Review: THE NINA VARIATIONS is 'Theatre for Theatre People'

There's theatre for people, and theatre for theatre people. Theatre for people is exactly what it sounds like: theatre that can be enjoyed by anyone who appreciates storytelling. Theatre for theatre people is theatre that celebrates other theatre; it's the in-joke; the esoteric re-rendering; the specific allusion. Westmont's student production of The Nina Variations (by Steven Dietz) falls into this latter category.

Dietz's show presents 42 variations on Nina and Treplev's final scene from The Seagull (by Anton Chekhov). It's an interesting concept--the variations, each a short scene, examine multiple alternate endings to Nina and Treplev's story. Naturally, this type of theatrical analysis brings up a number of questions: What do each of the variations accomplish on their own? What do they accomplish as a unit, or as a series? What, exactly, is the theme of a project whose engine seems to be no more intricate than "variations on a theme" for the sake of variations?

I enjoy Chekhov's work, but I struggled with The Nina Variations. Inherent in the act of borrowing characters from another play is the idea that those characters were chosen purposefully so the playwright could comment on the original work (in this case, The Seagull). Though The Nina Variations isn't Chekhov's work, the characters are still his: Treplev and Nina need to behave like Treplev and Nina, or there's little point in using their characters. Dietz presents adaptations of this scene, presumably because he found something important in the scene worth exploring. Why is this particular moment so vital to The Seagull, and what was Chekhov saying about human nature via this particular interaction? One of the interesting aspects of derivative works is the opportunity to see new perspective on an existing piece, but Dietz's play languishies in a limbo where reference to The Seagull seems needless. The characterizations of Nina and Treplev (and the numerous permutations of their relationship) were vague, and it wasn't clear what Dietz was attempting to say about Chekhov's work (or the human condition, overall).

The Nina Variations, while certainly investigative of the various ways people can behave in a relationship, lacked connective tissue. One variation did not necessarily inform the next, and 42 variations were too few to develop an opinion on Dietz's perceived importance of this scene. This lack of thesis and structure made The Nina Variations whimsical, but somewhat directionless. Certainly, many of the variations had some reliance on the audience's understanding of the specific emotional complexities of The Seagull, including the nuances of the complicated relationship between Treplev and his mother (Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina), as well as Nina's similarly complicated place in the love triangles between Trigorin and Irina, and Trigorin and Treplev. Context clues provide the basic situation, but Dietz's play doesn't offer the subtleties that make the original scene between Nina and Treplev remarkable. The Nina Variations loses much of the layered emotionality so integral to Chekhov's work in the assumption that the audience knows more than they necessarily do.

In the end, The Nina Variations left me with a number of questions to consider, but very little in terms of solid postulations regarding the playwright's message. The most substantial theme in Dietz's play was the comparison of form versus content, and the art of fashioning a great story. Ironically, while the play is fixated on the idea of creating the perfect story, Dietz does not manage this feat himself, which undercuts the veracity of the plays seeming self-awareness. I appreciate that the play illustrates the ideas of effective storytelling, but without distinct direction or rising action, The Nina Variations is a bizarre experiment in negative theatrical space--it presents the important aspects of storytelling, and then demonstrates the points by not accomplishing them.

COMING UP AT WESTMONT:

The Insect Comedy or The World We Live In
By Karel Capek
Directed by John Blondell
February 27 - 28 at 8 pm
March 5 - 6 at 8 pm
March 7 at 2 pm Porter Theatre

In this early 20th century European classic, Czech playwright, novelist, and short story writer Karel Capek creates an allegoric moral fantasy that presents the human condition through the perspective of insects. Capek's exuberantly theatrical and perceptive play presents a vivid picture of early 20th century European life, a life not too far from our own. In the nearly 100 years since its writing, is the World We Live In actually much different from that of Capek's? $15 General Admission, $10 Students, Seniors, and Children.
**On Saturday March 7th, The Insect Comedy plays back-to-back with Lit Moon Theatre's production of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, in an afternoon and evening of two fascinating European plays.

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