The Russians, it has often been noted, approach Chekhov in a vastly
different manner than how English theatre-makers do. Where a home-grown
production of The Cherry Orchard might be full of laughs, a British
take on Chekhov is likely to make heavy classicist weather of the
playwright's pre-absurdist ennui. Whether the same reverence applies to
Russian directors when taking on Shakespeare's canon remains to be seen
as Russian wunderkind Dmitry Krymov arrives at the Edinburgh
International Festival this week with his version of ultimate seasonal
rom-com, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
In an EIF theatre season that is awash with reinvented classics,
Krymov's Dream has been brought to Edinburgh via the Moscow-based
Chekhov International Theatre Festival and Krymov's own Laboratory
School of Art Theatre Production. The production was commissioned,
however, by the Royal Shakespeare Company, who have just previewed it
over nine days as part of the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival.
Unlike what one might suspect from a pukkah-voiced RSC show, however,
Krymov's emphasis will be on a visual reimagining of the play. This
looks set to incorporate life-size puppets made from a Frankenstein's
monster style jumble of sources that lend a collage-like feel to the
production.
“The idea came from the RSC,” Krymov says via a translator of his new
production's genesis. “I was very happy to receive the invitation, and
it was one I couldn't refuse. The main thing for me was, as the play
was written so long ago, how do I deal with it now and appreciate it
for today. With the play I had very little to do. I don't know anything
about love with donkeys, but Shakespeare is a genius. He writes about
the same things in different plays, but in opposite ways, so a
phenomenon can be seen both as tragedy and comedy. This gives you
plenty of opportunities to play with these ideas.”
Which, to all intents and purposes, is what Krymov's Laboratory was set
up to do. Even its existence in its current form came about more by
accident than design.
“The Laboratory was made by chance,” says Krymov. “It was initially a
course for set design at the Moscow Academy, but then first year
students started making their own productions. Many students became set
designers, nut now there are graduates who become actors and form
companies as well.”
In spirit, then, Krymov's work sounds more akin to performance and live
art interventions that grew out of art schools in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now, as then, developing such a form of total theatre that is rooted in
design faced considerable resistance from more dyed in the wool
institutions more used to individual art-forms being compartmentalised.
As the son of director Anatoly Efros and critic Natalia Krymova, Krymov
has been steeped in theatre his entire life. It was to design he turned
to first, however, and, after graduating from the Moscow Art theatre
Studio school in 1976, he worked with his father for nine years at the
Taganka Theatre in Moscow, where Efros was artistic director between
1985 and 1987. For the next thirteen years following his father's
death, Krymov designed more than a hundred productions, both in Russia
and further afield in France and Japan.
As the collapse of the Berlin wall presaged the collapse of Communism
in 1990, Krymov turned his back on the theatre to become a full time
artist, exhibiting worldwide. He only returned to theatre in 2002 when
he joined the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, working in the design
department. Only then did he try his hand at directing via a production
of Hamlet.
Two years later, Krymov began his bold new curriculum, which resulted
in the sorts of self-generated productions that led to the formation of
his Laboratory. The acclaim that resulted from Krymov's more holistic
approach to making theatre via cross-artform methodology raised
eyebrows in some quarters, although Krymov continues to work with his
students in this way to this day. This year alone, the laboratory have
produced four shows which have utilised a mixed media approach
alongside the work of young Russian composers.
Of all of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream has lent
itself to wild interpretations more than any other. Both Peter Brook's
seminal post-hippy 1970 production and Peter Hall's take on the play
two years before were produced by the RSC. In a way, Krymov's take on
things is getting back to the free-form radicalism of the arts-labs
that influenced both his predecessors. Yet Krymov hoes even further,
his influences ranging from Polish guru Tadeusz Kantor to icons of the
Russian avant-garde who so influenced post-modern theatre today.
Krymov's Dream, then, looks set to be an irreverent and audacious set
of actions influenced as much by art history as a theatrical one as it
bursts into life. One thing it most certainly won't be, is faithful to
received ideas of Shakespeare.
“We don't aim to become Englishmen or behave like English people,”
Krymov says. “We remain ourselves in order to make it the most exciting
theatre production that we can. When Americans do Chekhov, they don't
pretend to be Russians, and so we too keep our own identity.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (As You Like It), King's Theatre, August
24th-25th, 7.30pm, August 26th, 2.30pm
www.eif.co.uk
The Herald, August 23rd 2012
ends
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