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reading as they rely less on the ability of theatre to "show"
things and more onthe words of Chekhov's omniscient narrator to
tell the audience how tointerpret things.
An example of this is Ragin's inability to improve conditions in
the hospital.Instead of allowing Smith's - hopefully intentional -
monotone and mutedactions as Ragin to demonstrate the hypocrisy and
spiritual deadness that areat the root of the protagonist's
impotence, Gilmour, who removes his hat to
distinguish between his roles as narrator and Gromov, takes off
his hat andtells the audience:
Andrei Ragin much admires intellect and integrity, but lacks the
character and confidence
to create a decent, intelligent environment. As for issuing
orders and prohibits or insisting
on anything, he is positively impotent, as if he had taken a vow
never to raise his voice or
use the imperative mood. He finds it hard to say "give me this"
or "bring me that."But to
tell his manager to stop pilfering, to sack him, to do away with
his parasitical sinecure
entirelysuch things are absolutely beyond him. When people try
to hoodwink Dr. Ragin,
when they flatter him or bring him some blatantly falsified
account to sigh, he turns red as a
beetroot and feels guilty - but signs it all the same. He
squirms when his patients complain
of hunger or rude nurses.(Chekhov 131)
If this were an isolated occurrence or if what was shown on
stage somehowilluminated the words, the excess verbiage could be
forgiven. Unfortunately,though, the narration is repeatedly used to
alleviate some of the difficulties ofportraying Chekhov's complex
characters onstage.
The predominance of narration mars the production to such an
extent that theonly successful parts of it are those that feature
little or no narration. Anexample of this occurs towards the very
end of the play after Ragin has beencommitted. Since only four
actors play all of the parts, there are occasionalonstage costume
changes. Earlier in the play, when Ann-Marie Kerr, who
played the mental patient Moiseika, puts on that costume, she
merely rolls upher sleeves and pant legs so that they are not
visible from underneath thehospital gown. Ragin also changes into
his hospital gown on stage, but incontrast to Kerr's earlier
transformation into Moiseika, Ragin actually removeshis street
clothes before putting on the uniform of ward 6. The removal of
allstreet clothes suggests that the ward is an indelible part of
Ragin and that hewill never be able to leave it, since the outside
world's uniform is nowmissing.
Another well-executed sequence, although it is less successful
within thecontext of the entire play, occurs during the opening
ofDr. Chekhov: Ward 6.
The play opens with a brief description of Gromov's life before
his descentinto madness. During this sequence, the audience is not
told in words thatGromov loved books, but was shown this love
whenever he enters hisapartment. Upon stepping across the
threshold, a flock of books, which healso uses as a pillow, flies
out from the wings and comes to rest at his feet.Another example is
Gromov's brief transformation into a stereotypical street-corner
prophet of doom. Instead of being told that everyone, including
eachaudience member, is one small step from being considered insane
by thegeneral populace, the company chooses to demonstrate this by
drawing on acommon Anglo-American cultural trope.
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The opening's reliance on slapstick and situational comedy
separates it fromthe rest of the production, which has a darker
tone. One result is the sensationof watching two different plays:
one depicting Gromov's life before insanityand another depicting
Ragin's after Gromov's confinement to the ward. Whilean argument
for the stylistic shift could be made, as the play progresses
andthe production continually uses bits of comic relief, the
opening and thehumorous sequences become more and more incongruous
with the bulk of theproduction. For example, when a patient in
tremendous pain is forced to hand
over a bribe for ineffective treatment, certain comic touches,
i.e. the patientspeaks a Slavic-sounding gibberish and acts as
though in a silent film, reducethe abhorrent nature of the incident
by reducing the patient to a caricature.
Ultimately, Hamlet's advice to "suit the action to the word, the
word to theaction" is not followed inDr. Chekhov: Ward 6-- either
the action isinappropriate to the word or so much is invested in
the word that the action isforgotten altogether.
Jennifer Olson
Notes
1. Although Stam focuses exclusively on adapting novels for
films, his
discussion of fidelity is applicable to dramatizations, that
is
transforming prose into theatre, because the idea that a
core
cluster of information can be transferred from one medium to
another also affects judgments on theatrical adaptations.
Works Cited
Chekhov, Anton. "Ward Number Six." Trans. Ronald Hingley.
TheOxford Chekhov. Vol. 6. Ed. Ronald Hingley. Oxford: Oxford
UP,1971. 119-68.
Stam, Robert. "Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation."
FilmAdaptation. Ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
UP,2000. 54-76.
J. Olson
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