Published in 1861, Ivan Turgenev’s great novel is a confrontation between the ancien régime of the 1840s and the modern intelligentsia who want to create a better society in the coming 1860’s. Lindsey Turner’s revival of Brian Friel’s adaptation, well-cast and beautifully designed by Rob Howell, is very enjoyable.
Arkady (Joshua James), recently graduated from Moscow University, brings home his best friend, Bazarov, an arrogant, rude, heartless Nihilist, who respects nobody and wants to destroy everything. Arkady thinks he is brilliant and extraordinary and becomes his disciple; but he is far too liberal and far too naïve ever to become a successful Nihilist himself.
The ancien régime is represented by Arkady’s father, Nikolai, and his uncle, Pavel, and Bazarov’s proud and adoring parents. Nikolai (Anthony Calf) is a charming but an inefficient liberal landowner, a widower, who fell in love with his housekeeper’s daughter (Caoilfhionn Dunne) and has taken her as his mistress and had a child by her. There are delightful performances by Tim McMullan as Pavel, a precious, pretentious dandy and by Karl Johnson as Bazarov’s over-reverential father, who is a walking dictionary of quotations.
Turgenev imagined Bazarov to be ‘a sombre, savage and great figure, only half emerged from barbarism, strong, méchant and honest but nevertheless doomed.’ “I do not know whether to love him or hate him,” he said. Seth Numrich has the Nihilist’s articulacy but not the savage physical charisma. The role is further diminished by having his two major scenes a duel and his death acted off stage. Turgenev made his death a tragic accident. Friel gives him a heroic death by typhus, making him die because he doctored the sick where the typhus was most virulent.