Platonov

Peter Stein, the undisputed master of late twentieth-century stage direction and founder of Berlin’s legendary Schaubühne, is a leading figure in a theatre that is philological, exacting, and profoundly humane. Born in 1937, Stein has shaped the modern theatrical imagination through his remarkable ability to reinterpret the classics in a contemporary key while preserving their full complexity.

With Platonov, Stein turns to an early work by Anton Čechov, written around 1880: a visionary, demanding text, never entirely completed, yet for that very reason brimming with potential.

For the director, Platonov “is the story of a man gifted with talent and charm, yet incapable of finding his place in the world. He is loved by four women, but cannot choose among them. He loses himself in his own thoughts, wavering between desire and fear, until he comes to despise himself. He contemplates suicide, and just when he finds the courage to live, one of the women who loves him kills him.” And again: “Platonov is the first example of those "superfluous" men whom Čechov would later scatter throughout his stories and plays. It is also a work filled with other extraordinary characters, each struggling with their own contradictions, with economic, emotional, and personal difficulties. It is the portrait of a world that is collapsing, yet refuses to relinquish its beauty”.

As for the staging, Stein explains: “To tell this story requires fifteen actors, and a set capable of conveying the complexity and richness of this universe. I have imagined five distinct spaces that transform and pursue one another like the characters’ states of mind: a large veranda, where the opening encounters unfold; a night-time park illuminated by fireworks, like an illusion of happiness; a stretch of railway lined with telegraph poles, symbol of a progress that does not redeem; the interior of a small country school, a place of idealism and frustration; and finally, a sumptuous room with weapons on the walls, where the tragedy is consummated.

To stage Platonov is an undertaking fraught with both fear and hope. Yet it is worth the risk. Few plays offer such human, poetic, and dramatic richness. Even in his youth, Chekhov already understood everything.”

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