Tchekov at the House of Special Purpose

Rosemary Johns’ play about the final days of the Romanovs is no docu-drama.  As in the historical accounts, all the named characters are real people, and the Romanov family is confined to a single room in ‘the house of special purpose’, the Inpatiev House, the windows covered in newspaper.  As in history, the family is exposed to constant surveillance, inspections and insults from the Bolshevik guards. 

But the play treats the historical and political context only fleetingly and relies on our prior knowledge – if we have it – of the civil war going on outside (and drawing closer) and the eventual botched executions of the Tsar, his family and servants.  It omits the Tsarevich Alexei and some members of the royal entourage who were ‘really’ there.  Instead, Johns plays upon the situation as if it were - in a sense, but only in a sense – written by Tchekov.  

Tchekov’s characters may be desperate or doomed, but are not already stripped of all status and power right there on stage in the present, nor subject to intrusion by armed guards and under threat of imminent death.  Where Johns’ text is ‘Tchekovian’ or suffused with a Tchekovian melancholy and comedy, if you will, is in way the characters are in denial, still hoping, still yearning, and trapped by forces they reluctantly struggle to understand.

It’s a Russian flavoured production (note the spelling of ‘Tchekov’) in the sense that director Alex Menglet is Russian and Russian trained, and his consultant was Olga Makeeva from the Red Stitch company.  Mr Menglet pushes the action and the look of things into a kind of stylised nightmare, aided by designer Peter Mumford’s bare stage littered with travel trunks – as if the family were in transit – which, of course, they are.  Millie Lavakis Lucas’ sound design brings the outside world into this prison, the rattle of gunfire and boom of explosions coming ever closer. 

Michael Mumford’s costume design puts all the Romanovs, their doctor and their chef in white – making them vulnerable, as if dressed for bed or simply stripped against the heat - a sharp contrast to the guards in their leather coats and red trousers, revolvers on show.  The first image of the Tsarina and her daughters, dancing, all in white, is strangely reminiscent of Botticelli goddesses – a fine, ironic start to a horror story.

We’re in a place where the not entirely apprehended jeopardy exacerbates emotions – as if everything is felt intensely but to no purpose.  Tsar Nicholas (Jim Daly) alone appears to have some grip on their predicament, but he is fatalistic, his bursts of anger ineffectual -  and throughout he has nothing to wear but a set of droopy long-johns.  (Historical fact: the family and entourage were allowed no change of clothes.)  The Tsarina Alexandra (Carolyn Bock with her regal bearing) is in a perpetual, panicky discombobulation, criss-crossing the stage, making agitated and pointless observations and disappearing again. 

Instead of three sisters, we have four, but Olga (Alice Batt) is reduced to a passivity that is nevertheless touching.  Maria (Yvette Turner) is the romantic drawn to the young and uncertain Red Guard Ivan (Huw Jennings).  Because of her, he keeps forgetting that these Romanovs are the enemies of the people. 

Tatiana (Meg Spencer) is torn between fear and the certainty of the nobly entitled princess that they will all come out of this… somehow.  Anastasia (Asleen Mauthoor) is theatrical, striking poses and maintaining her dream of getting to Moscow and becoming an actress.  If Tchekov’s three sisters dream of Moscow and are disappointed, seeking solace in ‘work’, Johns’ Romanovs cling only to the hope that there is a way out.  As in Tchekov, there is the family physician, here the real Dr Botkin (Peter Stratford), confined to a wheelchair, even more helpless, and yet maintaining a certain philosophical calm.  As in Tchekov, there is the faithful retainer, here the real chef Kharitonov (Greg Fryer), doggedly loyal, with nothing to cook and having to help Nicholas with his bath.

Mr Menglet has skilfully cast his Bolsheviks in contrast to their prisoners.  Guard Ivan, just a boy, with his impossible crush on Grand Duchess Maria, is the exception.  Maria Paula Afandor is one of the guards – a striking woman and all the more chilling because of that – unsmiling, a long stride and a large revolver on her hip.  Milijana Cancar is a somewhat shorter guard, but her character used to be the family’s servant.  Now unconstrained, she takes every chance to remind them that things have changed - in a mocking, sneering kind of way, delighting in how the mighty have fallen.  The man in charge, Yurovsky (Adam May), appears harassed and impatient no doubt because (in reality) he was surrounded by hotheads, drunks and incompetents.  Mr May combines ambivalence with a cold menace in such a way as to make a mere operative with a job to do far more interesting.

It is a pleasure to see such a rich mixture of themes and variations of cast and their characters’ responses to an inescapable fate.  A familiarity with Tchekov’s plays is not strictly necessary, but can only increase that pleasure.  It’s also a pleasure to see a cast of twelve talented actors in a usually restricted La Mama production.  That’s an endorsement in itself of the text and Mr Menglet’s direction of it. 

On opening night, however, most of this talented cast were somewhat prone to the modern style of naturalistic mumbling so that, up the back at the La Mama Courthouse, it was easy to miss half the dialogue or more.  I do hope this has been fixed, because in every other respect, this is a production very much worth seeing.

Michael Brindley    

Photographer: John Lloyd Fillingham.