Fifty years after his death, the seminal Russian theater director Konstantin Stanislavsky is still an object of controversy in his native land.
America and the West probably remember Stanislavsky and his innovative "method" system of acting because of the late Lee Strasberg and his celebrated Actors Studio, which helped form the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Marilyn Monroe. Oleg Efremov, current artistic director of the Moscow Art Theater, the company formed by Stanislavsky, recently organized an International Stanislavsky Symposium in Moscow, which brought together five hundred delegates to discuss what the late, great director means to the modern world.
Realism, on stage or off, is never an easy commodity to handle, particularly in Moscow, at a time when glasnost, particularly in the theater, was quite astonishing. As discussions at the symposium progressed and members saw more examples of what currently passes for "truth-telling" in Moscow's theaters, the idea that a common definition of stage realism could be achieved became increasingly remote.
Variations on Chekhov
Members were presented with several different ways of directing Chekhov. The most apparently authentic is still to be found at the Moscow Art Theater, where realism is taken to mean a close imitation of life's surfaces, together with a passionate expression of the characters' inner emotions. It is a style that, with its lack of irony, might be mistaken in the West for overly broad acting. Efremov's version of Uncle Vanya, which I had first seen four years ago, was described as a "meteorological" production, because one could tell from the lighting effects what the weather was, even the exact time of day. Through the windows could be seen the Russian countryside and there, in the distance, charcoal fires smoldering on a hill.
The setting was spectacularly exact, a perfect replica of a provincial estate of some eighty years past; but Chekhov himself often complained that Stanislavsky wasted time on inessentials. What do charcoal fires have to do with Uncle Vanya? A more selective directorial approach was found with Peter Brook, whose celebrated international company from the Bouffes du Nord in Paris took on the challenging task of playing The Cherry Orchard in English before Moscow audiences.
There were no elaborate sets in Brook's The Cherry Orchard, just some carefully selected rugs, a few chairs, a screen, and a bookcase. In the final scene, as the family leaves the country mansion that has been its ancestral home, the back walls of the stage at the Taganka Theatre were exposed to reveal a desolation of brick and plaster. What was more startling than this visual austerity, however, was the restraint in the acting. Brook, though Russian by birth, had brought with him the full British rhetorical repertoire of understatement and excessive politeness. No Slavic excesses were allowed.
For the first twenty minutes, Muscovites watched in silence; and then, as the cool, conversational delivery took hold, they began to respond with increasing excitement. "It was as if," my Russian companion said to me, "I had heard the words for the first time and knew what they meant." There was one memorable moment when Tom Wilkinson's Lopakhin said, "God has given
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