Anton Chekhov
The Old Vic, 1997
Time Out, 27th
August 1997, Patrick Marmion
Anton Chekhov once reflected: “People have dinner, that’s all they do, they have dinner; yet during this time their happiness is established or their lives are falling apart.” But although there is no sign of dinner in Michael Pennington’s deliciously low-key portrait of the Russian dramatist, his show has the flavour of a post-prandial oration documenting Chekhov’s life. Rustled up from quotes and correspondence this is a smorgasbord of sad but witty maunderings on the subjects of insomnia, travel, “a childhood without a childhood”, womanising, encounters with Tolstoy (who described him as “worse than Shakespeare”) and a harrowing visit to a Siberian prison camp. It is characterised by a loneliness bordering on misanthropy, but the final impression is of a man inspired by a powerful empathy for people and their suffering.
This has clearly been a labour of love for
Pennington, who manages to look uncannily like his hero as he bumbles about the
stage affecting unselfconsciously effete manners. He also adopts the air of a
learned, somewhat aristocratic raconteur, sensitive and wryly solicitous. Only
occasionally is this persona broken by a tubercular cough or angry eructation
for which he immediately apologises, as any gentleman would. Nor is it easy to
pull off a monologue in a theatre the size of The Old Vic, but Pennington’s use
of silence is both fearless and moving. Played out among packed suitcases and
furniture covered in drapes with recurrent references to a
one-thousand-year-old monk in black, the whole is infused with, and driven by,
a sense of loss and anticipation of the grave. Featuring few warts, it may be a
doting portrait by a fan, but it remains a touching two hours.
The Observer, 24th
August 1997, Jeremy Kingston
The revised version of Michael Pennington’s celebrated one-man show appears on a sorrowful day for the Peter Hall Company. Ed and David Mirvish, Canadian producers and owners of the Old Vic, have announced that the building is to be sold in December.
This is a sad curtailment of a project that Hall
hoped might last five years, a revival of the repertory system he has always
believed works best for actors, playing seven days a week. I have no figures
for the season as a whole, but when I saw ‘Waiting for Godot’ two weeks ago the
house was packed. Pennington manages to make a coded reference to Beckett’s
play in the course of his performance, which is quite an achievement when the
man he is portraying died two years before Beckett was born.
This biographical entertainment was first seen at
the National Theatre in 1984, since when more details of Chekhov’s life have
surfaced as the oil-slick of Soviet censorship fades away.
These revelations chiefly show the man’s fondness
for women, fat or thin, Russian or foreign, and must have been suppressed
because censors always believe that the only hero is a sexless hero. A daydream
of settling in The Netherlands with a Dutch woman and a cow is particularly
endearing.
Pennington walks into view from the darkness at the
rear of the stage, supporting himself on a knobbly black cane, trimly bearded,
pince-nez clipped to the bridge of his nose. Open trunks are scattered across
the stage, and in the course of the evening he packs books and other small
objects into them, as if about to set off to Yalta, where he lived the last
years of his life, or Badenweiler, where he was to die. His memories roam
around his harsh childhood, early years as doctor and hack writer, and the
astonishing journey across Siberia in 1890.
Presenting the hallucinations in his story ‘The
Black Monk’ as being the dying Chekhov’s own experience is effective, but so is
Pennington’s manner throughout, his light voice caressing us with precise,
vivid descriptions, so courteously spoken, and when pessimistic nonetheless
crossed by shafts of comic observation.
He can be tart about the earnestness of Dostoevsky,
passionately distressed when obliged to witness brutality and evidently an
excellent teller of jokes. The mosaic Pennington assembles from the mass of
Chekhov material is the portrait of a man for all seasons.
The Stage and
Television Today, 28th August 1997, John Thaxter
Michael Pennington’s solo, a reflective portrayal
of Chekhov on the brink of death, has been revised since London first saw it at
the Cottesloe in 1984. In the interim, both actor and subject have somehow
grown younger. With a neat beard, auburn quiff and pince-nez he now represents
the perkier version of Russia’s most famous writer, more believably a
44-year-old, despite a bout of consumptive coughing and a champagne death scene
at the final black-out.
Another change allows us an opportunity to opt for
a five-minute discourse on one of the major plays. At the press night the
chosen subject was ‘The Seagull’, prompting a quick account of the Petersburg
fiasco – with little acknowledgement of Chekhov’s own humiliation. Unwisely,
this sequence ends with a misleading joke suggesting Chekhov was about to
pre-empt Beckett’s ‘Godot’. In fact at the time he was devising a play about
passengers trapped on an ice-bound liner.
Drawn from the stories, letters and diaries, the performance
gives us Chekhov’s restrained, ironic façade, broken by moments of
compassionate despair on his visit to Siberia and an idyllic return via Hong
King. A scene from ‘Vanya’ casts Astrov and his charts as straightforward
autobiography. Of Chekhov’s turbulent sex life and his less than idyllic
marriage there is almost nothing.
But seen as a counterpoint to Pennington’s
tragicomic Trigorin – continuing in repertory – the evening is a sharp reminder
of what London playgoers will lose if the Peter Hall ensemble is wound up with
the sale of the Old Vic.