What if Anton Chekhov came back to life? That’s the nub of Dan Rebellato’s satire, which opens with Chekhov’s touching 1904 deathbed scene then yanks the rug out from under the expiring writer and shoves him into the remorseless electric light of a modern hospital.
When chippy descendant Nicola Chalker shows up (‘Fucking fruit and nut this is’) it’s as if Chekhov’s erupted into ‘EastEnders’. It gets worse. Without bothering to show how he got there, Rebellato shoves the quizzical pince-nez-ed old innocent into encounters with gibbering media clichés. There’s a Russian sex-trafficker, a celebrity chef; a sexist fashion designer; a pop star; the author of a confessional abuse memoir; a TV producer who wants to help people so much that she begs strange men to call her a slut and fuck her in the arse; and a Ukrainian prostitute who gives him a condensed history of the last hundred years in Russian: basically, ‘milliony smertyei’ (‘millions die’).
If this tour of now were as funny as it wants to be, you might forgive the lack of story, purpose, or a now that goes beyond violence, porn and fashion. Despite zingy acting from a talented young cast who throw themselves into the accents and self-regarding blah that Rebellato has such a good ear for, this is basically channel-flicking. The TV producer’s confession is the only Chekhovian moment – but abused women are the butt of too many jokes.
If Chekhov were reincarnated, the doctor who witnessed brutal prison beatings, built schools and fought cholera and ignorance among Russia’s peasants would surely notice universal suffrage, education, and healthcare – if he was allowed to. It’s reactionary and jejune to have him just play the straight guy to postmodern peasants and the ringmasters of their media circus.
In letters, Chekhov described the ‘moral vomit’, phariseeism, dull-wittedness and tyranny in his own era: I don’t think Twitter would come as that much of a shock.