Lunchtime Chekhov at Bridewell

It’s not every day you can say you enjoyed a spot of Chekhov whilst eating a panini alongside the employees of Fleet Street. That is unless you happen to have dropped in on the Bridewell Theatre’s ingenious venture, ‘Lunchbox Theatre’, where the audience is encouraged to utilise their lunch hours by seeing a 45 minute performance of some of theatre’s greats.

Getting the bitesize treatment for the last time before  the  run changes was everyone’s favourite Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, with director Aileen Gonsalves opting for the more palatable short one-act comedies, The Proposal and The Bear rather than his more famously serious plays which may be a little hard to swallow in such a timeframe.

Ok, that’s probably enough food related puns.

The minimalistic set, small cast and fast-paced dialogue of the plays work well for this type of wham-bam theatre, relying on the energetic performances of the cast and their excellent interaction with one another to engage the audience and keep the laughs coming. The Proposal sees a hypochondriac attempt to propose to the girl next door, a feat that becomes all the more difficult as he gradually discovers perhaps they might not be as compatible as he first thought. It all gets too much for him and his poor ticker, resulting in paralysing palpitations and numb limbs demonstrating, thanks to Nick Danan’s  enthusiastic performance, that physical ailments can indeed be hilarious. Danan’s interplay with his oddly camp future father-in-law, played by John-Christian Bateman,  perfectly captures the farcical witticisms of Chekov’s text.

The farce seamlessly continues into The Bear, where a mourning widow lies prostrate in her lounge staring at her former husband’s photograph until she is rudely interrupted by a moneylender, with some serious rage issues, who has come to reclaim her husband’s debt. After battling with the stubborn widow and some incredibly fragile furniture, he realises what he really wants to reclaim from the deceased isn’t the money – but his wife.

Like the plays themselves, emotion is just as fleeting and transitory; hatred turns into unadulterated lust in a matter of seconds while the fluttering heart of a besotted lover soon becomes a palpitating collapse to the floor. The whiplash emotional turnaround of the actors exemplifies Chekhov’s love of caricaturing the broad spectrum of society – most of which were sat in the Bridewell Theatre.

Lunchtime Chekhov may have come to an end but, never fear, lunchtime Mad Dogs and Englishmen will be providing a  refreshing alternative to hunching over our keyboards from the end of this month. And by refreshing I don’t just refer to my misfortune of being  in the splash-zone when the chap behind me opened his second can of coke down the back of my neck.

Lunchtime Chekhov took place at:
St Bride Foundation
Bride Lane
Fleet Street
EC4Y 8EQ

Box Office: 020 7353 3331

Mad Dogs and Englishmen will be running  from 27 October until 20 November.