2 March - Chekhov & Spring

How current is old Chekhov? Am sure you ask yourselves that question on a weekly basis. A lot. That’s why going to see The Seagull (and Uncle Vanya a few weeks ago) even though you read it years ago and saw the play years ago the therefore you don’t think you need to repeat the experience … is actually crucial. You just have to remind yourself that things make sense at different times in your life and what seemed irrelevant then, is now and s on. You take away from them what you need. Toph thinks the play is bleak, granted, and that Konstantin kills himself because he’s a failed writer. I think he kills himself because his mother doesn’t love him and the girl he’s fixated on doesn’t want him. But there you go. I do get the other stuff about these people being ciphers for the larger problems of Russia in those days and so on but… all of that doesn’t matter because at the end, after our furious clapping and self backslapping for bothering to get tickets, the boy says ‘You do look a bit like Kristin Scott Thomas, she’s more drawn than you but the mouth is very similar…’
I mean, a girl could fall off the balcony at such tribute. (La Scott Thomas was also terrific in the role of the vain actress mother, she totally inhabited it which I more that can be said for him from The Office) especially if she identifies with the vain in the above sentence. I was already thinking that it’s a shame it’s not cold enough to warrant me wearing gorgeous Russian style winter coats. Did I ever mention I love Anna Karenina? Didn’t think so.
If you consider that only a few days earlier leafing through supplements he’d leant over to show me the Creole looking girl in the M&S lingerie ads and said ‘She looks like you!’, it’s practically flattery heaven. Now, that one is a good 20 years younger than me, no? Kristin at least not dissimilar in age to me, bit more polished but I don’t benefit from Oscar make up on a daily basis or, come to think of it, ever. Clearly the two don’t look like each other and I don’t look like them, but these compliments are very, very welcome. Going into Spring feeling good! And it’s mutual. I’ve taken pictures of him where I’ve compared him to Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt who clearly don’t look like each other and/or like him blah blah but isn’t that the whole premise of that movie where Jack Black falls in love with Gwynnie and doesn’t see the fat girl? The look of love indeed.