Nikolai Ivanov (Sam Underwood, right) confronts (from left) Count Shabyelski (Jordan Lage), Misha Borkin (Sam Adegoke), Pasha Lebedev (Spencer Aste), and Dr. Lvov (Elijah Guo) in The Real Ivanov: A Comedy About Despair by Laura Strausfeld.
Laura Strausfeld, adaptor and director of The Real Ivanov: A Comedy About Despair, describes her production as a “faithful adaptation of [Anton] Chekhov’s Ivanov.” In 100 minutes without an intermission, an 11-member cast touches the principal plot points of the Russian master’s first full-length drama; but little remains of the dramatic craftsmanship that gives each scene of a genuine Chekhov play the aura of lived experience. The script of the so-called Real Ivanov summons to mind Reader’s Digest Condensed Books: more has been discarded than left intact.
Ivanov (Underwood, who is both leading man and producer through his Initiative Productions) argues with Sasha (Amelia Mason). Photographs by Ross Rowland.
Chekhov was a 27-year-old physician in 1887 when he wrote Ivanov. It’s an amalgam of 19th-century melodrama and farcical comedy, with a tragic coda that explodes as unforeseeably as a land mine. Written before Chekhov was in command of the artistry of his mature plays (The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull), Ivanov nonetheless displays glimmers of the brilliance ahead. In Strausfeld’s adaptation, those glimmers have been extinguished.
Nikolai Ivanov (Sam Underwood) is a landowner and county councilman in a small Russian community. He’s well-educated and sometimes charming, but his life’s a mess. Bored with his marriage, Ivanov regrets that his wife, Anna (Ivory Aquino), abandoned all ties to her parents and the Judaism of her upbringing in order to marry him; but his regret doesn’t engender compassion.
Strausfeld’s rendering of Chekhov’s dialogue often sounds like a television movie. Anna, trying to understand Ivanov’s rejection, asks, “What’s changed?”
“I don’t know,” he replies.
“Please try,” she begs.
After a pause, Ivanov says, “It will sound cruel, but you deserve honesty: When despair strikes, as it does in the evenings, I begin to not love you and I need to escape.”
Ivanov and Borkin, his grifting cousin and farm manager, talk at cross-purposes in the opening scene of The Real Ivanov.
What’s unacknowledged between them is that Anna is dying of tuberculosis and Ivanov is on the verge of an affair with the much younger Sasha (Amelia Mason), only child of his boss, Pavel Lebedev (Spencer Aste). He has borrowed heavily from Sasha’s mother Zinaida (Sarah Long) and is unable to make timely repayments. Morose and world-weary, oscillating between self-pity and self-lacerating guilt, Ivanov laments, “I could die of shame, that I, a strong, healthy man, has [sic] become a whining Hamlet.”
Strausfeld is an activist lawyer who became interested in Chekhov when she saw a Lincoln Center Theater (LCT) production of Ivanov featuring Kevin Kline and Marian Seldes. Recalling that 1997 revival, Strausfeld says: Chekhov “revealed my own despair—and, for the first time, gave me hope that I could be living better.” She’d been in therapy, but declares “it was Chekhov who had the answers I was looking for.”
The LCT revival polarized New York drama critics, but Strausfeld’s response was novel. To her, the play is primarily “a comedy of despair” and a manual for emotional healing. (The Jed Foundation, a U.S. not-for-profit committed to suicide prevention and education about mental health, is partnering with Strausfeld and Real Ivanov lead producer Initiative Productions to offer information about psychological support for playgoers who are depressed or suicidal.)
The Real Ivanov is performed on an unfurnished stage (the underutilized scenic designer is Jiyoun Chang). As Ivanov, Underwood gives a stiff, though compellingly brooding, performance. His low-key demeanor exacerbates the shock of the famous moment when Ivanov loses his temper and hurls an antisemitic slur in Anna’s face.
The rest of the company mills around the stage, surrounding Underwood like unsupervised patients in a memory-care ward. In the card-playing sequences of Act II, Lebedev, Avdotya (Soph Metcalf), and Kosyk (William Demeritt) go through the motions of bidding, drawing and discarding cards without benefit of a game table, deck of cards, or consistent proximity to one another: it feels more like Ionesco than Chekhov. In certain group scenes, the lighting (also designed by Chang) shifts to an otherworldly bluish-gray as Underwood steps emphatically away from the others. That’s an effective means of indicating Ivanov’s sense of alienation; it’s also a theatrical thumb-of-the-nose at Chekhovian realism, contravening Strausfeld’s claim that her play is “a faithful adaptation.”
During the performance under review, nine audience members (some singly, others in pairs) abandoned their seats and crept out of the auditorium. This conspicuous exodus was unexpected—back in March and April the New American Ensemble’s Off-Off-Broadway presentation of Ivanov on the Upper West Side ran to acclaim and sold-out houses. That production, however, utilized Paul Schmidt’s admirable American translation, which neither abbreviates the Russian text nor offers a modish spin on it. Chekhov fares better, it’s clear, when permitted to speak for himself.
The Real Ivanov, presented by Initiative Productions, plays through Sept. 19 at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater (136 E. 13th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and at 8 p.m. Saturdays; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturdays. For tickets and information, visit realivanov.com.
Playwright: Anton Chekhov
Adaptor & Director: Laura Strausfeld
Set & Lighting Design: Jiyoun Chang
Costume Design: Ella Matza
Sound Design: Brandon Bulls
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