UW News

January 30, 2003

Despite glum title, Suicide is classic comedy


You wouldn’t expect a play called The Suicide to be a comedy. But playwright Nikolai Erdman knew what he was doing back in 1929 when he wrote the story of Semyon Podsekalnikov, an unemployed man who — forced to live off his wife and browbeaten by his mother-in-law — contemplates suicide.







SPECIAL FEATURE: Photographer Kathy Sauber’s behind-the-scenes look at the staging of The Suicide.
Erdman was living in Soviet Russia under Stalin, and his play — which opens on campus next week — shows a man lionized by a series of advocates who relish the idea of having a martyr for their pet causes. Semyon finds himself in a bizarrely heroic race toward his own demise as one by one his “friends” beg him to commit suicide as the ultimate anti-Soviet act.


Stalin was not amused.


Although two famous directors — Stanislavsky and Meyerhold — had competed to produce the play, the dictator suppressed it as anti-government and sent Erdman packing to a work camp. The Suicide was not seen anywhere in the Soviet Union until the 1980s.


Mark Weil, who is directing the play for the UW School of Drama, has some inkling of how Erdman must have felt. His country, Uzbekistan, was under the Soviet thumb from the late 19th century until 1991. But Weil, unlike Erdman, has been able to have a successful career in the theater and is now director of Tashkent’s Ilkhom Theatre.


Here as a visiting artist, Weil is happy to be staging what he calls “a great Russian classic.” The play, he says, was unacceptable to the government because of what it said about life in the Soviet Union at that time.


“The people who are urging the hero on to suicide represent different layers of society,” he says, “so it shows that a lot of people are unhappy and ready to use any situation to present a protest.”


Beyond its history as a vehicle for protest, however, the play is also in the artistic tradition of Nikolai Gogol. “Gogol would use a small, simple person as his hero,” Weil says, “and that simple person would represent people in general.”


Weil is invoking Gogol in the production by using Alfred Schnittke’s Gogol Suite as musical accompaniment. Also featured is contemporary composer Leonid Desiatnikov’s score for the movie Moscow. Theater in his country, Weil explains, makes greater use of music than does American theater — which is only one of the differences.


“At home we would work on this play sometimes two, three months in classes, just to warm up, small scenes,” he says. “After the work in classes we work on stage for another two, three months to complete the staging. Here, I arrived on Dec. 27, started rehearsals on Dec. 29 and we start previews Feb. 2.”


Weil adds that in his country, a play typically has a very long run. But he feels on the whole that Americans rush things more than they need to. “I wonder if Americans need to press students so much from the very beginning, in the time when they’re not really strong — why you don’t give them a little more space,” he says.


Although this is the first time he’s directed a play at the UW, Weil has presented workshops for drama students and has been visiting Seattle since 1991. In fact, he has one daughter who is a graduate of the UW and another who is currently enrolled. The older daughter came here when the situation in Uzbekistan became dangerous because of Islamic militants. The younger followed, and then his wife moved here to be near her children. Weil still lives in Uzbekistan but travels back and forth frequently.


“I like working at the University because there are some very talented people here,” Weil says. “We are in discussions about possible future projects.”


The Suicide will be presented Feb. 5–16 in Meany Studio Theatre. Previews are on Feb. 2 and 4. Tickets are available at the Arts Ticket Office, 4001 University Way N.E. For more information about this and other arts events on campus, go to www.artsuw.org.