TOLSTOY, who wrote the greatest novel in the history of world literature, couldn’t stand Chekhov’s plays. “Shakespeare’s are terrible,” Tolstoy told Chekhov, “but yours are even worse.” Tolstoy the stern prophet hated Shakespeare’s “exuberance with life,” but he also didn’t like the fact that “nothing happens” in a Chekhov play or short story.
Yet a lot of things happen while nothing happens. Chekhov — and no, not the creators of “Seinfeld” — was the first writer to realize this startling insight into the human condition. He was aware of the personal drama seething behind the surface of what we think we see in everyday life. What is the point? we ask after reading Chekhov’s fictions. The answer, of course, is the question itself.
Chekhov, one of the greatest writers ever, dealt with the intensity of futility: the intensity of desire and the consequent surrender to the futility of desire. His characters, like their creator, love life for what it is. At the age of 44, in 1904, as he was already dying of TB, his German physician recommended that Chekhov be given oxygen. But the Russian writer, who himself was a medical doctor, said it was too late. He requested a bottle of champagne instead.
According to his biographers, Chekhov’s pet peeve was “philowisdomizing,” and he believed — it was his “philosophy” — that “there ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man.”
In the 1973 play “The Good Doctor,” this Russian “poet of hopelessness” meets the American “patron saint of laughter” — Neil Simon, who celebrated his 81st birthday last July 4th, and is now considered the world’s most successful playwright.
Over the weekend, Saipan’s Friends of the Art staged their version of “The Good Doctor,” and it was while watching this charming, entertaining and funny production on Saturday evening that I realized I could actually smile for more than an hour.
It wasn’t a lavish production. Four or so chairs and a partition screen comprised the “production design.” The costumes were passably late 19th century. Everything, in short, had to depend on the actors. And boy, did they deliver.
The number of talented people on this island will never cease to amaze me, I told myself, seated just a few feet away from a small stage while admiring the pinpoint intensity of Richard Hamilton, the expansiveness of the multi-talented Paul Dujua, the believable Dave Bucher, the poise of Shauna Brown, the angelic Judy Tiples, the pathos of Bianca Blanco, the superb comedic timing of Moon Hyo Lee and Tommy Baik, the subtlety of Barbara Sher, the sincerity of Don Cohen, the aplomb of Antonio Tiples, the ardor of Chelo Marie Minguito, the vivacity of Joannie Liwanag, the amusing Frank Gibson, the incandescent Adeleyah Mojica, the passion of Therese Dimapilis, the efficiency of Tori Brown, the smooth Rick Jones, and the unforgettable Chantelle Renae Voutilainen.
The Friends of the Arts’ “The Good Doctor” featured nine scenes based on Chekhov’s stories, and my favorite was the wistful “Too Late for Happiness,” which featured two lonely middle-age people — played by Don Cohen and Barbara Sher — wondering whether it was still possible for them to tip-toe into the game called love. In the original version of the play, this scene was a musical interlude, but Don and Barbara pulled it off even without singing their lines. Is it too late? they asked, still coy and hopeful. No, they decided, it’s not too late, there will be another afternoon in the park, while we in the audience, who were quietly cheering for them, wanted to say, “It’s always too late!”
Directed by Harold Easton, this production was a labor of love brought to us by the untiring lovers of the theatrical art — the best kind of folks in my book.
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