‘In a European city with monuments, a couple was found drinking tea. They were most likely the last couple to be found in that state,’ read the headline – and that was exactly what we found as we climbed up the stairs at The Rag Factory, just off Brick Lane, to an attic-like room, with a stage buried in a pile of random stuff. Excitement and curiosity filled the air. And that’s when the chaos, the insanity and the unpredictable began.

Who’s Afraid of Anton Chekhov? is a brainchild of Dina Gordon, Nadia Lamin and Ella Gamble – three friends and actors who met during their training at East 15 Acting School and together form an all-female theatre company: allgoodartistsaredead. Written by Gordon and starring all three of them, the show resulted from their collective improvisation.

From the beginning, nothing was making sense. But as the mind got used to the craziness of the characters, understanding crept in. Centred around a long and frustrated relationship between hipster-looking Painter (Gamble) and Victoria (Lamin, in a white Victorian wedding dress), the play resembled Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee in 1962 and the parallel in the title.

“The resemblance in title came when I realized I had written about a relationship on the verge of obliteration. So I thought it would be fun to reference Edward Albee’s play, which is the epitome of such a relationship,“ says Gordon, whose dominatrix-resembling character, simply called Woman, dressed in a tight leather miniskirt with chains around her neck, stood outside the plot of Victoria and Painter, talking to Jean, a man lying on the floor as she was demanding money that he owed her but who we never got to see.

But why Anton Chekhov? The Russian author and playwright, whose picture rests on the table of the couple’s living room? ‘The play follows a similar structure to Chekhov’s work. They all sit around, drinking tea, hungover, talking about nothing which in fact is everything,’ explains Lamin. ‘I think Chekhov was the greatest early-modern playwright, the first to consider human psychology. He perfectly understood human nature. Humans can be very vulgar, lazy and cruel but he saw beyond these behaviours and focussed on their causes,‘ adds Gamble.

We left the theatre joyous, confused and a little bit stunned.

Images courtesy of allgoodartistsaredead

Published 09/07/2015 at alvarmagazine.com