Quixotic Director Dares Audience to Blink in 'Under the Bed'

If ever there were a Don Quixote in the flesh, it would have to be Mikhail Levitin. This director seems to grow more out of date, more out of touch with every new production he mounts at his Hermitage Theater.

Make no mistake, Levitin appears to understand that perfectly well. More than that, he seems to relish his position as someone who continually tilts at theatrical windmills, going into battle armed only with his imagination and convictions.

Consider Levitin's production of "Under the Bed," a dramatization of the early Fyodor Dostoevsky story, "Wife of Another and a Husband Under the Bed." This show, whose genre is defined in the program as "a game of nerves," begins with the boldest challenge I have seen thrown at an audience this season: To the sound of circus music, an actor slowly walks on stage, takes up a position facing the spectators and then proceeds to stare at them comically until the crowd grows restless.

You can almost see Levitin's own thoughts churning in the head of his actor as he stands waiting with the patience of death for someone in the hall to complain or snicker. Levitin is declaring his refusal to join in the fashion of television-influenced, action-packed theater. He engages us in a game of dare, wanting to see who will blink first. Of course, the audience does, and only then does the actor turn and leave stage, although, as if to rub in his victory, he returns and begins the game again.

Were this just a smart-aleck contest, it would not be noteworthy. But Levitin's actor Arseny Kovalsky, even while standing stock still, is engaged in highly detailed communication with the audience. His eyes flash, his mouth curls, his eyebrows rise and fall, his cheek twitches. A hand suddenly moves before coming to rest again on the lapel of his coat. Levitin is inviting spectators to focus on something other than the usual. He is attuning them to nuances and allowing time for that message to sink in.

This is a hellish task for an actor, but Kovalsky is up to the challenge. Seemingly doing nothing at all, he expresses a whole range of emotions from bemusement to confusion, from haughtiness to meekness. Finally, another actor races in and the show begins.

Dostoevsky's two-part tale observes the farce of jealous husbands. In the first, a man encounters his wife's lover on the street; in the second a suspicious husband thinks he is about to catch his wife in flagrante delicto but ends up hiding under the bed of complete strangers where he meets another man who had thought he was coming to a love tryst. This is hardly vintage Dostoevsky; it isn't even Dostoevsky doing his best Gogol imitation. But you see why Levitin was intrigued to stage it when you look at the text -- it is almost pure dialogue, as if Dostoevsky imagined the tale in performance as he wrote it.

Playing the foolhardy husband is Alexander Pozharov, an actor with brilliant comic instincts. In contrast to his rivals, real and imagined (played by Kovalsky), he is a bundle of nerves and talk. Dressed in a wild, feathery fur coat designed by Tatyana Spasolomskaya, he seems to be moving in a hundred directions at once.

The first segment, where we learn that the lover has been duped no less than the husband, is the more successful. Pozharov, all obsequiousness, and Kovalsky, all arrogance, are excellent adversaries. The simplicity of the scenes allows them to work on the kind of subtle characterization that Levitin hinted at in the prologue.

The second half runs into problems. Levitin echoes the challenge of the prologue, this time with a chorus that interminably sings the same quatrain over and over again. What was bold in the first act is now redundant. Furthermore, the addition of several new grotesque characters -- including an old man (Sergei Oleksyak) and his young wife (Olga Levitina) under whose bed the jealous husband and lover find themselves by mistake -- dispels the simplicity of the first segment. Finally, for all their comic prowess, Pozharov and Kovalsky have a difficult time working so long on the floor beneath a bed.

David Borovsky provided the versatile set that combines street lamps, a raised platform in back and fence railings that imply a bedstead.

Regardless of this show's flaws, I still appreciated Levitin's stubborn willingness to challenge his audience. Even if he fell victim to his own tricks in the end, that opening confrontation is one to remember.

"Under the Bed" (Pod Krovatyu) plays at 7 p.m. on Sat., Dec. 14 and 20 at the Hermitage Theater, located at 3 Karetny Ryad. Metro Chekhovskaya. Tel. 209-2076, 209-6742.