October 11 - November 4, 2007
Nothing Sacred
Reviewed by Brad Hathaway

Running time 2:20 - one intermission
A Russian classic inspired a contemporary Canadian playwright 

This is not your typical stage adaptation of a novel. Highly successful, often produced Canadian playwright George F. Walker took the characters from what is often cited as the first modern Russian novel, Ivan Turgenev's 1862 Fathers and Sons, and built his own play. He starts just where Turgenev began, but he ends miles away with the lives of the characters having taken different paths. The result is a play quite appropriate for Firebelly as they pursue their mission of giving younger, less experienced cast members a chance to sink their teeth into challenging roles in a supportive environment. It features Jon Townson strutting to good effect as the charismatic young nihilist and Patrick Flannery finding a nice balance between hero worship and spunk as a follower who follows his lead only so far. The production under Robb Hunter making his Potomac Region directorial debut is a diverting and entertaining evening of substantial theater blending a light comic touch with undercurrents of tragedy which, after all, is the hallmark of Russian literature.

Storyline: The son of a land owner in rural Russia in 1859 returns home from school with his older best friend to find his widowed father has a child by a servant with whom he is in love, his uncle has complications in his own love life and the overseer has difficulty with the newly freed serfs.

Those who know Turgenev's novel will find familiar ground at the start of this play but things begin to become a bit destabilizing as the plot veers from the source material. Walker constructs his plot from the motivations of the characters and lets it play out in a different way than the original. Those who aren't familiar with the Russian classic needn't fear, however. No knowledge of the source is needed to quickly comprehend events and recognize sharply defined characters. The language that Walker uses is free of any pretension of being "historical" or "classic". Instead, while he avoids any contemporary jargon, there is a lightness in the dialogue that feels distinctly modern even as the characters retain their Russian names.

Townson looks a bit like a young John Lennon, which seems right for a young nihilist. Russian nihilism of the mid-nineteenth century rejected the social mores of society, but Townson gives it a touch of flippantry that feels sort of Lennon-like. Flannery has a bit more reserve, as befits the scion of an estate. Together, they establish a rapport as friends. Charles St. Charles and Dave Bobb find a sharper, slightly more competitive relationship as the young student's father and uncle. Clarissa Zies is effective as well as the servant the father loves.

Following the action of the nine-scene (plus prologue) play is easier because of the use of signs at the side of the stage reminiscent of vaudeville posters that give the location for each scene ("A Country Road," "The Kirsanov Garden," "The Kirsanov Drawing Room"). Andrew J. Berry's set splits the playing space in the Theatre on the Run into thirds with one segment the garden, one the dining room and the third, the front lip of the playing space, serving as a road or the woods or even an extra room. Highlighting the fact that this is not your stuffy classic, Hunter adds music ranging from a mandolin solo on the old Italian tune Funiculí, Funiculá to one with a hint of a Parisian cabaret.

Written by George F. Walker. Directed by Robb Hunter. Design: Andrew J. Berry (set) Connor M. Dale (lights) Ray Gniewek (photography) Kathi Gollwitzer (stage manager). Cast: Dave Bobb, Patrick Flannery, Mitch Irzinski, Craig Lawrence, Andrew Pecoraro, Kelley Slagle, Charles St. Charles, Jon Townson, Cliff Williams III, Scott Zeigler, Clarissa Zies.