The Present (STC 2015)

The Present was a production based on Anton Chekhov's Platonov that was produced by the Sydney Theatre Company. It was performed at the Roslyn Packer Theatre between 4 August - 19 September 2015. The production was directed by John Crowley, written by Andrew Upton and starred Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh.

Adaptation
This production was adapted from Anton Chekhov's first play Platonov. Platonov was first published in 1923, after being discovered in Chekhov's safety deposit box by his sister in about 1914. The title of Platonov was created posthumously, and is sometimes referred to as "a long play without a title."

Andrew Upton has adapted many Russian classics, including The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, Children of the Sun, and The White Guard. The Present contains numerous Chekhovian tropes, while also being distinctly Upton. The "Chekhov's gun" convention is in use in the production, as are the themes of "disenchantment with life, love and tangled relationships and time." In Upton's writing, he tried to mirror the "strong staccato rhythm" he found in the original text, by being "economical and precise." In the STC-produced On Cue magazine on The Present, Hannah Brown writes,"Another trademark of Upton's writing is his use of simultaneous and overlapping dialogue which captures the rhythms and of everyday conversation. In Upton's texts this is signaled with a /. The overlapping dialogue shows the way that people don't listen or hear each other and the way we jostle for our place within a conversation and sometimes even shut others down."Upton said of his own adaptation, "I have taken more liberty than I did with [Uncle] Vanya. But I know that Chekhov became a master of 4-act structure, so I think there's still plenty of Chekhov in this production. The punch of act 3 has to be there."

Unlike Chekhov's original play, this production is set in 1990s Russia. Upton's rationale for this temporal setting is that the large cast of thirteen people, all of different generations, inspired him to "draw out intergenerational conflict in his adaptation." Upton further explained that the post-Soviet period in Russia was a time of great change "but the young generation missed out at the expense of the oligarchs." The characters themselves are a reflection of this great change. As Brown explains, "Anna would have been part of the Russian gentry and now with the General dead, her place in society is uncertain...Yegor has benefited from Russian privatization and can be considered an “oligarch”. Osip is an ex KGB member and represents the morally corrupt USSR Communist regime which the older characters admire and the younger characters abhor. The younger birthday party attendees including Mikhail, Sergei and Nikolai are part of a generation of Russians who were supposed to embrace societal change, but instead, fast economic growth has been favoured and wealthy oligarchs have gained power."

Conception and Development
Designer Alice Babidge's set design intentionally "evoked the Russian dacha, along with costumes that channelled 90s-era Russia." It featured four distinct white sets. The main set resembled half a large gazebo, in which the party took place, with a long table down the middle, surrounded by chairs. The props (furniture) on stage and set were designed to reflect the play's themes of past, present and future. The set is distinctly pre-revolutionary, while the furniture is from the 1990s.

Staging and Performance
In preparation for their roles, director John Crowley asked the cast to research topics relevant to the play, the period in which it was set and the characters' back stories. However, both Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh confirmed that, once on stage, "the research inevitably falls away...you play off the language and the people there in front of you."

Crowley has further stated that he intended his direction to be invisible in order for the actors to access the writing "in the most authentic way."

As a three-hour play, the emotional mood changes throughout. In an interview, actor Chris Ryan was asked how the actors navigated these changing moods. He responded, "Each act in a Chekhov play is its own beast...The hardest act is act 1 - lots of set up and history. It gets easier to perform once the action really sets in at pace."

Promotion
During the production of The Present, the Sydney Theatre Company had the following on their website:"Love will tear us apart""Anton Chekhov’s first play was a sprawling, unstructured epic but it marked out the style and themes he would return to in his later masterworks from  The Seagull  to  The Cherry Orchard . It remains a mysterious, unpolished gem.""The manuscript, left unpublished until almost two decades after Chekhov’s death, lacked a title. Over the years it has inspired various adaptations –  Wild Honey, Fatherlessness, The Disinherited  –but it is most commonly referred to as  Platonov, the name of the man at its centre. And yet, the play has always contained another extraordinarily rich and complex character – that of Anna Petrovna.""Taking on these roles are the fearsome talents of Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh. Irish director John Crowley, renowned for his work on the West End and Broadway, brings his lean and precise theatrical vision. And, as with his 2010 adaptation of  Uncle Vanya, Andrew Upton lends his distinctive voice, brimming with vitality, to this tale of yearning, vodka and shattered dreams."

Ticket Prices

 * Saturday evening A Reserve $149
 * Saturday evening B Reserve $105
 * Adult A Reserve $144
 * Adult B Reserve $93
 * Concession $114
 * Seniors cardholder $134
 * Preview $95
 * Under 30 $114
 * Upper boxes $35

On Tour
In late 2016, the full original cast toured the production to Broadway. It commenced previews at the Barrymore Theatre on 17 December 2016. The official Broadway run began on 8 January 2017 and closed on 19 March 2017. The first time an all-Australian cast has performed on Broadway, it marked the Broadway debut for Blanchett, Roxburgh, and the rest of the cast.

Original Sydney production
The production in Sydney received mostly highly positive reviews. In particular, Andrew Upton's adaptation of Chekhov's play was praised, given the difficulty of interpreting and editing the source material. Limelight Magazine critic Maxim Boon said of the adaptation, "The artistic license Upton takes with the specifics of the action, such as transplanting the play into a more contemporary, late 20th Century context and infusing the dialogue with charismatic Australian colloquialisms, serves only to unveil these characters as relatable, recognisable figures, rather than culturally and historically distant artefacts."Boon also praised the high calibre of actors in the cast, describing Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh's rapport as "transfixing." Critic Bec Caton also commended the on-stage chemistry of the two actors, saying that, "[Roxburgh's] scenes with Blanchett were some of the most moving and intense moments of the piece; both actors holding such emotional vulnerability behind a facade of authority." Boon said the interaction of the whole cast, and the speech patterns woven into the script, greatly enhance the performance. "People talk over each other, words are stuttered and tripped over: it creates a hugely absorbing sense of authenticity to the text that holds a mirror up to our own ways of communicating."

Broadway
While critics praised the Sydney production, its tour to Broadway divided critics significantly. Upton's adaptation was largely the target of the negative criticism in the New York reviews. Ben Brantley of the New York Times referred to the production as a "sprawling and confused adaptation of a sprawling and confused play." David Cote from Time Out New York described the production as "alternately tedious and odious."

The cast, particularly Blanchett and Roxburgh, received some positive reviews, with Marilyn Stasio of Variety saying, "the spirit of Chekhovian farce shines bright, and the ensemble work of this Aussie company is just grand...Is it too soon to ask them back?"