Theatre 1
A Month in the Country (Swan Theatre, Stratford)
Alas, poor Turgenev
Patrick Carnegy
Isaiah Berlin, who translated Turgenev's A Month in the Count?), for the National Theatre in 1981, reckoned that the full text would take five hours to perform. At the rate actors gabble through words today that's a wild over-estimate. But it'd be a brave director who attempted to give Tur- genev's masterpiece 'as written'. Continu- ously compelling on the page, this great `novel in dramatic form' as Turgenev, char- acteristically insecure, described it, doubt- less does need some adaptation if it's to hold an audience. Fair enough, but Brian Friel's ingenious version has a major sin to declare in that it's a bid to make an Irish- man of Turgenev.
Working from a literal translation by Christopher Heaney, Friel's script was first given at Dublin's Gate Theatre in 1992. If it was something of a surprise for the Dubliners to discover that Russian gentry in the 1840s could sport a nice little line in the Irish blarney, it was no small shock for an innocent abroad in Stratford to find himself in County Donegal at the mercy of a cast, aided and abetted by a 'dialect coach' (Charmian Hoare), blarneying away to perfection. Up to a point there's nothing to be sniffy about in finding the flavour of Irish coffee given to a play that touches the quick of common human emotions. The production conjured a neat link in using piano music by the Irishman John Field, darling of Russian society in the early 19th century. (It was exquisitely played by Jane MacFarlane.) The trouble begins with Friel bringing up the spotlight on Turgenev's minor charac- ters. He writes them splendid lines, puts jokes into their mouths. This is wonderfully diverting and, from a craft point of view, makes the play a better story. But it goes too far. You sense that neither Friel nor Michael Attenborough, the director, was prepared to risk the unprotected exposure to pain offered by Turgenev himself.
The comedians of the piece are, of course, the survivors — like Shpigelsky (Lloyd Hutchinson), the obnoxious doctor whose need for a troika and hatred of the gentry trigger the catastrophe. His jokes mostly Friel's — chill everyone except Arkady, Natalya's husband, built up from Turgenev's shadowy figure into a swarthy, mud-spattered farmer. Darrell D'Silva plays him as no less emotionally vulnerable than anyone else. Colin Hurley's German tutor is inflated into a major comic act, handing out lethal ice-creams and reveng- ing himself on anyone who corrects him with a crisply dismissiveDanker.
All this is richly diverting but comes near to upstaging the central roles, Sara Stew- art's Natalya crucial among them. With her striking blonde looks and handsome dress- es it's a commanding portrayal of a lady whose emotions have annoyingly slipped out of control. The arrival of the young tutor Belyayev has shattered the lie of a life in no-woman's land between the rough affection of her husband and the sentimen- tal attentions of Rakitin, the longstanding family friend — a partial self-portrait of Turgenev himself. Where this is not quite right is that her efforts to keep a grip on herself topple too quickly into petulance.
Friel might protest that this is intrinsic to his view of the Islayev household as down- to-earth comedy, but I can't help feeling this is no gain on the more distant, sadder music of Turgenev's original (harder to handle, maybe, but ultimately awakening deeper echoes). Those echoes are affect- ingly sounded by Sam Graham's Rakitin, the dapper admirer whose agony at the col- lapse of his hopes was proof enough of the character's famous denunciation of passion as calamity. Friel makes it plainer than Turgenev that this disease also gets to Belyayev, if only as the folly of an irre- sistible moment, a man more seduced than seducing. Jack Tarlton is superb in the part, the upper lip of his sinuous, sensual mouth anticipating his hesitant thought, his need to find a way through the troubles he's unwittingly inflicted on the household. The best performance of all is that of Catherine Walker. Her Vera catches every nuance of a teenager's precipitation into womanhood — this is a major talent in the making. What a Tatiana she'd be.
At the end, Friel softens the pain of Tur- genev's tortured creatures by drumming up a busy ensemble of 'goodbyes', with tea and crumpets handed round by the giggling ser- vants. Turgenev's drama of interior conflict is given a rumbustious Irish outing. There is, of course, deliberate dramatic irony in this finale, but it's fitting only to the behavioural comedy Friel has spun from Turgenev, not to the understated music of despair, the pre-echoes of Chekhov, in which the greatness of the play is to be sought. How could Friel have creat- ed a speech for Arkady's old mother in which she spells out the moral of the piece? Alas, poor Turgenev! Your name is acknowledged almost incidentally at the bottom of the cover of the new text as `after Turgenev' while Brian Friel is printed shamelessly large under the title. What next? Who's for Brian Friel's Hamlet 'after Shakespeare'? When it comes to plays by geniuses from abroad, pretty well anything goes. For the best line to Turgenev go straight to the Penguin Classics translation. Isaiah Berlin's name isn't even on the cover.
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