“Is
There a Doctor in the House?”
When Boris Pasternak’s epic romantic novel, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, was published in Milan in 1957 (it was considered too anti-Soviet to be published in its homeland) it caused a worldwide sensation and became an instant best seller. Pasternak, already renowned as a great poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but was pressured by the Soviet government to refuse it. In 1965 director David Lean turned the novel into a three-hour, 20-minute movie (intermission included) with an all-star, mostly British, cast, including Julie Christie as Lara Antipov, Omar Sharif as Yuri Zhivago, Rod Steiger as Komarovsky, Geraldine Chaplin as Tonya Gromeko, Ralph Richardson as her father, Siobhan McKenna as her mother, Tom Courtenay as Pasha/Strelnikov, and Alec Guinness as Yuri’s half-brother, Yevgraf. (Note: the spellings of some names in the movie differ from those in the Broadway show reviewed here.)
When Boris Pasternak’s epic romantic novel, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, was published in Milan in 1957 (it was considered too anti-Soviet to be published in its homeland) it caused a worldwide sensation and became an instant best seller. Pasternak, already renowned as a great poet, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but was pressured by the Soviet government to refuse it. In 1965 director David Lean turned the novel into a three-hour, 20-minute movie (intermission included) with an all-star, mostly British, cast, including Julie Christie as Lara Antipov, Omar Sharif as Yuri Zhivago, Rod Steiger as Komarovsky, Geraldine Chaplin as Tonya Gromeko, Ralph Richardson as her father, Siobhan McKenna as her mother, Tom Courtenay as Pasha/Strelnikov, and Alec Guinness as Yuri’s half-brother, Yevgraf. (Note: the spellings of some names in the movie differ from those in the Broadway show reviewed here.)
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| Kelli Barrett, Tam Mutu. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
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| From left: Paul Alexander Nolan, Kelli Barrett, Tam Mutu, Lora Lee Gayer. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
This isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of drama in DOCTOR
ZHIVAGO, but the drama is attenuated over three decades, with soap opera
coincidences, numerous plot developments, and—unless you care very much about
whether or not Zhivago and Lara’s love affair will succeed—no continuing
central conflict other than the struggle to survive Russia’s political and
human maelstrom before, during, and after World War I and the Russian
Revolution. The Revolution itself provides opportunities for plenty of action,
and some historically interesting speechifying, but it all gets swallowed up in
the rush of events, the relentless piling on of one big power ballad after the
other, and the ravenous needs of the physical production. Subtitles are
necessary to help the audience keep up with the march of time.
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| Tam Mutu. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Musicals based on thick historical novels (this one is
over 700 pages) are a tricky business, and very few shows are able—like Boublil and
Schönberg’s LES MISÉRABLES—to find the correct proportion of plot,
character, history, music, and spectacle to hit the bulls-eye. And, unlike LES
MIZ, to which its mixture of revolution, personal relationships, and big balladry
has been compared, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is insistently serious, the only number
having a touch of humor being “It’s a Godsend,” which is as far from Boublil and
Schönberg’s comic delight, “Master of the House,” as Moscow is from Siberia.
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| Tom Hewitt. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
The show abandons the movie’s framing device
of flashing back to the lovers’ story by having Yuri’s half-brother, a KGB
officer, investigate whether a girl he’s been looking for is the daughter of the
now deceased Lara and Yuri; still, it hews fairly closely to the plotline the movie
devised for cutting through the novel’s multiple stories and characters. The reliance on
the movie’s onetime popularity is further suggested by inserting “Lara’s Theme”
into the score (with the “Somewhere My Love” lyrics that were later added by Paul
Francis Webster) and by the show's advertising image of a woman’s beautiful eyes framed
in white fur and snow; the latter seems strongly influenced by a streetcar scene
in which Lean’s camera focuses on Julie Christie’s eyes (albeit framed in
black, not white). “Lara’s Theme”—sung as a folk song, first in Russian, and
then in English, by a group of nurses—really doesn’t fit the tone created by Ms.
Simon’s score, and its placement seems awkward, but its haunting melody is not
matched by the other, more operatic, numbers on display.
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| Julie Christie in the movie, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. |
The basic story—some of whose sequences are raced
through in telegraph-style to get them out of the way—begins (and ends) with a
graveside scene of Lara and their child at Yurii’s funeral in 1930, then
flashes back to the funeral of young Yurii’s (Jonah Halperin) mother in 1903,
when he’s taken in to be cared for by her friends, Alexander (Jamie Jackson)
and Anna Gromeko (Jacqueline Antaramian), who raise him alongside their
daughter, young Tonia (Ava-Riley Miles). By 1914, these small children have (rather
implausibly) grown into a handsome doctor (Tam Mutu), with a growing reputation as a poet, and a beautiful young
woman (Lora Lee Gayer), who are destined to marry and have kids. We’re also
introduced to the exquisite Lara Guishar (Kelli Barrett), daughter of the dress
shop owner, Mrs. Guishar (Pilar Milhollen), who becomes the prey of her mother’s
friend, the powerful lawyer Komarovsky (Tom Hewitt). Lara, however, loves and
marries the idealistic revolutionary, Pasha Antipov (Paul Alexander Nolan). Before
long the lawyer seduces Lara, she wounds him but he
refuses to press charges, World War I breaks out, the Revolution erupts, Pasha
becomes a vengeful Bolshevik, Lara (now a nurse’s aide) and Yurii meet while
she’s searching for Pasha on the front, an affair between Lara and Yurii follows
when they each move to the distant Urals, Yurii writes poetry inspired by Lara,
Pasha is thought dead but turns out to be a cruel commander named Strelnikov, Komarovsky
reappears in Lara and Yurii’s lives to help them, and, among other happenings,
the Communist Reds successfully fight the Tsarist Whites.
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| Tam Mutu, Kelli Barrett, and Company. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Just before the final curtain, Lara and the dead Yurii
(momentarily alive in Lara’s imagination) sing of their eternal love living “in
ray of light, in a distant chime [whatever that is], on the edge of time.” This
is not only melodramatic optimism, but unfaithful to the book, since Lara,
although she attends Yurii’s funeral, winds up arrested in Stalin’s Great Purge
and dying in the Gulag, and the orphaned daughter, Tanya, becomes a laundress.
This sweeping tale of passion and politics, strenuously
directed by Des McAnuff, is laid out over two acts on designer Michael
Scott-Mitchell’s raked, marble-floored stage. In act one impressive columns
move on and off to encase both indoors and out, so even battle scenes seem to
be fought from the confines of imperial Russian hallways. In act two, several
bomb-scarred archways, one behind the other, again serve clumsily for interiors
and exteriors. The “ice palace” of the abandoned Kruger mansion is a chintzy misfire.
An image of chairs piled from floor to ceiling bookends the acts, although why
escapes me. Also puzzling are Sean Niewenhuiss’s huge projections of
photographs, especially one of Lara looking back over her naked shoulder. Finally,
a long, metallic platform, that seems to be floating, revolving, and moving back
and forth, serving mainly as a train, ultimately becomes distracting.
Of course, this being a show depicting wartime combat,
the stage is often filled with smoke, shafts of powerful lighting (Howell
Binkley’s work), explosions, and gunfire. There’s so much Sturm and Drang that
both the story of the lovers and the nuances of the politics (critical of the inhuman excesses of the revolutionaries) get pretty much blown up in the
process. The film makes the historical issues much clearer.
This isn’t to deny that there’s actually much beauty
in the production, nor that, despite its susceptibility to criticism, it isn't enjoyable on some levels. It's certainly not boring, the staging often is visually striking, Paul Tazewell’s many
period costumes are sumptuously lovely, and a number of the songs (like “Now”
and “It Comes as No Surprise”) deserve to be heard again, although the show
needs more musical variety.
The singing is sometimes glorious, but, apart from Mr.
Mutu, the acting isn’t very impressive. Ms. Barrett’s Lara, in particular, is dull
and noninflected, especially with the memory of Julie Christie (looking totally anachronistic, by the way, for an early 20th-century Russian prole) hanging
over her. Tom Hewitt’s Komarovsky is competent, but not special, the way
Rod Steiger’s was in the film, and Paul Alexander Nolan is more shouting attitude
than breathing person. One problem stems from having the aristocrats speak in
British accents and the proletarians in American ones. The latter sound
gratingly flat when speaking the stagy dialogue, and diminish the performances
of the actors. In the film, even American Rod Steiger did his manful best to
sound British for the sake of consistency.
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| Sophia Genussa, Kelli Barrett. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
There’s a lot of bloodshed and other forms of
suffering in DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, but, despite his proficiency at staunching wounds,
Dr. Zhivago can’t do much to heal this show. It’s in that spirit that I ask, is
there a play doctor in the house?
Then Broadway
Theatre
1681
Broadway, NYC
Open
run