JONATHAN Kent’s outstanding production of Turgenev’s A Month In The Country makes a fitting autumnal close to a brilliant summer season at the Chichester Festival.

Brian Friels’s adaptation was originally produced at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1992 and, later, by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan at Stratford in 1998 and transferred to The Pit in London in 1999.

The play deals with a classic situation; Natalya (Janie Dee), the bored wife of a country landowner, falls in love with Aleksey, her son’s tutor (James McArdle), who is more attracted to her teenage ward, Vera (Phoebe Fox).

She ignores her ciscebo Michel (Michael Feast) and tries to marry Vera off with the result that both Michel and Aleksey depart leaving her to return to her previous boring existence with her husband Arkady (Jonathan Coy).

There is a slight sub-plot concerning the wooing of Lisaveta (Carolyn Pickles), companion to Arkady’s mother (Joanna McCallum), and the local peasant doctor (Kenneth Cranham).

The role of the wife, Natalya, is one that attracts great actresses, including Ingrid Bergman, Dorothy Tutin and Helen Mirren. It is now undertaken by Janie Dee.

I have long admired Miss Dee as a Musical Comedy artiste and comedy actress but although she shows great dramatic promise the nuances of this part escape her. Her Natalya is an attractive suburban housewife whose boredom seems more seated in petulance than tragedy.

She displays no real depth of feeling and her attempts at seducing Aleksey seem born of a sexual infatuation rather than a real tragic emotion. One feels that after his departure and that of her admirer, Michel, she will settle down quite happily with her adoring and permissive husband.

Her confrontation of Vera smacks more of a governess chastising an unruly pupil than a distraught woman seeing off a potential rival.

While Miss Dee makes a pleasing, and at times appealing, woman out of the role, a tragic heroine she is not.

Does this matter? I think on the whole not at all. She is surrounded by excellent character actors and actresses who give her Natalya a cosy dramatic frame ensuring that the play goes on pleasantly and effectively hiding its lack of a dramatic centerpiece.

Michael Feast makes a strong character out of his unrequited suitor and his scene with Jonathan Coy’s Arkady, where he confesses his love for Natalya and his willingness to go away so as to avoid causing Arkady any more distress, is very real and moving.

Phobe Fox’s Vera illustrates, with great adeptness for such a young actress, the emotions of a teenager experiencing her first emotional experience and her refusal to accept any advice or caution.

Her ultimate acquiescence to Natalya’s power over her was beautifully and very sincerely played. Miss Fox is definitely an actress to watch.

James McArdle’s Aleksey is a nice young man, caught between two strong women, who realises at last he is out of his depth and makes a run for it. Mr McArdle does all he can with what is now a somewhat stereotyped role and does it very well making what could be an unpleasant character, pleasing.

The rest of the characters are archetypal and could have come out of any Russian play; the elderly but forceful mother-in law, her downtrodden companion, the village doctor and the two servants all play their parts to give a background for the principal players and do it very well and unobtrusively.

In order to emphasise the rural setting of the play, the theatre has been liberally bedecked with leafy branches making it into a monumental bower with the action being concentrated on a virtually bare stage and the verandah of the house in the background.

Whether this was the brainchild of Paul Brown, the designer, or the director, Jonathan Kent, I do not know but it is very effective.

With a more powerful actress as Natalya this would have been one of the great productions of the play. As it is, it is a very successful interpretation of Turgenev’s intentions and passes the time away enjoyably making, as I have said, a fitting close to the season.

A Month In The Country by Ivan Turgenev
Adapted by Brian Friel
Directed by Jonathan Kent
Designer – Paul Brown
Lighting – Mark Henderson
Sound – Gregory Clarke

CAST: Jonathan Coy; Kenneth Cranham; Janie Dee; Laura Elphinstone; Michael Feast; Phoebe Fox; Tony Haygarth; Kieron Jecchinis; Teddy Kempner; James McArdle; Joanna McCallum; Carolyn Pickles.

Chichester Festival Theatre, Oaklands Park, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 6AP.
September 24 – October 16, 2010.
Evenings 7.30pm/Mat. Thurs. & Sat. 2pm
Box Office: 01234 781312

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