Sons Without Fathers

Synopsis

Village school teacher Platonov is a man who is loved by women. Despite his best intentions, he is drawn into a series of extra-marital affairs that all hold the promise of escape from the provincial Russian reality where he and his circle of friends are trapped. Consumed by bitterness and disappointment, they attempt to fill their lives with sex and vodka, blaming their fathers for the mess they've been left in.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 13 May 2013

Chekhov's unfinished first play is best known as Platonov but director Helena Kaut-Howson reverts to the closer Russian title of "Fatherlessness" in her spiky and colloquial translation, first seen earlier this year at the Belgrade in Coventry.

Most strikingly, she has updated the play to post-Communist Russia. The first shock of the evening is to find Iona McLeish's towering set of silver sheet metal as a background to the chaotic schoolroom where Platonov (Jack Laskey) bursts through an upper-level panel.

This is as radical, and as successful, a take on Chekhov as was Benedict Andrews' production of Three Sisters at the Young Vic last year, and it shares the same quality of melding modern with traditional, so that the characters' boredom is symptomatic of spiritual and material stagnation both then and now.

A full version of Platonov might run to six hours, but Kaut...

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