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A Month in the Country

Festival Theatre, Chichester, 24 September - 16 October 2010

Janie Dee and James McArdle (Photo: Alastair Muir)

cast:
Janie Dee, James McArdle, Phoebe Fox, Michael Feast, Jonathan Coy, Kenneth Cranham, Tony Haygarth

directed by
Jonathan Kent

Although much of his fiction is still widely admired, Turgenev’s reputation as a playwright depends solely on his masterpiece A Month in the Country.

Written in 1848, it anticipates by fifty years the great plays of Chekhov in its tragicomic depiction of the Russian landed gentry getting into emotional difficulties as time runs out on their way of life.

This free version by Brian Friel (who has also adapted Chekhov) brings into sharp focus the bittersweet nature of love’s complications and how easily people’s potential can be wasted.

At the centre of this tangled web of unsatisfactory relationships is Natalya Petrovna, an attractive, cultured middle-aged woman who feels trapped in her passionless marriage to affable but dull estate owner Arkady. After years of receiving the attentions of her “lapdog” admirer Michel, she falls in love with her son’s new, youthful tutor Aleksey. But since he is also loved by her teenage ward Vera the sometimes farcical intrigues seem destined to end in tears.

Like Chekhov, the greatest quality in Turgenev’s drama is his refusal to morally judge his protagonists, allowing us to see all their different points of view with broad sympathy as they struggle vainly to attain personal fulfilment. This unsentimental compassion, coupled with a wry sense of humour, for human failings ensures that we do not become alienated from the self-centred behaviour of the characters.

Jonathan Kent’s beautifully balanced production allows Turgenev’s subtle perceptions into how people deceive each other and themselves complete expression. Paul Brown’s marvellous design features an elegant clapboard house and veranda, with a garden bestrewn with brown leaves and trees whose branches stretch out well into the auditorium above the audience, as if to embrace us all in this drama of thwarted dreams. Mark Henderson’s evocative lighting, with darkness descending between the acts, suggests an autumnal melancholy, while Gregory Clarke’s natural sound effects reinforce the rural setting.

The cast demonstrate fine ensemble playing. As Natalya, Janie Dee conveys a sensual desperation as she seeks an escape from her claustrophobic confines, capable of considerable manipulative cruelty in her swooning pursuit of love. James McArdle impresses as the upwardly mobile Aleksey, well intentioned but out of his depth, and Phoebe Fox is the movingly girlish Vera who has to grow up very quickly. Michael Feast’s Michel reveals a real bitterness behind his unrequited love for Natalya, as he belatedly realises he has wasted the best years of his life, while Jonathan Coy’s Arkady cuts a touchingly ridiculous figure. There is also good support from Kenneth Cranham as a roguish, wisecracking doctor and Tony Haygarth as a pathetically lonely landowner.

This elegiac production of A Month in the Country is a great way to close the Chichester Festival Theatre summer season, as the autumn nights draw in.

- Neil Dowden