elliott holt

Another dispatch from Moscow from my sister the Platonov scholar: 

katharineholt:

I saw an adaptation of Platonov’s “Reka Potudan’” (“River Potudan”) at the Studio of Theater Art tonight (see pics of beautiful lobby space and theater interior here). It was on a tiny stage with just 35 seats: I talked my way into a ticket even though there is a long waiting list by doing some shameless namedropping in an email to the administrator and talking up the conference I organized. The production was extraordinary — and more in the spirit of Platonov, to my mind, than the (almost great) Platonov adaptation at the Tabakov Theater,  ”Rasskaz o schastlivoi Moskve” (“Story about Happy Moscow”), which I saw a couple of weeks ago. There is a lot that is good about the Tabakov production, but it feels a bit one-note, at least in its current variant (it’s been up for a few years), and as though it has taken too many shortcuts to Stalinism (enough with that shade of red!).  I was a bit reminded of the Patrick Stewart Macbeth at BAM a few years ago: almost great, a little too generally “pan-Fascist” to make a full impact. Also the Tabokov production felt a bit too jokey-jokey at times, even though I fully support the attempt to understand the absurd and humorous in Platonov. 

I should write more about these two productions so I remember the details and can refer back to them as I continue my adventures with Platonov, but I’ll do that elsewhere. For now, I will just say the following about tonight’s show: THE POTATOES! They served them tonight at a long communal table before the show and then incorporated very similar ones into the production itself, when the two main characters, on the verge of starvation in the post-Civil War period, repeatedly dive wolfishly upon the few potatoes they are able to scrounge up at a given time. It could have felt gimmicky, this whole “feed the hipster audience potatoes in a fancy space and then incorporate them into scenes of starvation,” but somehow it didn’t. The acting and adaptation and staging were good enough that the potatoes were able to help translate the pathos of Platonov—to make the audience aware, that is, that the plentiful bowls of potatoes that seemed like a period snack to get the audience in the mood just moments before would have been cherished in another time. It’s another way of honoring Platonov’s brand of “refamiliarization,”  I suppose, and a way of honoring such bizarre and wonderful utterances as this, spoken by Lyuba as she longs for some food:  ”Я и так не очень люблю кушать: это не я – голова сама начинает болеть, она думает про хлеб и мешает мне жить и думать другое… ” (Roughly: “I don’t even really like eating: it is not I — the head itself starts to ache, it thinks about bread and gets in the way of me living and thinking anything else…”)