By, John Nathan
2 min read
ByJohn Nathan, John Nathan
You can see why writer and director Patrick Marber, an expert in what he calls the comedy of pain, was drawn to Turgenev's 1855 play, A Month in the Country.
The setting is a Russian country estate where almost everyone is in love with someone. The world-weary Rakitin, played by John Simm, has been in love with the house's married mistress Natalya for 20 years, while Natalya has fallen for her son's dashing new tutor Belyaev, as has her 17-year-old ward, Vera. And although it turns out that Natalya's remote husband actually loves his wife, he is far too emotionally stunted by the presence of his domineering mother, who doesn't love anyone, to express it. Still with me?
Meanwhile Mark Gatiss's local country doctor, and self-confessed incompetent, loves Natalya's spinster companion Lizaveta, all of which leaves the ageing neighbour Bolshintsov who wants to marry the beautiful Vera, who responds to the notion by almost throwing up. She, if you remember, only has eyes for Belyaev.
Quite how all this intrigue would sustain Turgenev's original vision of a four-hour drama - which he himself said was unstageable - is hard to imagine. But in the hands of Marber - not only a playwright but an expert adapter of dog-eared classics - the original has been paired down to a pacy two-and-a-quarter hours while at the same time throwing off many of the conventions that go with Russian dramas set in country estates.
This one still uses a cast of more than 20 but Mark Thompson's modern design suggests the surrounding forest of silver birches with suspended glass sheets on which the trees' trunks are etched. The cast sit around the huge stage's perimeter waiting for their cue, at which point they join the action and then recede like unwanted extras. Languid, this production is not.
But what interests Marber even more than the discipline of reinventing an old work for a new audience is the rawness of the condition of being in love.
The primary objective here is to find the comedy in the piece and, to that end, Marber's script - one suspects there is as much here that is his as Turgenev's - is scattered with wit.
When Gatiss's pompous doctor attempts to compliment the austere Lizaveta (played by Marber's wife Debra Gillett) with the line "I like your…", she finishes the inept attempt for him. "Clothing?"
Yet there is an undercurrent of pain here that is never far below the surface. And in the scene where Royce Pierreson's Belyaev fends off advances from the distraught Vera, I half expected him to use the ruthless reason stated in a similar exchange in Marber's relationship play Closer - because she can't live without him.
Comparisons with Chekhov are inevitable. Here there is neither the psychological detail you get with the Russian master nor the depth of character and despair. But there are some terrific performances, not least from Amanda Drew as Natalya who is haunted by the sensual and sexual frustration of being a neglected wife. Simm, meanwhile, transmits the resigned sadness of being doomed to a life of unrequited love. And Chekhov or no, this is still a gripping meditation on the pain of love. And it's full of memorable moments such as the touchingly unemotional proposal of marriage by Gatiss's doctor. Starting on one knee, he ends up on all fours in agony after his back gives way. A better example of the comedy of pain you couldn't wish for.