Review: Anton Chekhov Is A Tasty Snack by Penfold Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs
Quick quiz:
Identify yourself: are you/were you - a theatre kid/college actor/theatre artist (struggling or not)/theatregoer?
Are you nerdy enough to know who Anton Chekhov was?
Do you know any of his plays? Have you acted/designed/produced any of his plays?
Do you like farce? Not slapstick, exclusively; think something more like The Play that Goes Wrong but without the pratfalls.
Are theatre people beautiful? Vulnerable? Ridiculous? (All of those?)
Your answers don't matter; go see this production!
Jenny Connell Davis's Anton Chekhov Is A Tasty Snack in the hands of director Liz Fisher and a lively, dedicated cast, prove everything in the preceding sentence above. Connell's script takes a desperate director (Ryan Crowder) aspiring to make a huge splash with a broadway musical but driven to settle for less (?) in the form of a production of Chekhov's The Seagull, the possibities and scope of which steadily melt away over the course of the action. His company, a tiny band, includes only two thespians: an over-the-hill professional actress (Helen Merino, who in real life will never find herself in that dilemma) and an ingenue (Abigail Bensman) eager to build her resumé. Joining them are a tweedy young prof of Russian (Diego Arroyo Aceves) as "turg" (dramaturg, whatever that really is) and a rock-steady stage manager who appears to know more about Chekhov than all the others combined (Gabrielle Smith). They gather in a shabby plywood-walled empty space, the familiar hell of all broke thespians, and wrestle with all the familiar hellish challenges of bringing something to the stage.
Desperation and indignation are powerful sparkplugs for comedy, and Connell cleverly mines both. She writes rants that entertain wonderfully. Merino gets two: the first a passionate I've-seen-and-lived-it-all lecture to the ingenue about casting couches, indignities, and ageing actresses; the second a post-intermission blast about money-grubbing producers and theatres that break the magic of theatre by imposing intermissions on audiences, no, not to give them bathroom breaks, but to sell the booze and raise the cash take (that one provoked laughter and near-applause from the audience just back in their seats). Crowder's exasperation, kinetic reactions and rubber-faced expressions in his late-second-act rant about one-man-shows and seagulls comes close to stopping the show.
But it's not all satire; heart and history are embedded in this script. Connell clearly knows her Chekhov, The Seagull, and the playwright's history. An unexpected set of circumstances brought a tubercular physician cum short-story writer stranded far from Moscow to craft four full-length plays during the last eight years of his life. Though the first of these, The Seagull, was a disaster when it premiered, confusing and angering the audience, a director at the Moscow Art Theatre recognized the genius of Chekhov's unfamiliar spare, realistic, conversation-based script and commissioned more work from him. Chekhov, considered the country's most reclusive bachelor, eventually married leading actress Olga Knipper.
Connell scatters Chekhovian bits, scenes, and tropes through the script. Some of these will flash harmlessly past anyone not familiar with The Seagull. The playwright falls short of remedying that when she gives the stage manager the assignment of a swift four-minute solo recap of the plot; to appreciate Gabrielle Smith's mastery of that text, you really need to be able to recall all of the characters by name and remember the developments of the relatively static text.
Any confusion is compensated, however, by the unexpected transformation to a closing scene. The tawdry warehouse transforms to a cottage in Yalta (thanks to set designer Gary Thornsberry) and Liz Fisher's cast takes us out of the frantic present back to the origins, in an eminently satisfying time trip back to 1895.
I have director Liz Fisher and her husband Robert Matney to thank, in part, both for my fascination with Chekhov and for the beginnings of my engagement with Austin theatre. They appeared in Breaking String Theatre's 2009 production of The Cherry Orchard just as I was getting started with my investigation of the theatre scene; they appeared in and co-produced Uncle Vanya two years later. I was hooked. Hooked on stages, hooked on Chekhov, and, as it turned out, hooked on Liz Fisher's perceptive, inventive approach to creating dramatic art. Anton Chekhov is a Tasty Snack is an additional reminder, should you ever need it, to watch what this magical artist is up to.
EXTRAS
Click poster image below to go to Penfold Theatre's playbill for Anton Chekhov is a Tasty Snack
Video by Jose Lozano, Magic Spoon Productions
Anton Chekhov Is A Tasty Snack
by Jenny Connell Davis
Penfold Theatre Company
June 06 - June 28, 2025
June 6-28, 2025
Ticket price: $19-$39
Run time: 2 hours
For ages: High school+
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