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by Brian Friel, directed by Kyra Harper

Afterplay Collective, Campbell House Museum, Toronto

February 19-March 2, 2014

Vanya: “I’ve wasted my life, because I’m now too old to pursue the things –the real things – I might have had”, Uncle Vanya, trans. Brian Friel

If you’re looking for refuge from the general unpleasantness outside, the Campbell House Museum is offering a highly civilized hour of delicate comedy in the form of Brian Friel’s Afterplay.  Acclaimed Irish playwright Friel, author of such modern classics as Faith Healer (1979) and Translations (1980), has always been devoted to Chekhov and has adapted plays by the Russian master such as Three Sisters in 1981, Uncle Vanya in 1998 and The Bear in 2002.  In Afterplay, also from 2002, Friel imagines the meeting of Sonya, a character from Uncle Vanya with Andrey, a character from Three Sisters, in a Moscow cafe about twenty years after the events in their two plays.  While Chekhov enthusiasts will come to the play curious to find out what fate Friel has dealt the characters of Chekhov’s plays, Afterplay is so ingeniously written that even people with no knowledge of the two Chekhov plays will be able to appreciate Friel’s keenly observed mini-drama of two people attempting to set aside for once the facades they use to hide their loneliness.

Sitting alone in the upstairs ballroom of the Campbell House, which stands in beautifully for the cafe, is Sofia Alexandrovna Serebryakova, known as Sonya (Tracey Ferencz) hard at work looking at papers and maps that cover her table.  Those familiar with Uncle Vanya will remember that Sonya is the daughter if Professor Serebryakov, with whose wife Yelena Vanya became disastrously infatuated.  The play ends with Vanya and Sonya together with Sonya speaking of the rewards of hard work and the peace that will come in the afterlife. 

Into the cafe awkwardly carrying a bowl of cabbage soup and a violin case comes Andrey Sergeyevich Prozorov looking nervous and bumbling.  He obviously hopes to share the table with Sonya, as they apparently did yesterday.  Sonya finally recognizes him and flustered he sits down and their conversation begins. 

We see that twenty years later Sonya is still hard at work, but after Vanya’s death, she is the only one left to run the estate.  Sonya has been to Moscow to seek advice about management and has been told to give up all crops she used to grow and to plants the whole 300 acres with trees.  This give Sonya some comfort since the main expert on trees where she lives is Mikhail Astrov, a man with whom she was hopelessly in love, in Vanya, but now calls her “very dear friend”. 

As for Andrey, he tells Sonya that he plays violin in the orchestra at the opera house.  He has only two sisters now, Masha having committed suicide after her lover Vershinin’s death.  He claims his wife Natasha has also died and that he never hears from either of his two children.  After Sonya pulls out a bottle of vodka she has with her, undoubtably to help her through her “tundra” of loneliness, Andrey feels he much correct some of the details about himself that are not quite true.  Natasha, for example, did not die but rather left him to live with Protopopov, head of the local council, with whom she had begun an affair shortly after her marriage to Andrey.

Indeed, as it turns out both have not quite been telling each other the truth.  Andrey, clearly smitten with Sonya, has lied to make himself seem more important in her eyes. Sonya, pleased to find herself at last the object of a man’s affection, is happy to indulge Andrey’s fantasy as long as she can.  As happens in Chekhov, Friel’s epilogue to Chekhov places the tragedies of individuals within the greater context of the comedy of human fallibility and self-deception.

Under Kyra Harper’s sensitive, insightful direction, both Tracey Ferencz and Steve Cumyn give lovely, highly nuanced performances.  Cumyn’s role is the showier as his Andrey, quite like Uncle Vanya, repeatedly makes a fool of himself all the while embarrassed that he is doing so yet unable to stop himself.  Like so many Chekhov characters his actions are both painful and comic at once.  Ferencz’s role involves feigning propriety and control, while inwardly condemning herself for both.  Ferencz’s Sonya subtly becomes inebriated and shifts briefly to a phase of more openness before concluding as Sonya does in Vanya with a statement that sounds less like a firm belief than an attempt to convince herself she has such a belief.  

Designer Glenn Davidson has made up the upstairs ballroom of the Campbell House Museum like a tearoom with cafe chairs and tables around three walls to make us feel as if we are in the same cafe with the characters.  The ticket price includes a cup of hot tea and a plate of two tea biscuits and yummy homemade cookie.  The Campbell House production of Afterplay not only gives you physical respite from the cold outside, but a delicate, bittersweet glimpse into humanity that contrasts with the general crassness of the outside world.  Afterplay provides you not just with the imagined lives of two fictional characters, but with an insight into the fictions we all use to get by in life.  It is an intellectually and emotional refreshing hour you shouldn’t miss.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: Tracey Ferencz and Steve Cumyn. ©2014 Kyra Harper.

For tickets, visit www.campbellhousemuseum.ca.