1905 had scarcely begun in Russia when 300 people were slaughtered by Tsarist troops in St Petersburg. During the year that followed, a number of Russian artists and intellectuals became keenly aware that before long socialism would sweep away the society and culture they had known. Nobody was more alive to the situation than Maxim Gorky, who had already been writing radical plays and agitating for revolutionary change. In 1906, he caught the feeling of 1905 in his play Enemies. Concerning a strike at a factory in which the managing director gets shot, its main focus is on the ruling class: those who own and run the factory and their families. While Gorky clearly catches the string-them-up views of some of these characters, he refuses to make this a simple clash between us and them. The factory owner Zakhar has some understanding of the workers’ situation; his wife’s niece Nadya is powerfully sympathetic to them; and his open-minded sister-in-law Tatyana can see where the wind is blowing. The play ends in crisis. Enemies? Who are our enemies?
The marvel is that Enemies begins, as do some other Gorky plays, as if it was one of the plays that Chekhov never lived to write. A garden in summer, silver birches, crickets chirping, a bench, a table with a samovar, a housekeeper. Men in summer linen suits come and go, one character drinks too much, women talk, people discuss the present and the future. Though it seems at first impossible to try to work out who’s who amid the large cast, there’s a sensuous “field” feeling that this is a play of multiple plots. But around that, Gorky occasionally builds a feeling that this is a play-within-a-play: as tensions build, people keep feeling that what’s happening is unreal. The multiple plots continue – Gorky is interested in marriage and in class – but most of them just matter less and less, as these private lives become caught up in public crisis.
The way Enemies leads this rich, Chekhovian texture into this point of political upheaval is a superb theatrical achievement: we feel as if we know the Russia of 1905 from within. This version is by David Hare, a playwright whose own politics and dramaturgical style seem made for Gorky. And Michael Attenborough’s admirable Almeida staging likewise moves from many- stranded leisure to all- consuming storm.
Amanda Drew (Tatyana), Sean Chapman (Sakhar), and Jodie Whittaker (Nadya) lead an excellent cast. Simon Higlett’s designs handsomely evoke place and time. Since Gorky’s plays come round so seldom (when you see how crowded the Almeida stage is at curtain-calls, you understand why), this Enemies is a major event in our theatre. ★★★★★
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