Review: Ivanov

THE EXTREMELY COMIC AND THE TRAGIC MEET

Ivanov, which can be seen on the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre, is theatre created with solid professionalism and a deep understanding of the human mind. Hungarian Tamás Ascher’s direction of Anton Chekhov’s first full-length play stands out in the City Theatre’s repertoire as strong and visionary. In Ivanov, the relationships between people and the intricacies of the mind are tuned brightly, and a loud laugh is replaced by a burst of tears in the blink of an eye.

Chekhov’s lesser-known early work is flowing in its speech, sparing in its emotions and even unpolished. That makes Ivanov no less interesting than the author’s four classics that have risen to world fame.

There is something unrestrained and extravagant about Ivanov that rises to the surface with full force in the hands of a praised and award-winning director. Ascher is a reformer of Hungarian theatre and an internationally renowned director who is visiting Finland for the sixth time. Most recently, he directed Liliom by his compatriot Ferenc Molnár at the Helsinki City Theatre in 2004.

The meaninglessness of life

Ivanov tells the story of an unnecessary man, a representative of the decaying upper class in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Ascher shakes off the tradition of Chekhov’s interpretations and places the events in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in a grotesque and introverted rural community.

Ivanov recalls many of the characters who were bored with their lives in Chekhov’s later plays. He has married the Jewish Anna for love, but love has disappeared with the desire to live. Every night, Ivanov escapes from his home to the social circles of the chairman of the municipal board, and he does not like it there either. The daughter of the chairman, who loves Ivanov fervently, Shura offers the opportunity for a new beginning.

Rauno Ahonen draws a fine and gruesome picture of the grumbling and self-pitying Ivanov, who abandons his terminally ill wife. Pihla Penttinen makes great use of her instantaneously accelerated and precisely paced emotional scale as Shura, who believes in active love and wants to save the depressed Ivanov. In the end, Ivanov doesn’t even have to shoot himself, but collapses into his own regret and the meaninglessness of life.

Community and individuals

Ascher has tuned the actors of the City Theatre to a great run. In both large and small roles, the characters are drawn as crude, carefully guided carnal people. The ensemble of twenty people determines the social relations of the community and the grotesque cruelty of man. Chekhov’s perceptiveness towards people and life comes into its own under Ascher’s direction.

Zsolt Khell’s exquisite set design places people struggling in the midst of the boredom of life in a stuffy and worn lobby space, like a cultural or community centre, in the middle of water damage. The space will be home to studios and salons where socialites gather, but above all, the set design reflects the state of mind and atmosphere. The water is draining and the mind is covered in growing mold. Risto Heikkerö’s skilful lighting illuminates everything with the merciless light of fluorescent tubes.

The set design and costumes by Györgyi Szakács dig up the trends and whims of fashion from past decades. Nostalgia, too, but visual stylization does not remain a curiosity, but builds an entire world and vision.

In Ivanov, the extremely comic and the tragic alternate on a large scale. Ascher is a master of rhythm and timing, creating a sense of lifelike non-rhythm in the performance. There is an inner order in all grotesque absurdity.