By Thomas Grantham
**** - Four stars out of Five.
A stunning adaptation
of Chekhov’s forgotten masterpiece
When a teenage Chekhov wrote Sons Without Fathers, it was
six hours long. It was never performed. It was never published. And it never
originally had a name. Therefore, one would be forgiven - going into the
performance with only this knowledge, as we did - for expecting melodrama to be
high, existential pondering to come as a given, and the self-appointed slogan
of ‘A Tale of Sex, Vodka and Shattered Dreams’ to be true in its entirety
(teenagers, eh?).
Yet, whilst all these features were present - integral to
the piece as they were - they were executed so well that you’d have kicked
yourself for ever doubting it. Being a suitably ambitious adaptation from
director Helena Kaut-Howson - the driving force behind the revival of Uncle
Vanya two years ago, also at the Belgrade - the performance immediately grabs
your attention from the get-go. Vibrantly-realised characters mingle believably
with one another on-stage. Personality bursts from each drink of liquor and
seething insult. Sweeping colours and visual cues do battle with a roaring
soundtrack. Light shows dance. Lives fall apart. Laughter ensues. This is
existentialism. This is melodrama. But not as you’ve ever seen it before.
Jack Laskey excels in the role of Platonov, a dark and
handsome thirty-something teacher prone to alcohol, acerbic banter and the
occasional extra-marital affair. He exudes the sort of misplaced confidence
you’d expect a man like Platonov to have, garnering the appropriate amount of
sympathy needed by his character as his life begins to collapse around him.
Equally of note are Marianne Oldham - playing one of the many women who falls
for Platonov without really knowing why - and Simon Scardifield, Platonov’s
unscrupulous brother-in-law - often endlessly witty and endlessly drunken. Each
character lends their own perception of life to the mix, and this results in an
entertaining and entirely engrossing snapshot of the lives of Platonov and co.
That being said, the only gripe was that the play started to
grate slightly towards the climax; characters continued to appear individually
on stage to chastise Platonov, before leaving him muttering self-reflection to
himself and the audience. This is probably no fault of the performance’s,
though - if anything, it is Chekhov’s writing, and it soon becomes
self-referential enough to reinvigorate the sense of enjoyment from the
audience.
This is a fantastic adaptation of an equally fantastic
written piece, and one that well deserves any praise it receives.
Debauchery has never looked so fun.
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