MOSCOW,
November 20, 1887.
Well, the first performance [Translator’s Note: “Ivanov.”] is over. I
will tell you all about it in detail. To begin with, Korsh promised me
ten rehearsals, but gave me only four, of which only two could be called
rehearsals, for the other two were tournaments in which _messieurs les
artistes_ exercised themselves in altercation and abuse. Davydov and Glama
were the only two who knew their parts; the others trusted to the prompter
and their own inner conviction.
Act One.--I am behind the stage in a small box that looks like a prison
cell. My family is in a box of the benoire and is trembling. Contrary to my
expectations, I am cool and am conscious of no agitation. The actors are
nervous and excited, and cross themselves. The curtain goes up ... the
actor whose benefit night it is comes on. His uncertainty, the way that he
forgets his part, and the wreath that is presented to him make the play
unrecognizable to me from the first sentences. Kiselevsky, of whom I had
great hopes, did not deliver a single phrase correctly--literally _not a
single one_. He said things of his own composition. In spite of this and of
the stage manager’s blunders, the first act was a great success. There were
many calls.
Act Two.--A lot of people on the stage. Visitors. They don’t know
their parts, make mistakes, talk nonsense. Every word cuts me like a knife
in my back. But--o Muse!--this act, too, was a success. There were calls
for all the actors, and I was called before the curtain twice.
Congratulations and success.
Act Three.--The acting is not bad. Enormous success. I had to come
before the curtain three times, and as I did so Davydov was shaking my
hand, and Glama, like Manilov, was pressing my other hand to her heart. The
triumph of talent and virtue.
Act Four, Scene One.--It does not go badly. Calls before the curtain
again. Then a long, wearisome interval. The audience, not used to leaving
their seats and going to the refreshment bar between two scenes, murmur.
The curtain goes up. Fine: through the arch one can see the supper table
(the wedding). The band plays flourishes. The groomsmen come out: they are
drunk, and so you see they think they must behave like clowns and cut
capers. The horseplay and pot-house atmosphere reduce me to despair. Then
Kiselevsky comes out: it is a poetical, moving passage, but my Kiselevsky
does not know his part, is drunk as a cobbler, and a short poetical
dialogue is transformed into something tedious and disgusting: the public
is perplexed. At the end of the play the hero dies because he cannot get
over the insult he has received. The audience, grown cold and tired, does
not understand this death (the actors insisted on it; I have another
version). There are calls for the actors and for me. During one of the
calls I hear sounds of open hissing, drowned by the clapping and stamping.
On the whole I feel tired and annoyed. It was sickening though the play had
considerable success....
Theatre-goers say that they had never seen such a ferment in a theatre,
such universal clapping and hissing, nor heard such discussions among the
audience as they saw and heard at my play. And it has never happened before
at Korsh’s that the author has been called after the second act.
November 24.
... It has all subsided at last, and I sit as before at my writing-table
and compose stories with untroubled spirit. You can’t think what it was
like! ... I have already told you that at the first performance there was
such excitement in the audience and on the stage as the prompter, who has
served at the theatre for thirty-two years, had never seen. They made an
uproar, shouted, clapped and hissed; at the refreshment bar it almost came
to fighting, and in the gallery the students wanted to throw someone out
and two persons were removed by the police. The excitement was general....
... The actors were in a state of nervous tension. All that I wrote to you
and Maslov about their acting and attitude to their work must not, of
course, go any further. There is much one has to excuse and understand....
It turned out that the actress who was doing the chief part in my play had
a daughter lying dangerously ill--how could she feel like acting? Kurepin
did well to praise the actors.
The next day after the performance there was a review by Pyotr Kitcheyev in
the _Moskovsky Listok_. He calls my play impudently cynical and immoral
rubbish. The _Moskovskiya Vyedomosti_ praised it.
... If you read the play you will not understand the excitement I have
described to you; you will find nothing special in it. Nikolay, Shehtel,
and Levitan--all of them painters--assure me that on the stage it is so
original that it is quite strange to look at. In reading one does not
notice it.