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The Scoundrel That You Need, the brutal comedy by Alexandr Ostrovsky, founder of Russian national theatre, will have its first-ever professional production in Melbourne, at Gasworks Theatre from 7 to 24 May. Directed by James McCaughey, The Scoundrel That You Need is Ostrovsky’s viciously funny portrayal of the behaviour and standards of the Russian merchant class.
McCaughey has assembled a cast of eight with enormously diverse acting backgrounds and experience, including London-trained Stephen Costan; 2007 VCA graduate and star, Ben Pfeiffer; one of Australia’s best-known and most loved stage performers, Evelyn Krape; and Olga Makeeva, formerly of the Theatre of the Russian Army in Moscow.
First performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1868, The Scoundrel That You Need (or Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man) is a comedy which follows the fortunes of a social-climber who finds himself on a ladder of ambition every bit as rotten and hollow as his own collapsing schemes. Telling the timeless tale of an older woman scorned for a younger girl, the play bounces from satire to farce as the spurned married woman seeks her own moral justice from her former lover.
Born in 1823 in Moscow, Ostrovsky was one of 19th Century Russia’s most highly regarded playwrights, and lived when theatre was dangerous. (He was under police surveillance for many years because a play he wrote was deemed subversive.) Famously, he was the first to depict onstage the ordinary merchants, government bureaucrats and other middle-class denizens of Moscow and the Volga River region. Described as the most influential figure of the pre-Chekhovian Russian theatre, Ostrovsky was the master of Moscow street vernacular, his characters speaking in the coarse and colourful slang of the sidewalk.
Director James McCaughey’s theatre career started in the late 1960s when Melbourne was a ferment of activity and exploration, powered by explorations of the role of the actor and the language of acting. His whole career has continued that exploration.
He directed Aeschylus’ Oresteian Trilogy at the Pram Factory, the second play to be staged at the now legendary Melbourne venue, then went on to found one of Victoria’s first community theatre companies, the Mill Theatre. McCaughey also set up the performing arts program at Deakin University.
Despite Ostrovsky’s popularity in Russia, his works have been rarely performed in the West. James McCaughey comments ‘What was happening in Melbourne in the late 1960s and early 1970s was comparable to what was happening in Russia at the time of Ostrovsky – a commitment to remaking a theatre which stemmed from the society of which it was part, powered by the energy of vernacular speech and releasing new capacities in the actor.
‘Having Evelyn Krape in the play draws those two stories together, bringing to the realisation of Ostrovsky some of the rich development of Melbourne theatre over the last forty years.’
Gasworks Arts Park present Alexandr Ostrovsky’s
The Scoundrel That You Need
Directed by James McCaughey
Performers Stephen Costan, Steve Gome, Miria Kostiuk, Evelyn Krape,
Olga Makeeva, Grant Mouldey, Ben Pfeiffer & Elizabeth Thomson
Venue:
Gasworks Theatre, corner Graham and Pickles Sts, Albert Park
Dates/Times: May 7 to 24, Tuesday to Saturday @ 7.30pm
Tickets: $28/$20
Bookings: 9699 3253 OR online at www.gasworks.org.au
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