Ivanov

*****
Chekhov’s trademark scripts of character, rather than deliverance of some great controversial philosophical message, still managed to change man’s opinion in it's emotional display of human complexity. There are no heroes or villains in this play. Stoppard’s adaption includes his witty one liners that further enhance the humour always present in Chekhov alongside the sorrow present in this play. Combined, these two great playwrights are great puppeteers pulling at the audience’s heartstrings, making Ivanov a wondrously powerful play. You ride upon an emotional wave, swinging from laughter to despair in a heartbeat. Stoppard makes Ivanov more understandable and there are delicious one liners about the credit crunch and gooseberry jam, and a constant, cheeky mockery of the boring trifles in upper class life.
Ivanov played by Kenneth Branagh, more than meets expectations. Ivanov, plagued by bad luck, is self tortured by his over analytical mind and self disgust - his depressed, unstable emotional state at the hands of debt and being a subject of gossip, a heartbreaking mystery to him. Tears flow freely in the audience’s empathy for Branagh’s remarkable performance. The air is as heavy as Ivanov’s heart as we watch a man weep, and collapse into the foetal position and asks, stuttering with the meekness and innocence of a child, “What’s wrong with me?” I have never experienced an audience so deadly silent as in that moment. Branagh is Ivanov.
Chekhov shows human complexity in his wonderful dynamic between Ivanov and Doctor Lvov, played excellently by rising star Tom Hiddleston. Chekhov defies traditional, simple good and evil roles, and shows how there is both in a man, challenging audience opinion. Ivanov is both high and low in opinion, everyone respecting him as a good man, but under the impression he is marrying for money, whereas Lvov, motivated by a sense of duty plays the man who would be perceived the hero, thinking he is an ‘honest, upright man, disgusted by human cruelty’, but coming across as foolish and rude by voicing his opinions.
Ivanov is superbly directed by the Donmar’s artistic director Michael Grandage, with a strong cast. Pale faced Gina Beck play’s Anna, Ivanov’s wife who is dying of tuberculosis, beautifully, a physical reflection of Ivanov’s ill fragile mind. Shabelsky (who sounds uncannily like Jim Broadbent…) and Lebedev, grumpy old men lighten the tone as a comic duo, and Lorcan Cranitch is suitably unbearably annoying as Borkin, Judas to Ivanov. Only Andrea Riseborough as young Sasha who loves Ivanov and inspires hope for a new beginning in him, feels unconvincing in her overacting that is meant as a contrast against the old cast, her abundance of energy representing her youth.
The audience reluctantly left their seats in a slow motion daze. Gushing praise echoed around the theatre. It’s won my love despite the fact I queued three hours in the pouring rain for tickets - it was SO worth it. And that’s longer than even a nation of queuers can bear.

Veronica Grubb