ASHCAN THEATRE COMPANY
PRESENTS
“CHEKHOV#S 'THE BEAR'.”

Our next production will be “The Bear” by Anton Chekhov, to be staged at The Farmhouse, Canterbury from Tuesday October-Thursday October 7th. The version we are presenting is by Brian Friel, who is regularly described as “Ireland’s greatest living playwright”. He has previously done translations of “Three Sisters” and “Uncle Vanya”, and is often thought of by critics as an “Irish Chekhov”. His adaptation of “The Bear” was first staged alongside his own short drama “Afterplay” at The Gate Theatre, Dublin in March 2002.

The action of the play takes place in the home of a young widow Elena Popova. Her self-imposed seclusion is rudely invaded by the arrival of Gregory Smirnov, a retired soldier and neighbouring landowner. He has come to collect a debt he is owed by Elena’s late husband. Incensed by his demands and boorish behaviour, she orders her elderly servant Luka to throw him out. Smirnov refuses to budge until he receives his money. Tempers on both sides reach such a pitch that Smirnov challenges Elena to a duel. Being the feisty creature that she is, she accepts and fetches a pair of duelling pistols her late husband kept. She then confesses that she has never fired a pistol before and orders Smirnov to give her some basic tuition. Coming into close physical contact with her as he shows her how to aim and fire a pistol, Smirnov finds himself becoming increasingly attracted by Elena’s beauty and fearless, fiery temperament. Almost against his will, he proposes marriage to her, which she initially rejects, repeating her charge that he is a foul-mouthed bully and unfit for civilised society. He makes to leave, but is unable to tear himself away from her magnetic presence. Luka returns armed with a pitchfork in order to prevent the expected bloodshed, only to find Elena and Smirnov locked in a passionate embrace.

“The Bear”, along with Chekov’s other best known short plays such as “The Proposal” and “The Anniversary” belongs to a genre known as farce-vaudevilles. This type of drama was extremely popular in 19th Century Russia, and was originally imported from France during the previous century. The primary aim was to amuse rather than instruct which led to a large number of feeble examples which used minor variations on the same stock situations and characters. The extremely strict State censorship of the theatre did not encourage experiment, and in fact led writers such as Turgenev to turn their back on writing for the stage.

Although Chekhov set little store on his achievement with “The Bear”, calling it “a trivial little vaudeville in the French manner”, it is to his credit that he succeeds in imbuing the genre with greater depth than previous writers had achieved in this form. While the play is an amorous “comedy-joke”, it contains three-dimensional characters and uses a range of comic techniques ranging from pure slapstick to parody and irony. The inter-relationship of the visual with the verbal is equally complex.

Ashcan is proud to be mounting a production of this classic comedy as our next helping of Cafe Theatre at The Farmhouse in October.