The good man himself lived to be barely 44. But on his deathbed, he thus wrote a play for which you have to be at least well over 50 and have experienced a lot if you want to do it justice as a director. So we are talking about Anton Chekhov and The Cherry Garden. And about Willlibrord Keesen, who in his now third Chekhov directing has achieved a degree of perfection that deserves a deep bow.
I thought I had pretty much figured Chekhov out by now. Once, as a 20-year-old student, I did not understand what people saw in this dusty Russian from the late nineteenth century. Endless chatter about nothing, slow theatre, and needless lugging of tea pots and billiard cues and, above all, lots of whining about how boring life is. Later, I started knowing better, and especially reading better and watching better, and understood why great people ran away with the man. On the amateur circuit, I directed his work a few times - an Uncle Vanya, a Three Sisters, a Cherry Garden - and each time I thought I understood Chekhov infinitely more deeply than the last time I thought I had already understood him.
Willibrord Keesen has experienced the same thing in a much more professional circuit than I have. Once, in 1990, he directed Three Sisters featuring three real sisters in a beautiful location setting. Legendary performance and enough to last almost two decades, as it was not until 2008 that the director who once starred in a Utrecht theatre cafe learned the trade ventured into his second Chekhov, and who 'a seagull' was another hit. Much lighter in tone than that rather heavy Three Sisters from 1990, but again with a starring role for Monique Kuijpers as an actress-of-age.
And now, therefore, The Cherry Garden. With ten actors: an unprecedentedly large ensemble for a company as small as Keesen&Co. All high level individual performances, and even all of the same high level. That director Keesen manages to get everyone, from intern to old hand, to stand on stage with the same clarity is a much greater achievement than it seems at first sight, because the bar has been set high this time.
Truly every word in this almost two-hour-long performance falls into place. What some still like to see as naturalistic noise or filler, is with Keesen&Co a pure note, sounding exactly where a gaping void would otherwise fall. And not that everyone is playing so emphatically, on the contrary: the atmosphere is playful, the tone light and unobtrusive. But as crystal clear as a bright clearing after an autumnal downpour. That sense of clarity is almost physical and when that happens you know you are dealing with something special.
Bizarre, then, that as the years increase, you can penetrate Chekhov deeper and deeper, needing decades of longer life than the writer himself to really grasp what he wrote at 43.
Thank you to the taxpayer, who made it possible for Willibrord Keesen and his actors to grow to such intensity in a commercially utterly hopeless small venues circuit. This kind of theatre is unique to places like Theatre Kikker, and will not be made in the Netherlands from 2013 onwards.
Courtesy of that same taxpayer.
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