange Manchester

New Victoria Stoke-on-Trent Ipswich Wolsey, Sheffield Crucible Nottingham Playhouse

Sheffield Lyceum Lyric Hammersmith

Theatre

18 Apr

12 June

1 Nov

10 Oct

2 Oct

11 Sep

8 July 12 Aug

Date

TR, 482

TR, 1379; Nottsarchives, DDNP 2/2/1/51; ph, DDNP 2/2/87/641/111

SheffTA: pg, r

P&P, Oct; TR, 1008; BTYB, 1992

Youth Theatre

Renaissance Theatre Co. Cast: Peter Egan; Richard Briers

Reference materials Notes

326  Appendices

Reality & Dreams

Too Clever by Half

Mozart & Salieri

Olga Kuchkina

Ostrovsky

Pushkin

Gogol

Gogol

a. Ceri Sherlock

Sally Crabb

Designer

John Horwood

Mark Brickman

Ceri Sherlock

Richard Aylwin

Christopher Woods

Vicki Mortimer

Matthew Francis Lez Brotherston

Susan Hogg

Director

a Thomas Crane Graham Spicer & t. Margarita Latsinova Mark Zakharov

Stars in the t. Cathy Porter Morning & Michael Sky Glenny The a. Ronald Eyre Government t. Michal Inspector Schonberg The Government Inspector The Diary of a Madman & The Gamblers The Overcoat

Galin

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1991

Watermans Arts

22 Apr

Aug

23 May

3 Sep

BAC

Offstage Downstairs [Chalk Farm] Empire Theatre, Edinburgh

28 Nov

5 Sep

18 Apr

13 May

Date

Duke’s Head

Sheffield Crucible

Greenwich

Orange Tree, Richmond

Theatre

TR, 1084

Tottering Bipeds Theatre Co. Clean Sweep TR, 640 Theatre Productions Lenkom Sealey Rahmen, Theatre 215, 226, 273 Company, Moscow. In Russian TR, 477; Actors LTM: pg, r, po Touring (Watermans theaCo. tre file)

TR, 1489

SheffTA: pg, r

P&P, May; TR, 472

P&P, July; TR, 586

Reference materials Notes

Appendices

  327

Shooting Ducks

Vampilov

t. Peter Tegel

Philip Hedley

Garry Hynes

Paul Stebbings

t. Igor Glikin a. P. Smith & Paul Stebbings a. John McGaherne

The Dragon

The Power of Darkness

Irina Brown

t. Cathy Porter

Pip Broughton

a. Christopher Webber

Tatyana

Dear Elena

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Tolstoy*

Liudmila Razumo­ vskaya Schwartz

Author

Year 1991

Watermans Arts

Gate

Nottingham Playhouse

Theatre

Jenny Tiramani

Edinburgh Theatre Royal, Stratford East

Frank Conway Abbey Theatre, Dublin

John Chownde

Geraldine Pilgri

Designer

23 Aug 5 Sep

16 Oct

29 Jan

24 Jan

31 Jan

Date

TR, 992 TR, 1072

Not reviewed in TR because of Eire

P&P, Mar; Nottsarchives, DDNP2/2/1283, ph, 2/2/8/650 /1-10 TR, 92

*This production was not given on a British stage, but is referred to in the book

Cf. opera “Eugene Onegin”

Reference materials Notes

328  Appendices

A Family Affair Anna Karenina

Ostrovsky

a. Helen Edmundson

a. Kevin Elyot t. Helen Rappaport

Artists & Admirers

Ostrovsky

Tolstoy

t. Stephen Walshe

The Gamblers

Alexander Wit’s End Griboedov

Gogol

Anthony Ward

Laura Hopkins

RSC, Barbican Pit

New End

Martin Everyman Houghton Cheltenham Nancy Meckler Lucy Weller Tricycle and tour into 1992

Phillida Lloyd

Jake Lushington

10 Mar

13 Oct

18 Sep

7 Sep

P&P, May & July; TR, 620

8 May

The Seagull

P&P Mar; TR, 305; STA

6 Mar

TR, 034, 1218, 1316, 1398; P&P, Nov; Sealey Rahmen, 214, 271 Sealey Rahmen, 214, 274 TR, 289; P&P, Mar & Apr; LTM: Tricycle Theatre file

TR, 1043; P&P, Sep & Oct; LTM: ph (Tricycle theatre file) TR, 1121

TR, 226, 245; P&P, Apr

a. Stuart Hugh Hodgart Gregory Royal Lyceum Paterson Smith Edinburgh t. Alla Parkhomenko a. Jeremy Toby Paul Theatr Clwyd Brooks Robertson Edwards t. Susanna Hamnett a. Chris Hannan Dalia Ibel Oleg Tricycle Hauptaite Sheintsis*

S. Brimson Lewis

Uncle Vanya

Seam Mathias

Shared Experience Co.

The Angel Theatre Company. New prose translation

*Graduate of Moscow Art Theatre

Cast: Dorothy Tutin

Cast: Ian McKellen, Antony Sher

Reference materials Notes

25 Feb

Date

NT, Cottesloe

Theatre

a. Pam Gems

Designer

Uncle Vanya

Director

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1992

Appendices

  329

Chekhov

Chekhov

Bulgakov

The Sneeze

Rothschild’s Violin Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard The Seagull

The Author’s Voice Uncle Vanya

Freely adapted by Dawn Lintern t. a. Michael Frayn

t. Michael Frayn

t. Alla Parkhomenko a. Stuart Paterson t. Michael Frayn

Michael Frayn

t. Roz McKenzie, a. Kate Raper & Suzy Willson Heart of a Dog a. Robert Astle, Agnes Limbos t. Mirra Ginsburg Flight t. Michael Glenny

Petersburg

Andrei Bely

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1993

Mikhail Bychkov Dawn Lintern

Graham Watkins Paul Shelley

Dawn Lintern

1 Sep

8 Sep

Date

Dundee Rep.

14 Oct

2 Dec

New Grove Euston Road Two-Way Mirror London, NW1

9 Oct

Before June 6 Sep

25 Feb

Lyric 12 Oct Hammersmith Studio Copper, SE1 9 Feb

BAC, Studio

St. Paul’s, W6

Theatre

Colin Wilnslow Redgrave, Farnham Anne Orange Tree, Gruenberg Richmond Watermans Arts

Hamish Glen Tristan AntoineEvans-Tovey

Nick Darcey

Wendy Tomlinson

David GrahamYoung Ned Seago

Agnes Limbos

Susan Grange Bennett & Alan B. Dougtall Didier Caffonnette

Designer

Kate Raper

Director

TR, 1165

TR, 979; P&P, Sep TR, 1205

P&P, June & July

STA

TR, 136

TR, 1166

TR, 969

TR, 987

Reference materials

Voronezh Theatre Presented by TheatrePod

Contemporary Stage Co.

Also at Edinburgh Fringe

Devised by the Anton Piller Company

Notes

330  Appendices

The Government Inspector Chatsky

Gogol

Ludmila Petrush­ evskaya

Ostrovsky

Daniil Kharms

Alexander Griboyedov

t. Anthony Burgess

Play by Gerard McLarnon

Translator/ Adaptor

Charmsburg Adaptation of stories by Kharms A Family Affair A Family a. Nick Dear Affair Wolves & Sheep t. David Magarshack a. Nick Dear Cinzano and Stephen Mulrine Smirnova’s Birthday

Brothers Karamazov Gogol’s Coat with Rothschild’s Violin (above) and Charmsburg (below)

Dostoevsky

Gogol

Play

Author

Year 1993 Designer

Liz Ash & Tim Welton

Julian Parkin

Aletta Ritchie

Hen & Chickens, London Arts Threshold

Tabard

Gillian King

Watermans Arts

Almeida

Almeida Clare McCormack Roy Bell

Tim Hatley

Harrogate

Royal Exchange Manchester Watermans Arts

Theatre

Julian Grant

Ted Kejiser

Jonathan Kent

A. Manley

Braham Simon Higlett Murray Vadim Mikheenko

Director

10 Aug

7 Oct

6 Oct

12 Oct

16 Mar

16 Sep

5 Oct

4 Feb

Date

TR, 906

TR, 1130

Sealey Rahmen, 214, 274 TR, 1126

TR, 1205

TR, 295

TR, 1205

TR, 157

Reference materials

The Kings Players Sighing Furnace Theatre Company

Cast: Colin Firth as Chatsky Voronezh Theatre Company

Russian Theatre Season: Terra Mobile, St. Petersburg Presented by Perpetual Motion Theatre

Notes

Appendices

  331

Brothers and Sisters

Katerina

The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

Abramov

Andreyev

Chekhov

Chekhov

House

Abramov

Eileen Diss

Valeri Leventhal [Bolshoi Theatre]

Misha Mokelev [Moscow Art Theatre]

t. Tania Alexander Anthony a. Julian Mitchell Hopkins

The Cherry Orchard

Uncle Vanya

Simon Higlett

John Gunter

Laurence Maskell Eduard Kochergin

Bruce Gallup

Eduard Kochergin, Inna Gabai

Eduard Kochergin, Inna Gabai

Designer

Lisa Forrell

Alexi Campbell John Caird

Lev Dodin, Vladimir Toumanov

Justin Joseph

Sydnee Blake

Lev Dodin

Lev Dodin

Director

t. Michael H. Heim t. Michael Frayn

a. Pam Gems

Michael Frayn

a. Sergei Bekhterev, Lev Dodin, Arkady Katsman t. Jeremy Clyne

a. Lev Dodin

Translator/ Adaptor

Three Sisters

The Proposal The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 1994

New Theatre

Minerva Studio, Chichester Leicester Haymarket Liverpool Playhouse

Lyric Hammersmith Citizens, Glasgow RSC, TOP NT, Olivier

Lyric Hammersmith Studio Doc-Camden

Citizens’ Glasgow

Citizens

Theatre

22 Nov

13 Sep 4 Oct

12 Aug

9 Jan 7 July

14 Apr 29 Apr

25 Jan*

6 Sep

7 May

3 May

Date

TR, 1158

P&P, June & Aug; TR, 855 P&P, Oct

TR, 1084; P&P, Aug (advert) TR, 82; P&P, Jan TR, 455; P&P, Sep & Oct

STA

STA

Reference materials

Co. production Liverpool Playhouse and Leicester Haymarket Theatr Clwyd Co.

Cast: Judy Dench, Bill Nighy

Open Door Theatre Company Maly Drama Theatre Company, St. Petersburg, Season in Russian

Damned Poets Theatre Company

Maly Drama Theatre Co., St. Petersburg, Season in Russian Maly Drama Theatre Co. Season in Russian

Notes

332  Appendices

Play

Out of a House Walked a Man

A Month in the Country

Kharms

Turgenev

Musical scenes from the writings of Kharms a. Jozef Houben; Simon McBurney; Mark Wheatley t. Richard Freeborn

a. K. Segger

The a. Marie Jones Government Inspector

Gogol

The Nose

Stars in the Morning Sky

Philip Engleheart

Robert Ballagh

Alexei Porai-Koshits

Jessica Apanyol

Eduard Kochergin

David Roger

Designer

Bill Bryden

Hayden Griffin

Simon McBurney Tim Hatley

Andrea Brooks

Pam Brighton

Lev Dodin

Sergei Osipian

a. Chaika theatre company

White Nights

Galin

Lev Dodin

a. Lev Dodin

The Devils

Director Jonathan Holloway

Translator/ Adaptor

a. Jonathan Holloway

Dostoevsky Crime & Punishment

Author

Year 1994

Albery

Attic, Wimbledon; Old Red Lion NT, Lyttelton

Tramway and Forum Theatre, Manchester and Nottingham Playhouse Tricycle

New End

Tramway, Glasgow

BAC

Theatre

29 Mar

1 Dec

27 Jan 8 March

1 Feb

4 May 22 Apr 26 May

26 May

14 May

27 Apr

Date

TR, 369; P&P, Apr

TR, 144; P&P, Feb; LTM: r (Tricycle theatre file) TR, 57; P&P, March TR, 1495–8

STA

TR, 652

STA

TR, 513; P&P, Mar

Reference materials

Cast: John Hurt; Helen Mirren

Devised by Théâtre de Complicité Original score by Gerard McBurney

Dubblejoint Theatre Co.

Maly Drama Theatre Co., Season in Russian.

London Premiere Red Shift Theatre Co. Maly Drama Theatre Co.; season in Russian

Notes

Appendices

  333

Chekhov

Chekhov

a. Frank McGuiness

Three Sisters a. Harry Meacher

The Proposal

The Cherry t. Ted Braun Orchard a. Peter Gill Three Sisters t. Stephen Mulrine

Uncle Vanya The Seagull

The Promise t. Ariadne Nicolaeff The Sneeze t. and a. Michael Frayn The Sisters a. A. [Three Sadowski Sisters] The Seagull a. Nikolas Simmonds

Arbuzov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1995

Harry Meacher

Max Stafford Clark

Adrian Noble

Robert Sturua

Peter Gill

Katarzyna Deszcz

Michael Gordon Tim Carroll

Director

Theatre

Judi Bowker

Pentameters

Battersea Arts Centre (2) Northcott Theatre, Studio, Exeter Sophia Old Bull Arts Lovell-Smith Centre; Young Vic Studio Hull New; Marlowe Canterbury; & West End Hayden Tricycle Griffin Georgi Alexi- Yvonne Arnaud, Meskhishvili Guildford and tour Richard RSC,Swan Hudson & tour into 1996 Julian Bristol Theatre McGowan Royal and tour into 1996; Lyric, Hammersmith Watermans Arts

Liz Cooke

Designer

TR, 264

Northcott script

TR, 190

Reference materials

TR, 1577

16 Nov

Nov/Dec P&P, 1995. P&P, Jan 1996

4 Sep 7 May 1996

TR, 915; P&P, Aug TR, 1307; P&P, Sep; TR, 593 (1996)

TR, 451; P&P, May TR, 564

28 June

24 Apr

10 Apr

Feb 1995 P&P, Apr

17 Feb 1 Mar

1 Feb

16 Feb

Date

St. Petersburg Theatre of Comedy Part of season of plays from RFSFR

Out of Joint Co. & Royal Court

Theatre Royal Plymouth touring production

Field Day Theatre Co.

Notes

334  Appendices

Play

Tolstoy

Pushkin

Gogol

a. Jon Pope

Translator/ Adaptor

Martin Duncan

Henk Schut

Jon Pope

Director

The Feast Suzy Willson During the Plague Anna a. Helen Giles Croft Karenina Edmundson

2000 [based Devised by on The Alison Gambler] Edgar & the Co. The Nose a. Alistair Beaton

Dostoevsky The Double

Author

Year 1995 Theatre

Lucy Hall

Sarah Blenkinsop

Tim Hatley

Palace, Watford

BAC2

Nottingham Playhouse

Citizens Stalls Glasgow Katherine Lara Union Chapel [London]

Jon Pope

Designer

10 Oct

2 June

25 Mar

19 July

29 Mar

Date

TR, 1461

TR, 362; P&P, Apr & May TR, 695

TR, 439; STA TR, 950

Reference materials

Toured: British Theatre Festival— Bucharest 1995 The Clod Ensemble

Shaker Productions— first seen at the Hawthorn, Crawley

Touring production

Notes

Appendices

  335

Morphine

“Big Juicy Farces”: The Bear/The Proposal/A Tragic Role/ Smoking Is Bad for You The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya

Bulgakov

Chekhov

t. Ted Braun a. Peter Gill a. Mike Poulton

a. Victor Sobchak t. Ronald Hingley

Translator/ Adaptor

Uncle Vanya

a. Howard Barker Gogol The a. Adrian Government Mitchell Inspector The a. Michael Government Bogdanov Inspector Nikolai The Oginski t. Peter Tegel Kolyada Polonaise

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 1996

Richard Hudson Hayden Griffin

Designer

Date

Claire Lyth

Helen Evans Gate

Pat Kiernan

TR, 302

Reference materials

TR, 1512 BTC: pg TR, 890, 1179; P&P, July, Aug & Sep

28 Feb

TR, 265

TR, 376

TR, 243

19 June TR, 798

10 Oct 21Nov 9 July 5 Aug 20 Sep

25 June TR, 801

Quarry, West 15 Feb Yorkshire Playhouse Theatre Clwyd, 19 Mar Mold

RSC, Swan; Albery Chichester Minerva; Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford; Albery Almeida

Grace

Courtyard, N.1 7 Mar

Theatre

Michael Bogdanov

Howard Robin Don Barker Phelim Julain McDermott Crouch

Bill Bryden

Adrian Noble

Victor Sobchak Tim Connolly

Director

The Wrestling School, touring production

Cast: Derek Jacobi

See 1995

Abandon Theatre Co.

Notes

336  Appendices

t. Helen Nancy Bunnie Edmundson Meckler & Christie Polly Teale a. Mike Gale Edwards Peter J. Poulton Davison t. Constance Garnett

Fortune’s Fool

Turgenev

Nichola Fitchett

Designer

War and Peace

Julian Crouch

Gillian King

Director

Tolstoy

Translator/ Adaptor

t. Nick Dear

Play

Ostrovsky The Art of Success A Family Affair

Author

Year 1996 Date

Reference materials

Chichester Festival Theatre 27 Aug

TR, 1131

Man in the 15 May TR, 615 Moon Emlyn Williams Sealey Rahmen, 228n, Studio, 274 Theatre Clwyd, Mold NT, Cottesloe 25 June TR, 807

Theatre

Shared Experience Company

King’s Players

Notes

Appendices

  337

Tim Georgia Marchant Lindsay Tom John Gunter Stoppard Lucy Pitman Wallace Janet Suzman Anthony Clark

t. Roger Ringrose a. Tim Marchant t. Joanna Wright a. Tom Stoppard

Michael Frayn

a. Roger Martin a. Janet Suzman a. Nicholas Saunders t. Frank Dwyer

Ivanov

The Duel

Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard The Wood Demon

Chekhov

The Lighthouse [Based on Three Sisters] The Seagull t.Stephen Mulrine

The Seagull

Jonathan Kent

t. Michael Glenny a. Alexander Chervinsky a. David Hare t. Alex Wilbraham

S. Unwin

9 May

Old Vic

Donmar

Playhouse, Northumb­ erland Avenue Wimbledon Studio

Joel Froomkin

P. Howard

Birmingham Rep.

Johan Engel

TR, 686

TR, 587; P&P, June & July TR, 610

P&P, Dec 1996; P&P, Jan & May 1997; TR, 192 TR, 586

TR, 1478

TR, 1169

Reference materials

14 Aug

TR, 1007; P&P, Aug & Sep

18 June TR, 779; P&P, Aug & Sep 16 July TR, 920

27 May

20 May

8 May

18 Feb

13 Nov

10 Sep

Date

Lyric Studio

Almeida

White Bear

Old Red Lion

Theatre

Kerry Bradley Southwark Playhouse

Tobias Hoheisel

Dalla Ibel- Jason hauptalte Southgate Jane Clarke Amelia Pimlott

Heart of a Dog

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff

Bulgakov

Designer

The Promise

Director

Arbuzov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1997

English Theatre Co.; Cast: Cheryl Campbell

Bateau Ivre Theatre Co.

Three Legged Company

News from Verona Theatre Co. Peter Hall Co.

Cast: Ralph Fiennes

Audra & Rebus Productions

Notes

338  Appendices

Alexei Lavochkin-5 Shipenko Tolstoy The Power of Darkness

Play by Stephen Erica Sharkey, based on Whyman the novel t. Iain Heggie, Irina Irina Brown Brown t. Anthony Clark Sean Holmes Bunny Christie Nicky Shaw

Hannah Marshall

Rob Howell

Jonathan Kent

Play by Michael Pennington t Alex Wilbraham a. John Byrne

Anna Fairweather John Gunter

Harry Meacher Peter Hall

a. Harry Meacher

The Seagull

Designer

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Anton Chekhov Gogol The Government Inspector The Government Inspector Goncharov Oblomov

Author

Year 1997

2 May 11 Apr

Tron, Glasgow Orange Tree

8 Apr

6 Mar

Salisbury Playhouse Pleasance

17 Dec

18 Aug

1 Oct

Date

Almeida

Old Vic

Pentameters

Theatre

TR, 445

TR, 571

TR, 418

P&P, Feb

TR, 1631

TR, 1282; P&P, Dec TR, 1011

Reference materials

Only Human Theatre Co.; Edinburgh Fringe 1996

Pilgrim Theatre Co.

Notes

Appendices

  339

Old World

Flight

Arbuzov

Bulgakov

The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

Lev Dodin

a. Rodney Ackland

Dostoevsky Crime & Punishment

a. M. Poulton a. Tom Stoppard

a. Mike Alfreds

t. Ariadne Nicolaeff a. Ron Hutchinson a. Xavier Leret

Translator/ Adaptor

Dostoevsky The Possessed

Three Sisters The Seagull

The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov

The Kaos Master and Margarita

Play

Author

Year 1998

Phil Willmott

Lev Dodin

Bill Bryden Jude Kelly

Rimus Tuminas

Mike Alfreds

Xavier Leret

Howard Davies

Richard Digby

Director

Warehouse Croydon

Haymarket, Basingstoke NT, Olivier

Theatre

Birmingham Rep. Courtyard, West Yorkshire Playhouse Barbican

Tamasin Rhymes Finborough

Eduard Kochergin

Hayden Griffin Robert Innes Hopkins

Peter McKintosh Northcott Theatre, Exeter, in association with Method and Madness Co. Rita Derby Playhouse Daunoravciene

Judith Aitken

Tim Hatley

Elroy Allimore

Designer

4 Sep

27 June

3 Nov 9 Nov

12 May

22 Jan

9 Sep

12 Feb

22 Jan

Date

TR, 1150

TR, 828

TR, 1469 TR, 1546

TR, 100; Northcott: pg; press ph TR, 658

TR, 1222

TR, 167

TR, 92

Reference materials

Maly Theatre Co., St. Petersburg; in Russian The Steam Industry, as part of Discipline Season

Cast: Ian McKellen

Vilnius Small Theatre; in Lithuanian

Kaos Theatre Co., previously at Edinburgh Fringe 1998

Notes

340  Appendices

Venedikt Erofeev (also Yerofeev)

A Month in the a. Brian Friel Michael Tom Piper Country from a literal Attenborough trans. by Christopher Heaney (première The Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1992) Moscow Stations

Nancy Meckler

Lucy Weller

Robin Don

Turgenev

a. Helen Edmundson

Hettie MacDonald

Anna Karenina

a. Frank McGuinness

Tolstoy

Designer

The Storm

Director

Ostrovsky

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1998

17 Nov

Date

Aberdeen Arts Centre

RSC, Swan, and tour: Barbican, The Pit

9 Nov

15 Dec 4 May 1999

Lyric Hammersmith 15 Sep

Almeida

Theatre

TR, 1558

TR, 1700; TR, 569 [1999]

TR, 1529; Sealey Rahmen, 217, 224n, 276 TR, 1211

Reference materials

Confederate Theatre Company

Revival of Shared Experience Co. Production Toured into 1999

Notes

Appendices

  341

John Keates

Sonia Fraser

a. John Keates

a. John Mortimer t. Emily Mortimer a. Eileen Thalenberg & Alan Richardson a. Joe Spence t. Ivan Mazur a. Eric Bentley

The Cherry Orchard (version 2.0)

The Cherry Orchard The Suicide

The Gamblers

The Diary of a Madman Vassa

Erdman

Gogol

Gorky

The Forest

Eugene Onegin

Ostrovsky

Pushkin

Summerfolk

a. Katherine Bailey Chubb

a. a. Howard Davies t. Tania Alexander & Tim Suter b.a. Nick Dear c. t. Vera Liber a. Alan Ayckbourn t. Vera Liber

Dominic Dromgoole Lev Dodin

a. Samuel Adamson

Three Sisters

Platonov

David Hunt

M. Poulton

Chekhov

Susannah York

Ignacy Gatell & Andrew Lock & Alex Martin-Verdenoz

William Dudley

Christopher Oram

Trevor Nunn Anthony Page

Rob Howell

Richard Ward [Lighting]

Jemma Green Howard Davies

Ruth Paton

Richard Evans

Adrian Rees

White Bear

NT, Lyttelton

NT, London

Albery

Finborough

BAC

Theatre Royal, York Tabard

Oval House

Barbican

Alexey Porai Koshits

Ti Green

Mercury, Colchester Whitehall

Old Red Lion

Theatre

David Knapman

Designer

Charlie Wood

Marc Brenner

Patrick Lynch

Zoyka’s Apartment Uncle Vanya

Director

Bulgakov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 1999

TR, 1394

TR, 801

TR, 752

TR, 681

TR, 455

TR, 269

Reference materials

29 Oct

28 Jan

3 Sep

20 Jan

TR, 97; Sealey Rahmen, 217, 219, 241, 273 TR, 1437

TR, 64; LTM: Albery theatre file TR, 1078

13 July TR, 905

LTM: Tabard Theatre file 11 Mar TR, 303

8 Mar

11 Oct

23 June

27 May 9 June

8 Apr

25 Feb

Date

A Star Danced Theatre Co.

New Action Theatre Co. Cast: Sheila Hancock

Strut & Fret Theatre Co.

Maly Theatre Co., St. Petersburg; in Russian Fecund Theatre Co.; paired with a version of Jarry’s Ubu roi

Oxford Stage Co.

Empire Studio Productions

Notes

342  Appendices

The Nose

Gogol

t. Lyubov Shtilianova

t. a. Stephen Mulrine

Stephen Unwin

t.Stephen Mulrine a. David Lan t. Helen Rappaport

A Man with Connections

Janet Suzman, Martin L. Platt

t. Tania Alexander a. Janet Suzman

The Free State: A South African response to The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard The Cherry Orchard

Gelman

Tony Cownie

a. Liz Lockhead

Three Sisters

Pamela Howard Maria Bjornson

Johan Engles

Vicki Mortimer Geoff Rose

Designer

devised by STAMPEDE

Srgyn Stenquist

Steven James Little James Gwynne

Trevor Nunn

Adrian Noble

a. Peter Gill

The Seagull

Director

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2000

Malvern; Greenwich NT, Cottesloe; transferred to NT Olivier Minerva, Chichester/ with Theatre Informer Etcetera

RSC, Swan; Barbican Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh Theatre Royal, Bath

Theatre

11 Jan

Cast: Janet Suzman; different version of her 1997 production

Notes

English Theatre TR, 583; Co. TR, 831 TR, 1224 TR, 145 [2001]

TR, 290

TR, 156; TR, 539 TR, 177; STA

Reference materials

TR, 12

2000 (revived TR, 40 (2001) Finborough, (Finborough Jan 2001) revival)

28 Apr 27 June 21 Sep 13 Feb 2001

8 Mar and tour

1 Feb 25 Apr 11 Feb

Date

Appendices

  343

Ostrovsky

Author

Year 2000

A Family Affair Artists & Admirers or Just an Actress

t. & a. Anna Baron

Veronica Wigg

Hamish Glen David Wigg

Crispin Bonham Carter Mark Lesse

Crispin Bonham Carter

The Gamblers

Maya Petroya

Nina Dmitrova, Vassil Vassilev Zuek, Svetlozar Gagov

a. Nina Dmitrova, Vassil Vassilev Zuek, Svetlozar Gagov a. Crispin Bonham Carter a. Nick Dear

The Overcoat

Designer

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Etcetera Theatre

Camden People’s Theatre Dundee Rep.

Barbican Pit

Theatre

3 May

9 Feb

3 Oct

22 June

Date

TR, 183; STA TR, 563

TR, 1283

TR, 812

Reference materials

The Company of Ten Theatre Company

New Action Theatre Co.

Credo Theatre Bulgaria; in Bulgarian; BITE 2000

Notes

344  Appendices

Pushkin

a. Brecht t. Steve Trafford

The Mother

Boris Godunov

a. Brian Friel

Translator/ Adaptor

Three Sisters

Play

Director

Designer

Theatre

Declan Donnellan

Annie Castledine

Nick Ormerod

Martin Johns

Riverside

BAC

Loveday Ingram Colin Chichester Falconer Uncle Vanya t. Michael Frayn Greg Hersov Robert Jones Royal Exchange Manchester Platonov a. David Hare Jonathan Kent Paul Brown Almeida at King’s Cross The Seagull a. Tom Stoppard Rimas Tuminas Adomas Dundee Rep Jakovskis Dostoevsky The Idiot a. Henry Henry Baranowski Riverside 3 Baranowski Baranowski Gogol The a. Adrian Christopher Malcolm Rose & Crown Government Mitchell Chilton Chilton Inspector Marriage Gerald Gritzko Shaw Gorky Summerfolk Radio 3

Chekhov

Author

Year 2001

TR, 1199 TR, 1379 TR, 542 TR, 693

TR, 965

11 Sep 10 Oct 26 Apr 24 May

20 July

12 June

4 Apr

TR, 1229

10 Sep

Notes

No further info; have taped version TR, 430, 585 Touring co-production, Visiting Moon Theatre, and Theatre by the Lake Keswick TR, 878 Co-presented by Anton Chekhov Festival/Brighton Festival/Festival D’Avignon; Russian actors, in Russian

TR, 1103

Reference materials

26 Aug

Date

Appendices

  345

a. Brian Friel

Uncle Vanya David Farr

Bruce Jamieson Patrick Sandford Graham McLaren Gerry Mulgrew Katie Mitchell Sam Mendes

a. Steven Wasson & Steven Corinne Soum Wasson & Corinne Soum

Play by David Farr

a. David Harrower

The Cherry Orchard Ivanov

a. Tom Leonard

Uncle Vanya

Dostoevsky Crime & Punishment in Dalston Gogol The Government Inspector

Chekhov

t. Ronald Hingley

Iain Halkett

Bunny Christie Lottie Fenby Margarete Forsyth

Designer

Glasgow Citizens Greenwich Playhouse Nuffield, Southampton Royal Lyceum Edinburgh Tron Glasgow

Pilton & Tour

Tricycle Union S.E.1 Orange Tree, Richmond

Theatre

Matthew Britten [Lighting]

Angela Simpson

Anthony Ward

Pleasance

Arcola

Donmar

Vicki Mortimer NT, Cottesloe

Kai Fischer [Lighting] Laura Hopkins

Simon Higlett

Alex Marker

Philip Prowse Philip Prowse

Peter Clerke

a. Nick Dear Nicolas Kent t. Ariadne Nicolaeff Phillip Brean t. Carol Rocamora Sam Walters

Translator/Adaptor Director

Three Sisters

The Bear & The Proposal The Cherry Orchard Three Sisters

The Promise The Promise Three Sisters

Arbuzov

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 2002 Reference materials

TR, 295

TR, 244

TR, 1214, 1321, 1391 TR, 16

TR, 1210

TR, 888

27 Mar TR, 391

3 Jan

17 Sep

19 June 16 Sep

22 May TR, 736

16 Mar TR, 501

14 Mar TR, 335

8 Mar

11 Feb

18 Feb TR, 197 20 Mar TR, 356 8 Feb TR, 146

Date

Theatre de l’Ange Fou

Associated Co. of Angels

Benchtours

Associated production Theatre Royal Bath

Galleon Theatre Co.

Triple Point In repertoire with Reza de Wet, Three Sisters Two Edinburgh Benchtours

Notes

346  Appendices

Steps to Siberia: The Coalfield and Soldiers Letters

Based on the novel by S. Solokov; Simultaneous translation by Antonia Dzotsenidze Simultaneous t. Sasha Dugdale

School for Fools

No author credited

t. Sasha Dugdale

Plasticine

Vasily Sigarev Sasha Sokolov

a. Nick Dear

A Family Affair

Ostrovsky

Konstantin Goldaev Elena Kaloujskikh

Dominic Cooke Andrew Moguchy

Peter Rowe

Translator/Adaptor Director

Play

Author

Year 2002 Theatre

Denis Solntsev [Lighting]

Ian McNeil

Royal Court Upstairs

Royal Court Upstairs Barbican

Reference materials

6 Mar

TR, 264

12 Nov TR, 1512

TR, 1318; Sealey Rahmen, 227, 275 15 Mar TR, 343

Date

Richard Foxton Wolsey, Ipswich 24 Sep

Designer

International Playwrights Season: Theatre Lozhe; and Babii (Chelyabinsk)

Formalny Theatre, St. Petersburg

Notes

Appendices

  347

Vassily Sigarev

Black Milk

t. Sasha Dugdale

a. Samuel Adamson Chekhov a. Phyllis Nagy t. Helen Molchanoff The Seagull t. Peter Stein based on Constance Garnett Three Sisters a. Nicholas Wright t. Helen Rappaport Gorky Barbarians a. Jeremy Brooks & t. Kitty Hunter-Blair & M. Weller Presnyakov Playing the t. Sasha Dugdale Brothers Victim

The Cherry Orchard The Seagull

Theatre

Nicolai Hart Hansen

Richard Wilson

Delia Peel

Norman Surman

Joanna Reid

Simon Usher

Vicki Mortimer

Katie Mitchell

Traverse, Edinburgh Royal Court Upstairs Royal Court Upstairs

Salisbury Playhouse

NT, Lyttelton

Ferdinand King’s Edinburgh Wogerbaue

Peter Stein

Chichester Festival

Royal Exchange, Manchester Robin Don Playhouse, Northumberland Avenue Michael Vale Mercury, Colchester Rachel Blues Riverside

Liz Ashcroft

Designer

Dominic Dromgoole Stephen Alison Pimlott Chitty

David Hunt

Michael Blakemore

Three Sisters a. Christopher Hampton t. Vera Liber Three Sisters t. Mike Poulton

Director Greg Hersov

The Seagull

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

t. Michael Frayn

Play

Author

Year 2003

TR, 671

TR, 1025

TR, 1071

TR, 1048

TR, 753

TR, 775

TR, 424, 519

TR, 366

Reference materials

4 Feb

TR, 125

*13 Aug TR, 1110 2 Sep TR, 1183, 1365

13 May

12 Aug

11 Aug

7 Aug

12 June

9 June

3 Apr

12 Mar

Date

Focus Russia Season

*Edinburgh Festival: “Told by an Idiot”, Theatre Co.

Direction, design & technical by Theatre of Riga, Latvia at Edinburgh Festival; British cast

Oxford Stage Co.

Ambassador Theatre Group

Notes

348  Appendices

The Mandate

The Government t. John Byrne Inspector The Government t. Stephen Mulrine Inspector The Overcoat Created by Morris Panych & Wendy Gorling Bedbug: The a. Snoo Wilson Musical

Erdman

Gogol

Ladybird

Maxim Isaev, White Cabin Pavel Semchenko

Sigarev

Slava Polunin Slava’s Snow Show

Mayakovsky

Chekhov

Mime performance created by Isaev and Semchenko

t. Sasha Dugdale

New play based on Uncle Vanya by John Byrne a. Declan Donnellan

Isaev and Semchenko

Created by Slava Polunin Ramin Gray

Jason Brown

Theatre

Geoff Rose

Hackney Empire

NT, Shell Connections

Vadim Gololobov [Lighting]

Purcell Room

14 Jan

8 Mar

29 Jan

13 July

20 Jan

Barbican

Lizzie Clachan Royal Court Upstairs

Stefan Gabrysch

3 June

24 June

26 Oct

17 Apr

23 Aug

29 July

8 July

Date

Union S.E.1

Pitlochry

Nick Ormerod NT, Cottesloe

Greenwich Playhouse Chichester Festival Theatre Laura Hopkins Lyric Hammersmith John Byrne Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Prav Menon– Johannson Alison Chitty

Designer

Ben de Wynter Steve Miller [Lighting] Morris Panych Ken MacDonald

Declan Donellan Tony Cownie

John Hoggarth Mark Thomson

a. David Rudkin

a. Edward Kemp

Blanche McIntyre Steven Pimlott

Director

a. Blanche McIntyre

The Master & Margarita The Master & Margarita The Master & Margarita Uncle Varick

Bulgakov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2004

Left Handed Theatre Co.

Notes

TR, 105

TR, 297

TR, 152

TR, 921

TR, 103

TR, 776

TR, 999

TR, 1397

International Playwrights Season Akhe Company at London International Mime Festival

Youth Theatre Festival; Queen Elizabeth School, Cumbria

Canadian Stage Co.

TR, 1050 National Youth Theatre TR, 516

TR, 1057

TR, 895

Reference materials

Appendices

  349

Gogol

Gogol

Dostoevsky

a. Tom Stoppard

The Seagull

New play by David Farr, based on The Government Inspector The Government a. Alastair Beaton Inspector

Designer

Bruce Jamieson Robert Bowman

David Hunt

Martin Duncan

David Farr

Colchester, Mercury Rosemary Branch

Barbican

Bristol Tobacco Factory, and tour

Old Red Lion, Sputnik Theatre

Theatre

Jon Morrell

Ti Green

Chichester Festival Theatre

NT, Olivier

Rachel Greenwich Playhouse Baynton Anthony Bristol Old Vic Macllwaine Union, SE1 Vicki Old Abbatoir Cowan(Dreamthinkspeak Ostersen Co.)

Sara Perks

Norah Jennifer BirkstedGreeves Breen Andrew Hilton Vicki CowanOstersen Lev Dodin David Borovsky

Director

a. Elizabeth Egloff a. Dreamthinkspeak Tristan Sharps

t. Elizaveta Fen

The Seagull

The Devils Underground, based on Crime and Punishment The UN Inspector

a. Mike Poulton

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

a. Nicholas Wright t. Helen Rappaport

t. Norah Birksted-Breen

Translator/Adaptor

The Seagull The Bear

Russian National Mail Three Sisters

Oleg Bogaev

Chekhov

Play

Author

Year 2005

30 June

16 June

21 Apr 10 Oct

8 Nov

11 Aug

6 June 11 Aug

24 May (and tour)

29 Mar

25 Aug

Date

TR, 884

TR, 816

TR 518 TR, 1358

TR, 1534

TR, 1053

TR, 824 TR, 1064

TR, 749

TR, 7, 454

TR, 1069, 1138

Reference materials

Yellow Chair Productions

Maly Drama Theatre, St. Petersburg; in Russian

Notes

350  Appendices

Muriel Romanes

Anna Karenina

Tolstoy

a. John Clifford

Caroline Lynch

t. Stephen Mulrine

Wolves and Sheep

Ostrovsky

Rachel Vowles

a. Adrian Mitchell

The Government Inspector

Devised by Isaev and Semchenko

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Isaev & Mister Carmen Semchenko

Author

Year 2005

Francis O’Connor

Sheree Tams

Alexandra Marchant; Mike Reddaway; Dominic Jeffery

Designer

Edinburgh, Royal Lyceum

ICA, Akhe Theatre Co., St. Petersburg; with Neuchatel International Marionette Festival Pleasance Theatre, London

Northcott Theatre, Exeter, the Northcott Community Company

Theatre

19 Mar

16 Sep

18 Jan

3 June

Date

Sealey Rahmen, 228n, 276; TR, 1191 TR, 393

TR, 94

Northcott: pg, po (Show file)

Reference materials

Escapade Theatre Co.

Russian Co.

Notes

Appendices

  351

t. Michael Antonia Frayn Doggett a. Marie Hélène Peter Brook Estienne

The Proposal

Kate Wild

Katie Mitchell

t. Marcin Krystian Lupa Wierzchowski

a. Martin Crimp t. David Lan

Three Sisters

Dostoevsky The Grand Inquisitor

Chekhov

The Cherry Orchard

The Seagull

Jeremy Bond

Chris Perkin

The Night before the Trial

Three Sisters

Chekhov

Ariadne Nicolaeff a. Mustapha Matura

Director

Dmitri Devdariani

The Promise

Arbuzov

Translator/ Adaptor

Uncle Vanya

Play

Author

Year 2006

Birmingham Rep.

Tabard

Theatre

The Pit, by Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, pres by Millbrook Productions

Lion and Unicorn, by Act Provocateur International John Halle The Sound by the Sound and Fury Theatre Company Vicki Mortimer Lyttelton, NT Company Naomi Dawson Southwark Playhouse, pieces of work (sic) Theatre Company Krystian Lupa Kings Edinburgh, Edinburgh International Festival, by American Repertory Theater Charlotte Lane Etcetera

Nika Khitrova

Designer

TR, 510

TR, 510

TR, 277

TR, 1490

Reference materials

21 Feb

28 Nov

29 Aug

13 July

TR, 195

TR, 1437

TR, 1076

TR, 818

27 June TR, 763

2 May

25 Apr

28 Feb

19 Dec

Date

In ‘A Shot of Genius’ with Pirandello and Orton shorts

With Nottingham Playhouse & New Wolsey, Ipswich

Notes

352  Appendices

Play

Translator/ Adaptor

Notes from Underground

Play by Eric Bogosian, inspired by Dostoevsky Gorky Enemies a. David Hare, literal trans. by Charlotte Pyke Goncharov Oblomov’s Dream a. Julia Britton from episode in Goncharov’s Oblomov Abdullah White White Black In Uzbek and Kadyri Stork (new play) Russian, with English surtitles Ostrovsky A Family Affair t. Nick Dear

Author

Year 2006 Designer

Steve Denton

Shukhrat Abdumalikov

Naomi Wilkinson

Robert Chuter

Mark Weill

Serdar Bilis

Michael Simon Higlett Attenborough

Adrian Osmond Jon Bausor

Director

Arcola

The Pit, Barbican

Jermyn Street, Fly-on -the-Wall Theatre Company/Fat Kid Pictures

Trafalgar Studio2, pres. by Neil Laidlaw for NML productions Almeida

Theatre

15 Dec

6 June

7 July

11 May

12 Oct

Date

TR, 1491

TR, 675

TR, 813

TR, 565

TR, 1227

Reference materials

Colour pic in Times, 11/07/06

Colour pic. on back cover

Notes

Appendices

  353

a. Brian Friel; Afterplay inspired by Uncle Vanya &Three Sisters a. Linnie Linnie Reedman, from Reedman story, ‘The Grasshopper’

The Bear Afterplay

Chekhov

a. Pam Gems; t. Tania Alexander a. Bryony Lavery

The Cherry Orchard Uncle Vanya

Poprygunya

Platonov

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

Jonathan Miller Rachel Kavanagh Jenny Lee

Alexey Porai-Koshits

Lev Dodin

Wilton’s Music Hall

Royal Court

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Aurora Nova

Theatre

No creditfor decor Paul Green (Lighting); Joe Evans (Music/MD)

Ruari Murchison Laura Lee

20 Mar 28 Mar 6 Apr

12 Mar

26 Jan

25 Jan

21 Aug

Date

Greenwich Playhouse, 10 Honest Hands May Theatre Company

Edinburgh Traverse, Attic Theatre Company

Birmingham Rep.

Barbican by Maly Drama Theatre, St. Petersburg Isabella Bywater Sheffield Crucible

Charlie Cridlan

Hugh Fraser

Hildegard Bechtler

Ian Rickson

The Seagull

No credits

Designer

No credits

Devised piece for blackSKYwhite [Russian Company] a. Christopher Hampton; literal t. by Vera Lieber a. David Mamet; literal t. Vlada Chernomordik a. Lev Dodin, in Russian

Astronomy for Insects

Director

Dmitry Aryupin, Marshella Soltan Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2007 Notes

TR, 586

TR, 416

TR, 411

TR, 346

TR, 298

TR, 70

TR, 64

In Russian

TR, 1219 Live Art/Physical Theatre

Reference materials

354  Appendices

Gorky

The Lower Depths

Stars in the Morning Sky Diary of Madman

Galin

Gogol

Notes from Underground

Dostoevsky

t. Michael Glenny, Cathy Porter a. Jonathan Heron and Christopher Tesler a. Phil Willmott Phil Willmott

Jonathan Heron

Aoife Smyth

Nicky Bunch

Nomi Everall

Robyn Wilson

Ellie Halls

Christopher Oram

Johan Engels

Christopher Oram

Trevor Nunn

Terry Hands

Nick Ormerod

Designer

Declan Donellan

Director

a. Trevor Nunn Trevor Nunn with the company a. Buzz Goodbody Christopher Haydon

a. Mike Poulton

The Cherry Orchard The Seagull

The Seagull

Collaboration between Cheek by Jowl/ Chekhov International Theatre Festival a. Trevor Nunn with the company

Three Sisters

Chekhov

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2007

31 May

15 May

Date

TR, 643

TR, 583

Reference materials

Rosemary Branch, Fail Better Productions Finborough, The Steam Industry

Arcola, by Displaced Theatre and Strawberry Vale Productions Unicorn, SE1

New London

17 May

29 Aug

Tours to London, Nov, New London Theatre (see below). Pic back cover TR

In Russian Pic back cover of TR

Notes

TR, 14

TR, 558

TR, 999

Script published

TR, 1429 RSC on tour (see above)

15 Feb TR, 184

17 Jan

27 Nov

Mold, Theatre Cymru 16 Oct TR, 1277

Courtyard, Stratford-on- Avon

Barbican

Theatre

Appendices

  355

Natalia Vorozhbit

Khomenko Family Chronicles

t. Sasha Dugdale

Boris Ravil Petrushansky Baygeldinov (Special Effects) Joe Hill Ultz Gibbins

No credits

No Credits

Bunny Christie

Vadim Tallerov

Howard Davies

a. Andrew Upton

Philistines

Designer

Patrick Sandford

Director

Translator/ Adaptor

Play

Tchaikovsky and a. John Clifford, the Queen Of from story Spades by Pushkin, ‘The Queen of Spades’ Tbilisi The Battle of No credits Marionettes, Stalingrad Tbilisi Georgia Teatr The Family Written and preLicedei, St. [Semianyki] sented by Teatr Petersburg Licedei

Pushkin

Author

Year 2007

10 May

30 May

Date

Royal Court Upstairs

Hackney Empire

5 Dec

24 July

Edinburgh Festival 21 Fringe Aurora Nova Aug

Lyttelton, NT, The National Theatre Company Nuffield, Southampton

Theatre Script published. Pic back cover of TR

Notes

TR, 1467

TR, 879

Clown troupe

TR, 1219 Puppet show with script in Russian

TR, 602

TR, 635

Reference materials

356  Appendices

Ivanov

new a. Tom Stoppard

Chris Goode

new a. Chris Goode Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov t. Michael Frayn

Alexander Markov

Sarah Frankcom Michael Grandage

John Durnin

t. a. Michael Frayn

Wild Honey (Platonov) …Sisters

Three Sisters

Philip Franks

a. Mike Poulton

Lindsay Posner

Peter Hall Ben Crocker

Director

The Cherry Orchard

Dostoevsky Netochka a. Alexander Markov Nezvanova— Nameless Nobody

Chekhov

Chekhov

[after] Chekhov

Uncle Vanya t. Stephen Mulrine The Notebook a. Tennessee Williams of Trigorin (The Seagull) Three Sisters on a. Diane Samuels and Hope Street Tracy-Ann Oberman

Chekhov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2008

The Rose, Kingston Exeter Northcott

Theatre 25 Jan 19 Feb

Date

Alexander Markov

Christopher Oram

Liz Ascroft

Naomi Dawson

Gate, co-production with Headlong Theatre Manchester Royal Exchange Wyndhams, Donmar Warehouse Production New End

17 Jan

17 Sep

15 Sep

11 June

Hampstead, 26 Feb Co-production with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse Leslie Travers Chichester Festival 23 May Theatre; pres. in association with Duncan Weldon Adrian Rees Pitlochry Festival 10 June

Ruari Murchison

Alison Chitty Kit Surrey

Designer

TR, 50

TR, 1040

TR, 1063

TR, 684

TR, 705

TR, 634

TR, 220

TR, 67 TR, 199

Reference materials

A ‘free adaptation’ from The Seagull Billed as ‘a new play’ after Anton Chekhov

Notes

Appendices

  357

Play

War and Peace a. Helen Edmundson

Tolstoy

[in Russian]

Boris Godunov

a. Katie Mitchell and the Company (National Theatre), from The Idiot, from t. by David Magarshack, and the poems of Emily Dickinson t. Michael Glenny & Cathy Porter t. Sasha Dugdale

Translator/Adaptor

Pushkin

Stars in the Morning Sky Presnyakov Terrorism Brothers

Galin

Dostoevsky …Some Trace of Her

Author

Year 2008

Nancy Meckler; Polly Teale

Declan Donellon

Peter McAllister Martin Berry

Katie Mitchell

Director

Angela Simpson

Nick Ormerod

Yasuko Hasegawa No credit

Vicki Mortimer

Designer

Riverside (‘Jagged Fence’) Greenwich Playhouse, ‘Kadmes Theatre’, in assoc. with Red Jelly Barbican ‘Cheek by Jowl’, with Russian actors Hampstead ‘Shared Experience’

Cottesloe

Theatre

14 Apr

TR, 415

TR, 554

TR, 734

26 June

13 May

TR, 913

TR, 908

Reference materials

30 July

30 July

Date

Revival of 2006 production in Russian Touring production

Inspired by Dostoevsky and Emily Dickinson, based on theatre and film. Pic facing p. 919

Notes

358  Appendices

Chekhov

Uncle Vanya t. Stephen Mulrine

New play by Sam Holcroft, inspired by the play by Anton Chekhov a. Brian Friel from Chekhov’s story, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’.

Andrew Hilton

Patrick Mason

Vladimir Bouchier Natalie Abrahami

a. Stuart Paterson

The Cherry Orchard Vanya

The Yalta Game

Christopher Woods

Peter Hall

No credit

Swansong

Harriet de Winter

Liz Ascroft

Neil Warrington Tom Scutt

Anthony Ward

Chekhov

t. Michael Glenny

new a. Tom Stoppard Sam Mendes

Designer

Molière, or The League of Hypocrites The Cherry Orchard

Director

Bulgakov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2009

King’s Theatre, Edinburgh; The Gate Theatre, Dublin. Edinburgh International Festival Bristol Old Vic, Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory Co.

The Gate

Bath Theatre Royal, Peter Hall Co. Dundee Rep

Old Vic, The Bridge Project; in rep with The Winter’s Tale

Finborough

Theatre

3 Nov

29 Aug

2 Sep

1 Sep

13 July

9 June

26 Nov

Date

TR, 1182

TR, 1421

TR, 917

TR, 949

TR, 789

TR, 647

TR, 1296

Reference materials

Performed with Afterplay, Friel’s play derived from Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya

The Bridge Project: Bank of America, Old Vic, Brooklyn Academy of Music & Neal Street Productions Curtain raiser to The Browning Version

Notes

Appendices

  359

Natura Morte

The Drunks

The Overcoat

Derevo/Ache/ Conflux (troupes)

Durnenkov Brothers (Mikhail & Vyacheslav)

Gogol

Nikita Burnt by the Mikhalkov Sun & Rustam Ibragimbekov (film makers) Tolstoy The Kreutzer Sonata Vorozhbit The Grain Store

Play

Author

Year 2009

Chloe Lamford Tom Piper

Natalie Abrahami Michael Boyd

new a. Nancy Harris from Tolstoy’s novella t. Sasha Dugdale

Vicki Mortimer

Ti Green

Tom Piper

Designer

Howard Davies

Amit Lahav

Anthony Nielson

Anton Adasinsky (Derevo)

Director

a. Peter Flannery (from the film)

a. by Gecko

Collectively devised promenade piece by the two Russian companies, and Conflux (resident at the Arches) t. Sasha Dugdale

Translator/Adaptor

Courtyard, Stratfordupon-Avon (RSC)

The Gate

Lyric Hammersmith; pres. by Gecko with Theatre Royal, Plymouth Lyttelton, National Theatre Company

Courtyard, Stratfordupon-Avon (RSC)

Glasgow Arches

Theatre

24 Sep

10 Nov

3 Mar

23 Mar

24 Sep

10 Nov

Date

TR, 1062

TR, 1208

TR, 220

TR, 300

TR, 1062

TR, 1240

Reference materials

Part of festival as above for The Drunks

2 Pics on back cover of Th.R.

Part of festival: ‘Revolutions: an exploration of a new generation of post-Soviet theatre’

Part of a street arts and circus initiative

Notes

360  Appendices

A Jubilee for Chekhov: to celebrate 150 yr anniversary of Chekhov’s birth Three Sisters a. Christopher Hampton; literal t. Vera Lieber

Chekhov

Phil Willmott

Bruce Jamieson

Tony Cownie Philip Saville

a. Tennessee Williams ‘loosely based on The Seagull’

t. Elisaveta Fen

new a. John Byrne

Play by Brian Friel, based on Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters

The Cherry Orchard

The Cherry Orchard Afterplay

Michael Pennington, organiser and host with Rosamund Bartlett Sean Holmes (Filter)

Howard Davies

Director

The Notebook of Trigorin

new a. Andrew Upton; literal t. Charlotte Pike

The White Guard

Bulgakov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2010

Lyric, Hammersmith, pres. by Filter Theatre Co. Finborough; pres. by The Steam Industry and Neil McPherson Greenwich Playhouse, Galleon Theatre Co. Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh Pushkin House

Jon Bausor

Michael Taylor Tony Meyer

Kim Alwyn, Aimee SajjanServaes Sara Gianfrate

Lyttelton (National Theatre) Hampstead

Theatre

Bunny Christie

Designer

TR, 366

TR, 354

TR, 59

TR, 32

TR, 297

Reference materials

29 June

TR, 725

17 Apr TR, 448

1 Apr

1 Apr

25 Jan

18 Jan

23 Mar

Date

By arrangement with The University of the South, Tennessee

A nightly celebration of performances and talks (18–23 Jan)

Notes

Appendices

  361

Reference materials

The Double

The Government Inspector The Bespoke Overcoat

A Month in the Country

Gogol

Turgenev

Gerry Mulgrew

Kate McGregor

Play by Wolf Ninon Jerome Mankowitz based on Gogol’s short story The Overcoat a. Brian Friel, ‘after Jonathan Kent Turgenev’; literal t. Christopher Heaney

a. Adrian Mitchell

a. Carol Rocamora from two short stories: ‘Romance with a Double Base’ and ‘The two Volodyas’ a. Kate McGregor

Paul Brown

Helen Atherton

Jessica Brettle

Chichester Festival Theatre

White Bear, Theatre 6 Co. Tron, Glasgow, Communicado Theatre Co. New End

TR, 603

Touring

Notes

30 Sep TR, 1136 Pic. on back cover

24 May

11 TR, 220 Mar 16 Feb TR, 202

Rachel Kavanagh Colin Birmingham Rep. 19 Oct TR, 1199 Richmond Maria Oller Jessica Tron, Glasgow; 28 Oct TR, 1260 Worrall Lung Ha’s Theatre Co.

Date

a. Tom Stoppard

Theatre

The Cherry Orchard Chekhov Shorts

Designer

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Dostoevsky

Author

Year 2010

362  Appendices

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

The Yalta Game

The Cherry Orchard The Seagull

Eugenia Into the Ginzburg Whirlwind

Chekhov

Chekhov

Uncle Vanya

Sovremennik, Theatre Co., Galina Moscow Volchek a. Matthew Parker Matthew (DogOrange Theatre) Parker new v. Helena Kaut-Howson Helena & Jon Strickland KautHowson New v. by Andrew Upton Howard (NT) Davies New v. by Charlotte Joseph Pyke, John Kerr, Joseph Blatchley Blatchley (Runaway Theatre) Brian Friel’s play based on Chris Monks The Lady with the Little Dog New a. as Dear Uncle by Alan Alan Ayckbourn Ayckbourn New play by Blake Morrison: Barrie We Are Three Sisters Rutter combining the Brontes’ life story and Chekhov’s play (Northern Broadsides) a. Alexander Getman from Galina Ginzburg’s memoir Volchek

The Cherry Orchard Ward No 6

Galina Volchek

Sovremennik Theatre Co., Moscow

Three Sisters

Director

Chekhov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2011

Stephen Joseph, Scarborough Halifax Viaduct (touring)

Jan Bee Brown

Mikhail Frenkel

Noel Coward, Vakhtangov Theatre Company

Stephen Joseph, Scarborough

Michael Roberts

Jessica Worrall

Arcola

10 Feb

Camden People’s Theatre Arcola/Belgrade Coventry (co- production) Olivier, NT.

21 Jan

13 Sep

12 July

28 June

14 June

17 May

28 Apr

28 Jan

24 Jan

Date

Noel Coward

Noel Coward

Theatre

Dora Schweitzer

Bunny Christie

Pyotr Kirillov, Vyacheslav Zaitsev Pavel Kaplevich, Pyotr Kirillov Suneeda Maruthiyil Sophie Jump

Designer

TR, 59

TR, 1014

TR, 783

TR, 734

TR, 648

TR, 513

TR, 450

TR, 126

TR, 59

TR, 59

Reference materials

In Russian

In Russian

In Russian

Notes

Appendices

  363

Tolstoy

Slava Polunin Pushkin

[Gorky/ Brecht]

The new v. by David Harrower Government Inspector The Mother new v. by Mark Ravenhill of Brecht’s a. from Gorky’s novel, The Mother Slava’s Revival Snowshow The Queen of new a. by Raymond Spades Blankenhorn (Fusebox Productions) Anna a. Helen Edmundson (Piano Karenina Removal Company) Anna a. by Jo Clifford Karenina War and New v. by Irina Brown Peace (Giffords Circus Theatre (at the circus) Company)

Gogol

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2011

Max Webster Jemima Levick

Max Hoehn

Phil Willmott

Richard Jones

Director

25 May 23 June

Dundee Rep Tackley Village Green (tour)

Alex Lowde

21 Mar

17 Oct

17 Dec

5 Aug

9 June

Date

Arcola

Arcola

Royal Festival Hall

Young Vic, In assoc. with Warwick Arts Centre The Scoop, open air venue, London

Theatre

David Crisp

Valentina Ricci

Charlie Cridian

Miriam Buether

Designer

TR, 730

TR, 604

TR, 303

TR, 1131

TR, 1396

TR, 866

TR, 637, 738

Reference materials Notes

364  Appendices

Lucy Bailey Andrew Hilton

Jeremy Herrin

Benedict Andrews Johannes Schutz

new v. Mike Poulton

t. Stephen Mulrine

v. Michael Frayn

new v. Benedict Andrews

Uncle Vanya

The Cherry Orchard

Uncle Vanya

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

[Uncle Vanya]

Peter Gill

a. Peter Gill, from Chekhov’s novella

A Provincial Life

Chekhov

Mick Gordon

a. Brian Friel

Uncle Vanya

Chekhov

new play Anton’s Uncles, based on Uncle Vanya by Tina Kronis and Richard Alger (Theatre Movement Bazaar) a. Christopher Hampton

new a. by Simon McBurney, Complicité

Vaudeville

Lindsay Posner

Bristol Tobacco Factory Chichester Minerva Theatre Young Vic

Sherman Cymru, Cardiff Print Room

Belfast Lyric

Greenwich (touring)

Christopher Oram

Peter McKintosh

William Dudley Harriet de Winton

Alison Chitty

Igor Vasiljev

Es Devlin

Trafalgar Studios Barbican

Theatre

Tina Kronis

Simon McBurney

Mike Britton

Master and Margarita

new v. by Penelope Skinner Alex Sims

Bulgakov

Designer

The Promise

Director

Arbuzov

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2012

2 Nov

25 Sep

13 Sep

5 Apr

4 Apr

29 Mar

21 Mar Revived, 18 Dec–19 Jan 2013 9 Feb–10 Mar 5 Mar

19 Nov

Date

TR, 1162

TR, 1029

TR, 973

TR, 347

TR, 336, 429 TR, 359

TR, 245

TR, 292 TR, 1321 TR (2013, 65) TR, 134

TR, 1248

Reference materials

Pic. on cover TR (Vanya)

Pic on cover of TR (Masha)

Notes

Appendices

  365

Tolstoy

Pushkin

A Government a. Deborah McAndrew Inspector (Northern Broadsides) Boris Godunov new a. Adrian Mitchell (RSC) Kreutzer a. Nancy Harris, from Sonata Tolstoy’s novella

Gogol

new v. Chris Hannan; t. Julie Curtis

Stars in the Morning Sky

Galin

Natalie Abrahami

Michael Boyd

Conrad Nelson

Hamish Glen

Laurence Boswell

Rimas Tuminas

Russell Bolam

new v. Anya Reiss; literal t. by Ilona Kohanchuk Vakhtangov Theatre Co., Moscow new a. Laurence Boswell

The Seagull

Uncle Vanya

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Dostoevsky The Double

Author

Year 2012 Theatre

Southwark Playhouse Adomas Noel Yatsovkis Coward Ti Green Ustinov Theatre, Bath Libby Watson Belgrade Theatre, Coventry Dawn Allsopp Harrogate (touring) Tom Piper Stratford, The Swan Chloe Lamford The Gate

Jean Chan

Designer

11 Jan

28 Nov

13 Sep

20 Mar

29 Nov

5 Nov

12 Nov

Date

TR, 40

TR, 1278

TR, 1002

TR, 308

TR, 1282

TR, 1191

TR, 1206

Reference materials

In Russian

Notes

366  Appendices

Crime and Punishment Notes from Underground

The Government Inspector

Children of the Sun

Gogol

Gorky

Three Sisters

Sons Without Fathers

Dostoevsky

Chekhov

Three Sisters

Chekhov

The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 2013

Gerry Mulgrew

Dominic Hill Debbie Hannan

Maggie Kinloch

Helena KautHowson

Bunny Christie

Lyttelton (NT)

TR, 37

Reference materials

TR, 323

TR, 814, 876 TR, 926

16 Apr TR, 340

26 Mar

7–28 Sep 11–14 Sep

TR, 620

16 Apr TR, 373, 452

16 Apr TR, 371, 428

9 Jan

Date

Óran Mór, Glasgow 1–6 July

Belgrade, Coventry and Arcola (KP Productions)

Colin Glasgow Citizens Richmond (and touring) Glasgow Citizens Circle Studio (Visiting Company) Jessica Kings, Edinburgh Brettle (touring)

Iona McLeish

Nuffield, Southampton (touring)

Blanche McIntyre

Theatre New Diorama

Laura Hopkins

Designer

Mark Leipacher

Director

new v. by Andrew Howard Upton (NT); literal Davies translation by Clare Barrett

a. by Adrian Mitchell

new a. by Chris Hannan new a. by Debbie Hannan

New a. by Helena Kaut-Howson from Chekhov’s ‘Platonov’ a. Viv Adam (Classic Cuts)

New t. Ranjit Bolt (Faction Theatre Company) New v. by John Donnelly

Translator/Adaptor

Communicado Theatre Co. and Aberystwyth Arts Centre This version also given by Sydney Theatre Co., 2014; directed by Kip Williams

Collaboration between Headlong, Nuffield and Derby Theatres Takes title from Fatherlessnes, play found after Chekhov’s death Three 20-min cameos, telling each of the sisters’ stories

Notes

Appendices

  367

The Old Woman

Larisa and the Merchants (UK première of Without a Dowry [Bespridannitsa]) Too Clever by Half

Kharms

Ostrovsky

a. Rodney Ackland

new v. by Samuel Adamson (Insite Performance)

new a. by Darryl Pinckney from novella by Kharms

Translator/Adaptor

Paul Hunter

Jacqui HonessMartin

Robert Wilson

Director

Solzhenitsyn The Love Girl and the a. Matthew Dunster Matthew Innocent from t. by Nicholas Dunster Bethell (Jagged Fence Prod’ns in assoc. with Big Picnic) Turgenev Fortune’s Fool a. Mike Poulton Lucy Bailey t. Constance Garnett

Ostrovsky

Play

Author

Year 2013

Old Vic

William Dudley

Anna Fleischle

Royal Exchange, Manchester (Told By An Idiot Theatre Co.) Southwark Playhouse

Palace Manchester (Baryshnikov Productions/ Change Performing Arts/ Watermill Center Project) Arcola

Theatre

Laura Hopkins

Signe Beckmann

Robert Wilson

Designer

TR, 671, 729

TR, 440

TR, 669

Reference materials

16 Dec

TR, 1171, & TR (2014) 68, 127

15 Oct TR, 954

15 July

7 May

4–7 July

Date Manchester International Festival, with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Willem Dafoe

Notes

368  Appendices

Chekhov

Chekhov

[Three Sisters]

Chekhov

Judith Croft

Chris Honer

Andrei Konchalovsky

As above As above Michael Eamons Jessica Brettle

Andy Arnold

Russell Bolam

Katie Mitchell

Mossovet State Academic Theatre

As above a. as Uncle Varick by John Byrne (2004)

new a. John Byrne

new a. Anya Reiss

new t. Simon Stephens

Uncle Vanya

Three Sisters [Uncle Vanya]

Three Sisters

Uncle Vanya

The Cherry Orchard

Vicki Mortimer

John Byrne/ Charlotte Lane Janet Bird

Lyubov Skorina

Russell Bolam

Anthony Camble

Fian Andrews

Designer

Alice Robinson

Director

new a. Anya Reiss

‘Storm in a teacup’ a new piece based on Three Sisters devised by Alice Robinson and Hot Coals theatre Ensemble a. Anya Reiss

Translator/Adaptor

Three Sisters

The Seagull

Play

Author

Year 2014 Reference materials

20 Feb TR, 162

Date

St. James (Jagged Fence Productions Ltd.) Young Vic

TR, 1011

As above TR, 450

16 Oct TR, 1043

13 Oct TR, 1034

As above 25 Apr Ekilbride Village 28 Apr Theatre (touring) (Rapture Theatre and Mill Theatre in assoc. with The Tolbooth) Tron, Glasgow 3 Oct

Lowry, Salford (Library 24 Feb TR, 179 Theatre Company) Southwark Playhouse 8 Apr TR, 333 (Jagged Fence Productions and Danielle Tarento) Wyndhams (Belka 24 Apr TR, 419 Productions with Lee Menzies Ltd.)

Park

Theatre

In Russian in repertoire with Three Sisters (see below)

Notes

Appendices

  369

Opus No 7

Slava’s Snowshow

Fathers and Sons

Dimitry Krymov (deviser}

Polunin

Turgenev

Marcus Roche

new a. Marcus Roche

The Night Before the Trial/The Sneeze Dostoevsky Notes from Underground Gogol The Gamblers

Revival of show devised by Slava Polunin a. Brian Friel, ‘after Turgenev’

New piece conceived by Dmitry Krymov for Laboratory Theatre. Text Lev Rubinshtein

Lyndsey Turner

Victor Kramer

Dmitry Krymov

new a. Harry Lloyd/ Gerald Garutti Gerald Garutti new a. Selma Selma Dimitrijevic with Dimitrijevic Michael Durnenkov

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Author

Year 2014

Rob Howell

Victor Plotnikov

Vera Martynova/ Mariia Tregubova

Oliver Townsend

Designer

Reference materials

17 Oct TR, 1113

Date Notes

Donmar Warehouse

Print Room

10 June

8 Oct

TR, 583

TR, 1020 Performed by Harry Lloyd Dundee Rep (Greyscale 23 Oct TR, 1114 All female company. and Dundee Rep Pic. T.R., 1112 Ensemble in assoc. with Northern Stage and Stellar Quines) (touring) In Russian, Brighton Festival; 3 May TR, 602 almost wordBarbican (LIFT 4 June TR, 572 less. First Festival) piece about a group of Jews. Second part titled Shostakovich, includes his music. Pic. T.R., facing 587 Royal Festival Hall 18 Dec TR, 1279

Tron, Glasgow

Theatre

370  Appendices

Play

Gorky

Dostoevsky

The Lower Depths

Ned Bennett

‘from’ the play by Maxim Andy Corelli Gorky

The Crocodile new a. Tom Basden

Gareth Nichols

a. David Hare of Platonov, Ivanov, The Seagull new a. Sam Holcroft, of Uncle Vanya.

Young Chekhov

[Uncle] Vanya

Matthew Dunster Jonathan Kent

new a. Torben Betts

The Seagull

Director

Mark Rosenblatt

Devised piece

Translator/Adaptor

new a. Samuel Adamson

Akhe Mr Carmen Company (St. Petersburg) Chekhov Uncle Vanya

Author

Year 2015

Tom Pye

Jon Bausor

Dick Bird

Designer

Manchester Pavilion, Manchester International Festival/The Invisible Dot Ltd. Edinburgh, Old Lighting Depot, Kings Stable Road. Siege Perilous Theatre Co.

Citizens, Glasgow (studio)

Traverse, Edinburgh for Manipulate, Visual Theatre Festival Quarry, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds Open Air Theatre, Regents Park Festival Theatre, Chichester

Theatre

Reference materials

22 May

14–18 July

3 Nov

17 Oct

24 June

4 Mar

Pic facing p. 233

Notes

TR, 554

Part of the Hidden Door Festival

TR, 1116 4 characters only: Vanya, Sonya, Yelena, Astrov. Pic. facing p. 1106 TR, 726

TR, 1043 Pic. on front cover of TR

TR, 644

TR, 229

30 Jan–7 TR, 132 Feb

Date

Appendices

  371

Anon

Vorozhbit

Turgenev

Anna Karenina A Month in a. Patrick Marber as the Country Three Days in the Country from literal t. by Patrick Miles Take The t. Sasha Dugdale Rubbish Out, Sasha Little a. Arthur Ransome from Daughter Russian tale New play of the Snow by Emma Reeves, The Snow Child, based on above and other Russian tales

Tolstoy

New a. Rimas Tuminas, Vakhtangov State Academic Theatre a. Jo Clifford

Eugene Onegin

Jonathan Scott

None cited

Designer

Wendy Harris

Kate Bruce

Date

Leeds, Carriageworks (tutti frutti/York Theatre Royal) (touring)

Óran Mór, Glasgow

30 Oct

23 Mar

28 July

24 Mar

18 Feb

21 May

Glasgow Citizens, 24–25 for festival Sep Progression 2015, International Celebration of Deaf Arts Óran Mór, Glasgow, 25 May ‘A Play, a Pie and a Pint’

Theatre

Madeleine Soho Theatre Girling/ (Theatre Royal Tom Piper Productions, Bath) Rimas Adomas Barbican, Oksana Tuminas Jacovskis Nemchuk in assoc with ArtsBridge Ellen Joanna Manchester Royal McDougall Scotcher Exchange Patrick Mark Lyttelton, NT Marber Thompson (Sonia Friedman productions)

Michael Boyd

Candice Edmunds

None cited

a. as Unlocked Freedom for Nedoslov (t. Words Are Not For Us), Moscow

Makar Chudra (Short story)

All Thoughts a. Peter Arnott Spoken Aloud from Above The Harvest t. Sasha Dugdale, new play

Director

Translator/Adaptor

Play

Pushkin

Pavel Pryazhko

Yuri Klavdiev

Author

Year 2015 Notes

TR, 1167

TR, 288

TR, 759

TR, 283

TR, 152

In Russian with surtitles

TR, 1003 Second piece called No Right To Have An Angel (No author cited) performed by deaf company In assoc with TR, 556 National Theatre of Scotland and Uni of Edinburgh In Belarusian with TR, 278 surtitles

Reference materials

372  Appendices

Bibliography

Books and Articles Referred to in the Main Text and Appendix Aaltonen, Sirkku, ‘Olga’s Eightsome Reel in Edinburgh: A Case Study of Finnish Drama in English Translation’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 121–135. Babbage, Frances, ‘Heavy Bodies, Fragile Texts: Stage Adaptation and the Problem of Presence’, in Adaptation and Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities, ed. by Rachel Carroll (London and New York: Continuum, 2009), pp. 11–22. Barker, Kathleen, The Theatre Royal Bristol, 1766–1966 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1974). Bartoshevich, A., ‘The “Inevitability” of Chekhov: Anglo-Russian Theatrical Contacts in the 1910s’, in Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 20–28. Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere, Constructing Cultures, Topics in Translation, 11 (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1998). ———, and Harish Trivedi, eds., Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 1999). ———, ‘Engendering Anew: Shakespeare, Gender and Translation’, in Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, ed. by Ton Hoenselaars (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004), pp. 53–67. Beasley, Rebecca, and Philip Ross Bullock, eds., Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7

373

374  Bibliography Beerbohm, Max, Around Theatres (London: Rupert Hart-Davies, 1953). Beresford, Michael, Gogol’s ‘The Government Inspector’, Critical Studies in Russian Literature (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1997). Beumers, Birgit, Yuri Lyubimov at the Taganka Theatre 1964–1994 (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997). Bond, Niall, ‘Interpreting the Objectively “Strange” and the “Strangely Objective”: Hybrid Texts in Social Discourse and in the Social Sciences’, Across Languages and Cultures, 2, 2 (2001), 251–259. Cross, Anthony, Anglo-Russica: Aspects of Cultural Relations Between Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford: Berg Publishers Limited, 1993). Davies, Richard, ed., Leonid Andreyev: Photographs by a Russian Writer, with a foreword by Olga Andreyev Carlisle (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989). Dixon, Ros, ‘From Iconoclast to Traditionalist: A Study of Anatolii Efros’ Productions of Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 2002). ———, ‘Chekhov Bogged Down or Not? Tom Kilroy’s version of The Seagull’ (Paper for Conference of the Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages, University of Ulster, Derry, April 2004) published in Renegotiating and Resisting Nationalism in Twentieth Century Irish Drama, ed. by S. Boltwood (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 2009). ———, ‘O Chekhov, Though Art Translated!’ (Paper for Conference of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literature, Charles University, Prague, July, 2005). ——— with Irina Ruppo Malone, eds., Ibsen and Chekhov on the Irish Stage (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2012). Dobroliubov, Nikolai, ‘Temnoe Tsarstvo’ (Realm of Darkness), Sovremennik, 7 (St. Petersburg, 1859). English version trans. by J. Fineberg in N. A. Dobroliubov, Selected Philosophical Essays (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956), pp. 218–372. Draper, J. W., ‘Shakespeare and Muscovy’, Slavonic and East European Review, 33, 80 (1954), 217–221. Edmundson, Helen, ‘Introduction’ to Her Adaptation, Anna Karenina (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994). Emeljanow, Victor, Chekhov: The Critical Heritage (London, Boston, and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981). Green, Michael, et al., The Cherry Sisters, in The Coarse Acting Show 2 (London: Samuel French, c.1980). Gregory, Serge, Antosha and Levitasha: The Shared Lives of Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2015). Grossman, Vasily, Life and Fate, trans. by Robert Chandler (London: Vintage, 2006).

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Hoenselaars, Ton, ed., Shakespeare and the Language of Translation (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004). Janáček, Leoš, Kát'a Kabanová, compiled by John Tyrell, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Johnston, David, ‘Theatre Pragmatics’, in Stages of Translation, ed. by David Johnston (Bristol: Absolute Classics, 1996), pp. 57–66. Karlinsky, Simon, Russian Drama from Its Beginnings to the Age of Pushkin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). Kobetts Miller, Renata, ‘Nineteenth Century Theatrical Adaptations of Novels: The Paradox of Ephemerality’, in The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. by Thomas Leitch (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 53–70. Leach, Robert ‘Masquerade’ [Lermontov], in ibid., Vsevolod Meyerhold (Directors in Perspective) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 139–151. Leach, Robert, and Victor Borovsky with Andy Davies, eds., A History of Russian Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Lefevere, André, ed. and trans., Translating Literature: The German Tradition from Luther to Rosenzweig (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977). ———, ‘Composing the Other’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999). le Fleming, Stephen, ‘Coping with the Outlandish: The English Response to Chekhov’s Plays’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 54–64. Marsh, Cynthia, ‘Chekhov-Reviewed: The Moscow Art Theatre’s Visits to Britain in 1958, 1964, and 1970’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 113–125. ——— (compiler), File on Gorky (London: Methuen, 1993). ———, ‘Realism in the Russian Theatre 1850–1882’, in A History of Russian Theatre, ed. by Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky with Andy Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 146–165. ———, ‘Gorky and Chekhov: A Dialogue of Text and Performance’, Slavonic and East European Review, 77, 4 (1999), 1–19. ———, ‘Whose Text Is It Anyway? On Translating and Directing Gorky’s Egor Bulychev’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 137–439. ———, Maxim Gorky: Russian Dramatist (Berne and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006). ———, ‘Post-War British Month(s) in the Country’, in Turgenev and Russian Culture: Essays to Honour Richard Peace, ed. by Joe Andrew, Derek Offord, and Robert Reid, Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics, vol. XLIX (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 221–232.

376  Bibliography ———, ‘Vania’s Map’, in When the Elephant Broke Out of the Zoo: A Festschrift for Donald Rayfield, ed. by Andreas Schönle, Olga Makarova, and Jeremy Hicks (Stanford: Stanford Slavic Studies, 2012), pp. 72–86. ———, ‘Three Sisters as a Case Study for “Making Foreign Theater or Making Theater Foreign”’, in Chekhov for the Twenty First Century, ed. by Carol Appollonio and Angela Brintlinger (Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica, 2012), pp. 269–281. ———, ‘Bridging Cultures? John McGahern’s The Power of Darkness’, in Tolstoi 100 Years On, Vol. II, ed. by Joe Andrew and Robert Reid (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers (forthcoming, 2021). Mazour, Anatole, ed. and trans., The First Russian Revolution of 1825 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961). Miles, Patrick, Chekhov on the British Stage, 1909–1987 (Cambridge: Sam&Sam, 1987). ———, Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). ———, ‘Chekhov and the Company Problem in the British Theatre’, in Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 185–193. ——— with Stuart Young, ‘A Selective Chronology of British Professional Productions of Chekhov’s Plays 1901–1991’, in Chekhov on the British Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 237–250. Mitchell, Elizabeth, ‘The Reception of Chekhov in the UK, with Particular Reference to 1997–2001’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Keele, 2003). Monas, Sidney, The Third Section; Police and Society in Russia Under Nicholas I (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961). Mulrine, Stephen, ‘“A Man with Connections”: Adapting Gelman’s “Naedine so Vsemi” for Radio’, in Stages of Translation, ed. by David Johnston (Bristol: Absolute Classics, 1996), pp. 123–130. Nekhoroshev, I. I., Dekorator Khudozhestvennogo teatra Viktor Andreevich Simov (Moskva: Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1984). Nikoliukin, A. N., ‘Dostoevskii in Constance Garnett’s Translation’, in Dostoevskii and Britain, ed. by W. J. Leatherbarrow (Oxford: Berg, 1995), pp. 207–226. Ostrovsky, Arkady, ‘Imperial and Private Theatres 1882–1905’, in A History of Russian Theatre, ed. by Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky with Andy Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 218–253. Ouspensky, P. D., The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (London: Stourton, 1947; republished by London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1983). Pasternak, Boris, Dr Zhivago, trans. by Max Hayward and Manya Harari (London: William Collins and Son Ltd., 1958).

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Pavis, Patrice, ‘Problems of Translation for the Stage: Interculturalism and Post Modern Theatre’, trans. by L. Kruger, in The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture, ed. by H. Scolnicov and P. Holland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 25–44. ———, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (London: Routledge, 1992). Perteghella, Manuela, ‘A Descriptive-Anthropological Model of Theatre Translation’, in Drama Translation and Theatre Practice, ed. by Sabine Coelsch-Foisner and Holger Klein (Frankfurt am Main and Oxford: P. Lang, 2004), pp. 1–23. Pickering, Michael, Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001). Platform Papers. 1. Translation [Ranjit Bolt, Michael Frayn, Christopher Hampton, Steven Pimlott, Jeremy Sams, Timberlake Wertenbaker] (London: Royal National Theatre, 1992). Rayfield, Donald, Anton Chekhov: A Life (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1997, 2000). Schäffner, Christina, and Beverley Adab, ‘The Idea of the Hybrid Text in Translation Revisited’, Across Languages and Cultures, 2, 2 (2001), 277–302. Sealey Rahmen, Kate, Ostrovsky: Reality and Illusion, Birmingham Slavonic Monographs 30 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 1999). ———, The British Reception of Russian Playwright Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky (1823–1886) (Lampeter: Mellen, 2011). Seeley, F. F., Turgenev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Senelick, Laurence, The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of Plays in Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). ———, ‘“For God, for Czar, for Fatherland”: Russians on the British Stage from Napoleon to the Great War’, in Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, ed. by Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 19–34. Shevstova, Maria, Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre (London: Routledge, 2004). Simon, Sherry, ‘Translating and Interlingual Creation in the Contact Zone: Border Writing in Quebec’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 58–74. Smeliansky, Anatoly, The Russian Theatre After Stalin, trans. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Sokolov, Sasha, School for Fools (Ann Arbor: Ardis Books, 1977). Trewin, J. C., and T. Wendy, The Arts Theatre London 1927–1981 (London: Society for Theatre Research, 1986). Venuti, Lawrence, The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

378  Bibliography ———, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008). Verma, Jatinder, ‘The Challenge of Binglish: Analysing Multi-Cultural Productions’, in Analysing Performance, ed. by Patrick Campbell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 193–202. Vieira, Else Ribeiro Pires, ‘Liberating Calibans: Antropofagia and Haroldo de Campos’ Poetics of Transcreation’, in Post-Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 95–113. Warden, Claire, Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels Through Russia (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Warren, Jill K., Acculturating Shakespeare: The Tactics of Translating His Works Under Stalin in the Light of Recent Theoretical Advances in Translation Studies (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, 2015). Williamson, A., and C. Landstone, The Bristol Old Vic—The First Ten Years (London: J. Garnet Miller, c.1957). Young, Stuart, ‘Changes of Direction: Mike Alfreds’ Methods with Chekhov’, in Chekhov on the British Stage, ed. by Patrick Miles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 169–184. ———, ‘A Month in the Country in the British Theatre’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal (1994), 207–227. ———, ‘A Blind Spot: Chekhov’s Deepest Horizons’, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, 21, 2 (Spring 2007), 65–78. ———, ‘Making the “Unstageable” Stageable: English Rewriting of Chekhov’s First Play’, Modern Drama, 52, 2 (2009), 325–350. ———, ‘“Formless”, “Pretentious”, “Hideous and Revolting”: Non-Chekhov Russian and Soviet Drama on the British Stage’, in Russia in Britain, 1880– 1940: From Melodrama to Modernism, ed. by Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 87–112. Zolotnitskii, D. I., Russkie Dramaturgi: Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov- Schedrin (Moscow-Leningrad: Isskustvo, 1951).

Published Drama and Prose Translations, Versions and Adaptations Referred to in the Main Text and Appendix As such, the following is not a complete list of available translations. Arbuzov, Alexei Izbrannoe, 2 vols. (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1981). Selected Plays of Alexei Arbuzov, trans. by Ariadne Nicolaeff (Oxford: Pergamon, 1982).

Bibliography

  379

Babel, Isaac Marya, trans. by Michael Glenny and Harold Shukman in The Golden Age of Soviet Theatre (London: Penguin Books, [1961] 1981). Bulgakov, Mikhail Six Plays, trans. by Michael Glenny, with an introduction by Lesley Milne (London: Methuen, 1991). Contains: The White Guard, Madame Zoyka, Flight, Molière, Adam and Eve and The Last Days [trans. by William Powell and Michael Earley]. Black Snow, adapt. by Brian Wright and K. Dewhirst from Bulgakov’s Novel, trans. by Patrick Miles (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1991). Chekhov, Anton The Seagull, adapt. by Tom Kilroy, for the Royal Court Theatre (London: Eyre Methuen, 1981). Wild Honey, trans. by Michael Frayn (London: Methuen, 1984) [aka Bezottsovschina; Platonov]. Friel Brian, Afterplay, in Three Plays After (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 2002). Afterplay draws on Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters; also includes Friel’s adaptations The Yalta Game (from the story ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’) and The Bear (after Chekhov). Durnenkov, Mikhail & Vyacheslav The Drunks, trans. by Nina Raine [e-book: Dramaonline] (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Erdman, Nikolai The Suicide, trans. by Peter Tegel (New York and London: Samuel French Inc., 1979). Fonvizin, Denis The Infant, in Four Russian Plays, trans. with introduction and notes by Joshua Cooper (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 47–124. The Dramatic Works of D. I. Fonvizin, trans. and intro. by Marvin Kantor (Bern: H. Lang, 1974). Contains: The Brigadier and The Infant. Galin, Alexander Stars in the Morning Sky, in Five New Plays from the Soviet Union, trans. and ed. by Michael Glenny (London: Nick Hern, 1989). Gogol, Nikolai The Government Inspector: A Comedy in Five Acts, ed. by M. Beresford (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996). Gorky, Maxim The Lower Depths, trans. by Alex Szogyi (New York: Samuel French, Inc., 1971).

380  Bibliography The Mother, adapt. by Berthold Brecht, trans. by Steve Gooch (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978). Gorky, Five Plays, trans. by Kitty Hunter Blair and Jeremy Brooks (London and New York: Methuen, 1988). Contains: The Lower Depths, Summerfolk, Children of the Sun, Barbarians, Enemies. Vassa Zheleznova, adapt. and trans. by Tania Alexander and Tim Suter (Oxford: Amber Lane Press, 1988). Summerfolk, adapt. by Nick Dear, trans. by Vera Liber (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). Children of the Sun, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Nick Hern Books, 2000). Gorky Plays: 2, trans. by Cathy Porter (London: Methuen, 2003). Contains The Last Ones, Vassa Zheleznova, The Zykovs, Egor Bulychev. Philistines, adapt. by Andrew Upton, trans. by Charlotte Pyke (London: Faber and Faber, 2007). The Lower Depths, adapt. by Phil Willmott [no translator cited] (London: Oberon Books, 2009). Children of the Sun, adapt. by Andrew Upton, trans. by Clare Barrett (London: Faber and Faber, 2013). Griboedov, Alexander Chatsky, in Four Russian Plays, Chatsky, trans. by Anthony Burgess (Almeida Theatre, 1993). Published as part of the production programme. Gubaryev, Vladimir Sarcophagus, trans. by Michael Glenny (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1987). Mayakovsky, Vladimir The Bedbug (first published by Meridian books in 1960) in The Golden Age of Soviet Theatre (London: Penguin Books [1966] 1981). Ostrovsky, Alexander Ackland, Rodney, Diary of a Scoundrel (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1948; republished London: Samuel French, 1951) [aka Too Clever by Half (after 1988)]. The Forest in Five Plays of Alexander Ostrovsky, trans. and ed. by Eugene K. Bristow (New York: Pegasus, 1969). Thunder, in Four Russian Plays, trans., ed. and intro. by Joshua Cooper (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1972). A Family Affair, trans. by David Budgen, adapt. by Nick Dear (London: Absolute Press, 1989; republished London: Absolute Classics, 1997). Four Plays, trans. Stephen Mulrine (Reading: Oberon Books Limited [Absolute Classics], 1997). Contains: The Storm; Too Clever by Half; Crazy Money; Innocent as Charged.

Bibliography

  381

The Forest, trans. by Vera Liber, adapt. by Alan Ayckbourn (London: Faber and Faber, 1999). Plays Two, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Oberon, 2003, 2016). Contains: The Forest, Artists and Admirers, Wolves and Sheep, Sin and Sorrow. Petrushevskaia, Liudmila Three Girls in Blue, trans. by Liane Aukin and Michael Glenny, in New Soviet Plays, intro. by Michael Glenny (London: Nick Hern Books, 1989). Cinzano, Eleven Plays, trans. and intro. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Nick Hern Books, 1991). Presnyakov, Oleg and Vladimir (brothers and co authors) Playing the Victim, trans. by Sahsa Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2003). Pushkin, Alexander Mozart and Salieri: The Little Tragedies, trans. by Antony Wood (London: Angel [1982], 1987). Boris Godunov, adapt. by Adrian Mitchell, trans. by Alisa M. Voznaya (London: Oberon Books, 2012). Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, adapt. by Tom Murphy, trans. by Patrick Miles (London: Methuen Drama, 2009). Sigarev, Vassily Plasticine, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2002). Black Milk, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2003). Ladybird, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2004). Solzhenitsyn, Alexander The Love-Girl and the Innocent, trans. by Nicholas Bethel and David Burg (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1971). Sukhovo-Kobylin, Alexander The Trilogy of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin, trans. and intro. by Harold B. Segel (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1969). Tolstoy, Lev ‘Kholstomer’ [Strider] ([1863] 1886), trans. by Louise and Aylmer Maude in Leo Tolstoy, Nine Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). War and Peace, adapt. by Erwin Piscator (and others) [Krieg und Frieden] trans. & adapt. by Robert David McDonald (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1963). The Fruits of Enlightenment, trans. by Michael Frayn (London: Methuen, 1979). The Power of Darkness, trans. and adapt. by Anthony Clark (Bath: Absolute Classics, 1989). Anna Karenina, adapt. by Helen Edmundson (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994).

382  Bibliography War and Peace, adapt. by Helen Edmundson (London: Nick Hern Books, 1994). The Kreutzer Sonata, adapt. by Nancy Hughes (London: Oberon Modern Plays, 2009). Turgenev, Ivan Three Plays, trans. by Constance Garnett (London: Cassell and Co., 1934). Contains: A Month in the Country, A Provincial Lady, A Poor Gentleman. A Month in the Country: A Comedy, adapt. by Emlyn Williams (London: Heinemann, 1943). A Month in the Country: A Comedy in Five Acts, trans. and intro. by Isaiah Berlin (London: Hogarth, 1981; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983). Fathers and Sons, A Play by Brian Friel After the Novel by Turgenev (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). A Month in the Country, trans. and ed. Richard Freeborn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Friel, Brian, A Month in the Country: After Turgenev (Loughcrew, Ireland: Gallery Press, 1992). Plays, trans. by Stephen Mulrine (London: Oberon, 1998). Contains: A Month in the Country; Stoney Broke (aka Moneyless); One of the Family (aka The Parasite; or The Poor Gentleman; or Fortune’s Fool); The Bachelor; Lunch at His Excellency’s; A Provincial Lady. Marber, Patrick, Three Days in the Country: After Turgenev (London: Faber and Faber, 2015). Vampilov, Alexander Duck Hunting; Last Summer in Chulimsk, trans. by Patrick Miles (Nottingham: Bramcote, 1994). Vorozhbit, Natalia The Khomenko Family Chronicles, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Oberon Books, 2007). The Grain Store, trans. by Sasha Dugdale (London: Nick Hern, 2009).

Websites “Radio Plays Date Finder” (www.suttonelms.org.uk). Websites relating to database: Birmingham City Library, Local Theatre Collection (libraryofbirmingham.com/ collections). Bristol Theatre Collection, University of Bristol (www.bristol.ac.uk/ theatrecollection). Chichester Festival Theatre On-Line Archive 1962– (www.cft.org.uk/passiton).

Bibliography

  383

London Theatre Museum Collection, ‘The V and A Theatre and Performance Archive’ (www.vam.ac.uk). National Theatre Archive: NT Studio, 83–101 The Cut, London, SE1 8LL (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-the-national-theatre/archive). Northcott Theatre, Exeter. Archive, now in the holdings of the University of Exeter (www.exeter.ac.uk/heritage-collections). Nottinghamshire County Archives (www.nawcat.nottinghamshire.gov.uk). Radio Plays Date Finder (www.suttonelms.org.uk). The Royal Shakespeare Company Archive is held at The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-Upon-Avon (www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/ collections). Sheffield Theatres Archive (www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk). Scottish Theatre Archive, held in the University of Glasgow Special Collections (www.gla.ac.uk/services/specialcollectionsa-z/scottishtheatrearchive/).

Films Referenced in Text Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters, trans. by Moura Budberg, directed by Laurence Olivier for the National Theatre, distributed by Warner Home Video (UK) Limited, Copyright Alan Clore Films, 1970. Stage play based on film Peter Flannery, Burnt by the Sun, after the screenplay by Nikita Mikhalkov and Rustam Ibragimbekov (London: Nick Hern Books, 2009).

Index

A Aaltonen, Sirkku, 12 Abramov, Fedor adaptation/s, 129 Brothers and Sisters, 216, 220, 225, 322, 325, 332 Adaptation studies, 4, 11, 17, 19–21, 35, 38, 43, 53, 68, 69, 75, 77, 90, 91, 95, 96, 100, 101, 111, 132, 146, 150, 167, 168, 176, 183, 185, 196, 217–219, 255, 256 adaptation/s, 2, 4, 34, 59, 63, 90, 102, 104, 136, 147, 181, 188, 215, 216, 219 Afinogenov, Alexander Distant Point, 29, 179, 282 Andreev, Leonid He Who Gets Slapped, 180, 197, 273, 281, 282, 287 Katerina, 180, 332 Life of Man, 197 Arbuzov, Aleksei, 175, 197 Cruel Games, 197 Irkutsk Story, 197

Old World, 175, 300, 303, 340 The Promise, 165, 175, 197, 289, 290, 292, 298, 312, 314, 315, 334, 338, 346, 352, 365 Ayckbourn, Alan, 91, 92, 116, 181, 317, 342, 363 B Babel, Isaac Marya, 32, 322 Bassnett, Susan, 16, 17, 25, 44, 45 Billington, Michael, 43, 55, 57, 61, 64, 69, 100, 101, 166, 170, 222, 231, 236, 243 Boyd, Michael, 46, 60, 183, 263, 309, 360, 366, 372 Bulgakov, Mikhail, 175, 197 Black Snow, 197, 216, 325 Flight, 170, 194, 197 Heart of a Dog, 216, 317, 330, 338 Master and Margarita, 186, 197, 216, 242, 340, 365 Molière or The League of Hypocrites, 186

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 C. Marsh, Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7

385

386  Index The White Guard, 175, 176, 241, 242, 305, 361 Burgess, Anthony, 57 C Chekhov, Anton, 127, 128, 257, 259 1 Act plays; The Bear, 127, 152, 239, 274–276, 288, 289, 294, 303, 304, 312, 315, 336, 346, 350, 354; The Proposal, 127, 152, 155, 275–277, 283, 287, 289, 292, 294, 312, 315, 317, 323, 332, 334, 336, 346, 352 full length plays; Bezotsovshchina (Sons without Fathers, aka Platonov; Wild Honey), 101; The Cherry Orchard, 47, 127, 129, 135, 138, 152, 156, 165, 274, 278, 280, 282–284, 287– 290, 293, 295–300, 302, 303, 305, 307–312, 317, 319, 325, 326, 330, 332, 334, 338, 340, 342, 343, 346, 348, 352, 354, 357, 359, 361–363, 365, 369; Ivanov, 114, 127, 152, 264, 276, 288, 295, 296, 301, 303, 319, 338, 357; The Seagull, 7, 27, 37, 127, 130, 131, 133, 137, 272–275, 277, 278, 281, 284, 285, 287, 292, 298, 301, 305, 307, 308, 311, 312, 314, 323, 325, 326, 329, 330, 332, 334, 338, 340, 343, 345, 348, 350, 352, 354, 355, 363, 366, 367, 371; Three Sisters, 24, 45, 99, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 141, 152, 164, 179, 239, 273, 275–277, 281, 282, 286–290, 293–295, 297–301, 303, 305, 307, 308, 310, 312, 314, 315, 317, 318, 322, 323, 326, 330, 332, 334, 338, 340, 342, 343,

345, 346, 348, 350, 352, 355, 357, 361, 363, 365, 367, 369; Uncle Vanya, 127, 133, 239, 272, 277, 280, 282, 285, 286, 288, 289, 294, 296–300, 302, 305, 307–310, 312, 314, 315, 317, 319, 322, 323, 326, 329, 330, 332, 334, 336, 342, 345, 346, 350, 352, 354, 357, 359, 363, 365, 366, 369, 371, 346 ‘Plays after’; Mrs Vershinin, 24; The Cherry Sisters, 24; Three Sisters Two, 24, 346 Short story; Lady with the Little Dog, 239, 359 Clapp, Susannah, 1, 7, 41, 60, 61, 255 cluster, 14, 240–242 Cold War, 26, 89, 141, 144, 146, 164, 174, 221, 222, 244, 255, 258 cultural stereotypes (Russian) holy fool, 170, 187, 191, 202, 257 mother Russia, 73, 95, 109, 135, 174, 184, 187, 190, 257 seagulls, 130, 152 D database, 4, 33 Davies, Howard, 176, 205, 323, 340, 342, 356, 360, 361, 363, 367 Dewhirst, Martin, 3, 249 Dixon, Ros, 2, 5, 7, 8, 45, 249 Dodin, Lev, 200 Abramov, Brothers and Sisters, 216, 220, 245, 322, 325, 332 Dostoevsky, The Possessed, 340 Maly Drama Theatre, St Petersburg, 332, 350, 354 Donellan, Declan, 60 Cheek by Jowl, 4, 22, 95, 129, 186, 318, 355, 358 Chekhov International Festival Theatre, 186, 355

Index

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Brothers Karamazov, 225, 229, 230, 273, 308, 331 Crime and Punishment; Crime and Punishment in Dalston (David Farr), 225, 242; Underground (Dreamthinkspeak, from Crime and Punishment), 223, 247, 350, 355 The Idiot, 217, 221, 225, 285, 289, 294, 319, 326, 345 The Possessed (aka The Devils), 227, 296, 297, 312, 340 White Nights, 228, 281, 333 Durnenkov brothers, Mikhail and Viacheslav, 209 Cultural Level, 209 The Drunks, 22, 183, 209, 360 The Last Day of Summer, 209 Durnenkov, Mikhail, 22, 183, 186, 209, 370 The War Hasn’t Started Yet, 186 E Efros, Anatolii, 7, 209, 210, 249, 304 Erdman, Nikolai, 198 The Mandate, 196, 198, 349 The Suicide, 176, 306, 320, 326, 342 Volga-Volga, 198 Erofeev, Viktor, 216, 230, 245, 341 Life with an Idiot, 216, 236 F Farr, David Crime and Punishment in Dalston, 225, 242 The UN Inspector (Gogol), 69, 72, 85 Fonvizin, Denis, 53

  387

The Brigadier, 79 The Infant (aka The Minor), 54, 55, 79, 320 Frayn, Michael, 20, 112, 113, 153, 303, 305, 306, 312, 315, 317, 319, 322, 324–326, 330, 332, 334, 338, 345, 348, 352, 357, 365 Friel, Brian, 18, 20, 39–41, 45, 49, 218, 238, 251, 316, 341, 345, 346, 354, 359, 361–363, 365, 370 Afterplay, 239, 252, 354, 359, 361 G Galin, Alexander, 179, 200, 237, 327 Stars in the Morning Sky, 167, 179, 186, 194, 200, 318, 320, 333, 355, 358, 366 Gelman, Aleksandr (Isaakovich), 207, 208 Alone Among Many (retitled A Man with Connections), 181, 207, 320, 343 Ginzburg, Evgeniia Into the Whirlwind, 129, 171, 194, 363 glasnost, 109, 164, 166–168, 179, 191, 199, 211, 231 Gogol, Nikolai, 68 Dead Souls, 35, 70, 95, 215, 226, 234, 287 Diary of a Madman, 235, 286, 290, 291, 293, 302, 327, 342 The Gamblers, 68, 327, 329, 342, 344, 370 The Government Inspector, 35, 53, 54, 65, 68–70, 72–74, 76, 83, 85, 94, 272, 274, 278, 279, 285, 289, 291, 293, 294, 298, 299, 302, 306, 310, 311,

388  Index 313, 315, 318, 320, 327, 331, 333, 336, 339, 345, 346, 349, 350, 362, 364, 367; The UN Inspector, 72, 350 Marriage, 68, 76, 83, 274, 311, 345 The Nose, 251, 306, 318, 333, 335, 343 The Overcoat, 225, 230, 234, 235, 278, 279, 306, 323, 327, 344, 349, 360 Goncharov,Ivan Oblomov, 215, 339 Gorky, Maxim, 129, 136 plays; Barbarians, 146, 147, 150, 151, 156, 158, 159, 324, 348; Children of the Sun, 146, 150, 156, 158, 205, 306, 367; Counterfeit Coin, 150; The Eccentrics, 150; Egor Bulychev, 44, 158; Enemies, 112, 143, 146, 156, 158, 159, 295, 313, 353; The Last Ones, 149; The Lower Depths, 135–140, 142– 144, 146, 156, 159, 160, 169, 188, 191, 272, 273, 282, 284, 285, 296, 306, 314, 355, 371; The Old Man, 150; Philistines (aka The Bessemenovs), 136, 146, 154, 156, 158, 176, 313, 314, 356; Summerfolk (aka Summerpeople), 146–150, 156, 158, 159, 298, 302, 321, 342, 345; Vassa Zheleznova, 6, 146, 148, 159, 160, 314, 324; The Zykovs, 156, 158, 301 prose; Makar Chudra, 136, 372; Mother, 136, 243, 253, 345 Griboedov, Alexander, 54, 58 Woe from Wit(aka Wits End, Chatsky, The Importance of Being Stupid, The Mischief or Misfortune of

Being Clever, Wit Works Woe, Bitterness out of Intelligence), 54, 56, 79 Grossman, Vasily, 261 Life and Fate, 244, 245 Gubaryev, Vladimir, 206 Sarcophagus, 179, 191, 206, 315 gulag, 164, 177, 204 I Irishisation, 20 Irishness, 238 Irish re-writings, 139 Iskaev, Konstantin; Galich, Alexander, 203 Hold the Line, 173, 192, 203, 281 J Jones, David, 145, 147, 150, 158, 282, 292, 295, 296, 298, 301, 324, 364 K Kataev, Valentin, 212 Sign Here Please, 193, 291 Kaut-Howson, Helena, 313, 363, 367 Kharms, Daniil, 206 Elizaveta Bam, 180, 207, 216 Out of a House Walked a Man; Théâtre de Complicité, 180, 216, 236 Klavdiev, Yuri Thoughts Spoken Aloud From Above, 186, 372 Krylov, Ivan, 134 Krymov,Dmitry, 209 Laboratory Theatre from Moscow; Opus 7, 190

Index

L Lefevere, André, 13 Lenin, Vladimir, 143, 154, 166, 190, 192, 193, 199, 203 Leonov, Leonid The Apple Orchards, 173, 203, 274 Invasion, 203 Lepage, Robert, 19 Lermontov, Mikhail, 59, 65 Hero of Our Time, 65, 246 Masquerade, 29, 65, 66 Lyubimov, Yuri, 60 Dostoevsky; Crime and Punishment, 222, 227; The Possessed, 227 The Taganka Theatre, Moscow, 81, 198; Claustrophobia, 253; Gaudeamus, 253 M Marber, Patrick, 19, 37 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 198 The Bedbug, 173, 198 Misteriia Bouffe, 198 McBurney, Simon Théâtre de Complicité, 246, 333 Meckler, Nancy Helen Edmundson; Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 232, 250, 335, 341, 364 Polly Teale, 337, 358 Shared Experience Company, 232, 329, 337, 341 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 65–67, 70, 72, 83, 95, 196–198, 227, 258 Mikhalkov, Nikita; Ibragimbekov, Rustam Burnt by the Sun (film), 185, 360 Miles, Patrick, 2, 5, 7, 42, 45, 84, 128, 153, 249, 264, 316, 372 Mitchell, Katie

  389

Dostoevsky; Some Trace of Her… (The Idiot), 358 Gorky; The Last Ones, 149 Mukhina, Vera (sculptor), 212 Worker and the Collective Farm Worker, 192 ‘The Worker and the Kolkhoz Woman’, 212 Mulrine, Stephen, 18, 45, 93, 106, 117, 122, 150, 160, 201, 320, 331, 334, 338, 343, 349, 351, 357, 359, 365 N National Theatre (NT), 23, 33, 37, 38, 40, 46, 48, 69, 72, 91, 96, 111, 113, 124, 147–149, 153, 159, 160, 166, 170, 173, 176, 185, 194–196, 217, 218, 230, 231, 286, 289, 290, 294, 297, 302–304, 306, 308, 309, 311– 314, 316, 319, 323, 325, 329, 332, 333, 337, 340, 342, 343, 346, 348–350, 356, 363, 372 Nunn, Trevor, 148, 303, 305, 307, 342, 343, 355 O Olivier, Laurence, 23, 46, 272, 275, 285, 286, 290 Ostrovsky, Alexander, 78 Artists and Admirers, 97, 98 Crazy Money, 93, 117 Diary of a Scoundrel (aka Too Clever by Half), 98, 275, 286, 292, 302, 313 A Family Affair, 116, 318, 324, 329, 331, 337, 344, 347, 353 The Forest, 90, 98–100, 116, 279, 308, 342

390  Index Innocent as Charged, 93, 117 Larissa and the Merchants (aka Without a Dowry), 91, 101 Sin and Sorrow, 117 The Snowmaiden, 96 The Storm, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98–100, 103, 115, 289, 315, 341 Wolves and Sheep, 90, 93, 98, 117, 272, 351 Ouspensky, P.D., 216, 245, 311 Ozerov, Vladislav Dmitrii Donskoi, 154 P Pasternak, Boris Dr Zhivago, 216, 245 Pavis, Patrice, 14, 17, 20, 23, 44, 150, 160, 257, 263 language-body, 151, 263 Perteghella, Manuela, 15, 44, 257 Petrushevskaia, Liudmila, 200 Cinzano, 168, 179, 200, 321, 331 Columbina’s Apartment, 200 Moscow Chorus, 200 Three Girls in Blue, 179, 200 Pisemskii, Alexei A Bitter Fate, 154 Pogodin, Nikolai, 199 Kremlin Chimes, 166, 174, 187, 190, 199, 287 Lenin, the Third Pathétique, 166 Polunin, Viacheslav (‘Slava’), 202 Potekhin, Alexei, 134 The People’s Judgement Not God’s, 154 Presnyakov, Oleg and Vladimir (brothers as joint playwrights) Konek–Gorbunok, 208 Playing the Victim, 181, 182, 348 Terrorism, 181, 358 The Presnyakov Brothers, 208 Pushkin, Alexander, 59

Boris Godunov, 59–61, 82, 345, 358, 366 Evgenii Onegin, 59, 64, 84, 215 Little Tragedies; A Feast in the Time of Plague, 62; The Miserly Knight, 62; Mozart and Salieri, 62 The Queen of Spades, 230, 356, 364; The Stone Guest, 62 R Rakhmanov, Leonid The Baltic Deputy (screen play), 198 Troubled Past, 166, 173, 199, 282 Roshchin, Mikhail, 211 Valentine and Valentina, 189 Royal Court Theatre, 47, 137, 209, 235 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), 22, 39, 41, 46, 60, 61, 69, 70, 91, 92, 97, 100, 140, 141, 143–145, 147, 148, 150, 156, 158, 175–177, 182, 188, 209, 230, 263, 287, 289, 294–298, 303, 305, 306, 308, 313–315, 317, 324, 329, 334, 341, 343 Rozov, Viktor, 211 From Night to Noon, 189 Life Eternal; The Cranes are Flying (film), 212 S Saltykov-Schedrin, Mikhail The Golovyev Family, 153; Iudushka, 153; The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant, 153 Pazukhin’s Death, 153 Salynsky, Afanasy, 211 Brothers, 211 Maria, 189

Index

Sealey Rahmen, Kate, 2, 8, 35, 116, 120 Senelick, Laurence, 2, 5, 7, 8, 128, 249 Shakespeare Hamlet, 98 King Lear, 98 Macbeth, 61, 109 Shchekochikhin, Yuri, 201 Lavoushka, 169, 321 Shevstova, Maria, 249 Dodin, Lev, 249 Shipenko, Alexei Lavochkin-5, 181, 187, 207, 339 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 216, 245 Sigarev, Vasilii, 208 Black Milk, 182, 208, 348 Ladybird, 182, 208, 349 Plasticine, 182, 188, 208, 211, 347 Slavkin, Victor, 201 Cerceau, 169, 201, 316 The Grown up Daughter of a young Man, 201 Socialist Realism/social realism, 4, 28, 127, 152, 154, 160, 165, 167, 180, 187, 188, 192, 196, 197, 203, 204, 206, 226, 262 Sofronov, Anatoly, 204 A Million for a Smile, 174, 193, 288 Sokolov, Sasha School for Fools, 216, 228, 245, 347 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 204 A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, 174 The Love-Girl and the Innocent, 174 Sovremennik Theatre, 129, 363 Stalin, Joseph, 72, 128, 136, 143, 154, 163, 166, 173, 175, 183, 185, 187, 190, 192, 196, 197, 236, 240, 241, 257, 262 stereotypes, 27, 30, 55, 67, 72, 73, 76, 110, 113, 129, 130, 141, 190, 257, 259

  391

Suzman, Janet The Cherry Orchard, 24 T Tolstoy, A.K. Death of Ivan the Terrible, 154 Tsar Boris, 154 Tsar Fedor Ioannovich, 154 Tolstoy, Leo The First Distiller, 122 The Fruits of Enlightenment, 106, 111, 125 The Kreutzer Sonata, 114, 246, 276, 284, 304, 360 The Living Corpse, 122 The Power of Darkness, 35, 106, 108, 110, 114, 123, 275, 311, 328, 339 Strider-the Story of a Horse, 230 War and Peace, 114, 122, 176, 216, 220, 230, 246, 337, 358, 364 Tovstonogov, Georgy, 215, 221, 226, 249, 289 translated productions, categories of acculturation, 12, 21, 23, 24, 41, 71, 73, 74, 76, 77, 92, 95, 112, 138, 139, 146, 147, 151, 187, 195, 196, 217, 219, 236, 240, 244, 255, 256, 263 collision, 21–23, 40, 58, 60, 93, 129, 147, 151, 187, 194, 219, 255, 263 hybridisation, 21, 23, 36, 71, 76, 101, 102, 113, 138, 151, 187, 195, 196, 217, 219, 235, 236, 243, 255, 263 hybridising or acculturating, 193 Translation studies, 2, 4, 11, 12, 14, 17, 19, 45, 256 Turgenev, Ivan The Bachelor, 122

392  Index Breakfast with the Marshal of the Nobility, 122 A Chain is as Strong as its Weakest Link, 122 Conversation on a Highway, 122 An Evening in Sorrento, 122 Fathers and Sons, 35, 215, 218, 238, 239, 246, 370 Fortune’s Fool, 103, 121 An Imprudence, 122 A Month in the Country, 1, 4, 18, 34–37, 39, 45, 49, 102, 103, 106, 120, 122, 189, 246, 274, 275, 277, 286, 288, 298, 299, 301, 304, 306–308, 316, 321, 333, 341, 362; Three Days in the Country, 19, 38, 372 Moneyless, 122 A Poor Gentleman (aka Fortune’s Fool and The Parasite), 35, 121, 302 A Provincial Lady, 35, 121, 122, 302 A Sportsman’s Sketches, 103 Turgenev’s novels, 238 V Vampilov, Alexander, 198 Duck Hunting, 178, 309 Last Summer in Chulimsk, 178, 193, 198, 304, 310, 311, 316 Vassiliev, Boris, 199 Tomorrow was War, 167, 316 Venuti, Laurence, 14, 15, 44, 46, 61 Verma, Jatinder, 13, 44, 256, 323 Tara Arts, 13, 73 Visiting Russian Companies Akhe, 183, 184, 349, 371 Derevo Company Leningrad, 168, 183

Dmitry Krymov’s Laboratory Theatre, Moscow, 184, 209, 370 Formal’nyi Theatre of St Petersburg, 228 Lev Dodin’s Maly Theatre Company, St Petersburg, 220 MAT (Moscow Art Theatre), 31, 70, 84, 139, 259, 282, 287, 294, 319, 329 Mayakovsky Theatre, Moscow, 166, 316 Sovremennik, Moscow, 129, 171, 363 Studio Celavek, Moscow, 168, 321 Theatre Lozhe, 170, 347 Visiting theatre, 3, 165, 169 Vorozhbit, Natalia, 209 Bad Roads, 209 The Granary (aka The Grainstore), 209 I join in, 209 Maidan, 209 Take the Rubbish out, Sasha, 186, 372 What do you want, a Ukrainian god?, 209 W Warden, Claire, 2, 8 Y Young, Stuart, 2, 5, 7, 8, 47, 264 Z Zhdanov, Andrei, 163, 196