REVIEW: SHAW VS CHEKHOV at Theatre at the Tabard, Chiswick 6 – 23 August 2025
‘Shaw vs Chekhov is playful and inventive’ ★★★★ ½
SHAW VS CHEKHOV is part of Theatre at the Tabard’s 40th Anniversary Season. An excellent choice for highlighting everything that the theatre stands for, with high production values using invention and innovation. Albeit a small-scale production the company, SHAW2020, present an excellent double bill of George Bernard Shaw’s VILLAGE WOOING and Anton Chekhov’s THE PROPOSAL. The two are paired together with the loose connection of women winning their man.
The ’fight’ kicks off with The Proposal, a comedy of manners and misunderstandings written in 1888. The set is a traditional Russian room, with wall hangings, period furniture with a beautiful samovar on one of the side tables. Enter elderly gentleman Stepan, looking for his flask of vodka which he has hidden somewhere behind the aspidistra. He is almost caught red handed, when his neighbour, the hypochondriac Ivan, comes to visit. Ivan has come to propose to his daughter, Natalya. Stepan, is delighted, but when he leaves the man alone with his daughter the proposal is delayed by a series of misunderstandings caused by the pair raising disputes and forming jealousies.
Directed by Jonas Cemm, in an updated translation by Bethany Blake, the piece is enlivened by the characterisations and the physicality. There is something of farce in the presentation with all three actors giving hugely detailed performances, a little larger than life. Something behind the sofa causes one of them to trip slightly and this is repeated in various guises throughout the play. Wonderfully timed and inventive, it works as a symbol of the state of each of the three characters. Will they ever complete the actual purpose of the visit, when they keep confounding each other?
The play is well modulated, leaving Chekhov’s clever dialogue, with its underlying satirical content, and caustic critique of the inability of neighbours to compromise, to shine. As a physician and writer first, Chekhov might well have observed that marriage sometimes holds similar horrors. Does Shaw think more highly of marital bliss?
During the interval the stage manager dismantled the entire set and put up a new one. It was quite impressive, replacing the drawing room with the deck of a cruise ship. Later this same set becomes a grocer’s shop with a few added sticks of furniture and well-chosen props. The details include weighing scales and packets of old-fashioned sweets and goods and green grocer’s boxes full of vegetables. Once completed it’s almost possible to smell the shop, that slight fustiness, it creates such a complete vision of a way of life.
So, now to Shaw’s three act comedy, Village Wooing, written in 1933. In the first act ‘Z’ is walking on the deck in the direction of ‘A’, who is seated in a deck chair, working on his travel guide. She clearly has an intention, on the surface to hold a conversation with him but there is a deeper objective. She’s got her eye on him. In the second act, ‘A’ mysteriously, turns up in the very shop where she works. It appears as a co-incidence, he does not recognise her, but her recollection of him is very clear, and her objective remains unchanged. Here is another opportunity to snare herself the man she wants to marry.
This play is particularly class driven, as he is an educated man of letters and she works as a shop assistant and telephonist. Joe Sargent as ‘A’ is all patronising and disparaging, while all the time being drawn in to ‘Z’s trap. Actor Maryann O’Brien, as the scheming ‘Z’ comes across as much the brighter of the two, and sure to win her quarry. The journey between the sparring pair is a delight to watch. Does Shaw have a kinder disposition towards marriage? It’s hard to say, but Village Wooing offers a social history and highlights how far times have changed (as well as how little has changed).
The actors in both shows, work seamlessly together with honed characterisations, they bring the subtext to life. Director Jonas Cemm has ensured a very playful take on the plays making them a lot of fun. The audience at Theatre at the Tabard, is quite sophisticated, so no guffaws, but the feeling seems to be one of quiet appreciation. That is something to be roundly endorsed, an entertaining night of Chekhov vs Shaw.
SHAW VS CHEKHOV at Theatre at the Tabard, Chiswick 6 – 23 August 2025
BOX OFFICE https://tabard.org.uk/whats-on/shaw-vs-chekov/
Cast: Anthony Wise, Maryann O’Brien, Joe Sargent
Director: Jonas Cemm
Producers: Bethany Blake, Jonas Cemm, Maryann O’Brien, Eoin O’callaghan, Joe Sargent, Lainey Shaw
Design team: Bethany Blake, Ruth Heppelthwaite, Maryann O’Brien
Photographer: Macky Mann
Production Assistant: Arden Cemm
