Three Days in the Country

Reviewed by Deborah Klugman
Antaeus Theatre Company
Through August 26

Ivan Turgenev published A Month in the Country in 1855 under the title Two Women, a reference to two of his main characters — a disgruntled married woman and her teenage ward, who both fall passionately in love with a young student living in their home. Turgenev’s 4-hour long play was eventually produced in 1872 under today’s title, with a leading actress of the period in the pivotal role of Natalya Petrovna, the neurotic lady of the manor. Predating Chekhov by several decades, Turgenev set his story on a provincial estate and peopled it with restless characters who led uneventful lives that left them anxious and dissatisfied.

Three Days in the Country, British playwright Patrick Marber’s 2015 updated and abridged adaptation, has the makings of an insightful dramedy about what happens to bored and aimless people with too much time on their hands. Just about everyone in the story is in love or desirous of another person who isn’t interested in them. Married nearly 20 years to Arkady (Antonio Jaramillo), a man absorbed with managing his estate, the pivotal Natalya (Nike Doukas) secretly covets the embraces of her son’s tutor Belyaev (Peter Mendoza), even as her husband’s best friend Rakitin (Leo Marks) casts lovelorn glances in her direction — and indeed has done so throughout her entire marriage. Meanwhile her 17-year-old ward Vera (Jeanne Syquia), actually her father’s illegitimate daughter by a servant, is also in love with Belyaev, who dallies with the servant girl Katya (Lila Dupree). Welcoming his embraces, Katya shun her longtime suitor Matvey (Jay Lee), another family servant who grows angry and comically desperate when his wooing is rejected.

Besides members of this household, the plot’s prime mover (and a fount of the writer’s wit) is a garrulous country doctor, Shpigelsky (Armin Shimmerman) — a philosophizing scoundrel who suggests to Natasha that she marry Vera off to a rich doddering old landowner (Gregory Itzin) who’s paying him for the plug. Natasha at first will have none of it, but when she suspects a blossoming romance between Vera and Belyaev, her jealousy gets the better of her judgment and she changes her tune.

It goes without saying that tales of thwarted love like these require cultivation of nuance, both in fashioning the individual characters and in crafting the relationships between them. But director Andrew Paul seems to have given too short shrift to these particulars and the collective result is a disappointingly uneven rendering of what ultimately registers as a stagey period piece production, notwithstanding the modern playwright’s updated dialogue and percipient sensibility.

As Natasha, Doukas assumes the imperious presence of a woman accustomed to being the center of attention and in command of her household — but she devotes her energy almost entirely to expressing her character’s obsession; a sense of who Natalya might otherwise be or have been (a formerly devastating coquette, perhaps?) remains unexplored. Syquia’s buoyant maiden-in-love is also conventional, with few intriguing layers. Marks crafts a striking pose as the suave, cynical but lovesick Rakitin, and his bitter diatribe in Act 2 is arguably the play’s dramatic highlight — but this is a character whose well of grief, beneath a brittle exterior, is profound — and this performer hasn’t yet plumbed most of it. Jaramillo has an energetic presence, but isn’t buyable as a Russian estate owner with emotional ties to the land or, more significantly, as Natasha’s husband. We know they’re estranged but need to see more of what brought them together in the first place.

One of the production’s drollest scenes takes place between Shpigelsky and Bolshintsov, who craves advice on how to conduct himself with the youthful Vera. Shpigelsky, however, is hardly the best mentor, demonstrating how not to woo the fair sex by proposing marriage to a woman (Lily Knight) while delineating (notebook in hand) his defects as well as his needs. This pair of accomplished and versatile actors play out their scenes effectively.

But the most authentic portrayals are by Mendoza as the charming and cryptic Belyaev, and Dupree’s cameo as the come-hither servant girl ready to play in the hay. Separately and together, they exude a truth in too short supply elsewhere.

Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center, 110 East Broadway, Glendale; Mon.-Sat., 8 p.m., Sun., 2 p.m.; through August 26. www.Antaeus.org; Running time: approximately two hours and 30 minutes with an intermission.