Balancing Chekhov's tragic and comic

A pathway of torches guided us through the unfamiliar territory of the Ospizio, opened up to us for ActingHouse Productions' Anton Chekhov's Vaudevilles among other events part of the Malta Arts Festival; the ever more audible sounds of violin and accordion reassured us that indeed this was the right trajectory to be following.

The music accompanied us as we waited outside the arch that leads onto La Vittoria Bastion where we were to watch the performance, and it followed us in for the musicians Nemanja Ljubinkovic and Yuri Charyguine to then take the stage. The music was to accompany the performance right through; and thus the setting for the vaudevilles was set: we were to be given our variety and our entertainment. And in their support of the performance, the musicians took on a characterisation that wove into and out of the narratives that unfolded, enriching the experience.

As they took to the stage, a dilapidated character, stumbling under the awkwardness of a large cigarette bin, began his descent down the steep set of stairs, part of the bastion, making his own way towards the stage. Immediately the calibre of this actor was discernible, in the way that he spoke to the audience rather than at the audience.

He began his speech in a language that I can only assume was Russian, deliberated with the musicians for a while in this language and then proceeded with his monologue, still in this alien tongue. The prompter then reminded him of the need for translation, and he walked off with the excuse that this was a useless endeavour since he did not speak Maltese, only to then return and offer a compromise with English.

Later, he questioned the year and was advised, again by the prompter, that it was 1889, only for him to conclude that this was impossible as he himself was definitely not over 100 years old. Thus Ivan embarked on a series of reflections and self-indulgences as he portrayed himself as an oppressed husband, taking advantage of the rare absence of his wife.

His agitation was evident, and the awkwardness of this intimate relationship revealed itself to the audience, making for the tragic-comic figure to emerge: the absurdity of his abstractions was coupled with the reality of his human presence, even though this lost some of its effect when his desperation reached its climax and his weeping became overly drawn out.

The musicians carried us through to the second vaudeville to be presented under the direction of Stephen Baumecker. Irene Christ and Edward Mercieca played the main roles: a widow disturbed from her faithful mourning by a bully claiming a debt. The environment was used quite effectively to serve the melodramatic, as, for example, when Mercieca entered the scene from the height of the stairs, standing cloaked at the top of them, with a white light allowing only for him to be visible at that moment.

He quite resembled a highway man from some gothic novel. Graham Arnold played the supporting role of Luka, the widow's servant. The lead character's obstinacy provided for an attunement that led to a predictable end. Yet it was once this predictability was run through that it became more possible to engage with the sketch as the characters softened and the harsh screeching and yelling, manifesting the antagonism between the characters, abated. One of the hardest tasks for an actor is definitely that of expressing anger without alienating the audience through the harshness of it. This sketch definitely over-indulged in excessive vocal volume, allowing for the tragic-comedy to verge more on the farcical, making for pleasant entertainment but lacking in developing the fuller potential of the sketch.