Vintage Chekhov in Short Takes

Before Anton Chekhov wrote the great plays that made him one of the most popular and enigmatic playwrights of the 20th century, he wrote a bushel of one-act plays bursting in equal measure with knockabout humor and pathos.


Thanks to director Alexei Levinsky, we now have a relatively rare opportunity to see two of them, "The Wedding" and "The Anniversary," at the Yermolova International Theater Center. With the much-publicized and heavy-handed "Seagull" running across town at the Lenkom Theater, Levinsky has provided a chance to skip the hype and get down to Chekhov.


Performances are held on the theater's "Free Stage," a narrow nook where spectators and players are separated only by a yard of floorspace rigged with a solid row of bright footlights. The actors occasionally pose at stage's edge, peering hazily and quizzically through the light into the hall, and creating something of a one-way window effect. It lets us study in detail the peculiar expressions and idiosyncratic behavior of the endlessly sympathetic losers who inhabit these little plays.


Both are short and sweet, displaying the Chekhov signature of efficiency and clarity. "The Wedding" captures the flavor of a wedding reception where what is most important isn't who got married, but who is attending. "The Anniversary" depicts a disastrous day at a bank office celebrating its fifteenth anniversary: A despairing, if also belligerent, widow drives everyone mad demanding money the bank has nothing to do with.


Levinsky went after a loose, amateur-like feel in the performances and came up with a rough, clunky warmth that produces a nice mix of the lyrical and the grotesque. In both plays he gives us menageries of people who are funny, pathetic and quite painfully alone, yet modestly sure that something makes them special.That is best exemplified in "The Wedding" by Fyodor Valikov's softly eccentric performance of Captain Revunov-Karaulov, the reception's key guest. A total stranger, and totally unaware of what is going on, he was dragged in off the street to imitate the general that the groom demanded be present as part of the marriage agreement.


Valikov plays the retired captain as a clear-headed simpleton with a big heart. But when he realizes how he has been used, his aching sense of indignation recasts everything in a new light.


Also effective is Gennady Galkin's Kharlampy Dymba, a lonely, russified Greek whose litany of comically cliched truths about life in Russia and abroad almost pass for wisdom in this company.


Echoes of these two outcasts are easily discernable in the character of Khirin in "The Anniversary." He is the lowly, defeated and soured clerk who can't abide even hints of frivolity but who, in the excellent interpretation of Andrei Kalashnikov, clings tenaciously to his dignity.


Still, he is no match either for his fastidious, air-headed boss (Vladimir Mashchenko) or for the rampaging widow Merchutkina (Alexandra Nazarova) who quietly but relentlessly drives the poor clerk over the edge.


Designer Viktor Arkhipov gave the illusion of expanding the stage by placing upstage angled panels of tin-foil mirrors that reflect muddy images of the actors. He also painted most of the props in a flat gold, forcing the spectators to turn to the actors for color and variety, and underscoring the performance's human impact.


"The Wedding. The Anniversary" (Svadba. Yubilei) plays Nov. 18 and 19 at 7 P.M. at the Yermolova International Theater Center, 5 Tverskaya Ulitsa. Tel. 203-7952. Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.