Review: Ivanov

A JOYFUL CAVALCADE OF UNNECESSARY PEOPLE

Chekhov’s rare debut play in Helsinki

Anton Chekhov’s Ivanov, written in his early thirties, has perhaps been somewhat unnecessarily overshadowed by his four later classic texts. The audience of the Lahti City Theatre may remember Ville Sandqvist’s direction from 1997, but there have only been fifty interpretations in Finnish theatres.
In his recent direction at the Helsinki City Theatre, the Hungarian Tamás Asher has successfully and with great taste moved Ivanov’s story closer to the present day, according to the script, somewhere in the 1960s and 1970s. The large group of actors makes the performance a smooth, fun cavalcade. Especially in the first half, the theatre is so good that the audience forgets the time and place: who wouldn’t end yet!

Basic themes bite

Ivanov was completed in 1887, eight years before the premiere of Loki . Uncle Vanya was completed in 1899, Three Sisters in 1901 and Kirsikkapuisto in 1903. The sadly hilarious fatigue of the rural nobility, the fading of the will and purpose to live are eternal basic themes of Chekhov’s theatre. All this is already present in Ivanov in a recognizable way.
Nikolai Ivanov (Rauno Ahonen) is only in his thirties, but his actual life seems to be behind him. His wife Anna Petrovna (Jonna Järnefelt) is terminally ill, and the whole community is waiting for her to pass away. Of course, Ivanov is up to his ears in debt to the village’s snooping, eye-catching Zinaida (Leena Uotila), whose alcoholic husband Pasha (Pertti Sveholm) is trying to get her to postpone the debt collection to a more favorable time.

Ivanov would not be Chekhov if great emotions did not fluctuate in great arcs. Bored, Ivanov finds another opportunity: he meets Pasha and Zinaida’s daughter Shura (Pihla Penttinen). In the second act, after Anna Petrovna’s death, preparations are made for the wedding.

Tragic and comical

The play has two major crowd scenes. At the beginning, Šura’s 20th anniversary party will be held with rockets banging, and after the intermission, everyone will gather for a wedding party.
The gambling-hungry and debt-ridden idlers, led by Eppu Salminen and Jyrki Kovaleff , are excellent roles, full of little nuances. Jyrki Nousiainen gets to show off his great mime skills.
Matti Rasila as Gavrila, who serves vodka shots and hard tea, is a great example of Chekhov’s gallery of characters, where usually the supporting roles are also significant.
Of the central roles, the drunken braggart Pertti Sveholm in the style of the master of Puntila and Tom Wentzel (Count Šapelski), languishing in his loneliness and poverty, take over the stage. Leena Uotila and Riitta Havukainen (the young widow Marfutka) bring sweet laughter out of even the most serious tragedy viewers and know how to laugh exuberantly at themselves.
In the cavalcade of roles, the only characters that stand out as somehow balanced are the vibrant Lari Halme as Ivanov’s farm manager Misha, Pihla Penttinen as Miss Šura, and Jari Pehkonen as the safe responsible person as Dr. Lvovi.