The Arena's "A Month in the Country," Makes the Games People Play at Love a
Sure Winner
by ShireNet reviewer, Sharon Kennedy
The Arena stage turns its Fichandler stage into a 1840's Russian aristocratic midsummer and early Fall grand estate. On this altered stage, the landowner oversaw the summer estate activities such as winnowing and repairing the winnower. In the evening, the family and extended family members spend the evening painting, reading to each other, and playing Hearts, the card game. This peaceful pastime is deceiving to the underlying emotional currents to the games family members play in youth and mid-life romances.
Whether it is a card game or the manipulation and play to win a hand at youthful or mid-life romantic affairs, family members followed a set of rules. How one perceives these rules and the results changes with the passage of time and place. One may side with the belief that love is a catastrophe. On the other hand, it is equally believable that you win some and loose some in setting out to win at any game at any cost to human feelings.
Actually there is less boredom to watching this landowner and his familly engage in more than peaceful evening pastimes such as the card game of Hearts. In "Month in the Country" the landowner, Arkady Sergeyevich Islayev (Wendell Wright) believes his wife Natalya Petrovna is in love with another man, Michel Aleksandrovich Rakitin (Gary Sloan. Michel Alekandrovich Rakitin is also a close family friend. However, as Brian Friel's adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's "Month in the County" unfolds the truth to the family's relationships surprises and delights.
Undergoing a mid-life change, Natalya Petrovna (Mary Beth Peil) shows the audience the frustrations, pitfalls, joys, and humor of falling in love with Aleksy Nikolayevich Belyayev, a 21 year old unjaded student and tutor. Peil plays her part well surrounded by both supporting and contrasting characters.
The German tutor Herr Schaff (Richard Bauer)gives unfailing humor to Peil's romantic mid-life romantic changes and to the rest of the family's relationships. He adds a totally refreshing since of humor to the mundane card game of hearts. For example, Herr Schaff shares his belief that the most interesting women are widows. Besides Herr Schaff's beliefs, he projects humor by his efforts to learn the English language. Throughout, the play Herr Schaff frequently makes mistakes in his choice of words to use in sentences, such as "I refuse to couple." He calls himself a prize winning lecher when he means lecturer and his vocabulary erotic instead of erratic. These mistakes are hilarious in the context of the family's frenzied romantic relationships.
The local doctor, Ignaty Ilyich Shpigelsky (Henry Strozier) also supports the humor and tragedy to Nataly's mid-life romance. At the family gatherings Strozier makes joke telling and matchmaking his art. Supplementing the local doctor and Herr Schaff are a truely clownish and lusty pair--Katya (Melissa Flaim), a servent and Matvey(Ralph Cosham), a servant.
The characters that support the humor are just as necessary as the ones that give a serious contrast to the developing romantic relationships. One of these characters is Halo Wines, who plays Anna Semyonovna Islayeva, Arkady's widowed mother. Another is Vera Aleksandrovna (Kristina Nielson), Natalya's ward.
One line, you win some and you loose some, sums up the serious and tragic side to the characters' evolving relationships. This is evident throughout "A Month in the Country." To find out who the winners and loosers are, the choices they make and how they react, see "A Month in the Country." The cast will assure you of a winning time. The show runs through June 4. For reservations or information, call the box office at 202-488-3300.