The Graduate Centre clearly knows what they’re doing when it comes to drama.
The Bear was originally written in the late 1880’s in Russian by Chekhov – widely considered to be among the most complex of playwrights. It takes quite a bit of effort to update this piece for modern audiences.
The script is a sort of classic boy/girl squabble. Popova (Karen Kenedy Lazar) lost her husband-whom she hated-seven months ago and continues to mourn to show that she is a more dedicated person than he ever was. Smirnov (Michael Vitorovich) is not a vodka but in fact a landowner who comes to her to collect her husband’s very overdue rent. Luka (Ed Vincent), is a bumbling butler who’s caught in the middle and steals the show at times when he gets nailed in their crossfire. Although there is a lot of tension, it is hard to imagine how modern Toronto audiences can come to appreciate a scene out of 19th Century Russia.
If anyone could bridge the gap, it’s director Zed Pitkin. Brought up in Hungary, he was educated under a Soviet influence, and always has been familiar with traditional Chekhov style. Before he ever got involved in the dramatic arts he was fully trained in music also in his native Hungary. He manages to show this in his work, adding something to the play that Chekhov probably never would have conceived: dance.
Explains Pitkin: “It’s to show the part of their fully dysfunctional personality that they are afraid to ever show [through dialogue].”
The dance works perfectly. In each scene, Popova and Smirnov go way over the top to tell the other how much they hate them. In the dance sequences, they go off the deep end with tango-like steps, including a mourning scarf striptease, all set to the tune of 1930s-style vaudeville songs.
As farcical as the dances are, they are also fairly authentic. Pitkin was joined by another Hungarian, Gábor Szilvássy, as choreographer. The costumes were done by Marina Verpakhovskaia, a Russian painter, who accommodated both accuracy and aesthetics in her 1880s Russian clothing. Smirnov was particularly interesting, fully clad in trench coat, hat, and vest.
The production of a play can only do so much – the actors still have to hit it home to the audience. The three performers in this piece played off each other nicely with a lot of energy. Near the end, they hit the innuendo button cleverly as Smirnov shows Popova how she should cock a trigger on a gun.
Vincent’s Luka gets rather trampled upon by the two blinded lovers who are so caught up in hating each other that they give him heart palpitations. At times Vitorovich was going a bit too far over the top with his repeated line, “I’m in a such a rage!” that it became rather unbelievable. But he more than made up for that with his dancing between scenes. His stomping to the beat in combination with Lazar’s schoolgirl sighs was hilarious enough to bring the house down.
Lazar herself was very funny throughout. She starts off as a stubborn mourner who lets out her belt when no one else is in the room and becomes a kind of a fully-grown kindergarten girl who means the exact opposite of everything she says about hating the guy.
An intriguing production that suggests we should be keeping an eye out for further work by Pitkin and these actors.
Coming this fall from the Graduate Centre is Top Gun! The Musical, running September 24-25 at the Robert Gill Theatre and Flora the Red Menace November 17-21 and 24-28 at the Studio Theatre.
