Carnicke, Sharon Marie. Checking Out Chekhov: A Guide to the Plays for Actors, Directors and Readers (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 543 thespaceofthreedays’(p.86).Professionalhistoriansoftheperiodacknowledge that in order to boost the war effort in 1943 Stalin released thousands of political prisoners from the camps, sending them to penal battalions at the front; and that in the same year he set up a new Moscow patriarchy — also, it is usually argued, to bring the Orthodox Church and its believers behind the Generalissimo in the desperate struggle with Hitler. Reading the lively account of Mariia Iudina’s spiritual feats needs to be tempered by historical reality. On the other hand, a hagiography does not demand literal truth. This particular one, for example, is very free with, presumably imaginary, descriptions of Stalin’s thought processes and mood changes. Most of the critical and other tributes to the pianist were published in the twenty-first century, although one of the best sources of information on her life and thought is the collection published only eight years after her death: Mariia Iudina. Stat´i. Vospominaniia. Materialy (Moscow, 1978). That is in no way to say that Blessed John’s essays recorded another thirty-two years later are without interest. As Leonid Belov observes in his Foreword, ‘all the pages of the collection are one continuous hymn to this great soul’ (p. 23). There is every likelihood that his modest subject would have appreciated this enthusiastic tribute. And even secular admirers of Iudina’s marvellous playing may be glad to acquire at a nugatory price this ‘hymn’ to not only the musical side of her extraordinary life, but also to aspects of her devout faith and remarkable personality. London Arnold McMillin Carnicke, Sharon Marie. Checking Out Chekhov: A Guide to the Plays for Actors, Directors and Readers. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2013. 238 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Annotated bibliography. Index. $29.00: £21.95 (paperback) This study, described by its author as possessing the ‘insights’ of a ‘Russian scholar’ (p. 8) and as ‘a guide to reading Chekhov’s plays deeply’ (p. 21), is aimed primarily at a student readership, the major work being viewed through the prism of his prose and shorter dramatic ‘jokes’, as well as through contrasting examples of European farce and melodrama. A brief account of Chekhov’s life is followed by a ‘tedious close, close reading’ [sic] (p. 71) of his short story The Student, offered as an interpretive template for reading the plays. This is followed by an exposition of what is described as the ‘devilish’ detail in Chekhov’s dramatic method, requiring attentive exegesis to be fully appreciated. The examination of the detail is wide-ranging and reveals the author’s easy familiarity with the niceties of Chekhov’s dramatic technique, SEER, 92, 3, JULY 2014 544 despite a tendency to flit from play to play in a manner which might serve to confuse, rather than enlighten, the student. The sections on the influence of foreign vaudeville and melodrama are pertinent but rather lightweight in terms of coverage and analytical penetration. An objection to the confident authoritativeness which characterizes the study’s overall tone, and especially the ‘close reading’ of The Student offered here, might be that it is strained, highly tendentious and over-assertive. The student reader might also baulk at a general air of condescension throughout, an immodesty in the ubiquitous use of the first person singular, as well as the proliferation of excited exclamation marks coupled with an unerring instinct for the observation, or quotation, which is unremarkable. Insistent reminders that the (not always felicitous) translations of the plays are the author’s own tend to grate, while the actual writing could be characterized (albeit unkindly) as a combination of stylistic gaucherie, well-worn phraseology and didactic complacency, plus the recycling of critical commonplaces as fresh insight. On questions of interpretation, it might be considered misleading to locate the second act of The Cherry Orchard in ‘an abandoned graveyard’ (p. 102), which is precisely what Chekhov warned against in the original production, and to suggest that Trofimov blithely ‘ushers [Ania] into the future as they exit together’ (p. 112) demands a more discriminating analysis of that play’s conclusion. The uninitiated might also need explanation that ‘Masha’s whistle’ (p. 69) in Three Sisters is...