Chekhov Unscripted, Impro Theatre LA, 10 April 2020 ****

A Tree Planting

Chekhov Unscripted

Impro Theatre LA 
Friday April 10, 2020 (Live on Zoom, then available on Vimeo)
Directed by Dan O'Connor

Link to view:  Chekhov Unscripted- A Tree Planting

Live Streaming link: impro theatre

See the Unscripted plays each Thur, Fri, Sat LA time 8pm (Melbourne Aust time 1pm Fri, Sat , Sun)

Impro Theatre in L.A. may have paused its live performances, but it continues to create improvise performances online, live streaming from the actors’ homes directly to your couch.

The company continues to create fully improvised plays in style of famous playwrights and novelists – in this instance, Anton Chekhov.

A Tree Planting, a fitting title for a Chekhov, has echoes of his plays, The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya and The Seagull.

The ensemble of six improvisers begins with the title and creates an entire narrative, characters, relationships, locations and Chekhovian problems that straddle the line between tragedy and comedy, as did Chekhov’s own writing.

At their country estate, the sensible Anya (Edi O’Connor) and her extravagant, lovesick brother, Ivan (Paul Rogan), have a tree planting ceremony to honour the death of their father.

There is unrequited love, lost fortunes, pining for Moscow, a boring doctor a vain actor, a maudlin neighbour and a practical estate manager (Nick Massouh).

Anya and Ivan’s guests include: Doctor Petrov (Dan O’Connor), who loves Anya; Leonid (Brian Lohmann), the self-absorbed actor adored by Anya; Masha (Kari Coleman) the neighbour who loves Leonid but is adored by Ivan – and the tangled web continues.  

It is funny, clever, impeccably researched but totally improvised. Any mistakes are treated as gifts: a blank screen means a character is lost for words; when the Doctor misnames himself, he justifies it, saying, ‘I forget myself’, in true Chekhovian fashion.

In the Zoom room, the ‘theatre technician’ provides screen backgrounds of landscapes and rooms of a Russian estate, and cunningly switches between screens, cutting from one character to another, rather than using split screens with multiple actors visible at once.

It’s easy to forget that this Chekhov is all improvised in the moment, with no script or narrative preparation. It does, however, require an enormous amount of research and knowledge of Chekhov, his style, characters and themes to make Chekhov Unscripted. They've got it all!

By Kate Herbert

Anya – Edi Patterson O’Connor

Doctor Petrov – Dan O’Connor

Ivan  – Paul Rogan

Masha – Kari Coleman

Leonid Andreyevich – Brian Lohmann

Gorkov – Nick Massouh