A Month in the Country
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Cititour.com Review
Before they were household names, actors Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister on HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) and Taylor Schilling (Piper Chapman on Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black”) teamed up with director Erica Schmidt for an inventive version of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at Bard College. Now, this talented troika is tackling another Russian classic, Ivan Turgenev’s similarly-themed “A Month in the Country” at Classic Stage Company, with mostly felicitious results.
True, as many directors of Chekhov do, Schmidt errs by focusing too heavily on the “comedy” of the piece. Nonetheless, the two-hour play (colloquially translated by the actor John Christopher Jones) remains thoroughly absorbing, and enough of the piece’s “tragedy” remains to make our hearts ache, if not break, as the inevitable unhappy ending arrives.
Written a half-century or so before “Vanya,” Turgenev’s play also deals with a Russian household with too much time on its hands, resulting in various romantic complications. (Intriguingly, Schmidt uses almost-identical wallpaper as she did at Bard to illustrate the country setting as a backdrop for Mark Wendland’s minimalist set.) Here, however, the protagonist is the lady of the manor, Natalya (Schilling), a beautiful woman rather indifferently married to the older, mild-mannered Arkady (Anthony Edwards), and somewhat in love with the couple’s best friend, Mikhail Rakitin (the stirring Dinklage, in the evening’s finest performance), who is clearly head-over-heels for her.
This already delicate triangle begins to crumble when Natalya realizes she’s fallen for her young son’s 21-year-old tutor Alexey (Mike Faist, overdoing the whole “blank slate” bit and underacting most of the time), a student from Moscow. Her passion leads to much mercurial behavior, which sets everyone in the home on edge, and ruptures her relationship with her seemingly sweet-natured 17-year-old ward Vera (a stunning Megan West), who has taken her own shine to Alexey.
While Schillng and Dinklage sizzle in their scenes together, she and Faist generate less heat than a polar vortex, undermining the play’s central dilemma. Moreover, while Schilling clearly works heard to capture all of her character’s complexities, Natalya’s mood swings are often so abrupt that the actress can’t help but sometimes appear as she’s auditioning for a remake of “Sybil.”
Fortunately, Schmidt does well by casting the play’s smaller parts; most notable are Off-Broadway stalwart Thomas Jay Ryan, who is hilarious and heart-wrenching as the self-effacing doctor Shpieglsy, and the great Elizabeth Franz, who makes the most of her scenes as Arkady’s well-meaning mother Anna. Meanwhile Annabella Sciorra (surprisingly underused), Frank Van Patten, Ian Etheridge, James Joseph O’Neil, Elizabeth Ramos, and Peter Appel complete the well-chosen ensemble.
True, New York audiences are often asked to spend time in the theatrical countryside (from Donald Margulies’ recent “The Country House” to the many revivals of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music”). Still, there are far worse invitations to accept than this one, especially during our current cold spell.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://www.classicstage.org/season/productions/amonthinthecountry
Cast
Peter Appel, Prema Cruz, Peter Dinklage, Anthony Edwards, Ian Etheridge, Mike Faist, Elizabeth Franz, James Joseph O’Neil, Elizabeth Ramos, Thomas Jay Ryan, Taylor Schilling, Annabella Sciorra, Frank Van Putten, Megan West
Open/Close Dates
Opening 1/9/2015
Closing 2/28/2015
Box Office
212-352-3101
Theatre Info
CSC
136 East 13th Street
New York, NY 10003
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