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Ivanov

by Anton Chekhov. The company version

Ivanov
Ivanov
Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre
Directed Yury Butusov
Set Designer Alexander Borovsky
Costume Designer Oksana Yarmolnik
Lighting Designer Damir Ismagilov
Music Pavel Vorozhtsov
Plastique Director Nikolai Reutov
Assistant to Director Olga Roslyakova
Performed by Andrey Smolyakov, Natalia Rogozhkina, Sergei Sosnovsky, Igor Zolotovitsky, 
Polina Medvedeva, Natasha Shvets/Yana Gladkikh, Pavel Vorozhtsov, Elena Panova, 
Maksim Matveev, Igor Khripunov

The premiere: November 14, 2009

Many will find my words arguable, maybe too arguable, but I am firmly convinced that having written “Ivanov”, Chekhov created one of the world’s most tragic dramas about the lonesomeness of man. This lonesomeness is total, absurd and inescapable. It is also about one’s fear of lonesomeness and one’s desperate effort to overcome his fear and to keep on. Being a doctor, Chekhov spelled out a terrible diagnosis to mankind and, being a doctor, he prescribed the remedy against lonesomeness.
This is how I feel about this great play and this is what I wanted to speak about in this production.
Yury Butusov
 
t sees that where you expect it the least, Butusov radically breaks down the convention. In no previous stagings of Ivanov has the character of Pavel Vorozhtsov been suffering so much and there has never been such a poignant Lebedev as performed by Igor Zolotovitsky. None of the directors has ever discerned him in the crowd of Chekhov’s personages. Having at last gottem his fill of Chekhov, the actor put so much spiritual power, love and suffering into this allegedly purposeless character that one feel a lump in his throat.
And Ivanov doesn’t march on. He is psychically broken and depressed. He is suffering from a kind of toothache and megrim when it is painful just to move. One of the signs of his ailment is the constant expectation of death. Ivanov keeps holding the gun as the means “to fall asleep and see the dreams…
Olga Fux, «Vechernyaya Moskva»
 
There is an old joke about a student at the Conservatoire who ‘composed’ Beethoven’s The Moon Sonata back to front. “Well’, said the teacher, “in this version Beethoven sounds quite convincing too”. And Chekhov is very convincing too, when played from the closing scene up to the opening. But in contrast with a sonata with its clean-cut forms, Chekhov’s plays are written as a succession of scenes combined not so much by a distinct story-line as by the sense of futility of men going in circl.
Natalia Kaminskaya, «Kultura»

May 26, June 8
Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre
2 h 15 min without intermission