I heart Chekov plays in English. Vanya on 42nd Street is my favorite Wallace Shawn-Andre Gregory collaboration (film version of Uncle Vanya). I like it even better than My Dinner with Andre. And it has an actual famous actress is in it-- Julianne Moore plays Yelena, the young seductress married to the old professor.
I also heart Chekov plays in French. After Oncle Vania last week at the theatre in the round at Theatre de la Bastille, Evelyn and I decided that Chekovian humour translates well into French-- quiet tragi-comic afternoons at the country estate when in the course of your banal existance, you suddenly realise that you have no more money, and you've wasted your life and you spend the next 2 hours complaining about it and blaming others. Very Parisian. With lots of understatement. Did I mention that they also complain a lot?
For anyone not already familair with this charming personality trait, complaining and criticizing are essentially the main hobbies of all Parisians. The greastest compliment in the French language is to say you have nothing to say (j'ai rien a dire). It's implied that if you had anything to say, it would, of course, be critical (what else could possibly be worth mentioning?) Someone has therefore done something so incredibly well that there is miraculously nothing to criticize or complain about.
I guess I should spend my time seeing French plays in French; they do have some good playwrights, after all, but it somehow seems appropriately contradictory and contrary to see only Russian plays in French.
Some fun dialogue from Anton C. : it's a beautiful day. A beautiful day to hang one's self. (Vanya)
And: I am in mourning for my life. (Cherry Orchard)
J'ai rien a dire.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment