The story of Dimitri Dmitrich Gurov’s affair with the married Anna Sergeyevna during their convalescence in Yalta is introduced as a dream by an ageing incarnation of the protagonist. These reminiscences set the stage for the following dissolution of the boundaries between the real (represented by the actors) and the imaginary (represented by the puppets). Like in the Fingers Theatre, the puppeteers convince through their precise control of the marionettes, which imparts a special, sharp significance to each of their gestures.

This realm of distilled emotions and memories is at first juxtaposed with a more realistic environment in which the audience encounters the embodied equivalents of the puppets’ characters. Thus, we are abe to compare the story as experienced and transmitted by Dimitri the puppet with the version that is enacted by a younger human version of Dimitri (Nika Tavadze).

The true magic of Tsuladze’s staging emerges when the human characters are confronted with their puppet counterparts. It is as if the characters are facing themselves in a dream, and are suddenly asked to either reject or embrace some of their exaggerated personal aspects. Throughout the play, the different planes of the puppets and the actors mix freely and with smooth transitions: a miniature newspaper unfolds into a larger version when passed on to the actor, flowers are exchanged between actor and puppet and so on. In some instances, even the puppeteers, who otherwise display a remarkable self-discipline in channelling all of their emotions solely through their marionettes, are included in this colourful dance between fiction, fact, and the metatheatrical level.

Within fantasy and dream, the heightened acting style of the Georgian performers finally finds its true expressionistic strength. It matches the formal implications of the puppets remarkably, and leads to a charged and delectable otherworldly atmosphere. Anna Sergeyevna’s (XXX) porcelain beauty mirrors this glittering and tantalizingly unapproachable surface most appropriately.

In contrast to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and even Kakutsa Cholokashvili, music and the simple sound effect of the waves on the beach are not just a decorative veneer, but are vital in the creation of this unique world. Given the sparse use of words in this production, the music takes on an important narrative function, providing a strong rhythmic structure from which the puppets take their cues.

I was truly disappointed that I could not see the rest of this extraordinary performance, but as the promising end-point of the Marjanishvili’s presentation of their work, The Lady with the Dog was extremely effective.

Guram Qartvelishvili has unearthed and assembled material suppressed during the Soviet regime to create an epic play about Georgia’s struggle for freedom – naturally a very loaded subject in light of Georgia’s recent war with Russia over South Ossetia (August 2008). Against this backdrop, the historic 1920’s Soviet plans for settling the newly formed region of Ossetia, and eventually the rest of Georgia, with Russian military personnel was particularly poignant, since many Georgians see these forced re-settlements as the root of the recent conflict.

For this performance, the Marjanishvili’s large stage was used to its fullest extent, revealing a marvellous depth very appropriate to the panoramic scope of the events. The overall design was simple but effective. Moveable and tiltable platforms provided great flexibility and brought to life scenes as diverse as a lovers’ bed to the cold heights of the Battle of Sarikamish.

The acting matched this sweeping patriotic view of history in its use of pathos. The cast, with Kakutsa Cholokashvili (Nika Tavadze) as lead role, created a Hollywoodesque performance in the style of Doctor Zhivago, full of passion, male camaraderie, and heroic warfare. Gia Burjanadze was especially convincing as a burdened but responsible Marshall Kote Abkhazi. The Soviet commander’s hunchbacked servant Avksenti (Alexander Getsadze) with his gluttonous craving for food was also very memorable and added a much-needed element of humour to the piece.

The overall style of heightened naturalism combined with patriotic fervour was challenging at times for a non-Georgian audience more accustomed to psychological acting, but it was effective in what it tried to achieve. The problems of this approach lie in its consequences on the interpretation of the story. I found the aestheticisation of war through the use of heroic tableaux washed in a blue light problematic in the way it glossed over the atrocities of the armed conflicts. Even the on-stage fights were oddlly tame and insufficiently choreographed. With the recent August war in mind, such glorification of personal sacrifice can turn out to be a very dangerous call-to-arms. Given the country’s history, statements like ‘struggle always has meaning’ are understandable, but deserve closer scrutiny all the same. Not short on visual and emotional effects, it is this lack of critical thinking that stands out as a large gap in this production of Kakutsa Cholokashvili.

This production of Kakutsa Cholokashvili was reviewed on the 23/11/08 at the Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre Tbilisi, large stage.

Photograph-top: Portrait of Kakutsa Cholokashvili around the time of the conflict in 1921. Courtesy of Wikipedia.

Photograph-bottom: Kakutsa Cholokashvili prodcution at the Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre Tbilisi, large stage

The plot is simple: Upper-class lady Mme Lemarchand (Fiona Bell) visits the handyman Franck Meyer in order to hire his wife Hilda as nanny and maid. From the beginning, there are hidden implications that her real intention is to sleep with Franck – implications that were unfortunately spelled out only too largely in this production.

In Fiona Bell’s delivery, Mme Lemarchand’s sexual voraciousness, driven by a feeling of power and superiority, is continuously visible. Moreover, Bell’s performance starts at a high and hysteric pitch and remains on that level throughout the evening, thus precluding any further emotional development or even tonal nuances. This makes it difficult to follow her arguments – a serious defect given the discursive nature of Ndiaye’s script. It stands to question whether director and cast have fully penetrated the French tradition of the argumentative dialogic play. If performed in this way, it certainly emerges as a weakness, giving the impression of a lack of theatricality and an unbalanced predominance of language.

Franck’s (Merlin Leonhardt’s) performance was similarly one-dimensional. After having hired Hilda (who, by the way, is never seen on stage), Mme Lemarchand begins to invade their private space, and estranges Hilda step by step from her husband, to the point of coaxing the absent character to live in her house. Leonhardt expresses Franck’s emotional and later physical pain by being bent double most of the time, and usually plays with a rather vacant look supposedly meant to express the magnitude of his emotional suffering.

Tea Kitsmarishvili as Franck’s sister-in-law Carine was the one discovery of the evening. Her portrayal of a feisty and caring character willing to take over her sister’s responsibilities with her family was completely convincing. In contrast to the other actors, it was a relief to see Kitsmarishvili’s restraint (a curious reversal of the difference between a generally heightened Georgian style in comparison to the more psychological British one). Emotions registered on her face, but she was not thrusting herself on the audience. Instead, her character was more concerned in getting on with her life.

And that is exactly what Franck and Carine end up doing: they accept Hilda’s total appropriation by Mme Lemarchand and decide to build a new existence out of the scraps of their former lives. This strikes me as the most interesting aspect of a play that otherwise – as text and production – seems to be curiously limited in scope.

All characters in the piece are played by finger puppets clad in the most basic of costumes and cunningly lit to create the right level of focus and intimacy. The company uses three different types of puppets. The first is a sort of show presenter/emcee, a bag-shaped creature with a moveable mouth. This character would certainly please a younger audience, but to me it delivered little more than mild amusement. The second type of puppet was more engaging. Its head was of a similar design to characters from the Muppet Show and its body was created by a human hand: the index and middle fingers served as legs while the thumb and the ring finger formed its arms. The third type also used the puppeteer’s hand to create the shape of the body but added a small and simple egg-shaped wooden head that possessed a nose but no eyes. This proved to be the most touching of all the puppets.

There’s something amazing about watching a hand transform into a fully-fledged (albeit silent) character, all the more vulnerable for the visibility of the puppeteer’s naked skin. The gestures delivered by these finger puppets was of a simplicity and precision that is often lacking in human actors; and it brought home some of Kleist’s ideas in his famous essay On the Marionette Theatre. Dancing to the music, two finger puppets come together and separate, experience close physical encounters, and are finally given wings (created by another actor’s wide-spread hands) to fly away together.

The Fingers Theatre’s performance is full of the kind of rhythmic precision that was so clearly lacking in Tsuladze’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that I began watching earlier on in the evening. Overall, the performance was a bit too long for my taste, but that is more the original video’s fault than a failure on the part of the company. After my initial disappointment with performances in Georgia, Fingers Theatre certainly improved my hopes for the days ahead!

The Fingers Theatre production took place on the 22/11/08 at the Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre Tbilisi (small stage).

To watch a video clip of the Fingers Theatre’s adaptation of Bizet’s opera Carmen visit this link.

The presentations opened with a new adaptation of the Shakespeare classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Marjanishvili’s Artistic Director Levan Tsuladze. Tsuladze’s vision of the play is a pink and white extravaganza dominated by the development of a gay relationship between Oberon and Puck. The fairies, dressed in skimpish ballet dresses, inspired by Art Nouveau design, are representative of a Victorian prettification which culminates in an extravagant Botticelli pastiche when Titania emerges from a giant mussel.

The acting generally betrays the Georgian predilection for the grand old English style a la Olivier, which would appear to a modern London audience as heightened and bordering on the melodramatic. However, Tsuladze’s direction is not completely void of postmodern impulses. Some of the large theatrical gestures are ironically undercut, for example when Oberon calls thunder and lightning upon a character and is then surprised by the immediate effect of his gesture.

The use of space is often uninspired. Most monologues are expectedly delivered to the audience from the front of the stage, and during Theseus’ and Egeus’ negotiation of Hermia’s relationship with Lysander, all participants limply stand in a single line.

This lack of thorough thinking is unfortunately indicative of the rest of the performance. Many ideas and situations are created without following them through to their end. The only possible exception is the introduction of a female Snug (Nika Kuchava) into the group of mechanicals. Snug’s insistence on a part in the play they are going to enact for Theseus’ and Hippolyta’s wedding, reinforced as it is by Kuchava’s boisterous impersonation, is suddenly imbued with feminist implications. Unfortunately, even this potential female empowerment leads to a dead end when Snug is ready to settle for the minor part of the lion.

The production becomes a meandering plot that lacks a clear thrust. Attempts are made to fill this intellectual emptiness with music that does little else than reinforce the desired (and obvious) emotions of a scene. The production fails to rise beyond a titillating Disneyfication of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I left at the interval in order to attend a rather different performance.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed at the Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre Tbilisi, large stage on 22/11/08.

Read the first part of Jens Peters’ Georgia Series: The Rendezvous.