The Edinburgh International Festival continues to host the Dublin
Gate’s celebration of Brian Friel’s 80th birthday with two of his
Chekhovian pieces this week.
The
Yalta Game is an adaptation of Chekhov’s short story
Lady With Lapdog, whereas
Afterplay is a sequel of sorts to
two of the Russian master’s plays.
Friel is often spoken of as one of the most Chekhovian writers of our
time, with his sense of worlds passing away and lives which fail or
refuse to keep pace with them.
The
Yalta Game explicitly addresses this sense of
semi-disengagement. A
roué seduces
a young wife at the Black Sea resort of Yalta; they play the game of
ascribing imaginary lives to the people they see, but also tacitly
agree that this affair is an unreality after which their normal lives
will resume. Afterwards, each feels on the contrary that it is that
other life which is now fantastical, and yet nor do their subsequent
assignations satisfy. Patrick Mason’s production is decked out in
off-whites and driven at first by the breeziness of Risteárd
Cooper as Gurov, until his tone grows fraught and becomes
counterpointed by the growing maturity of Rebecca O’Mara’s Anna.
Garry Hynes directs
Afterplay
starkly, including some passages played in complete silence. It is a
simple yet marvellous idea: in a shabby Moscow café around 1920,
a middle-aged man and woman encounter each other. She is in town to
finance a rescue plan for her small rural estate; he is a down-at-heel
violinist. But she is Sonya (Frances Barber), the niece of
Uncle Vanya, and he is Andrey
(Niall Buggy), the brother of the
Three
Sisters. They recall earlier times, and extrapolate feelings and
relationships from the respective narratives we know into the dramatic
present. There are no surprises. But, in its discreet, slow-moving way,
it is captivating. Where Chekhov showed his characters about to become
throwbacks, Friel takes them forward into full-fledged but still
compelling mournful obsolescence.
The King’s Theatre is rather more cavernous than the Gate, so that the
pieces lose something of their chamber atmosphere. Moreover, with each
play running at less than an hour, there is a slight feeling of
programme inflation about the decision to present them in repertoire
with 9pm start times rather than as a double bill. Nevertheless, they
make a fitting commemoration.
Written for the Financial
Times.