York Theatre Royal – 4 April 2017. Reviewed by Marcus Richardson
Chekov Shorts is a collection of 5 short comic plays written by the historical theatre icon Anton Chekov, the plays consisted of; Evils of Tobacco, The Dimwit, The Bear, Swan Song and The Proposal.
The plays were written around the late 1800s and early 1900s and were put under his belt as classics, all were originally written in Russian the performance used the English translation but kept the names of the character. The Cast of three made up of two men, Rupert Mason, William Hartley and a women Eva Savage who took on the challenge of portraying a variety of characters between the 5 unrelated Acts, this can be a very hard task to do as there needs to be a difference with each of the characters even if they are played by the same person, with the comical element they were allowed to be more melodramatic with their characters which added to humour and made a clear difference with characters in the scenes.
My favourite act was ‘Act 5: The Proposal’ as it was end of the performance and they chose the scene to be manic with props and the scene had a hilarious story about a man going to propose to a neighbouring woman, but they have their opinions on certain matters, which gives the actors so much leverage to make the moments that will make the grumpiest person laugh, let’s just say the William Hartley gave the stage a shower of water, thank God I wasn’t drinking at the time otherwise the audience would have one as well.
The performance was in the studio with the trust audience, I love they use of a tall box that could be turned around and this showed the different Acts as it suited the scene with a photo of the character in the scene, this box could be opened up to make a long wall, I was rather blown away with simplicity but the genius of this tool, the costumes were also rather detailed and they varied between each play so you can just imagine the quick and many costume changes for them.
The show was very fun to watch and it felt like it ended far too quickly and I didn’t find myself bored at any point as every play was different and you could sink your teeth into each one even if they were small, the tour ends of the 8th of April so I’m glad that I got to watch it before it ended, but if it does go back on tour I would recommend that you go and see this as it’s a good display of 19th century theatre work