Platonov

There was a moment at the very end of Platonov at the Barbican when the talking was over and I suddenly felt released from 3 ¼ hours of concentration on the actors (performing in Russian), whilst at the same time reading the surtitles which were placed very high in the theatre, and trying to take in all the other things happening on stage: the lights dimmed and then glowed; the dead Platonov lay floating in the onstage river; up above, other characters were sat around a dining table, frozen in time; the light had a golden quality to it; rain poured down onto the set. At that moment it dawned on me, and everyone else in the theatre I suspect, what an incredible event we had just witnessed. I didn’t realise it earlier simply because I had been so absorbed in it all.

An old lady behind me described it as total theatre. I think in particular she was comparing the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg to Johan Cruyff’s 1970s Dutch team for whom the phrase “total football” was coined. The point of total football was that any player could perform in any position, so defenders would attack and attackers defend. Here similarly the actors swam and jumped, played music and sang, shifted furniture and laid tables for dinner.

The set was magnificent and multi-layered, including the river, a beach, and three levels of house. This allowed there always to be something going on in the background, with characters drifting in and out of scenes, which made sense given Chekov’s complicated multi-layered text.

But what most impressed me was that strange power of osmosis that can exist where things are communicated without being spoken. In particular was a sense of claustrophobia and “stuckism” and ennui. These characters are bored, stuck in their provincial estate, with nothing but gossip and seduction to keep them entertained – in such a backwater a brilliant man like Platonov once was can quickly stagnate into a boorish drunk without anyone noticing. Platonov himself, like his hero Hamlet, is cursed with knowledge of his own inevitable tragedy. All he can do is warn the various women infatuated with him of the inevitable consequence of pursuing him, and admit that he will not be strong enough to resist them if they insist. They cannot resist of course.

Platonov was an early, sprawling, and very long work by Chekov, and whilst there were times in the second half when the production threatened to lose control and shape, it managed to cling onto coherence, gathering momentum in its closing scenes until that final wordless image.

In a word, marvellous.