It is a truth semi-universally acknowledged that Russian drama is tricky to stage for an English language audience. There is a reason why Chekhov and Turgenev can be dismissed as simple ‘straw-hatted melancholy’, and that is that most translations err on the side of politeness, meaning that the love affairs of bourgeois landowners and their servants seldom fail to raise any emotion other than a wan smile. However, occasional ‘punk’ translations, which normally consist of inserting random expletives into otherwise decorous speeches, seldom work either, meaning that it is normally left to the estimable likes of Michael Frayn – who was present in the first night audience – to provide witty yet effective English versions of these plays.
In the case of Turgenev’s A Month In The Country, the National has recruited the apparently ubiquitous Patrick Marber to adapt and direct a new adaptation of the work, now renamed Three Days In The Country. As befits its new title, this moves with a speed and purpose that means that it runs a mere two and a quarter hours (including interval), and his adaptation is a largely colloquial one that nevertheless avoids the regrettable desire to shock so often found in other versions. This does not, however, make it as good as it should or could have been, save one wildly successful scene of blissful comic invention.
It’s easy to see what attracted the writer of Closer to the subject, revolving as it does around a series of interconnecting passions and would-be love affairs. Natalya (Amanda Drew) is the pivot, the bored wife of a wealthy landowner who seeks to dally with her daughter’s tutor Belyaev (Royce Pierreson) even as she is haplessly pursued by her husband’s oldest friend Rakitin (an excellent John Simm, who proves once again he ought to do more comedy). Throw into the mix the flamboyant local doctor (Mark Gatiss) and the woman that he is also drawn to (Marber’s wife, Debra Gillett), and the scene is set for both melancholia and laughs.
The problem is that neither Drew nor Pierreson are really up to the challenge; she comes across as petulant and irrational rather than genuinely lovelorn, and Pierreson is merely a bit flat, meaning that it’s impossible to see why half the women on stage seem to be madly drawn to a man of his extraordinary charisma. This leaves a void at the centre of the production that even Simm can’t fully fill. Marber’s staging, which uses Brechtian elements such as the other members of the cast being present and disembodied red doors, is perhaps too experimental for what is essentially another ‘well-made play’, but nonetheless it rattles along with precision.
Still, it’s worth seeing for one outrageously hilarious scene at the very beginning of Act II, when Gatiss’s medical man decides that it’s time to make a proposition of marriage to Gillett’s Miss Prism-esque spinster, even as he struggles nobly with a bad back. The utter joy of watching two excellent actors take every nuance and potential for mirth out of Marber’s charged and witty version of what is, on paper, an unexceptional scene makes this unmissable. It’s the funniest thing in London at the moment and renders the entire evening a worthwhile one, even if it is ultimately a fleeting distraction. But what a distraction!
Three Days in the Country at the Lyttelton Theatre, London, until October 21st 2015. For more information and tickets visit the website.
