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The Sneeze

by Anton Chekhov
SF Weekly Review April 28, 1999 by Michael Scott Moore

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Chekhov’s Old Shorts

Anton Chekhov’s best stories and plays are famously well-chiseled
portraits of landowners, artists, and Russian bourgeoisie, sculpted
with keen pathos and insight. But as a young medical student he
also wrote outrageously funny, easy-to-sell stories, and sometimes
turned to farce in one-act plays. The eminent and sensitive Dr.
Chekhov, not everyone realizes, has a farcical side as goofy as
Mark Twain’s.

The People’s Republic of Chekhov is producing eight of these
pieces (collected and adapted by Michael Frayn) in a very long
evening at the Exit called The Sneeze. “Check out the action in
Chekhov’s shorts!” is the blurb on its program, and his shorts, as
you might guess, teem with various forms of life. There’s the
anxious and undertalented lady writer who tries to read her
five-act play out loud to a famous playwright; there’s the minor
government official who sneezes on a prominent government
official; there’s the burly Russian who subjects his delicate French
visitor to rough country philosophy and gobs of hot mustard;
there’s the old actor on an empty stage; and there’s the gentle
man, scared of his wife, who fails to give a speech on the evils of
tobacco. The characters are mostly hilarious and mostly
well-acted, but 2 1/2 hours of slapstick Chekhov are a little like six
hours of Monty Python (something I once tried to sit through,
stoned, in college): overkill.

Some of the skits seem to “belong” to one or two actors in the
group. For example, “The Evils of Tobacco” is a one-man piece
performed by Gene Mocsy, who takes obvious pleasure in showing
off his talents. He comes on looking uxorious and meek, in lightly
graying hair and a brown twill coat, and announces that for the
general improvement of the audience he’s been asked by his wife
to speak against the evils of tobacco. “I have no personal feelings
in the matter, but my wife ... does,” he says, openly snorting a
greenish pinch of snuff. Then, except to notice that a fly once died
in his snuffbox, “probably of a nervous disorder,” he avoids his
topic altogether. The poor henpecked man evolves from a
shambling and mild-mannered character to a desperate maniac,
revealing in the process that he’s exploited by his proprietress wife
and has a drinking problem. Mocsy does an excellent job of
working both humor and pathos out of Chekhov’s simple script,
and although he doesn’t preen, it’s clearly his showcase piece of
the night.

“Clearly” because his next role doesn’t work so well. “Inspector
General” is Chekhov’s version of the old story about a king, or a
god, who disguises himself as an average person to learn how his
subjects act when they’re not in the presence of a god or a king.
The new, corrupt Inspector General -- who inspects for corruption
in local institutions -- chats up the driver of a hired sleigh to find
out what the people know about him. The driver tells everything:
He’s heard of the Inspector’s drinking and carousing and even
knows the names of his mistresses. This should be a funny skit,
but the two actors have thrown their energies into other parts of
the show. Mocsy puts on an unconvincing gruff voice as the
driver; and Paul Smith, who changes his voice on purpose as the
Inspector General, doesn’t find one that works. “Inspector
General” is an overlong dud.

Smith’s best piece is “Swan Song,” a monologue, or
near-monologue, by an old actor in a darkened theater. This skit
has more in common with Chekhov’s later style than the rest of
the show, because almost none of it is funny. The actor
Svetlovidov grapples with his memories of triumph and misery,
comparing the theater to “a bottomless pit, like a tomb with death
inside.” Smith does a virtuoso job -- wrapped in a shawl and
carrying a candle, acting drunk and growly, revisiting King Lear in
a booming voice as Nikita the prompter (Jonathan Gonzalez) plays
the Fool. The trouble is that the sketch follows “Inspector
General,” near but not quite at the end of an already long evening,
and Svetlovidov’s self-indulgence is taxing.

Jonathan Gonzalez has his high moment in “The Bear,” one of the
show’s strongest pieces. He shares it with Daria Hepps, who
plays a grieving widow. She lives on an elegant estate but sees no
one, weeping at the portrait of her dead husband, who wasn’t
always faithful. A rude, bearlike landlord named Smirnov bursts
into the house over the protests of her servant, Luka, and demands
payment on a debt her late husband left behind. She can’t give him
the money immediately, but if he doesn’t get it he’ll go bankrupt, so
he makes himself at home in the living room and drinks her vodka
until she pays up. This gives Chekhov a chance to let the landlord
and widow argue about coarseness and gentility. She accuses him
of not knowing how to behave in female company, and he makes
fun of sensitive behavior, telling her all about his romantic and
idealistic youth. His speech is like the doctor’s pessimistic rant
about idealism and hope in Uncle Vanya, and Gonzalez, looking
Russian enough in a long coat and boots, without affecting an
accent, delivers it with blustering force. Hepps is alternately
delicate and hysterical as the widow, and Paul Smith makes Luka
a good teeth-rattling, feather-dusting wimp of a servant, partly by
borrowing mannerisms from Wallace Shawn in Vanya on 42nd
Street.

The title piece is also excellent -- a wordless pantomime about a
sneeze during a ballet and its consequences. Paul Smith and
Jennifer Davis enter as an eminent Russian official and his wife,
dressed respectively in epaulets and a burgundy gown. Behind
them sit a brown-coated fop of a minor official (Jeremy Koerner)
and his appalling, overdressed wife (Hepps). This piece doesn’t
“belong” to anybody; all the actors do a good job. It’s like a
Chaplin film, vaudeville timed to lulls and climaxes in music from
The Nutcracker.

Koerner and Davis have their own spotlight moment in “The
Proposal,” in which Koerner plays a nervous hypochondriac trying
to propose to Natalya, a plain neighbor girl -- the hypochondriac
hops around like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers, without ever
coming to the point, and Natalya gives two loud, floor-tramping
tantrums -- but since it’s a long skit, coming after the indulgent
“Swan Song” to close out the show, their performances pale. It’s
too bad, because I like Davis; she shows real range and charm.
The People’s Republic should have shaved away the weaker
pieces and maybe rearranged the order, because there isn’t
anything inspired about the way Michael Frayn has collected the
skits. The show is like a museum exhibit passing through town --
old, historically interesting nuggets of a great Rhooshun’s incidental
work, sometimes hilarious but also a little wearing, and only for a
limited time.

The Sneeze. Plays and stories by Anton Chekhov.
Translated and adapted by Michael Frayn. Directed by
Daria Hepps and Jonathan Gonzalez. Produced by the
People’s Republic of Chekhov. Starring Hepps,
Gonzalez, Jennifer Davis, Jeremy Koerner, Gene
Mocsy, and Paul G. Smith. At Exit Stage Left, 156
Eddy (between Mason and Taylor), through May 1.
Call (510) 339-7819.

— Michael Scott Moore
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