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Ariette Taylor will direct an ensemble of sixteen of Australia’s finest actors in Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, bringing this famous Russian play to Melbourne audiences for the first time, in November.
This production, based on a new translation, is in many ways a companion piece to Taylor’s 2005 presentation of Chekhov’s Ivanov, which sold out its four week season and was described as ‘a superb production with a stellar cast’ (The Age).
Ariette Taylor is one of Australia’s finest directors renowned for the intensity and brilliance of her direction. The Keene/Taylor Theatre Project (1997-2002), in which Ariette directed works by playwright Daniel Keene, created a unique body of work performed by an ensemble of fine actors many of whom featured in Ivanov and will perform in this production.
“It is working with the actors that excite me more then anything. To follow on the work we did together before, to get beneath the obvious, to find the human complexities within all these characters. The actual production is of much less importance to me then the way we are able to get to the soul of the work. Not to impress, not to be new or even different, but to communicate directly, to celebrate our fragile humanity in this age of ultimate selfishness and greed.”
Perhaps Gorky’s best known play, The Lower Depths was premiered in 1902 at the Moscow Art Theatre with Stanislavski performing the role of Satin. The production 'thrilled and stirred the middle-class audience, then swept the world's capitals with 75,000 copies of the play sold in a year.' Set in urban Russia, just before the onslaught of the revolution in 1905, the play deals with 12 lone characters – dropouts, beggars, the lowest of the low – living together in a cellar, each renting a small space from the miser landlord living above them with his unloving wife and her beautiful young sister.
This is the second time (as with Ivanov) the ensemble has created its own translation, using a literal translation by the Russian actor Alex Menglet as a starting point.
“We sat around our living room table with sometimes as many as 10 actors at a time and while Alex would slowly translate the original script, literally on his feet, pacing around us we would struggle to find the translation that would work for us and for our audience, but still keep the idiosyncrasies of the Russian culture and politics of that time.”
The final translation is a coming together of cultures, languages and personalities that will come alive in what promises to be an unmissable theatrical experience in November.
The Lower Depths is being presented with the support of Arts Victoria, The Australia Council and City of Melbourne.
Critical responses to Ivanov:
‘It's a joy to see theatre like this. This production has many virtues, but perhaps its greatest is the sheer depth of its cast: the kind of insight an ensemble of this quality can collectively bring to a text can be revelatory.’ Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes
‘It's not often one feels one could weep with gratitude for how the theatre has brought a play to such magisterial life…an occasion of unalloyed joy and celebration’’
Brian McFarlane, The Australian Book Review
Ariette Taylor and fortyfivedownstairs present
The Lower Depths
By Maxim Gorky
Direction: Ariette Taylor
Design: Adrienne Chisholm
Lighting Design: Emma Valente
Script Assistant: Vanessa Rowell
Performers: Alex Menglet, Genevieve Picot, Greg Stone, Paul English,
Heather Bolton, Denis Moore, Syd Brisbane, Natalia Novikova, Marco
Chiappi, Bessie Holland, Evan Jureidini, Malcolm Robertson, Adam
Pierzchalski, Chloe Armstrong, Stewart Morritt, Luke Elliot
Venue: Fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne
Previews: Wed 29 Oct & Thur 30 Oct at 7.30pm
Dates: 31 October to 29 November
Times: Tuesday to Saturday 8pm (except Wednesday & Sunday 6.30pm, Saturday matinee 29 Nov 2.30pm
Bookings: (03) 9662 9966 or at www.fortyfivedownstairs.com
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Saturday, 10 January 2009
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