Битеф

just three more performances this week, has only a few pieces of furniture and an architectural framework to suggest the upper-class country estate where the action occurs. Nekrosius is not interested in painting a detailed picture of a small, self-contained world. Everything in his setting, every stick of furniture and every prop, is an active factor in expanding the play. A candle, a clock, a chair, a fur rug and a painting are more than decor; they are vibrant characters in the drama as well. The human actors do not confine themselves to the four walls of their stage world. They batter down the imaginary fourth wall separating them and the audience. They pour out the frustration, anger and desperation of their characters so directly that there doesn’t seem to be anything holding them back in their rush of emotion. Their characterizations are tilted to the point of mad distortion. The petty professor who holds the whole household in bondage by his nagging presence reels on stage leaning against his cane at a dangerous angle and crazily ringing a hand bell for service. When his beautiful and bored wife trembles with passion in her love for another man, she shakes as if she will fall apart. The estate’s impoverished hanger-on constantly sidles up to the wife’s glass perfume bottles and lovingly sniffs them, as if hoping that the perfume will lend his lumpish nature the exotic qualities he sees in the upper-class gentry above him. The object of these exaggerations is to achieve purity and clarity of understanding, but along with an almost innocent, unpolluted stream of delivery, there is an extremely complex and sophisticated theatrical presentation, in which Nekrosius underlines Chekhov’s text with vivid stage images of his own. A hushed scene between the besotted Dr. Astrov and the plain, unhappy young woman who loves him (a magnificent portrayal by Dalia Overaite) ends with an overturned bottle of vodka dribbling out its contents. The sickly old professor, whining about his lot in life, suddenly uses his cane to lift up the skirts of his young wife in a quick show of lust. When Vanya lashes out in uncontrollable rage at his empty life, the doctor uses a chair to trap his prone, thrashing figure in 'a tight, crude cage. And always there are the servants, picking up the messes caused by their master’s petty quarfels, leering knowingly at their folly and waiting for their downfall. Most of this is brilliant theater;