Review: Ivanov

RUSSIAN MELANCHOLY AND JOIE DE VIVRE

The guests of Surotska’s 20th birthday party yawn with boredom when Nikolai Alexeyevich Ivanov and his uncle, Count Matvei Semyonovitch Sabelsky, make a spectacular entrance to the party. In the blink of an eye, the women in their floral dresses start pooping and cheating, the grumpy waiter carries tea for the newly arrived guests and the men tell the story.
Suddenly, the cottage of the chairman of the municipal board, Pavel Kirillyts Lebedev, is bursting with Russian joie de vivre, laughter and sweet mishmash.

ANTON CHEKHOVIN Ivanov is irritated by the Russian national character.
The small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre is filled with alternating oppressive stagnation and lounging, alternating resounding carnivalesque. The most important thing is that everything that comes your way is lived to the fullest.
On the surface, the play tells the story of the protagonist, Ivanov, who struggles with his conscience and sorrows, and his adventures with women.
Ivanov is a restless soul who doesn’t really even know what he wants from life. Inactivity torments him. They feel unnecessary and old.
Ivanov’s neighbours, friends and loved ones also live and breathe strongly in the play. They have a different attitude to many things than Ivanov, and that creates drama.
However, more important in the play than the drama is the atmosphere and especially the characters.

THE PLAY marches onto the small stage of the Helsinki City Theatre a cavalcade of characters that most Finns perceive as stereotypical Russians. On stage, we can see, among other things, inept loafers, gossiping acquaintances, a meticulous guardian of morals, a stingy hostess, a landlord who gets drunk and a deceived wife.
When costume designer Györgyi Szakács has coated the women with glitter and lace and dressed the men in brown and dark, the picture is complete.
Ivanov demands a lot from the actors, as the play is built on dialogue and acting. The narrator or, for example, hints about the passage of time are not given to the viewer in the lines, the actors must carry the story.
A well-known group succeeds in this.

IVANOV is Anton Chekhov’s first full-length play. The first version was written in 1887 and premiered in November of the same year.
The play was originally written in a hurry, short of money and under pressure.
And despite all this, it is still performed, more than a hundred years after its completion. In Finland, Ivanov has already been played in at least five different professional theatres.
After seeing the play, you just have to wonder how well it has stood the test of time. Wrestling with conscience, failures, letting go of illusions and self-criticism were just as relevant in the last century as they are today.
People don’t change.

I’m sure there are still people in Russia today who would rather put vodka on their problems and shut themselves off than take care of things.
There will always be people who don’t want to face the facts. Or those whose lives revolve only around money or love.
They play cards, fight, love, laugh and dream of new bedmates.
There are such people in both Russia and Finland. They are everywhere.
And that’s why Ivanov still hits the ground running even after more than a hundred years.