The starry revival of “A Month in the Country” has its moments and good looks — but ultimately can’t soar above its emotionally stunted material and a couple of bland performances in key roles.
This Classic Stage Company production led by Taylor Schilling and Peter Dinklage also offers a worthwhile reminder. Anton Chekhov wasn’t the only playwright concerned with the fates of melancholy Russians — and Russia itself. Or, the earliest.
Ivan Turgenev’s play, written in 1850 and performed for the first time 22 years later, precedes Chekhov’s more famous and more frequently performed works. Both writers covered similar themes.
Director Erica Schmidt presents Turgenev’s story of early 1840s Russia in evocative fashion. Exterior walls of a home on a birch-lined estate are hoisted and hover over the stage that’s surrounded by low walls. It’s like a petri dish for people — all the better for examining their romantic follies. That’s a timeless idea, but John Christopher Jones’ translation, filled with “yeah” and “he’s so weird,” tilts toward the contemporary.
Virtually everything that goes down over a few days does so because of Natalya (Schilling), the beautiful but bored wife of hard-working Arkady (Anthony Edwards) and mother of young Kolya (Ian Etheridge). When she admits she’s in love with her young son’s teacher, Aleksey (Mike Faist, less than persuasive), she upends things for herself, her upright suitor Rakitin (Dinklage), the tutor and her virtuous 17-year-old ward Vera (Megan West).
Nailing Natalya’s maddening complexities is a tall order. Schilling is radiant as a woman so lovely that she leaves chaos in her wake. But Schilling’s acting is flat. Lines meant to be dramatic — “Don’t you dare!” — emerge loud and tinny.
Dinklage, on hiatus from “Game of Thrones,” fares better as a sensitive, besotted man who’s been content to love from a distance. Rakitin mostly just pines and frets, sharing his thoughts directly with the audience. But his explosive speech about the corrosiveness of love sticks in your memory.
Though they play minor characters, the most satisfying moment is between Thomas Jay Ryan and “Sopranos” mistress Annabella Sciorra. He’s a seemingly accommodating, secretly contemptuous, country doctor. She’s the pragmatic spinster he proposes to in the least romantic way possible. The scene is barbed, funny and provocative — and makes a good point about the transactional nature of love.
We’d like to spend a month in the country with those two.
