{"id":391,"date":"2019-05-27T14:59:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T14:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/?p=391"},"modified":"2022-02-06T20:05:38","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T20:05:38","slug":"uncle-vanyas-roars-on-the-grand-piano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/uncle-vanyas-roars-on-the-grand-piano\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle Vanya\u2019s Roars on the Grand Piano"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aydin Tal\u0131bzadeh<\/b>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anton Chekhov\u2019s Uncle Vanya<\/em> by Chiten theatre of Japan, directed by Motoi Miura. Seen at the M.A.P. (Music Art Performance) Festival in Baku, Azerbaijan, November 5-11, 2018.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chiten theatre from Japan performed a spectacle of genius based on A. P. Chekhov\u2019s Uncle Vanya <\/em>at the M.A.P festival in Baku. I could never read, imagine or interpret Chekhov in such a way, and not only me. For this, you should have been born Japanese. I am sure that Russian theatre critics will see this performance as a nightmare and cross themselves, clinging to Chekhov\u2019s feet. Most of them will never agree with me, because everything here is quite extraordinary, original and Japanese. At first sight, you can barely recognize Anton Pavlovich. However, it quickly becomes clear that the Japanese have reached to the nerves of Chekhov\u2019s play by \u201cpeeling the words off,\u201d \u201cundressing\u201d them, taking off their \u201cskin.\u201d They have prepared a play from these nerves and have created a completely new visual text. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uncle Vanya (Kogi Ogawara) on the floor, Sonya (Satoko Abe) standing on the piano, Serebryakov (Yohei Kobayashi) leaning on the piano, Jelena (Shie Kubota) sitting. Photo: Faxriyya Mammadova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Uncle Vanya and Sonya spend most of their time on a grand piano, and sometimes, Serebryakov climbs on to the piano as well. There are rows of dried grass on the piano’s surface and a bunch of wires, decorated with small sparkling stones like a chandelier, hangs above. Director Motoi Miura lets Yelena Andreyevna go on the piano only when she interferes with Sonya\u2019s love affairs. This is somehow a forbidden space for Astrov as well, since he is a vagabond and observer and may only lean his elbows on the piano. Only Sonya stays there during the whole life cycle of the spectacle, not leaving her place, as if pinned to one point and speaking, speaking, speaking all the time. It is strange, isn\u2019t it? However, in reality everything is quite simple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sonya (Satoko Abe) prevails on her piano while others recline. Photo: Faxriyya Mammadova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The piano symbolizes Uncle Vanya\u2019s and\nSonya\u2019s estate, their inherited property.<\/em><\/strong> Being, staying, lying there means\nfor them living, living and living, it means the last shelter, it means daily\nliving, and it means enduring with all the pains in one’s heart. Because these\ntwo characters have nothing else and no joy in life except the estate: they\nhave lost in love, have not been married, have no specific occupation. Sonya\nand Vanya will cling on to the estate by their fingertips and will not give it\naway to anyone. Although Serebryakov puts his forehead on the ground and raises\nhis legs twice during the performance (a balancing act in a yoga position),\nthere is no place for him on this estate, nor for Yelena Andreyevna, nor for\nAstrov, or the others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Motoi Miura\u2019s interpretation,\npeople who cannot become Sonja’s bosom friends and cannot get on well with this\nold maid are politely kicked away from the piano.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The principal character of Chiten\u2019s Uncle Vanya<\/em> is certainly not Vanya, but\nSonya. But why is she called Sonya, this character named Sofia Serebryakova?\nDoes the nickname hint at Sofia\u2019s extreme sleepiness (Sonya means sleeping\nwoman in Russian)? Possibly, yes! Indeed, Old Russian landowners were keen on\nsleeping in their estates for a long time. Why shouldn\u2019t Sonya be keen on\nsleeping? Maybe this is why Miura presents Sonya like an \u201cunmoving princess,\u201d a\ncharacter from Kabuki?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uncle Vanya (Kogi Ogawara) and Sonya (Satoko Abe) on the piano, Astrov (Dai Ishida) at the back in Sonya\u2019s shadow. Photo: Faxriyya Mammadova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The play is entirely based on the ambitions\nand unrealized wishes of the old maid Sonya: <\/em><\/strong>she rises over the piano like a\nfurious goddess, as if controlling the other characters. Miura has interpreted\nSonya as a real confidential moderator, the inner power of the play. Vanya is a\nperformer who endures the old maid\u2019s caprices. Miura\u2019s great discovery in the\nChekhov tradition is to be the first to draw attention to the main mover of the\nevents\u2014Sonya\u2014and make her the leading character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miura\u2019s interpretation is completely new. Infact,\nChekhov named his play Uncle Vanya<\/em>\naccording to Sonya\u2019s language, reflecting the way she speaks. It is on purpose\nthat at the end of Miura\u2019s spectacle Sonya kicks Uncle Vanya, who is lying on\nthe piano leaning on his elbows, with all her force. This is her ambition, her\naccusation, her peculiar revenge. Questions such as \u201cWhy should Uncle Vanya\nfall in love with Yelena, why should Astrov love Yelena but not me?\u201d might make\nSonya think and become her psychological problem. Astrov has an excuse, but Vanya\ndoes not. He has declared his love to a woman who is married to his late\nsister\u2019s husband\u2014Serebryakov\u2014one who has deprived Sonya of Astrov, destroyed\nher hopes, hence Vanya became an \u201cenemy\u201d when he fell in love with Yelena\nAndreyevna!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Astrov (Dai Ishida) in the centre. Photo: Faxriyya Mammadova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This is uncle Vanya\u2019s mistake, his betrayal\nof his gracious, caring niece; this is brutish behaviour. For a good reason,\nSonya is offended, and even experiences a mental shock. Sonya is right, and\ndirector Miura sides with her. I, for one, never encountered such an\ninterpretation of the relationship between Vanya and Sonya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As already stated, the performance takes\nplace on a grand piano. Why particularly a grand piano? Because Miura is\nillustrating not only the text, but also the context of the play in the\nperformance space. He establishes an intertextual relation with Russian film\ndirector Nikita Mikhalkov\u2019s Unfinished\npiece for mechanical piano<\/em> (1977). In other words, Miura directly embodies\nthe associative character of Mikhalkov\u2019s film by replacing the piano with a\ngrand piano, which represents a centre of nervous energies for Chekhov\u2019s\ncharacters. Shouldn\u2019t the grand piano be considered the musical instrument with\nthe most stretched \u201cnerves\u201d?Shouldn\u2019t its multiple wires be\ninterpreted as the \u201cnerves\u201d of the world of music? Miura somehow opens \u201cthe\nlid\u201d of Chekhov\u2019s characters and finds out instantly that all they have exposed nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Serebryakov (Yohei Kobayashi, left) and Jelena (Shie Kubota) on the floor, Sonya (Satoko Abe) and Vanya (Kogi Ogawara) on the piano. Photo: Faxriyya Mammadova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That is why characters entering the performance space scream at physical contact with each other, as if in the grip of an electric shock. They are not bodies; they are injured creatures consisting solely of nerves. For this very reason Chekhov\u2019s characters cannot communicate, nor establish a dialogue between themselves, but turn dialogues into monologues by screaming. Every effort to communicate, every slight physical contact becomes a roar of pain. Only one character, the bankrupt landowner Ilya Ilich Telegin, has no nerves, so Miura replaces him with a black loudspeaker and places this \u201cdrowsy\u201d speaker by the side of the grand piano: there is no need for Telegin, the strumming of his guitar is enough, because according to Motoi Miura Telegin is the one who turns this terrible anger into sad songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Astrov (Dai Ishida) on the left. Photo: Faxriyya Mammadova<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The actors wear thin white clothes: Astrov stands out for his intellectual look and canotier hat, Voynitsky for his sleeveless jumper resembling an accountant and Serebryakov for his grey felt hat in the form of a skullcap resembling a real estate broker. Such a specific and loveless, somewhat cruel, somewhat physical, somewhat painful life: even so painful that some could say: \u201cI began to hate Chekhov.\u201d Myself, I consider Uncle Vanya<\/em> the crowning beauty of the M.A.P. festival. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\"\"\n\n\n\n

*<\/a>Aydin Talibzadeh <\/strong>(October 5,\u00a01958) is theatre critic, researcher, writer and professor of Azerbaijan State Culture and Art University. Member of international institutions and organizations such as IFTR, UNIMA, ASSITEJ. Author of books (in Azerbaijany) The Master and the Mirror<\/em>, Mehdi\u2019s Mystery or the Concept of Hamletizm in Art<\/em>, Thousand Masks and I<\/em>, The Theatrical Frescos<\/em>, The History of the East Theatre<\/em>, The Theatre and Theatrics in the Culture of Islam<\/em>, and more than 500 articles published worldwide. He is also author of several novels, including The Model of the Butterfly 102<\/em>, Abuhyub<\/em>, and plays, such as Tubinot<\/em>, Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>, The Aunt<\/em>, An Apple<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2019 Aydin Talibzadeh
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aydin Tal\u0131bzadeh* Anton Chekhov\u2019s Uncle Vanya by Chiten theatre of Japan, directed by Motoi Miura. Seen at the M.A.P. (Music Art Performance) Festival in Baku, Azerbaijan, November 5-11, 2018. Chiten theatre from Japan performed a spectacle of genius based on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performance-reviews","tag-by-aydin-talibzadeh","","tg-column-two"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2019\/05\/japan4.jpeg?fit=700%2C467&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paUXOT-6j","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1309,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/1309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}