Visitors from the Past
FIELD, ANDREW
PERSPECTIVES Visitors from the Past By Andrew Field It is scarcely more than a month since the somewhat unfortunate and unpleasant (to many observers and, I dare say, to not a few of our guests...
...There is no Art Theater anymore, he is told, but the MKhAT is over there...
...Finally, the program includes two Chekhov plays, The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters...
...One of the four plays, Dead Souls, is an adaptation of a novel—and the large number of such adaptations in the group's repertory is a highly indicative sign...
...Nonetheless, that one-half of one performance did correspond wholly to all that I had heard, and so I think there may be some point in relating my own experience at the Moscow Art Theater, and what I know of its reputation among Russian intellectuals today...
...Everything, including a fulsome cup of abuse, was exchanged except culture...
...I cannot recall ever having heard a good word said for it in Moscow...
...Still, the play is not without its charms as, for example, when the benign (in this play at least) head of the Secret Police, Dzerzhinsky, exclaims: "Thank God...
...after suitable difficulties, the aide gets the girl, Lenin gets her father, and the heretofore broken Kremlin chimes ring out the Internationale...
...Only Arbuzov carefully abstained from participation in this ritual, choosing instead to spend his time in the theater and talking with theater people...
...That judgment might have been challenged, but the ensuing dialogue would also have helped provide a ANDREW FIELD, a frequent contributor to THE NEW LEADER, recently spent several months in the USSR...
...I did associate with many people connected with the theater while I was in Moscow this past year, and I did hear a great deal about the Moscow Art Theater...
...It was written in 1941 and is, moreover, an uncomplicated hagiographic portrait of Lenin in the early '20s and his drive to bring about the electrification of Russia: An aide to Lenin falls in love with a haughty girl whose father, a highly skilled electrical engineer, rejects the Revolution...
...But I myself actually saw only one of its performances...
...it could, I am sure, play to standing-room-only audiences in New York for four weeks...
...The Vakhtangov's productions of Tolstoy's Living Corpse and Pushkin's Little Tragedies deserve special mention...
...We should expect a Chekhov play from a visiting troupe of the MKhAT, but the fact that it is doing two Chekhovs, making up one half the bill, is yet another indication of the way in which the contemporary MKhAT has not only failed to move forward but has reverted to the past to become a museum re-enactment of the early Moscow Art Theater...
...There was, in a word, not a drop of Method to their methods...
...A provincial comes to the Art Theater Way, so the joke goes, and asks to be directed to the Art Theater...
...The Moscow Art Theater is located on a street named in its honor, the Art Theater Way, and is commonly referred to by its Russian initials: MKhAT...
...And perhaps the kindest way to view the MKhAT is as an historical institution...
...The Maly's Masquerade is perhaps the most brilliant stage production I have ever seen...
...No, to be more precise, only half of one performance...
...There was, however, one saving grace: The actor who played Fyodor Karamazov was far and away the finest and most perfect lecher I have ever encountered in life or on the stage...
...The Kremlin Chimes could be, from one point of view, the most interesting play for Americans precisely because it is one of the better plays of its period and therefore gives some idea of what the contemporary Russian theater is up against...
...After Chekhov's death in 1904, however, the Moscow Art Theater went on to other equally impressive achievements...
...Another play, The Kremlin Chimes by Nikolai Pogodin, is the newest piece on the bill...
...In its better moments the performance recalled a spirited rendition of The Drunkard in New York several years back...
...They begin a four-week program at New York's City Center ("The Theatrical Event of the Decade") on February 4, and I should like to offer a few observations on their work which may inspire a meaningful dialogue...
...Consider, if you will, the program at the City Center...
...For the general high level of their acting the Vakhtangov and Maly Theaters enjoy very good reputations...
...When the month's tickets go on sale at the Sovremennik it is not uncommon to see lines of hundreds of people, half of whom may have waited through the night...
...It occurred to me as I followed this sad spectacle in the New York Times that much of it might have been avoided if someone had taken the trouble to present, prior to their arrival in this country, a straightforward critical summary of the literary achievements of these writers: listing their works, giving brief plot summaries and snatches of translations, and, most important, judgment of their artistic merit...
...It has its own public, which is not larger only because of the small size of its theater, and its productions invariably involve modern sets, music, and even modern dance...
...PERSPECTIVES Visitors from the Past By Andrew Field It is scarcely more than a month since the somewhat unfortunate and unpleasant (to many observers and, I dare say, to not a few of our guests too) visit to these shores of the Soviet editor and novelist Aleksandr Chakovsky, the poet Robert Rozhdestvensky, and the dramatist Aleksei Arbuzov...
...In a wearisome series of skits—the mold seems already to have become fixed —performed at some of our best universities (and in the newspapers) the "expected" questions were put and the "necessary" answers duly given in return...
...Prince Mirsky remarked in 1925 that American and English intellectuals, in their appreciation of Russian art, are about 20 years behind the times...
...I think it is also reasonable to suggest that there be some sense of proportion about the honors accorded our visitors...
...Genuine new plays, it was announced, had been promised the MKhAT by Korneichuk, Konstantin Simonov, and Leonid Zorin...
...and Lenin turns to him with: "What did you say, Felix...
...This, of course, necessitated numerous intricate "fill-in" dialogues...
...In this case, the fervent American cult of Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theater is about 30 years behind the times...
...The deadliness of its repertory is unquestionably the primary contributing factor to the calcification of the MKhAT...
...We have an obligation as hosts to avoid placing these writers in needlessly awkward and pointless predicaments...
...They represent, rather, the common opinions held by knowledgeable Muscovites themselves...
...It is unfortunate that these exchanges are arranged by impresarios, by State Department officers, by everyone, in short, except those who are capable of rendering some sort of informed judgment...
...The 1835 play by the poet Mikhail Lermontov is interesting in itself, and it was presented flawlessly, almost choreographed, with strikingly imaginative sets and uniformly fine acting...
...The director of the theater, Pokarzhevsky, spoke last year of the MKhAT's desire "to turn its attention this season to the creation of a new contemporary repertory...
...Admittedly, I am perhaps not the most qualified observer to pass judgment on the Moscow Art Theater...
...If the MKhAT has brought its best actors and its best productions one may look forward, especially in the Chekhov plays, to creditable performances...
...Interestingly, of the three, he is the only one who can lay claim to any artistic merit...
...They do not represent exactly the cream of contemporary Soviet dramatists, and Simonov, it should be noted, does frequently give his better efforts to other theaters...
...The Sovremennik does plays by Yevgeny Shvarts (the most talked about play in Moscow while I was there), Aleksandr Volodin, Simonov, Viktor Rozov, William Gibson, Arthur Miller, and Vladimir Tendryakov...
...Let me stress that my comments are not intended as an "attack" on the MKhAT...
...The play I saw was an adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov...
...I left at the point when, having read the book, I knew that old Fyodor was about to be killed...
...Thus we came to understand why the Moscow Art Theater, in spite of its grand history, is the object of widespread scorn among the sophisticated Russian theater-goers...
...Most intelligent Americans, I think, would agree that we should welcome as many Russian writers as can and care to come to the U.S...
...For freshness of repertory the small Theater-Studio Sovremennik on Mayakovsky Square stands out especially, despite the fact that the acting can be uneven...
...Which are the exciting theaters of Moscow today...
...The MKhAT is Chekhov of course...
...My first shock came early in the performance when I realized that they were not going to leave a thing out...
...The actors dashed about in a manner that was a bit much even for Dostoevsky, and at one point in the second act, while Mitya Karamazov stood on a porch table waving his arms and delivering a long soliloquy to fill in plot, there was a real question (the table was three-legged) as to whether or not he was going to be able to maintain his balance...
...Its triumphant production of The Seagull in 1898 (a previous production of the play in another theater had been a dismal failure) established its reputation and forged a close bond between the theater and Chekhov, who wrote his succeeding plays specifically for it...
...But what it created was a stage adaptation of an old Vsevolod Ivanov novel, a "reworking" of an old play by Aleksandr Korneichuk, adaptations of contemporary potboiler novels by Granin and Chakovsky and others, and an old Gorky play...
...These thoughts are occasioned by the arrival of our newest guests, the members of the world-famous Moscow Art Theater...
...fuller conception of our prospective guests...
...There were, in addition, distinct traces of 18th-century acting's assigned gestures for all emotions—Alyosha in particular walked about for minutes on end with his hands glued together and pointed heavenward...
...We should hope that the MKhAT's Chekhovs will be excellent, but then we too have had some very good Chekhov productions in New York these past few years...
...But we might have had the Sovremennik, the Maly, the Vakhtangov, or even the Mossovet...
Vol. 48 • February 1965 • No. 3
