Sunday 5 October 2014

A Personal Plea To Dominic Hill

 I know it would be really good, but please can you not do a version of any Chekhov plays in the near future.

It's not that I wouldn't enjoy it, or that I am not intrigued by how you'd work a clarinet solo into Uncle Vanya, nor that I found the version of Three Sisters at the Tron dull... I'm just kinda sick of Chekhov. 

I went to your Hamlet, didn't I? I trusted that you'd do something worth seeing, even with a terrible script like that - and you repaid me. I was actually outside at the interval wondering where you were taking it. But Chekhov...

He only really wrote one play. He just called it four different
names. I know it would fit with your interest in male failure (he usually has a son who has gubbed his potential), the ensemble cast, the Christian morality in an age of despair (every Chekhov has someone wondering about the future and seeing suffering as redemptive in the face of evidence to the contrary). But I have had enough Chekhov. It's the same bloody thing over and over again. 

Actually, you could do a version of all four plays, call it First World Problems and have a successful series of memes. 

Seriously, if you agree not to do it, I'll write a review as if it happened. Then we can say it did, you can get on with another project and...

Here, I'll give you my idea. Waiting for Godot is a classic, but most versions have lost the existential bite that gave it the buzz back in the 1950s. I have been campaigning for a return to the early versions, which recognised the vaudeville in Beckett... and how can you resist this casting?


It is a little known fact that there are four Chuckle Brothers. So that's the whole cast sorted. 



No comments :

Post a Comment