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by Anton Chekhov, directed by Tatiana Choujenko

Atrium Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

December 14-23, 2000

“More Padding Than Play”

"The Jubilee" (sometimes known as "The Anniversary") is probably the least produced of the one-act comedies Anton Chekhov wrote before 1891.  I and about nine other people were treated to a perfectly dreadful production of the piece by a group called the Atrium Players.  The director, Tatiana Chouljenko, besides her work in Canada, also directs the Atrium Theatre Group in Moscow.  If this is the Russian way of doing Chekhov's one-acters, I'm glad I've been spared it until now.

   

The main problem is that Chouljenko has taken a text, which if performed straight, would last thirty minutes or less and tricked it out to a full hour.  It would have been better to give us two short plays than do this.  She begins, unpromisingly enough, with the cast reading from note cards a capsule description of why Chekhov is a great author.  The play is then filled out with Russian songs and numerous dances by various combinations of the five actors in a choreography one might find in a preschoolers' pageant.  At other times the actors pointlessly dash about the stage while Strauss polkas blare from the speakers.  Chouljenko has obviously cast the play as a vaudeville except that the puerile filler overwhelms what little there is of the play.  Besides having the actors act in a highly exaggerated style, she has them laugh at virtually anything anyone says as if the constant laughter from the stage will somehow infect the audience.  It doesn't.  I never thought that the worst production I would so far see of Chekhov should be by a Russian director. 

   

The story is simple enough.  A bank manager, Mr. Shipuchin, tries to calm his nerves  before the fifteenth anniversary celebration of his bank where he hopes to attract would-be investors.  He sets an underling to the task of writing his speech for him.  First they are interrupted by the return of his flirtatious wife, Tatiana, and her insistence on telling a completely inconsequential story of the train journey she has had and the party she has just attended with her sister.  Her story is itself interrupted by the arrival of a strange woman, Mrs. Merchutkina, who insists on having the bank compensate her for her husband's illness, despite the fact that the bank has absolutely nothing to do with her husband's employer.  At the end, Shipuchin imagines he is being congratulated at the celebration for having kept the bank solvent by his firm grip on things.  On its own, the play could be seen as an forerunner of the Theatre of the Absurd, a glimpse of Chekhov showing us the ridiculous in everyday life.  However, when padded, as here, to twice its length, it loses any shred of subtlety.  Chouljenko's production keeps saying "Look, how funny this is!" until it becomes tedious.  In fact, absurdist comedies are funniest when the actors play them as dead serious.

   

There is always some light even the most misconceived productions.  Scott Bell is quite good as the bank manager seeming very much like John Cleese playing Basil Fawlty.  He also has a strong singing voice.  His singing of an aria from "Eugene Onegin" is the the high-point of the evening.  Isabella Zatti as his wife is also good, though the director's interpolations make it almost impossible to follow her story.  Edward Zinoviev, once an actor in Moscow, plays the strange Mrs. Merchutkina en travesti.  He gives her willful obtuseness in pursuing her unjustified claim an authentic East European flavour.  Frank Srebot as the bank underling seems unable to deliver lines distinctly and without shouting.  Wayne Roberts, as the man whom Tatiana is constantly flirting, has almost no lines and bungled even those. 

   

The work is played on an bare stage with two chairs, a table and a piano.  Olga Judeikin's costumes for the men make them seem like circus clowns, but strangely those for the women seem to try for period authenticity.  Peter Cianfarani's lighting made no sense to me.  Lights dim for no reason and turn red for no reason.  Strobes are used extensively, I assume, to make the pointless dashing about seem "funnier". 

   

The poster and programmes for the show say "Make ‘The Jubilee’ part of your Christmas season!"  My advice is . . . "Don't."

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Edward Zinoviev and Shawn Mathieson in Chekhov for Two.  ©2007 Jason Morneau.