Ivanov
Wyndham’s Theatre
Now or Later
Royal Court
Rain Man
Apollo
Great directors have the power to alter taste. Michael Grandage’s avowed aim with this revival of Ivanov, which opens the Donmar’s year-long residency at the Wyndham’s, is to secure the play a permanent place in the repertory. But even a director as sure-footed as Grandage can’t overcome the script’s shortcomings. Dashed off in ten days by a 27-year-old Chekhov, it feels glib and careless, its imitative homages to Hamlet creaky and self-conscious. Ivanov is a country landowner, his debts climbing, his marriage sinking, infatuated with a neighbour’s young daughter and with a peculiar taste for philosophical ramblings. All of Chekhov’s themes are here but unmoulded and poorly integrated. Most noticeably he hasn’t yet mastered the dynamic lethargy, the melancholy but vibrant inertia that give his later plays their aura of tragic, footling waste.
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