Once a magnetic and idealistic young figure within his community, Nikolai Ivanov was driven by a belief that he could change the world. Now, he finds himself abruptly cut off from the convictions, emotions, and sense of purpose that once defined both his inner life and his public identity. Confused by what is happening to him, and increasingly unable to control his own behavior, Ivanov’s unraveling begins to reverberate outward, taking a devastating toll on a community already stretched to its limits.

Solid production of prototypical early Chekhov, infrequently staged in New York and not, I would say, my favorite of his works. Ivanov typifies the things that he would come to be known for, in the sense that pretty much the entire runtime is spent with a bunch of disaffected hypocrites lying around gossiping in Russian estates before the play abruptly ends with a bang. This production by New American Ensemble ran all the way to the three-hour mark at our showtime and I was definitely feeling it.

Director Michael DeFilippis starts with the already-tight Schmidt translation and makes further cuts from there, especially to longer passages of secondary characters, which is understandable vis-à-vis the modern attention span but loses some juice from the original text. As I see it, Ivanov isn’t really a tragedy about a depressed man; the title character is fundamentally one among many. He speaks about the complexity within a person but makes snap judgments about others. He complains endlessly about being bored and isolated, but so does everybody else. He rationalizes endlessly and can’t seem to keep his dates straight about when the trouble began, but then, so do they. His eventual tragic arc is really distinguished more by its ruminative, melodramatic, self-pitying bent than anything. There is melancholic irony in his decisions when everyone around him is telling him (correctly) that if he would just give it a go, he might find that the world is not so different than it used to be after all. Thinning the text risks playing it a little too straight and over-sympathizing the lead.

Production values are solid: enjoyed the lighting and sound design, particularly in the fireworks sequence. Nice, period-appropriate costuming. The ensemble all does pretty good work, if a bit shouty across the board. I especially liked Quinn Jackson as Anna/Sarah, Mike Labbadia as the boisterous Borkin, and Paul Niebanck as the sentimental old drunk, Lebedev. Lead Zachary Desmond does a fine job with the existential monologues, but feels a few years too young to play the 35-year-old Ivanov, which doesn’t quite hammer home the world-weariness or the icky age gap relationship. All told, inessential but perhaps worth the cost of admission as a historical interest piece.