The Platform Theatre is one of the latest additions to the major redevelopment of the area around King’s Cross. Already the new home of the Guardian and Observer newspapers, Google UK are also moving in alongside Central Saint Martins and Drama Centre who are already resident behind the almost perpetual construction on Euston Road.
Belka Productions is one of the first professional companies to present work at the Platform. This, their second production following A Warsaw Melody at the Arcola last year, is a devised piece inspired by the short stories of Chekhov and Ivan Bunin, celebrated in Russia if less well known over here.
Belka are in the business of giving lesser known Russian authors and plays a platform in Britain. Bunin – from whose work the evening takes its title – was in fact the first of four Russian writers to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (ten points if you can name the other three) but this production doesn’t quite succeed in giving his work the airing it apparently deserves: for although there is an obvious mirroring in the two pieces presented here, it is Chekhov’s work that dominates.
Presented in traverse, with raised stages at either end, the connection between the stories is illicit holiday romance with much of the focus on Gurov, the mild-mannered but dominant wooer of Chekhov’s ‘Lady with the Dog.’ Stephen Pucci is sharp, committed and articulate in the glimpses of expressionism he brings to Gurov. A layer of story-telling which the director, Oleg Mirochnikov, claims to have been the driving force behind his creative process but is not quite strong enough to define the production or reveal further meaning to the audience.
The production values are high and the design by Agnes Treplin and lighting by Howard Hudson swing us gently between the abstract, the literal and the ethereal. Huge projections of rippling bed sheets and a white curtain caught by the breeze stray from their frames behind the stage and creates the kind of longing we would expect from Andrei Tarkovsky’s films and from Chekhov’s best dramatic works. Accompanied by Michael Umney’s well-curated sound design it is here that we get closest to the inexplicable fundamentals of love and the human experience that the production seeks to evoke.
Masumi Saito weaves exquisite Japanese dance through the piece, presumably inspired by the performance Gurov watches whilst in pursuit of The Lady. But while it is incredibly accomplished and watchable it is difficult to gauge what light her choreography sheds on the stories themselves.
The production is not, however, entirely out of reach nor is it intentionally esoteric. There are interesting elements and moments borne of all the right impetus here, but despite the considerable surface polish there are place where the piece lacks rigour in terms of narrative tension and dramatic style. As a result, Sunstroke sometimes falls between two stools, despite the best efforts of an evidently exciting and talented creative team.