by Maxim Gorky
Yelena Sense? Sense? … Are you …? How can you be so smart and such an idiot? Look at what you’ve done to your sister. And this place, look where you have left us? All of us, in your quest for sense. You think about the universe and the cosmos and the great big places. But look here, right under your nose? Your family home, your people – the whole town devoted to your family name – is dying. They’re all killing each other. Your best friend has hung himself. And you’ve been what? Making sense of the universe? Have you found the source of life? Have you found the final piece of the puzzle? You’ve sacrificed all of us, for what? Pavel? For your ‘sense’. For some great sudden insight? Where is it? This sense you’ve made?
Protasov Yelena? Really?
Nanny? What is she saying? All I want is for it to be how it was. When we were right there on the brink of the truth and everyone was listening, waiting, hoping for the great leap. The great future. Nanny?
Screams and explosions. The crashing of wood and the buckling of iron.
Nazar and Roman race on.
Nazar They’re going to break through. Liza is opening / the gates.
Nanny Liza! Liza!
Doctor Liza is being swallowed in / the crowd.
Yelena Come with me, we have to try and do something. Liza! Come on.
Yelena, brandishing her revolver heads off. The others follow.
Protasov is left.
Gunshots and a clamour of voices …
THE NATIONAL THEATRE
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About Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky was born in 1868, suffered a deprived childhood and spent his early youth as a vagrant, but by the 1890s he was ranked with Tolstoy and Chekhov among Russia’s leading writers. For long he was best known in the West as a novelist, notably for The Mother (1907) and for the three volumes of his Autobiography, with only The Lower Depths (1902) established on the stage; but in the last third of the twentieth century his other plays began also to be recognised for their portrayals of the painful pre-revolutionary decades. These included Philistines (1901), Summerfolk (1904), Children of the Sun (1905), Enemies (1906) and Vassa Shelesnova (1910). After some equivocation and years in exile, he finally embraced the Revolution, and died in 1936.
About Andrew Upton
Andrew Upton is Artistic Director of the Sydney Theatre Company, where his first play, Hanging Man, was staged in 2002, followed by Riflemind in 2007. He has also adapted a number of classics for the company. His version of Gorky’s Philistines was seen at the National Theatre in London in 2007, and of Bulgakov’s The White Guard in 2010. He wrote the films Bangers (1999), which he also directed, and Gone (2006), and the libretto for Alan John’s opera Through the Looking Glass (2008).
By Andrew Upton from Faber
RIFLEMIND
PHILISTINES
(adapted from Gorky)
THE WHITE GUARD
(adapted from Bulgakov)
THE CHERRY ORCHARD
(adapted from Chekhov)
Copyright
First published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
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This ebook edition first published in 2013
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ISBN 978–0–571–30488–2
