The Promise
THE PROMISE, Company B at Belvoir St; 11 July-23 August, 2009; www.belvoir.com.au.
“Written by Alexei Arbuzov, in new version by Nick Dear, based on the translation by Ariadne Nicolaeff” is a writing credit that may explain the occasional linguistic quaintness and discordant silliness, but in truth, Arbuzov’s 1964 play is way stronger than any mistranslation or incongruity.
Written in the freezing depths of the Cold War, The Promise itself opens in the winter of 1942, in the besieged and ruined city of Leningrad. In a crumbling, ransacked apartment room the lives of three young people collide. Lika (Alison Bell) is almost 16; alone and desperate for shelter and warmth, she has squatted the place and is affronted when Marat (b>Ewen Leslie) turns up – no matter that it had been the apartment where he grew up. They have just about sorted out territorial differences – and established that she has burnt all his family furniture and photographs to keep warm – when they are joined by the sickly and, frankly, odd Leonidik (Chris Ryan).
As is well known in old saw circles, two’s company and three’s a crowd. It also translates as dynamics are changed and continue to change as the inevitable two-one becomes one-two and all permutations between love and rivalry. As well these three are skittish teenagers, albeit old, sad and wise before their time, so the emotional underpinnings teeter between highly-charged nervousness and world weary resignation as they find their way into their triangular relationship.
The latest wunderkind director Simon Stone is behind this production and he and his creative team have come up with some appealing ideas. Time and movement – physical and emotional – are the keys to the play, which takes place over 17 years, in just one room and with just three characters. Beyond the room is Leningrad and the terrible results of WW2: the million and a half civilian dead in that city alone and the final death toll of 23 million before war’s end, when the two boys struggle home again, both injured in their different ways.
The years that follow are literally brought home to the audience by Lika, Leonidik and Marat in the small changes to their lives brought about by the massive events going on in the world outside. For Russians the bitter victory of the“Great Patriotic War” (WW2) was immediately followed by Stalin’s reign, which, depending on your historian, caused the deaths of between 10 and 30 million Soviet citizens, and terrorised millions more. Then there was the cruel hope of Krushchev’s “Thaw” – during which Arbuzov wrote The Promise – and the re-freeze when East and West were at their extremes: the West giddy with prosperity and the Swinging 60s, the Eastern Bloc mired in stagnant economies and dour, dangerous bureaucracy.
-c750x442.jpg)
Arbuzov’s “promise” is double-edged and cruel. For the trio there is the slowly diminishing dream of true love and happy ever after; and in the wider context, their youthful ideals have crumbled much like the society in which they live. Have they fulfilled their promise to themselves and to one another? Have society and politics fulfilled the promises of the revolution? As the years go by the painful realisations arise and the poignancy of hindsight – for the audience – is excruciating.
The Belvoir space lends itself to the spare, chilly place conjured by designer Adam Gardnir via a ratty parquet-floored revolve and little else. It’s used sparingly until the last act when its constant slow turning suggests the passing of time and life in a surprisingly affecting way. Ewen Leslie is particularly fine as the emotionally frozen lover, Marat; Alison Bell grows from girl to woman and into resignation and some degree of contentment in a moving and subtle trajectory. Chris Ryan takes a little longer to get over being self consciously peculiar but rises to build the third strong element to the triangle.
Altogether, The Promise is a play – and this is a production – that resonates clearly in the mind and imagination long after the evening is over.
