It is a very intelligent, subtle, nervous, and sensuous performance — clear, humane, yet original and personal. By the way, everything invented by the theater’s artistic director Rimas Tuminas has always come from Chekhov’s classical text: the director was simply able to read between the lines. Tuminas filled his story with pain bordering on despair, and restored Chekhov’s charming irony. The Classic’s famous words have now acquired a new, unexpected ring.
Sergei Makovetsky has played one of his best parts here, appearing as Voinitsky (with Charlie Chaplin’s emotional aesthetics, yet in his own, original way) – a naive man resembling a prematurely aged child who had somehow skipped adulthood, and thus never grown up. Endlessly kind, regardless of all his escapades towards Serebriakov (Vladimir Simonov), he always gets into comical and ridiculous situations, and his only reaction is a shy smile. He is incapable of as much as raising his voice, and is not really prone to rebellion. The only thing he has perhaps managed to realize is that his “life is lost.”
The performance incorporates several artistic triumphs. Simonov as Professor Serebriakov is a handsome dandy, still youngish and vigorous, and married to a young woman – yet he is a capricious, hypochondriac provoker and blackmailer.
The charming, stylish emansipee Voinitskaia (Liudmila Maksakova) will stay in the spectators’ memory as an eccentric parody of a vamp lady.
Vdovichenkov is the hub of male power in the play. His hot temperament, passion, and posture are all present in his Astrov, big and tender, a bit rough and lonely – a true local “macho man” with his wealth of unspent feeling, and a tired soul. The most experienced actress of the theater, Galina Konovalova (who is already past 90!) appears as Nanny Marina. She jumps, laughs, and looks with her bright, sparkling eyes at the men who pass by.
Elena Andreevna (Anna Dubrovskaia) is a beautiful predator. The director Tuminas has come up with a totally unexpected Helen, who mesmerizes the audience with her figure and the stare of a siren.
The country life scenes in two acts are played to the accompaniment of music by Faustas Latenas. It either creates a background noise or the effect of a clockwork opera. This key explains a lot: due to the music and the sincere, “Italian-style” manner of addressing the audience, we can here Chekhov’s text not as the conventional lace of “subtexts and emotions” but a perfect “opera,” a system of masterly, concerted arias and duets, choruses and overtures.
