More often than not, families are at the centre of American
plays: from the playwrights of the modern canon such as Miller, Odets, Williams
and O’Neill all the way through to contemporary playwrights like Tracy Letts. For
instance, you can interpret that the Loman family in Death of a Salesman act as a microcosm for the inequity of capitalism
in America. Not dissimilar are the plays of Anton Chekhov: although the great
themes of his plays such as Uncle Vanya,
The Seagull, Three Sisters and The Cherry
Orchard are change in Russia and the decay of the aristocratic classes, families
are a microcosm for Chekhov’s Russia. The sale of the cherry orchard, for
example, parallels the dispersal of the family. It’s interesting that the
similarities in American and Russian theatre can be seen in recent American
plays August: Osage County, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and The Country House, all of them having
drawn upon Chekhov’s work. Here’s a whistle-stop tour to those plays:
Tracy Letts’ August:
Osage County (2007) echoes Three
Sisters with its feuding siblings Barbara, Ivy and Karen. The play is a
stonking family drama seeing three generations of a family brought together by
an offstage tragedy (again, Chekhovian) and then contemplate their pasts,
presents and futures, and those of America too. It draws upon a great history
of American drama but also transcends it by linking back to the roots of the
country. Some might say that there’s also a link with the three story house
(windows covered in bin liners and in a state of disarray) which dominates the
stage and the abandoned house in The
Cherry Orchard. Letts also translated Three
Sisters for a new production in 2009.
Christopher Durang’s surreal comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2012) takes four of Chekov’s
characters and brings them to a contemporary setting in his reworking of
Chekhov. Ben Brantley for the New York Times said that it ‘tempers both Chekhovian ennui and
Durangian angst with the calming spirit of acceptance that antidepressants are
supposed to instil’. There are echoes of
The Seagull with its ambitious young
actor Nina, three siblings in a state of ennui typical of that Russian nastroenie,
and a house which has its own demising cherry orchard. It had mixed reviews but
transferred to Broadway from the Lincoln Centre in 2013 and there were plans
for it to come to London this Autumn with David Hyde Pierce but they don’t seem
to have come to fruition. The play is currently the most performed play
in American theatres according to the Theatre
Communications Group (TCG). Perhaps Durang’s most famous play is Beyond Therapy (1981). Interestingly, and maybe anticipating Vanya and Sonia over thirty years later,
this other surreal play features a lengthy speech about Chekhov’s characters
and relates them back to the present.
Donald Margulies’ The
Country House (2014), starring Blythe Danner, is a new play which
reimagines The Seagull and Uncle Vanya. Like August: Osage County, the Patterson family are brought together by
a family tragedy at the same time as actress Anna is learning her lines for a
play. The family is made up of sell-out Hollywood directors, failed playwrights
and TV actors, and comedy and tragedy thus ensues. Or so it should. The play
has been given far from glowing reviews, even if the performances are pleasing.
It features some nods to Chekhov’s characters, is set in a country house like the
aforementioned plays, and includes a general sense of malaise. It is currently
playing at the Manhattan Theatre Club, New York until 9th November.
Exploring and reimagining Chekhov’s characters and themes may
work better in some cases than others, but there’s no denying Vanya and Sonia’s popularity and August: Osage County’s layered
tragicomic genius.
