Platonov at The Hayloft

Checkov Recut: Platonov
Antonin Chekhov
The Hayloft Project
Until 16th March

It is sometimes painfully evident that fashion in Melbourne theatre is predictably cyclical. Every few years a new coterie of artists emerges with their re-invented wheels and we all do the “Independent theatre’s been reinvigorated” two step.
And along comes the Hayloft Project reinterpreting the classics.
Simon Stone became the name to know with his purportedly brilliant adaption of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening. He returns to us this year with an adaption of Platonov in a brand spankin’ rundown ex industrial venue out in Footscray.
The venue is grungy and hip, in sight of shipping containers, and makes clever use of converted packing crates and school desks in the foyer. It would all be so exciting if it didn’t have the faintest whiff of been there done that about it. Cautionary words then for Simon Stone should be Wax and Storeroom.
To the production itself - I have to say that even though we’ve suffered a slew of well meaning issues plays over the last three or four years, I still don’t find the trials of bored middle class yobs particularly interesting. Certainly it’s an exploration of the darker side of desire and intellect, but in all honesty, shallow and mean people are shallow and mean people whether they’re brilliantly observed by Chekhov or luridly paraded by E News.
And perhaps it’s just me but isn’t there something a little self aggrandizing about the artistic director of the company, directing the play and casting himself in the main role? Particularly as it’s a role in which he gets to bluster about, be cleverly mean to everyone and snog all the pretty girls. Plus, watching Stone in the star role I just can’t help but think of James Adler’s fatal attraction to Hamlet.
But beyond issues of ego, Stone doesn’t quite pull it off as he’s consistently outclassed by he fellow cast members, though it’s hardly surprising when he’s surrounded by some of the most talented young actors in town, including Jessamy Dyer, Angus Grant and Meredith Penman.
Stone’s best bet would be to concentrate on his skill for adaption and interpretation. It’s not often I hate something enough in the first act to compare it to Don’s Party and then be defending it as genius by the second. But, while we were outside having a cigarette and deciding we should probably stick around (after all we’d come all this way) inside Stone had turned the play inside out with some very clever choices. Suddenly everything I’d thought was a tediously bad decision in the first act became an ironic stroke of genius in the second, forcing us to reflect on the nature of the middle class in Australia, and the range of pitch black emotion that it’s possible for actors to find in desperately uninteresting characters.
A play, and I suspect a company, not for the impatient nor for the general “I don’t usually get theatre” public, but a play definitely worth seeing if you think you know your shit. Ultimately, the word that keeps coming back to me to describe The Hayloft’s Platonov is “Clever”.

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