Theatre in Review: A Month in the Country (Classic Stage Company)

	Taylor Schilling, Peter Dinklage. Photo: Joan Marcus

The lights come up on a classic tableau from Russian drama: a hot summer's day, with a gaggle of landed gentry lying around, doing nothing much, complaining of the boredom. It soon becomes obvious that any feelings of love -- or what passes for love among this crowd -- are wildly misdirected and a single moment of candor is all that is needed to set off a disaster. It's the kind of situation designed to keep the audience on tenterhooks --- or at least it should be. Despite some very fine contributions, however, his revival of Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country succumbs to that atmosphere summertime languor.

Much of the trouble with A Month in the Country is, I submit, built into Turgenev's text, for reasons that, strictly speaking, are not the author's fault. The basic situation -- the married lady of the estate toys with one man, chases after another, and frustrates the romantic dreams of her young ward -- leads one to expect a Chekhovian level of emotional richness and subtle characterization. But Turgenev, whatever his gifts as a prose stylist, never reached such heights. (For the record, I've been twice disappointed by A Month in the Country, and the 2002 Broadway revival of Fortune's Fool came across as a rickety period potboiler. There must be a reason why so few of his plays are revived.)

On examination, A Month in the Country is a surprisingly mechanical piece of construction; Turgenev sets up his gallery of characters, then knocks them over with a single dramatic gesture, having failed to give them much in the way of shading and dimension. The action centers on Natalya, who is as lazy as a cat in summer, as manipulative as a spider in her web, and, in Taylor Schilling's assured New York stage debut, possessed of a smile that acts a Potemkin village behind which all sorts of unruly emotions lurk. Bored with her husband Arkady, who buries himself in various estate-improvement projects, Natalya dallies with Rakitin, a family friend -- but this is a dangerous game: She merely wants a man to dance attention on her; he has fallen desperately in love.

Natalya's own amorous attentions land on Aleksey, a young student from Moscow hired to tutor her young son. It is Natalya's bad fortune that she has a young ward, Vera, who has been giving Aleksey the eye. Once she corners Vera's and confirms the young woman's interest in Aleksey, Natalya launches a series of maneuvers that leads to a brief, passionate fling with the younger man --and emotional disaster for her everyone in her orbit.

This romantic tangle would seem to be the very stuff of drama, but it falls flat, and not for reasons that have to do with John Christopher Jones' highly speakable translation. (Richard Freeborn's version, used on Broadway 20 years ago, was no more emotionally binding than the current one.) It's also possible that Erica Schmidt's notably dry-eyed directorial approach is a contributory factor: If you're going to stage this kind of old-fashioned melodrama, the least you can do is let the actors have at it.

Still, Schilling's Natalya has her fascinations, especially in the practiced manner that she deploys her highly calculated charm. She moves about the stage, disarming others with a slightly vulpine smile, her eyes missing nothing unfolding in her general vicinity. Sitting down with one of the younger characters for a cozy chat, she trains her glance on her companion so thoroughly that you half wonder if she isn't going to devour him whole. She is also the most shameless of flirts. When Rakitin, in the middle of a lazily comic dispute, asks her if she wants him to disagree with her, she responds, "I want you, I want you, I want you to... want," increasing the emphasis each time the phrase is repeated until the implications cannot be ignored. Later on, surveying the wreckage in the wake of her fling with Aleksey, she turns coldly dismissive in a way that reveals her deep self-disgust.

At the same time, she never seems to connect with the Rakitin of Peter Dinklage, largely because the actor never quite convinces as a lovestruck loner. He is deft with Rakitin's cynical comments. ("You can hide anything else but boredom") but when the time comes for him to admit that there is nothing for him in Natalya's house -- and never will be -- there's a surprising absence of heartbreak. There is a similar lack of heat between Schilling's Natalya and the remarkably bland Aleksey of Mike Faist. We are meant to see that Natalya is throwing away her passion on an unremarkable young man, but Faist, with his flat line readings, may be too unremarkable for his own good. Watching two women would fall under his spell makes you realize the man shortage must be critical in this particular corner of the Russian countryside.

Then again, the entire supporting cast is an up and down affair. As Natalya's mother-in-law, Elizabeth Franz has little to do but play cards in the background, although she makes the most her single big scene in which she warns her son that a scandal is in the offing. Annabella Sciorra is too muted as a spinster who strikes a cold marriage bargain. Megan West overplays Vera's tremulous qualities, delivering a performance that is out of sync with the rest of the production. The role of Arkady, Natalya's dullard husband, is made even duller by Anthony Edwards. The best work by far comes from Thomas Jay Ryan as a cynical physician who plays the fool while keeping his fury to himself. ("If I didn't absolutely need these people, I wouldn't give them the time of day," he snarls quietly at one point.) Whether brokering a distinctly unappealing marital deal for Vera or making an astonishingly unsentimental pitch to a prospective wife -- he might as well be hiring a maidservant -- Ryan is the most interesting person on stage.

Mark Wendland's set design provides a wooden deck surrounded by a series of low-rise walls; the room is refurnished from scene to scene. It is backed by a stunningly painted green forest. It's an elegant, uncluttered concept, but I wonder if the four walls that hovers in mid-air is really necessary; remove them, and you would still have a perfectly evocative and playable environment. Anyway, Jeff Croiter's lighting creates some beautifully understated time-of-day looks, especially the crepuscular later-afternoon sunlight that comes in from upstage left, becoming increasingly dimmer and more richly colored as Natalya's existence unravels. Tom Broecker's costumes are beautiful period creations, notable for their elegant lines and absence of frills. Bart Fasbender's sound system provides a number of effects, including barking dogs, birdsong, and a thunderstorm.

There is much good work here, to surprisingly little effect. CSC has worked its way through the Chekhov repertory with distinction. A Month in the Country must have seemed like a good way of extending the company's continuing that cycle. Perhaps there are other Russian writers the company might tackle. This Month in the Country seems to have left everyone dazed by the sun.--David Barbour