Tolstoy's "The Realm of Darkness"
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
Zishan Ugurlu’s production of Leo Tolstoy’s drama “The Realm of Darkness,” performed March 4 through 7, was an enormous success. Strong actors spearheaded the play, specifically the female leads, including Emma Benoit-Lavelle, who, aside from being completely believable as Anisya, performed a hilarious raw-chicken-wrangling scene, and Zina Goodall, whose Akulina evolved from free-spirited cartwheeling girl to broken woman over the course of the play.
The play presents the story of Nikita, portrayed by Lucas McGowen, whose 19th century Russian dilemmas translate curiously well to today’s time and setting. Nikita’s philandering is the source of conflict; marriage, premarital sex, and spousal murder lead to a beautifully handled climactic final scene, repeated for full effect in a brilliant decision to underscore the importance of the event and elucidate the nuances of each additional phrase.
The set was an important component of the production. Situated inside a cottage built for the play, the stage floor was the living room, on two sides of which the audience sat. Above these seats were four- by six- foot screens onto which moving images were projected, usually of the “neighborhood girls” who functioned as a sort of Greek-style chorus.
The play reflects Tolstoy’s eccentric religious ideology concerning fornication. According to a quote selected for the play’s program by Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Eugene Lang's Tolstoy scholar, Tolstoy believed that “… men and women [must] be educated by their families and public opinion in such a way that both before and after marriage they view desire and the carnal love that is associated with it not as a sublime, poetic condition... but as a condition of animality that is degrading to human beings…” Tolstoy also believed that the theater was the most direct medium with which to reach the masses. As such, the fornicating characters in "The Realm of Darkness" are made to pay for their sins.
In the play, women are decried as deceitful, cunning, and malicious by various characters, especially Nikita. But men like Nikita are dynamic and able to repent for their sins.
Once a promiscuous philanderer, Nikita is faced with a choice and eventually overcomes the mental pressures of having committed sin, choosing to publicly denounce those sins, including the murder of his newborn son. The women complicit in the murder remain static, incapable of change yet fully capable of poisoning, manipulation, thievery, and infanticide. Tolstoy’s sexist characterizations resonated as controversial when juxtaposed with more contemporary views.
But this modern production did not aspire to propagate any political agenda, which was Tolstoy’s original intent. This production of "The Realm of Darkness" was intended to help audiences better understand Tolstoy himself, and that is what Ugurlu and company managed to do.
The play presents the story of Nikita, portrayed by Lucas McGowen, whose 19th century Russian dilemmas translate curiously well to today’s time and setting. Nikita’s philandering is the source of conflict; marriage, premarital sex, and spousal murder lead to a beautifully handled climactic final scene, repeated for full effect in a brilliant decision to underscore the importance of the event and elucidate the nuances of each additional phrase.
The set was an important component of the production. Situated inside a cottage built for the play, the stage floor was the living room, on two sides of which the audience sat. Above these seats were four- by six- foot screens onto which moving images were projected, usually of the “neighborhood girls” who functioned as a sort of Greek-style chorus.
The play reflects Tolstoy’s eccentric religious ideology concerning fornication. According to a quote selected for the play’s program by Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Eugene Lang's Tolstoy scholar, Tolstoy believed that “… men and women [must] be educated by their families and public opinion in such a way that both before and after marriage they view desire and the carnal love that is associated with it not as a sublime, poetic condition... but as a condition of animality that is degrading to human beings…” Tolstoy also believed that the theater was the most direct medium with which to reach the masses. As such, the fornicating characters in "The Realm of Darkness" are made to pay for their sins.
In the play, women are decried as deceitful, cunning, and malicious by various characters, especially Nikita. But men like Nikita are dynamic and able to repent for their sins.
Once a promiscuous philanderer, Nikita is faced with a choice and eventually overcomes the mental pressures of having committed sin, choosing to publicly denounce those sins, including the murder of his newborn son. The women complicit in the murder remain static, incapable of change yet fully capable of poisoning, manipulation, thievery, and infanticide. Tolstoy’s sexist characterizations resonated as controversial when juxtaposed with more contemporary views.
But this modern production did not aspire to propagate any political agenda, which was Tolstoy’s original intent. This production of "The Realm of Darkness" was intended to help audiences better understand Tolstoy himself, and that is what Ugurlu and company managed to do.
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