This is no narrative history of the modern Russian theatre. Nicholas Rzhevsky makes it clear from the start that he has chosen a number of case studies to illustrate the close relationship between Russian theatre and its contextual literary culture, in particular ‘stage adaptations of written narratives originally not intended for performance’ (p. xi). Since performance is an act of creative imagination, Rzhevsky insists that a production can be as insightful as formal criticism in illuminating a literary work. Wide-ranging in its references, the exemplary introductory chapter explains how the author's central thesis dovetails with the last few decades of theatre discourse and practice. He then launches into a breathless survey of the ideas prevailing in Russian history, literature, philosophy and criticism around 1900. Here his most original contribution is to look closely at religious tenets, particularly kenoticism (the humbling of Christ to become man) and uslovnost’ (conditionality), while he conversely shows little interest in the influential ideas of the symbolists.
Rzhevsky's case studies are then primarily governed by his own interests and experiences. Sologub's Petty Demon and Kuzmin's Alexis, Man of God, mere footnotes in theatre history, are covered (though without reference to Kuzmin's debt to Flaubert), but not the popular pre-Revolutionary dramatizations of Crime and Punishment. Dickens's Cricket on the Hearth gets attention as embodying principles of the Moscow Art Theatre First Studio, but not the parent company's later stagings of his novels. Despite the importance of Vakhtangov's production, Princess Turandot cannot be classified as a ‘folk tale’; it is a Venetian fable originally confected for the stage and ought to fall outside Rzhevsky's writ.
The author's great advantage is his close collaboration with some of the leading animateurs of Russian theatre, especially Lyubimov and Kama Ginkas. Their productions are those parsed in the most circumstantial detail. Of the classic authors, most in evidence are Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and, of the Soviets, Sholokhov and Bulgakov. Like his favourite directors, Rzhevsky shows less interest in the often-staged novels of Turgenev, Gorky or Nikolay Ostrovsky. Owing to these personal predilections, the choice of subject here can at times seem arbitrary. Admittedly, there is no point in compiling laundry lists, but the result is a very partial picture. Aleksandr Tairov gets in only because he once worked with Bulgakov, Anatoly Efros because of a single Dostoevsky adaptation. Soviet theatres for young spectators, which relied largely on adaptations of fiction, are barely mentioned. In the final chapters, which cover more recent interpretations of the classics, the omissions are particularly troubling. Consequently, the book, while thought-provoking for the expert, is bound to prove problematic for a wider readership. Furthermore, the political situation is taken as given and the contingent factors that govern repertorial choices overlooked. And still, the book has much to offer. Rzhevsky is well informed and intellectually stimulating, and his re-creations at their best so pointed that one wishes the whole were not so disproportionate in its allotment of space and focus. As it stands, everything prior to the 1960s appears as precursor to Lyubimov and everything in the last twenty years derivative of his examples. Ultimately, the book seems like an art gallery where the exhibits are well chosen, cogently displayed and lit to show off their finer points, but the aggregate falls short of providing a cohesive account.
