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Interview ‘Theatre doesn’t have borders’

Legendary Russian director LEV DODIN talks to Matthew Amer about bringing his acclaimed production of Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters to Britain and why its profound human insights transcend international frontiers

“IF YOU put in a lot of effort, at some point something will come out.” By iconic director Lev Dodin’s own admission, this Russian proverb might not translate beautifully into English.

It does, however, encapsulate the modesty and ethos of the man at the helm of the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg, one of the premier theatre companies in Russia and Europe.

Following an acclaimed return to the London stage last year when, after 10 years away, they staged Life and Fate and Uncle Vanya, the Maly returns next month with Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov,  another globally applauded production.

Maybe surprisingly for a man who’s been in his job for 35 years and received numerous awards including an Olivier, Dodin admits to being a little nervous: “It would be strange if I was not jittery at all,” he laughs modestly. He considers London an important venue for the Maly. “We feel the British audience is our second home,” he says. “I think they understand Chekhov as if he was their native writer.”

This production of Three Sisters, too, says Dodin, is important. Its London premiere has been more than a decade in the making. In fact, Dodin first started working on a version of Three Sisters with the Maly in the 1990s.

He got as far as staging the first run-through before deciding it wasn’t ready and cancelling the production altogether. “We needed to grow up a bit,” he admits. “We didn’t have good enough questions to pose to that play, so we put it aside, which gave us a chance to do more Chekhovs.”

Fast forward a decade or so and they had questions aplenty. Following more than a year of rehearsals, this production of Three Sisters premiered in 2010 and the same ensemble toured it to the US to critical acclaim.

British audiences will see those same actors, Dodin confirms, although while the actors remain the same, the production has grown over the last decade. “As with every living being, the show develops and evolves in time, inevitably reacting to the world changing around it.”

Part of that he puts down to the company, part to a playwright who forms the cornerstone of the Maly Drama Theatre’s work. “Chekhov has stopped being, for us, a classical author. He feels very alive and very relevant today.

“The things Chekhov tells me about my own life, I don’t often find in modern writing. I recognise this play as a story about me and the people that surround me. No writer has ever written so specifically about exactly how I feel about the world and myself as Chekhov.

“He is very much like Shakespeare — unknowably deep. It’s infinity without confines.”

Dodin has run the Maly since 1983 and began directing in the 1960s. He has led the company through changes in Russia and the Soviet Union and has toured every continent. After three-and-a-half decades, his belief in the importance of theatre has not diminished.

“Theatre doesn’t have borders,” he says. “There’s no ‘your theatre is this or my theatre is that.’ As humans, we are uniquely the same. We are constantly being divided by our politicians, our superstitions, the cliched ideas we have about each other as one nation and another nation.

“Only art, only theatre keeps doing its solitary thankless job, proving to everybody in the world that everyone is equally human.”

That, of course, is one of the reasons Three Sisters still resonates more than a century after it was written. It is, as Dodin simply puts it, about “three girls facing real life as it is. During the play they each realise ‘Life is not what I expected it to be. All my aspirations and expectations were just about something that’s fantastical and does not exist.’ The play is an interlocking tapestry of lives and relationships.”

Part of what this defining Three Sisters offers is the chance to hear the piece performed in its native Russian, with the English translation displayed on surtitles. “The audience feels they can speak Russian,” Dodin says. “They follow the surtitles for what the characters are talking about but when they hear and see the characters, they follow their feelings.”

After 35 years leading the Maly and staging defining productions that run for decades, one might think the 75-year-old Dodin could consider retiring, or that he’s asked all the questions he wants to ask of Chekhov.

He’s having none of it. “As long as I’m capable of being able to change a production for the better or being able to create something new and alive again, I will keep on.

“To many people, I think my lot in life could seem to be toiling in vain but I’m convinced it’s worth it.”

Three Sisters runs at the Vaudeville Theatre in London from June 19-29, box office: nimaxtheatres.com

 

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