A Month in the Country
By Brian Friel, after Turgenev
Sydney Theatre Company
Drama Theatre at the Opera House
Until July 15
Review by Mark Stoyich
Three examples of recent translations of foreign classics have given Sydney audiences a chance to see how interesting this form of theatrical writing can be.
At the Wharf, Timberlake Wertenbaker's version of Marivaux's 18th century classic La Dispute remained more or less true to the original text, but the action ran very much counter to the words, ensuring that this elegant Enlightenment trifle was dragged screaming into the end of our disastrous century.
Another, very different, French classic has been playing at Belvoir Street Theatre, an updated (but still in verse) version by Martin Crisp of Moliere's The Misanthrope. This satire on ambitious social climbers turns Louis XIV's courtiers into showbiz and culturebiz types of varying ghastliness in modern London. Costumes and wigs come and go but superficiality and insincerity are eternal.
Again very different, but again bringing a classic to new life, is Brian Friel's version of A Month in the Country, the story of Natalya, a woman approaching middle age, married to a rich estate owner who is a nice man but whose enthusiasms run to winnowing machines.
She falls in love, not with her old friend Rakitin, who loves her, but with a young and silly student, Aleksey, for no other reason perhaps than that he reminds her of her own lost youth and silliness.
Turgenev wrote it in 1850 and, though not at all revolutionary politically, it was so innovative that it wasn't performed until 1872. At a time of heroic melodramas, it was an almost plotless study of psychological and moral dilemmas, a Chekhovian drama well before Chekhov.
Though A Month in the Country is an undoubted masterpiece, sitting through some versions of it can seem like a month at the theatre. Giving a play that is notoriously wordy, rambling and without action to an Irishman to translate may seem an unwise step, but Friel, famous for his blarney-full works like Dancing at Lughnasa, manages to make it fairly snappy, although a faintly irritating Irish jolliness does creep in to sabotage some of the Russian depth and seriousness.
There is also a problem with this production, which has an old-fashioned, elaborate set (the STC's high ticket prices have to go somewhere, I suppose) which regularly moves an extraordinary number of birch trees back and forth to no discernible purpose.
Also, the acting has to be very good for this piece to work, especially from the actress who plays Natalya, who almost never leaves the stage. Angie Milliken doesn't quite have the necessary grace, and it takes Anna Volska, as her mother-in-law, to show how it should be done.
Despite its shortcomings, this production is a reminder that new translations of foreign classics can be more interesting than some recent works in English which reflect only our bland, uncertain between-the-centuries.